LockedBox

14235

14201

Hello, AFF. It's been a while. I'm seeking a beta for my original work Mix Beer With Liquor And You Will Get Sicker, which is an M/M set in a fictional, pseudo-victorian setting. It centers around a romantic relationship between two adult men, and will contain consensual anal and oral sex (I'm also thinking of adding a solo-M scene, but I'm not sure yet) but these elements are not present in the next few chapters (there is kissing and a little heavy petting a little later on however). At the very least I need someone who can look at my spelling and grammar and give me feedback on the characterization and the plot flow. General feedback is fine, so long as you can be reasonable analytical and point out parts that need to be worked on. Simply running a spell check is not good enough. I've been working on this story for a while and have a backlog of chapters that have yet to be posted, adding up to about 35 thousand words if you include the incomplete chapter. You don't have to beta all of them by any means. Just betaing one chapter would make me a very happy girl so long as it is done properly, running a spell check and changing the grammar around without telling me how or why is not good enough. Also, I have some special specifications about chapter two (the first one that needs to be beta'd). Firstly, a significant portion of it received feedback the writerscrit site. It has several issues (mostly that its a bit dull and expository) and it needs a rewrite. I have tried to rewrite it over the Christmas break, several times in fact, but those attempts were circular and boring at best and nonsensical at worst. Since then real life has become a lot more full than it used to be, with a new job and my admission to university it's very doubtful that I can rewrite the chapter properly any time soon. That wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the fact that I haven't updated my story since last July and that all the other chapters I've written are much better and I want to post them. In short, I am sick to death of trying to rewrite this chapter and I do not have the time or inspiration to do so any more. Am I willing to tweak it to hell and back to make the best of the material that is there? Yes, yes I am. But I do not want to try to rewrite the thing again at this time so please keep that in mind. If you have done betaing in the past, or writing of your own, please link it to me so that I can see it. I don't want to sound rude but my first beta cut and run and I do not want to go through this polava any more than I have to. If you only want to do one chapter, then that's fine, but do it properly and tell me that from the start. If you change your mind or suffer a setback of some kind then please let me know asap and you will be forgiven, don't just ignore me and leave me in the dark.

Is roundhouse kicked and sent flying by the internet meme. I chuck a cheezburger.

I catch the gavel and thrust it into the sky, rendering the heavens assunder with a great bolt of lightning and from the heavens decends the angelic spirit of Chuck Norris. I chuck Chuck Norris.

*sigh* he still hasn't replied to my email yet, all he had to do was say "no I can't be your beta anymore", that would have taken what, 20 seconds? I think I'll just let go. The ironic thing is that I think I will take another stab at rewriting that chapter now, so its probably going to be a while before I can post anything anyway.

With one word I can convert a twilight fan over to good literature.

king of the mountain... in my pants

Thanks for the advice guys. I sent him another email on monday/sunday and I haven't heard from him yet. I tried to keep things cordial but I think that some of my annoyance leeched into it, and looking back on it I've noticed two whooping english errors that had me face palming. Note to self: do not send email's at one in the morning. I just hope he gets back in contact soon.

Hello people of AFF, I have a quandrary which has been bothering me to no end and I need your help on this. I only have one story on AFF and as of yet it only has one chapter. Now, I had considerable trouble writing the second chapter, no matter how I twisted it and edited it it remains long winded and full of exposition. I was given the good advice that I should just rewrite it from the ground up, looking at the scenes through fresh eyes with a blank page. But the problem is that I'm not particularily interested in that chapter. Its not bad but its really just a transition that leads to the more important part of the story that I really want to write, which makes rewriting it increadibly painstaking and to be completely honest, boring. In the end I resolved to simply send the original chapter of to my beta and then post it and move on, getting to the chapters I want to write and then, once I have satisfied my creativity and gotten those chapters cleaned up and posted. I might be able to focus on rewriting chapter two propperly. I sent the chapter to my beta in late October of last year. Not a word has he spoken to me since. Now the main quandary is that I really don't want to go through the kerfuffal of getting a new beta, he was a GOOD beta, and when I did chapter one he had it back to me very promptly and was a great help to me as we whipped it into shape, so this sudden haitus just came from no where. I know that he has a job and a life and that this is a very busy time of year and all, but isn't two and a half months a bit of a wait, even for a 10,000 word chapter? Just to clarify, I definatly know that he is alive and that he recieved my email with the story attached. Should I prod him about it or should I just let go and seek a new beta? Hell, any advice would be appreciated on this right now, my poor story hasn't been updated in months now and I have the third chapter ready to go as well now. I'm sick and tired of just sitting on these chapters and opening up an empty e-mail inbox every day. TL;DR= My beta hasn't sent me back my story after 2.5 months of waiting, what should I do? P.S. please do not offer to beta it for me or refer me to someone who can. I want to figure out what to do and try to contact him again, not just cut and run.

