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 Review #4778235 |
 | A Sentimental Affair  [GC] He is married, She's been through trauma. Holding on by a thread, yet only he can see it.  |
| (3.5)| Hi! Welcome to WdC! I found your item under Please Review, so I thought I'd give it a look. You'd posted in there that this was intended to be a prologue for your novel. You should check out "House of Sensual Prose " . Purple Holiday Givings  teaches how to write romance as well as how to write erotica. Classes, I think, are 10k GPs, but they don't run all the time. I recommend you double click her heart until it turns gold/yellow, so you can keep up with her. You'll see the things she posts on the Newsfeed, so when she advertises her classes, you can sign up, if you're interested. If you only click once, you'll set her as a favorite of yours and you'll still see what's on her Newsfeed, but she won't be notified of you following her. That's why I recommend the double click till you see  . That sets you as a fan and she's notified. Some of us, like me, send 10k GPs to all new fans. (Feel free to fan me, but don't feel obligated. Schnujo's Doing NaNoWriMo? ) Some of us, like me, also occasionally reward all our fans with GPs, MBs, or raffle tickets. So, to optimize your odds of getting free goodies, I recommend fanning folks. Most folks don't reward their fans, but some of us do, so don't risk missing out. lol We can't see who has set us as a favorite, so we can't reward them. We only know who has fanned us, thus why being a fan is better.  Anyway, another thing I suggest you check out is "October Novel Prep Challenge" . You mentioned writing a novel. I was wondering if you were going to be doing that for National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo or NaNo) in November. You don't have to do "October Novel Prep Challenge" to participate in NaNo, but I can say I've never completed NaNo without Prep. And every time I've ever done Prep, I finished NaNo...at least, so far. lol Even if you don't plan to participate in NaNo, Prep is super helpful. You can actually do the activities on your own throughout the year, not posting in the forum. No one really monitors the forum except near October and into November...maybe a little in December? Anyway, I do recommend you do Prep to help your novel go even more smoothly than you expect it to.Note that I'm not a professional writer or reviewer. All this is just my own opinion. Take what you find useful and ignore the rest. Okay, now to looking at your actual item here. lol Interesting description. Though I don't know how you managed to not have a rating for the intro. The intro is your description. It would be rated E, I would think? Anyway, I don't know how you managed to save your item without being forced to choose E or Non-E for your intro. Huh. Great job filling out all 3 genres! So few people do that, even people here who have been on WdC for over a decade often don't. Good for you! There are a lot of reasons to do it, but 2 of the biggest are to increase your odds of winning "The Quills" , should your item get nominated, and to increase your readership.When things are nominated for "The Quills" , they are nominated into categories like Best Short Story, Best Long Poem - Structured, etc. They aren't nominated for genres. The genre categories are automatic with the nomination of the regular thing. So, if a person only lists 1 genre, they only have 2 chances to win a Quill -- the main category they are nominated for and that 1 genre the listed. No matter HOW obvious it is that your item should be with a certain genre, if you don't list it, it won't be put in that category. Now, not every genre gets enough entries every year to become a genre category, but you're missing opportunities if they do. So, in total, with 3 genres, plus the main category, you could have up to 4 chances to win a Quill Award. Good job not missing out!Another big reason to fill out all 3 is that the #1 way people find things to read is through a genre search. You're literally missing out on potentially 2/3 of your readers if you only list 1 genre instead of all 3. I'm so happy to see you filled out all 3! Well done! I'm also happy to see that you've worked on this since you wrote it. Fabulous! That's definitely not a strong point for me. lol I tend to write things and then abandon them. Good for you for not doing that! Okay, I see you used quotation marks. Is she supposed to be literally speaking this out to someone? If it's to the reader, the quotation marks aren't really necessary, especially if the whole thing is going to be written in 1st person. If she's thinking this, you could use italics, instead. "My body became hot as a surge rushed throughout my whole body." I don't like "body" here being used twice so close together. You could use a body part, "My face became hot..." Or you could just say, "I became hot..." "A few moments felt longer, and time slowed when our eyes locked together..." I think "together" isn't necessary here. It's obvious that they locked together and not on a different object. "...I had to break his gaze before the nurse noticed our eye contact." This has me intrigued. Who is the nurse and why is she here? Is the speaker a patient in a hospital? I pictured them at a party or something until the nurse was mentioned. Interesting... "I wanted him to take me right then and there." This seems to be the beginning of a new paragraph. I recommend a blank space to give the eyes a place to rest when the text gets longer, but also, to help separate more clearly between paragraphs. "I wanted him to do anything that ran across his mind, to fulfill any fantasy he had." I don't know why, but I really like this statement. I think the fact that it leaves it up to the imagination what that might be, instead of naming something in particular, I think that's what really makes