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The Gift
Author: DemonMonsterDave
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(Added on May 15, 2010)
(This month 63988 readers) (Total 84016 readers) |
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A normal young man achieves untold power and uses it to manifest his darkest imagination. |
| Ratings and Reviews: |
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of Ratings: 2 |
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Weighed
Average (?):  (7/10) |
Average
Rating:  (8/10) |
| Highest
Rating: (8/10) |
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Rating: (8/10) |
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| Reviewer:
Michael247
(Edit) |
Rating: |
May 21, 2010 |
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Serials. God help me, another serial. Why do people write seven pages of a long story and then post it? This drives me crazy. On a website like the BDSM Library there are hundreds of stories. By the time the author posts round two or six or whatever, I have to go back and REREAD part one or five or whatever. And since I rarely read "updated" stories, I probably will never revisit this one, which is a damned shame.
*** When you write a serial basically what you are doing is writing episodes. The idea is to entice your audience into WANTING to come back for seconds. Each individual episode needs to have its own plot which moves the overall story plot along. Consider the television show 24. Each individual episode is a self-contained story, with tension build up, a climax, and even a cliff hanger or resolution in order to lure you into watching the next episode. In the case of "The Gift" we're missing the second half of the first episode. There is a discernible plot, but no climax, no resolution, not even a cliff hanger! "Push your clothes out of the cage." isn't a cliff hanger, its frustration that the damn story ends there.
*** Now let's talk about the magical device. I have absolutely no clue why the author decided to foster this absolutely horrible "convenience explanation" on us. It's never a good idea to start your story off with voodoo or alien technology, unless of course you're writing sci-fi. Unless this device creates things money CAN'T buy, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Now its possible "the device" actually DOES create things money can't buy, and that this will happen in a later section of the story, but if the device DOES do this, then why didn't the narrator just MAKE a willing sex slave to abuse, especially after making it so obvious that he intended to do particularly immoral things to her? It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Of course if the device DOESN'T create things money can't buy, then there where like a zillion ways that the narrator could have become ridiculously rich. He could have won the lottery. Invented cold fusion. Inherited it from Bill Gates. Won a lawsuit against the federal government. Obama gave him the money. Congress gave him the money. He started an internet porn site that was so popular he was a millionaire within a year. He forged the money. He robbed banks. He blackmailed CEOs. See? I could just go on and on. So what's with the "DEVICE"?
*** I actually liked the idea of reading the whimsical perverted and sadistic exploits of someone so rich and amoral that right and wrong didn't make a difference. Imagine to what depths he could go. I got the vague feeling he was psychopathic, which would have been a nice twist. I mean seriously, no empathy right? What a great idea and what an awesome vehicle for relating some pretty intense BDSM scenes that could never happen in real life. But then we run afoul of the narrator's caution. Evidently he isn't so rich that the authorities can't prosecute him and arrest him. So he's basically just a rapist and a kidnapper. A rich rapist and kidnapper, but a rapist and kidnapper nonetheless. This was a bit disappointing. I almost wish the device had just hummed a little bit and voila! One Jennifer Willis standing naked in the middle of the dungeon, ready for abuse. I mean...the abuse is the point of the story right? If the device can make things money can't buy, why not make a sex slave. I would have. Of course, maybe the device is just a counterfeiting machine, a really good one. And it can only make Ben Franklin, who isn't really good to abuse, except in a shopping mall. So we had to sit through almost the entire first half of the first episode listening to the narrator talk about building his house and dungeon and spending WEEKS YES WEEKS finding a willing stupid submissive girl. If he was just going to lock her up anyway, why not just go kidnap one? I mean seriously, he HAD the fricken ETHER. So just go driving down a California beach, pick out a luscious tidbit, follow it home, drug it, throw it in the back of the Hummer and put her in the cage when you get home. See? Why did the narrator make this so complicated? Girls go missing ALL THE TIME.
*** One of the things the author did absolutely right is the writing structure. All of the sentences were a successful combination of compound and simple sentences, with the occasional properly used prepositional phrase to add some spice. This makes it obvious that the author actually knows how to write, which is very nice. Even better, there weren't any little mistakes. That made it very nice to read.
*** Descriptions were also very good in this story. This also speaks to the writer's talent because the story is written in first person, which always makes it difficult to provide full and accurate descriptions because everything must be communicated through the lens of the narrator. The author did a very good job with this.
*** Where was the plot movement? Again, if this is a serial as I suspect, we are still missing the second half of episode one, chapter one, part one...whatever. Plot gets moved along with action and dialog. Okay, so maybe this was all foreshadowing and build up, but if that's the case, the moment we got to the top of the roller-coaster hill with "Take of your clothes", the author decided to stop.
*** So in summary I decided to give this story an eight rating, which I think is pretty damned generous considering the evil intentions of the author in only whetting our appetites and then taking away the dinner. I usually don't give serial stories or stories with serious plot holes a high rating, but to be honest, the total awesomeness of this story concept combined with the obvious writing ability of the author boosts the score. Maybe he'll email me the whole thing when he's done with it? If I'm lucky.
Michael Alexander (www.michaelalexanderstories.com) (8/10)
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- Replied by:
Demonmonsterdave
(Edit) (May 22, 2010)
- Hi there, thanks for this extensive review, and thanks so much for reading the story.
Mainly, I'd like to deal with some of the assumptions you have made, as I really feel that I must.
Describing it as a serial is accurate, since that is the way it will be created and published. However, I don't think you should be directly comparing it with, for instance, television shows or anything else which it does not profess to be. I like to think of it as serialised publishing rather than a cynical attempt to build readers' need to continue. I am actually trying to create a version of possible reality; real life doesn't usually have cliff-hangers, and I think they're a recent, contrived and populist method which is better used where there's marketing to be done. If I had already completed the story, I would happily post it all in one piece. I haven't. I'm about a week ahead of you, and it's getting nasty.