That would be pointless, when people rate things they give it a 5 if they liked it or a 1 if they disliked it, never anything in between.

Why do they use so many question marks? I can understand using several exclamation marks in a row to shout at people but the question marks make no sense, are they trying to be extra inquisitive or something?

I get good ideas when I'm asleep, trying to go to sleep or simply wishing that I could be asleep, for some reason my imagination is the most alive when all my other sensory functions have shut down.

I got Anne rice, David Foster Wallace, Arthur Clarke and Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling is the only one I'm familiar with, as he wrote the jungle book and Rikki Tikki Tavi which was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, but oddly enough that chapter was the beginnings of a smut scene, so I'm either raping my own childhood or doing something seriously wrong here

Ok, snogging. We all do it and we all know a bit about it, but how on earth do you write it? I've read through lots of fiction, and written up a long list of stuff I should never try and a short list of things that I can. I've read guides and I've tried my best to go through action-reaction and to write lots of good description. But I still just look at some of the stuff I've written today and think that's its way too cheesy, or that all the descriptions and actions are distracting from the fact that they're trying to eat each others tonsils. So how do you write a good snog? I don't mean a "kiss the bride" type of snog I mean an honest to goodness "When I'm done I'm gonna screw you through the floor" kind of snog, with lots of nipping and moaning going on accompanied by vivid description about what various tongues are doing and where peoples hands are going. How on earth do you write that sort of thing without it being vulgar or cringe worthy? is it even possible? I'm very interested in the way you guy's do this. Posting a good guide or copy pasta-ing a good snogging scene here for me to read would be much loved, but please be sure to credit it properly.

I know that most non-reviewers are due to laziness but a pretty good proportion of them are caused by fear of the dreaded foot to mouth syndrome. I, like many other readers, like to read my fanfiction late at night, and as such I can be rather moody and ready for bed by the time I reach the end. Then, looking back on the reviews I left, all I can do is groan, smack myself in the forehead and say "why did I write that? I sound like such a bitch/winger/nitpicker/annoying brat/idiot/brainless fangirl" which is very embarrassing for me, even if what was written doesn't offend the author. It really put me off reviewing, but now that I've started on my own story (and have become annoyed by the lack of reviewing going on) I've tried to start reviewing again. But because of my habit of shoving my foot into my mouth at every given opportunity, I will often spend at least half an hour combing through the story again and rereading what ever I wrote to make sure that it is something that I'm not going to regret saying later on. I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, so don't be too harsh on the lack of reviews happening.

Fourty Two

*is trampled by a horde of fangirls* I toss a lawsuit

dreaming in my pants

I'd like to say that my username is a deep and insightful metaphor, but it's not. I used to go by the username "masquerade" and if that was taken i would use "dragon-masquerade" Eventually I realized how completely unoriginal this was and decided to change it. I was stumped for a while and eventually I just gave up and picked something at random from my room: LockedBox. It's served me pretty well, it's androgenous, unique and it reminds me of rpg's because if something is locked then you automatically assume that it holds something good.

I'm not sure if I'm really qualified to answer to this, but I and I think most other beginners will want to post their chapters straight away. It's practical because I've gotten some good feedback and advice on how to make it better. Of course, the real reason is that my attention span is on the short side. Knowing that there are people who are reading and enjoying my story online gives me the motivation to keep writing it, I would never have the patience to write out the entire thing without receiving any recognition (and hence, satisfaction) from it.

Grabs the boot and inspects it for missing keys. When I don't find any I chuck it into a nearby pond. I toss a key to the tardis.

I've been reading through some writing tutorials and guides over at Y!gal and I'm worried that my original character, Lauchlan, may have a personality that is much more feminine than I ever intended. He's not supposed to be oozing masculinity from his pores or anything, but I want him to be male and not a female in a males body (I hate it when people do that and I don't want to turn into a hypocrite!) He was raised almost entirely by his mother so he didn't have a male influence on his childhood (father was a sailor, died when he was 3). Both he and his mother were servants to a noble family throughout his childhood and early teens, so he's supposed to be very soft spoken and submissive (not sexually, smartass) but I think that when I tried to give him these traits I ended up making him think and react like a woman would. I would greatly appreciate anyone (preferably men) who would take a look over my story and tell me what you think of Lauchlan's behavior and how you think it could be changed or altered if necessary. If you have the time it would also be really helpful if you could tell me how you think a different male character (or you) would react to the situation that Lauchlan is in, it would make really good reference material and since I'm new to this I really need all the help I can get. http://original.adul...hp?no=600104061 ( It's M/M, there are mentions of m/m sex and one character is nude throughout the whole chapter, don't say I didn't warn you)