4-4 Time

[Tinavamp]

So I think I would take this new board for spin around the block. This is something I wrote several months ago. Mostly to try a different, for me, way of storytelling. It moves back and forth from effect and cause in that order. I wrote this in about an hour. I have shared it a couple of times in private and the response I received indicates it might be worth continuing.

As I suspect many of you probably do, I have several unfinished ideas laying around. When I saw this new board was up, I thought of this story. I love to hear some feedback, both good as well as constructive. A lot of my inspiration for this comes from Sara H and FBH. Who, if no one has managed to guess are two my favorite authors in the archive.

This is 4-4 Time. It clocks in at 1009 words.

It is late afternoon, a security officer sits in front of a bank of video monitors from cameras placed at various locations around the city. On one of the monitors he notices an attractive young woman with striking long red hair navigating pedestrian traffic on a downtown sidewalk. She is wearing a short green dress and is impressed by her long legs. She’s only in the camera’s view for two or three seconds. Though she is so strikingly beautiful, the image lingers in the officer’s mind.

Continuing to walk beyond the camera’s view, the young woman’s phone announces a call. She reaches into her handbag to retrieve her phone, and sees the call is from her best friend.

She thinks to herself, ”why would she be calling me today?”, “Hi Zaida! How’s my BFF today.”

“Couldn’t be better, today is perfect. I was just missing you Lindsey and wanted to hear your voice.” Zaida replied.

“I’m so glad you called, I miss you too. I’m just out running some errands.” Lindsey smiled.

“Hey, you want to hear something I heard today?” The tone of Zaida’s voice is mischievous.

Lindsey stops walking. “Yes of course I want to hear.”

Zaida speaks slow and measured. “The water in the deep well runs clear.”

Lindsey drops her phone into her handbag, her expression becomes blank. She turns to her left and walks towards the building in front of her, She enters the pub and spots her target sitting at the bar.

“Excuse me sir, is this seat taken?”

Morning News Flash! “This morning we received an anonymous package with a series of photos which display Mega Tech Corp’s CEO Andrew Thomas engaged in sexual acts with a young woman. We’ve contacted Mr. Thomas’ office and have been informed Mega Tech Corp will host a press conference later this morning.”

***A young woman is laying on an exam table, on her back, completely nude. Her face as well as most of her upper body is wet. A drop of water lands on her forehead. She can’t see the source of the water. All she can see above her is a bright light which obscures everything else. The light is so bright she needs to keep her eyes closed.

She knows what the drops are intending to do to her and she’s trying to resist. She’s been counting the rhythm.

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.” <drip>

Over and over she’s been counting out the same four beat rhythm. She no longer has to think. Her head hurts, she can’t sleep. She knows that’s part of the technique. Another drip…

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand.” <drip>

The woman screams unnerved by the pattern, the rhythm is off.

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.” <drip>

She sighs and relaxes, the rhythm is back.

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.” <drip> Over and over again. The woman is back in sync.

Someone is next to the table, the woman is not able to see who it is, the light is too bright.

“How are you L? Is your body intune with your mind?” A voice from an unseen woman standing next to the table.

“I know what you are trying to do, and I am not going to give up.” The woman lying on the table protests.

“Are you sure L?” Her voice is now silky.

The woman on the table protests. “My name is not L, it’s Lindsey!”

“Oh I’m sorry I forgot introductions. My name is Zaida and I’m pretty sure your name is L.”

Lindsey tries to ignore Zaida. “You bitch!” She screams. “You’ll never break me.”

“Oh, we will see.” Zaida purrs.

<one one thousand” <drip>

***Lindsey steps onto the subway car. It’s not too crowded so she takes an empty seat. Directly across from Lindsay is a woman about her age. The woman smiles at Lindsay. Their eyes meet. Lindsay thinks, “that was a mistake.” She’s tired and just wants to get home. And now she has to be polite to the woman, she would rather read her book.

“Heading home?” The woman asks.

“Yes, it’s been a long day, I can’t wait for it to be over.” Lindsey replies.