I guess that many readers do actually enjoy stories in this form, if we could be said to enjoy the disappointment associated with the many times these ideas are not written to completion, and as you can see from my other attempts, I'm certainly guilty of that.
Another assumption you have made is that we SHOULD know what the 'device' is, and it is interesting to me how you take examples from your own experience and then use these as bases for your criticism, rather than the narrative itself. It's not voodoo, and it's not alien technology. I do intend to explain what it is and how it works, but not yet. SPOILER: Despite the character's power, he is not yet fully able to use it, and he also likes the idea of choosing a victim, rather than creating one, as an expression of destroying free-will and the simple beauty of the process to him. And, he doesn't have infinite power, as that would make it a crap story. SPOILER END!
You are using story-writing conventions to judge my story, which is fair enough. Conventions make me sick though, so please don't expect conventional plot movement, cliff-hanger endings or anything else which you may have seen elsewhere. It will jump chronologically and character point-of-view, and it will become confusing, I guess.
Anyway, I have to apologise for the negative tone of this reply. Forgive me in that I'm protecting my baby, and what we create needs our love, no matter how broken it may be.
Best wishes and thanks sincerely for the review,
DMD.
- Replied by:
H Dean
(Edit) (May 22, 2010)
- DemonMonsterDave - I, too, took the first read of this review much as you did. I think, if you read it again, you will see the attempt at humor the reviewer took. I think his closing paragraph says it all - have another read.
- Replied by:
Michael247
(Edit) (May 24, 2010)
- Dave, I totally understand you wanting to "protect your baby". Criticism of any sort, whether constructive of not, can always be difficult to swallow and one of the nice things about being an author is that you can generally ignore criticism (unless of course your editor is complaining and then you pretty much have to go along with what they want changed!) I re-read my review and I realized that I made a basic mistake in how I presented my critique. Usually I alternate positive and negative points, so that the review doesn't come out sounding derogatory, especially in case like yours. Instead, I hammered you pretty hard at the beginning and then put the positives at the end. By the time you got to them you were probably seething. My apologies. However poorly I presented my critique, I still stand by the things I said. I believe that serial stories DO require the same sort of formatting that television episodes (which are stories too, just filmed ones), chapters of serial novels (Stephen King's The Green Mile is a great example), and especially short stories all promote and use. Every chapter of King's The Green Mile is practically a self-contained short story with a sub-plot that moves the overall story arc along. Why does your first "episode" or "part" get a pass?
*** As for my assumptions about the device, well all I can say is: why did I have to MAKE assumptions about the device? You didn't provide any meaningful information about it. It was mentioned once, in the opening paragraph and then it never appeared again. Yeah, I applied my own background and guesswork to it, but that was just me filling in holes left by the you. Sorry, but that's what readers do when they aren't given information by the author. No doubt when I read the rest of your story I will go "oh! It's NOT an alien device! Wow, this is really cool!"
*** Lastly you say that you hate conventions. Hey, great! Do something totally off the wall and crazy! I love seeing creativity take unexpected directions. But there is a reason that conventional story writing methods are so popular. Its because they work. When you decide to cast convention to the wind, you step out onto a narrow bridge over a large gorge. It can work for you, or you can fall a long way. I know. I've written a few pieces where I threw convention to the wind. I didn't get many favorable reviews. You can find my work on my website or here at the BDSM Library.
*** Lastly, one of the reasons I was pretty hard on you was because I liked your story so much and I was a little pissed because you got me going. I was there, right next to your character, ready to go the mile with him, watch him do his thing, and then, right at the end, it ended. I can't even begin to relate to you my disappointment. Not with the story, but where it ended! I climbed the hill and I didn't even get to go down the other side! Anyway, I'm just rambling now.
*** I think your story is pretty good and when its done, email me and I will update my review and rating. Michael Alexander (www.michaelalexanderstories.com)
- Replied by:
Curtis
(Edit) (Jun 11, 2010)
- Michael, you write amazing reviews, but you seem to be laboring under a misconception, that being that all stories posted in installments are serials. That is simply not the case.
Serials are a distinct class of story (not certain whether they fit the definition of 'genre'). Often/usually they are posted in installments, but some of the best on this site were posted all in one go.
Likewise, there are multiple reasons for posting a story in installments, the most common being that each installment posted equals one session or week of writing. People stop writing when they get sleepy, or bored, or their eyes start to hurt, they get writer's block, they get called away from their computer by 'the real world', or any number of other reasons that have nothing to do with story structure. In my case, 20k is about my limit, whether I've reached a literarily satisfying stopping off place or not; other's mileage will vary, and you do not appear to be allowing for that variance.
I do realize that posters might be better served by waiting until their story is complete before posting it. This is a lesson I've learned myself, and is the primary reason why I have only one story posted. Some writers, however, feel compelled to send out every bit they complete as it's completed. On other sites (not this one, thank goodness) there are posters who refuse to post the next installment until they receive 'X' number of comments on the preceding one — a fashion which I devoutly hope will not catch on here.
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| Reviewer:
H Dean
(Edit) |
Rating: |
May 19, 2010 |
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In seeing that you had, in fact, offered up a story to the site (and remembering your own review of my story) I decided to give your writing the same chance you gave my own.
Thus far, the story is written quite well. Sure, there are a few minor gaffes and a couple of questionable word choices (I would replace "fake" with "faux") but over all this is an excellent beginning to a story I am quite looking forward to reading to completion.
Only an "8" for the review score? Well, there is promise, but one chapter does not get a "10" simply because I want to see how much better it can get. Really, DemonMosterDave, this appears to be the start of an excellent story. (8/10)
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