Down the Bunny Rabbit Hole Luv bunny's Wonderland
Related Articles
The results for round 3 of the Smut Marathon are in, and I have some mixed feedback about my entry. That is totally to be expected, as the task was a pretty open one, to write about a character masturbating. They are being watched by a voyeur, and we need to describe what they see in 225-250 words. I received 2 public votes (one of which was my own), and a point from each of the five judges. My final ranking is joint 42nd, which puts me in the bottom 10. I shall have to up my game to be selected into Round 5!
My entry was #17 – Peeping Tom’s Surprise Show.
I happened to be in her neighbourhood. Peering through her front room window the sight that greeted me could not have been better planned, were it me directing it! There she was! The MILF I’d chatted to online sat on a chair at her dining table, her lithe legs spread upon it, her back arched as she watched a laptop screen on the table in front of her. Blinking in disbelief, I didn’t know whether to stop to watch or carry on walking. There was a fence running around the front garden, so I propped my foot up, leaning forward as if to retie my shoelace.
Glancing up, I noticed ‘Milf’ tilting her head back and reaching between her legs. It looked like she was thrusting something into her groin. Her fingers or a dildo I couldn’t see from where I was watching. But there was no doubt as to what she was doing, pussy petting with some gusto! I wondered what she was thinking about as her hand worked rhythmically like a percussionist tapping a drum to the beat of her desire.
Suddenly her mouth opened, and her jaw went slack. This was the finale of her solo performance, and her dark hair fell forward over her chest. She placed her ‘drumstick’ on the table. It must have been 12 inches long! The greedy girl now licked it clean. A message on my phone alerted me. “Smile, you’re on CCTV!” A picture quickly followed. Time to run!
Feedback
Brigit Delaney said “you lost me at MILF. It’s a clunky term, and even though it fits with the voice of this rather unlikeable character, I couldn’t get past it.” May thought the story had a good ending and a nicely written scene too, though it was “not very sensual or erotic for me.”
Sweetgirl offered this helpful summary: “This story worked nicely. The relationship between the characters was explained, but I would have preferred more details of what he could see. That he had “no doubt as to what she was doing” isn’t exactly the most detailed description, and the language “pussy petting with some gusto” is not sexy.”
I appreciate the wording doesn’t give much description, and the line I used sounds rather crude. In some ways, I wanted it to sound like this, as in my mind’s eye, watching someone who doesn’t know they’re being watched is invasive. Writing is subjective, and sometimes the matter being written about is not the most comfortable to read. The language we choose to include can help to reflect this.
Sweetgirl goes on to say, “I would have liked more focus on providing a better description of the woman masturbating, and how he could see her, as it wasn’t clear what he could see from the window. For example, was she facing the window?”
This was perhaps a deliberately vague description. When I first started drafting the story, I was not going to end with my character being captured on CCTV. After reading through my first draft several times, I decided it lacked surprise, so I wanted to make it end with a punchy tables-turned finish.
Alas, this in itself put off some readers! Cousin Pons commented that stories where the voyeur was revealed to be discovered did not make his choice of top stories; “the stories I enjoyed most in round three were the ones where the voyeur was unseen. Quite a few stories had a voyeur who was discovered in the last sentence. I don’t think this was necessary and rather spoilt it for me. A few stories had the characters openly masturbating in full view of each other and for me, this wasn’t voyeurism. Though I know the word is open to a variety of meanings I prefer to think of a voyeur as a ‘peeper’.”
At least I appealed to that sense of voyeurism with my title 😉
Leaving things to the reader’s imagination
Marsha Adams gave her thoughts on the best lines from each of the 67 stories. This was insightful, as for my story she considers the best line to be: “…her hand worked rhythmically like a percussionist tapping a drum to the beat of her desire.”
Martha liked the fact that the observer could only infer masturbation from what they were seeing. The reason being that engaging the reader’s imagination can often create more eroticism than explicit description. I do like to be more subtle at times in my writing, so I’m happy Martha recognises this.
Martha also says “I can—like the voyeur—wonder what she was thinking about as she ‘pussy-petted with gusto,’ but I would have preferred to know what he imagined she might be thinking about; it would have told me a little about him as a character.” This is an interesting point, as I could have explored the voyeur’s personality more if I had done so. I will consider this facet in the next round.
Martha’s final comment was about limiting the use of punctuation to create emotion. She advises to instead, let the words do this. Another piece of useful feedback to bear in mind for the next round.
Editorial fixes
Marie bases her feedback on whether there were overused words in the stories or ‘sticky sentences’ (ones that use filler words and delay getting to the point). She also looked out for clichés, and checked the reading ease of the stories, specifically the Flesch Reading Ease.
“A great story, great idea, with some fun metaphors, such as “rhythmically like a percussionist tapping a drum to the beat of her desire” and “finale of her solo performance”. However, the last sentences confused me. What picture? For me, you undid some of the story with the CCTV and picture.”
Editorial changes Marie proposes are as follows:
- Replace the comma in “was doing, pussy petting” with a hyphen.
- The sentence starting with “The MILF I’d chatted to…” is too long.
- The sentence starting with “But there was no doubt…” is a sticky sentence, and removing the ‘but’ at the beginning will solve this. No clichés found, and no overused words. That’s useful to hear, as sometimes I can include ‘filler’ words, so I will try to be mindful about not using these so much in future rounds. I do try to avoid overusing the same words, and for me personally, when I read some of the stories, if I encountered this, it would put me off the story.
- Flesch Reading Ease: 54.7; this score is a bit low, so in future rounds, I will be looking to improve this 🙂
My personal favourites
For anyone wondering which entries I personally voted for, they were: #9 On Call, #23 Balcony Scene, #57 Brief Encounter, #63 Madam DeBouviour’s Tea House.
Here’s to the next round, which is now open until the 22nd April. In the voting round, 12 writers will be eliminated to bring the total down to 55. (assuming that everyone submits an entry of course).
To see my thoughts on previous rounds, click here for Round 1, and here for Round 2.
I did like your story – it was one of only about 25 to make my cut which i why I gave feedback for it – and I like your fiction in general and think you can do well in this comp.
Wishing you luck LB
x
That’s really lovely of you to say, and I appreciate it. There were a lot of stories to read, so it’s great that the judges all put in their valuable time to give their thoughts. xx
I’d like to tell you, LuvBunny 😉 that I liked your story too! keep on creating 🙂
Thank you, I am still in the running for now, so that’s my plan Lisa 😉 xx
keep my fingers crossed for you)
Thanks Lisa, and if you’d like to look at the story I wrote for Becky Embers’s site, that would be much appreciated too as every vote counts xx <3
I really like how you run through the feedback you have received, and share your own thoughts in between 🙂
Rebel xox
Thanks Marie, in some ways I kind of feel like I need to justify why I wrote something in a certain way. I guess it’s a hang-up from an unsettled past. But maybe it helps people understand my thoughts behind the stuff I write. Like some of it is personal but then I put a twist on it. I think readers sometimes want to be left wondering how and why… we can’t dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s for them…😉 LB xxx