“I know exactly what you mean.” The woman sighs. “I love your dress.”

Lindsey relaxes,the woman seems nice. “Thank you, I bought myself a birthday present.” Lindsey smiles.

“Hey have you ever seen one of these?” The woman holds Up a square of yellow cardboard.

Lindsay stares at the card and begins counting to herself “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand.” She remembers this is her stop. She stands up and moves to the door. She stares straight ahead waiting for the train to stop. When the train stops, she steps off and makes a sharp left. She recognizes a man walking her way. Just before they pass, she accidentally drops her book directly in his path. The man stops to pick up her book.

“This just in; Congressman Smith has been brought in for questioning for an alleged sexual assault.”

***L is sitting at a table performing an important task. On her right is a large container of marbles. On her left is a similar container, though it only contains a few marbles… so far.

L picks up a marble on her right. “two one thousand, three one thousand.” She drops the marble in the container on her left. She repeats the process again in perfect rhythm.

Zaida walks up. “Hello L, you may take a pause from your important task for a minute.”

“Zaida!” L beams. “I am so happy to see you.”

“You’re such a good girl. It’s time for your vitamins. Remember you don’t need to worry, it won’t hurt at all when I press the needle in your arm. You’ll just feel a little aroused is all.”

“Yummy!” L claps.

[SavagePeach]

Did someone light the Peach Signal for writing critique?

I'm going to ignore the typos---I assume those would get cleaned up later.


Praise

There's a lot more good than bad!

I do like this. We don't really know what's going on, but Lindsey is clearly being brainwashed and we're ping-ponging between her brainwashing sessions and the results of them. I like the premise. I'm going to assume Lindsey is at least one of the women in the news articles, if not both. Like, for real, I like the premise and I would love to see more. I think the length of time spent between the two time periods works, especially if this is only destined to be maybe two to three times longer than what we've seen so far. And I'm intrigued by the water droplet thing, and why it being out of rhythm so upset her, and how that will play into the brainwashing. So overall, I think it's a cool concept to start!

OK, critique time. I don't know how technical you are with writing, so I'm going to be pretty basic, and I hope I'm not insulting with explaining some things too simply. I'm sorry this part is going to be longer. That's the thing about critiques. There's not much to say when something is good, there's a lot more to say about things that could use improvement. Don't take this as an indication I think there was more bad than good. Quite the opposite!


Clunky Dialogue

When someone says something, write it how they would say it, not how they would write it. Fuck the grammar check when something is in quotation marks.

“Couldn’t be better, today is perfect. I was just missing you Lindsey and wanted to hear your voice.” Zaida replied.

"I was just missing you" is a mouth full. And if I called up a friend, would I say their name to them? They know who I'm talking to. I mean, I might do that for emphasis but it feels weird in a casual conversation.

Lindsey stops walking. “Yes of course I want to hear.”

Most people would just say "Of course!'

Unnatural dialogue is definitely the #1 area you could improve on. I think just cleaning this up would go a long way to improving the flow.


POV

You're writing in Third Person Omniscient. The tone is set right off the bat when the narrator gets into the head of the guard and how he noticed the young woman with red hair, and how she lingers in his mind. We then cut to Lindsay and we're now immediately in her head without a scene break.

This is a fucking hard voice to get right. Part of that is because almost no one writes in that style anymore, so it seems a little alien to readers. Neil Gaiman does it specifically to make his works feel "old" like a fairy-tale. Terry Pratchett does it, where the narrator is basically another character, leaving footnotes and making snide comments about things that the characters don't know. JRR Tolkien did it with the framing device that Lord of the Rings is a translation of some ancient tome into English. Those are all very specific use-cases.

I strongly, strongly recommend avoiding Third Person Omniscient (TPO) unless you really know what you're doing. In the hands of very skilled writers, TPO is an amazing tool that can be used to achieve very specific styles. In most cases, it's just a mistake someone made, and then we call it head-hopping. I think I'm a pretty decent writer, but I'm not Jane Austen or Terry Pratchett, so I'm very scared to use it. I may write something in TPO one day, but I don't have the confidence yet.

