For Don’t Jump:
From Thundercloud on August 30, 2020
I decided to read this story since InBrightestDay earlier pinged me on the forum in your review thread so it kind of suggests he thinks your stories are worth while to read...I am glad to say that he was right. I really like the story you are building even if it takes a while to get to the actual sex (not really a complaint but perhaps answer why this story has so few reviews).
I think the interaction of the character is great and on plenty of occasions you give the reader the chance to read between the lines when stuff happens between Tamara, Thomas, Ryan and guess what the character really meant and in later chapter we get verification.
Things to improve is that it takes a fair while until we get a visual description on how Tamara looks. I am not really the ones to complain about this since I often forget to add the visual descriptions until the last edit of story, but in this case I had to kind of readjust my mental image of Tamara in the later chapters and that hurts the reading a bit. I also think it is kind of shame that Tamaras lady friends don't figure more in small scenes to flesh out her social life for the reader.
Thank you so much for the review! Alright, on to answering things!
I’m really hard on myself so I don’t want to believe that InBrightestDay tagged you because they think my stories are worth anything but probably the other way around! I’ll have to hunker down and scroll through both of you guys’ stories to return the favor. I’m horrible when it comes to reading as a whole: I’ll do nothing but read for four months straight or not read anything for a year…
I came onto this site after the little purge that FFN did on Mature works. At the time, I only had one fanfic series and believed that was Mature because of the language (now that I’m more experienced, I’ve realized that my Lyght series is most definitely SFW...). So, writing smut is still a new thing for me; not too many of my stories will be in your face from the first chapter. But again, being on here for so long, I have realized that most readers are here for the sex and when it’s not present in the first two chapters, they leave the story alone. Also… I tend to only update once in a blue moon because my muse hates me…
I find it funny but thrilling that you said I give readers a chance to read between the lines because that was not my intention lol! Like, I have no idea how to do that on purpose, I just, write. I am glad that you’ve pointed that out though! I also suck at foreshadowing so keep that in mind…
As far as the visual description of Tamara. That was sort of done on purpose because I have no idea how she looks my damn self! Another thing that I am awful at: I either info dump a character’s description or you get little to nothing- there is no in-between with me. I mean, I tried to scatter her basic looks throughout the entire story; I’m rereading it now and have seen two parts where I tell the readers her skin tone and her weight. I think there’s three mentions of her hairstyle but unfortunately, that’s it.
Her social life was definitely done on purpose to actually show how little social life she has. Yes, she has friends but they are [spoiler for those who are not caught up] more associates than actual friends. This is, unfortunately, an ongoing theme in most of my books where my MCs either have shitty friends or they have only one or two besties. And are socially awkward to where their social life is itty bitty. Tamara actually attempts to beat herself up for how socially awkward she is throughout the whole story, always wondering why she has the little friends that she does have.
I hope this answers things and I’m glad that you gave this story a try! Also, I should’ve reminded people that this is a first draft of the story. I’m going to go through and make a couple of changes but that’s up in the air because I have no intention of making this a published story. It was something that I wanted to do during Inktober to try to kick myself into writing more: to try to get myself to write a chapter a day. As you can see, it didn’t work