this statement impactful. Nice work here! "This romantic dance between us never gets old." Oh? So, they've known each other for a while? Now I'm more curious. Have they known each other for month? Years? How do they know each other and how long has this been going on, this lust without contact? "I am fascinated by his ability to be self-restraint and patient." "Self-restraint" isn't used correctly here. That should be "self-restrained," though even that's odd. I think "restrained" is best because it's obvious that it's his own ability to restrain himself. Optionally, you could say, "I am fascinated by his restraint and patience." "His morals are set and supported by his intentions." Interesting sentence. I like this. "I am not one for breaking up a happy home, yet, I feel magnetically drawn to him for some reason." I think this would be more impactful as 2 separate sentences. We are happy that she's not one to break up a happy home. Then we see the other side of things when you start the next sentence with "Yet, I feel magnetically drawn..." I think that plays with our expectations and emotions more. "He is a happily married man with a baby just 4 months old." Yikes! Adding in that baby really amps up the stakes here. Nice touch. Though you're really risking the reader getting mad at your character. Good luck with pulling this off. lol "I feel guilty for feeling these things." This helps keep the reader from turning against your character. Good call! "Never has he led me on, he just acknowledged the connection we have one that has left a profound impact on me." That should be a semicolon or a period. I vote for a semicolon, I think. Also, I'm pretty sure you need something after "have." I'd say a comma or a dash. I vote for a dash. You can that with 2 hyphens -- or you can use the actual ML code for it. We have code for both an endash and an emdash. Ironically, I can't recall how to spell those. Is there a hyphen in there? I don't know and am too lazy to look it up. lol Anyway, the 2 codes are just the name of the thing. {endash} gives you – and {emdash} gives you —. In this case, you'd use the emdash between "have" and "one." "I wish things were this way." What way do you wish they were? I'm a bit confused here. Or did you mean to say, "I wish things WEREN'T this way"? "I wish everything I had worked for worked out, yet, I am happy it didn't because I still wouldn't know what was missing from my life." We don't know what she's worked for. Does she mean at her job? Is that being threatened here? Is she a doctor and not wanting to have an affair with another doctor? The first part of this is also a bit awkward to me. I think I might like it better if she'd said, "I wish everything I worked for had word out..." I don't know enough about the character and what she's done in her life, what she wants for her life, etc. for this sentence to do much for me. But I supposed that will be filled in later. Well, this seems like a good start. It leaves me wanting to know more, which is good, of course. But I think I also want more from this part. Maybe you intend for it to all be vague at the moment, to build intrigue. If so, you have. To be honest, I don't typically include prologues, so I can't say how yours measures up compared to what I do or even what I expect because most of what I read doesn't have them, either. lol I feel like it's missing something, but I honestly can't say what and that bothers me that I can't give you better information than that. I'm truly sorry I'm not more helpful. Remember that these thoughts are only my opinion and are not to be taken to heart. Do what you believe is best for your story. I'm not a professional. Take the comments you find helpful and ignore the rest of the review. I like this start and an curious to know more about these two people as well as how this will play out without you making the audience dislike either of them. Good luck with that part. lol I believe in you! While I don't believe in the idea that 2 people literally can't resist the temptation, I know it's a common trope and it often works, so if that's what you're going for, if executed well, you have a good chance for the audience to not be upset with them, but conflicted about the whole situation, which can be fun. If you're disappointed with my review and make some of the suggested changes, I'm happy to re-review it to improve the rating. Or, you can just leave it at that. It's up to you. Best of luck with this story! I'm especially impressed with your bravery to put something you labeled as erotica on Please Review. Nice! I don't know that I see that too often. lol Also, unless you plan to put more of the story in this item, you can probably take off the erotica genre and find another because this isn't really erotic yet. But if you plan to write more within this item, keep it...assuming it will get more steamy. If you'll be adding more here, consider using dropnotes to help things not get out of hand for the reader, depending on how long you'll be making this. Dropnotes can allow you to have a bunch of text without it appearing overwhelming to the reader. For Example... ▼ This is what the code looks like. It doesn't normally have a space between the beginning and ending code. I added that to help make it more clear for you. And, in case you're not super familiar with ML code, you use the curly braces, above the square brackets on the keyboard, but I suspect you already know that. {dropnote:"LinkTextHere"} {/dropnote} Anyway, this is a nice beginning. Good luck with your continued efforts. I hope to see you around "October Novel Prep Challenge" . It starts October 1, so be sure to click the link and check it out, in case you want to sign up. Best of luck with your novel, whether you're writing it for NaNo or not. And, again, welcome to WdC!  My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 09/28/2024 @ 2:39pm EDT