Part of that is because it's really hard to get into the head of a character in TPO. When the narrator jumps around like that, you feel less connected to your protagonist. This works if it's Lord of the Rings and you're writing a grand epic from a 20,000 foot view. When you're doing erotica, I think it's almost always a hindrance. Again, unless you're Jane Austen or Terry Pratchett. They pulled it off somehow (not the erotica part, but feeling close to the protagonist in spite of using TPO¹).

I strongly recommend sticking in Third Person Limited, unless you have a good reason not to. Zoom in on one character, and only narrate their thoughts. It makes the reader feel a lot closer to them. Otherwise we get confusion...

***L is sitting at a table performing an important task. On her right is a large container of marbles. On her left is a similar container, though it only contains a few marbles… so far.

OK, so is moving the marbles an important task? The narrator says it is, so do I take this at face value? Or does she just think it's important? If that's the case, this would be an example of FID (Free Indirect Discourse) where the thoughts of the protagonist "infects" the narration without any filter words. I love FID. I use it all the time. But you can only use it in Third Person Limited² (or, I guess, some people might say in First Person, but I'd disagree because First Person is already just the thoughts of the narrator).


Minor Nitpicks

She thinks to herself, ”why would she be calling me today?”, “Hi Zaida! How’s my BFF today.”

Italics or quotation marks for direct discourse, not both. And the modern standard is italics.

The woman screams unnerved by the pattern, the rhythm is off.

There's a few bad comma splices like this (I should know, I do those a lot too 🤣). They should probably just be two sentences.



<sup>1. Look, people have written entire books deconstructing Austen's voice. But we'll say she wrote in TPO for the sake of brevity.

2. This is a lie, of course, because there are no hard and fast rules for writing. You could do it if the narrator has a very distinct voice and is saying something sarcastically, for instance. But you're just heaping difficult-to-pull-off decisions on top of each other when you do this.</sup>

[Tinavamp]

Did someone light the Peach Signal for writing critique?

Thank you! I might need to get Peach spotlight installed in my backyard.

I appreciate you first for taking the time to read this piece as well as for your valuable feedback.

When I wrote this, I really only intended to write the first two scenes as an exercise. It was one of those times when I didn’t have anything in particular in mind so I just started writing.

The third and fourth scenes was really more of experiment to see if I could write something else similar to the first. So if I decide to turn this into a full story, this will not necessarily be the start, or even in this order.

I have never taken a creative writing course so I don’t find simple as being insulting. All of what you’ve said is valuable to me, I take is all in a positive tone. In most of recent writing, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid using a narrator as much as possible. Griff advised me on this, it’s much better to show than tell a story.

Thank you

[SavagePeach]

Did someone light the Peach Signal for writing critique?

Thank you! I might need to get Peach spotlight installed in my backyard.

I appreciate you first for taking the time to read this piece as well as for your valuable feedback.

When I wrote this, I really only intended to write the first two scenes as an exercise. It was one of those times when I didn’t have anything in particular in mind so I just started writing.

The third and fourth scenes was really more of experiment to see if I could write something else similar to the first. So if I decide to turn this into a full story, this will not necessarily be the start, or even in this order.

I have never taken a creative writing course so I don’t find simple as being insulting. All of what you’ve said is valuable to me, I take is all in a positive tone. In most of recent writing, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid using a narrator as much as possible. Griff advised me on this, it’s much better to show than tell a story.

Thank you

I agree on not having a narrator.¹ Unless your narrator has a very distinct voice, a narrator is essentially another layer of removal between the reader and the protagonist. With erotica, you usually want to be as close to the protagonist as possible. There's a reason First Person is so common in romance novels, after all!

What Griff was (probably) suggesting is you go for invisible narration. The "narrator" is essentially nothing more than a "camera" right behind the protagonist, without any opinions or voice of their own. This let's the protag's voice shine though and makes us feel closer to them. The other way to feel closer is to show (not tell) how they feel. They can't do that on TV. Well, they can, but they do it with a close up and really good acting. We can see the emotion on the actor's face, be it confusion, happiness, or what have you. In fiction, we can do that even easier. With TPL (Third Person Limited) you're with one character the whole time, so it doesn't feel jarring to dip into their thoughts, and you want to do that as much as possible. Especially when emotion is high.

The woman screams, unnerved by the pattern. The rhythm is off.

I called this out for a comma splice earlier², but this is also a great instance of dipping into the protag's head. This is the kind of thing you want to do a lot of (and another example of Free Indirect Discourse). For real, I really like this sentence! More of this! The only issue is it feels jarring when we haven't been so in their head previously. Earlier we were in the guard's head at the beginning, and even when we switched to Lindsey the narrator felt distant:

Lindsey drops her phone into her handbag, her expression becomes blank. She turns to her left and walks towards the building in front of her, She enters the pub and spots her target sitting at the bar.

Here the narrator describes her expression. We see her blankness, we don't feel it. Then she "turns to her left," describing her moves very clinically, again giving the narration a very detached voice. Imagine the line was something like:

Lindsey goes blank, dropping her phone into her handbag. She turns and walks into the pub to her left---her target is sitting at the bar.

We feel a lot closer to Lindsey when it's phrased this way. Neither is wrong, of course. But switching between the two styles gives the reader narrative whiplash.

<sup>1. Technically all stories have a narrator, but you know what I mean.

2. This is how I would do it. There does need to be a comma, just in a different place. 😁</sup>

[Tinavamp]

I agree on not having a narrator.¹ Unless your narrator has a very distinct voice, a narrator is essentially another layer of removal between the reader and the protagonist. With erotica, you usually want to be as close to the protagonist as possible. There's a reason First Person is so common in romance novels, after all!

What Griff was (probably) suggesting is you go for invisible narration. The "narrator" is essentially nothing more than a "camera" right behind the protagonist, without any opinions or voice of their own. This let's the protag's voice shine though and makes us feel closer to them. The other way to feel closer is to show (not tell) how they feel. They can't do that on TV. Well, they can, but they do it with a close up and really good acting. We can see the emotion on the actor's face, be it confusion, happiness, or what have you. In fiction, we can do that even easier. With TPL (Third Person Limited) you're with one character the whole time, so it doesn't feel jarring to dip into their thoughts, and you want to do that as much as possible. Especially when emotion is high.

The woman screams, unnerved by the pattern. The rhythm is off.

I called this out for a comma splice earlier², but this is also a great instance of dipping into the protag's head. This is the kind of thing you want to do a lot of (and another example of Free Indirect Discourse). For real, I really like this sentence! More of this! The only issue is it feels jarring when we haven't been so in their head previously. Earlier we were in the guard's head at the beginning, and even when we switched to Lindsey the narrator felt distant:

Lindsey drops her phone into her handbag, her expression becomes blank. She turns to her left and walks towards the building in front of her, She enters the pub and spots her target sitting at the bar.

Here the narrator describes her expression. We see her blankness, we don't feel it. Then she "turns to her left," describing her moves very clinically, again giving the narration a very detached voice. Imagine the line was something like:

Lindsey goes blank, dropping her phone into her handbag. She turns and walks into the pub to her left---her target is sitting at the bar.

We feel a lot closer to Lindsey when it's phrased this way. Neither is wrong, of course. But switching between the two styles gives the reader narrative whiplash.

<sup>1. Technically all stories have a narrator, but you know what I mean.

2. This is how I would do it. There does need to be a comma, just in a different place. 😁</sup>

Thank you. I have told you before I feel you are a valuable member of this community. You are a great author in my view as well as being supportive of others. It still remains to be seen if will do more with 4-4 time. Though I am taking a close look at the story I am currectly working on, for opportunities to apply some of your feedback. I tend to do best when I try to apply things which I have just learned.

[SavagePeach]

I appreciate the kind words. I have a terrible habit of being a nitpicker and being overly opinionated. Any time I can channel that "um, actually" energy to be a force of good is welcome 😁