All Comments on 'Mom and I XXXmastime Ch. 01'

i like this story a lot. i'm glad you're continuing it - it has been a couple of months since you last published and i was a little worried. i like all the characters and interactions. i have 1 suggestion: if in the future you publish a continuation of this story you may want to start with a "roster" of who's who. for example, when "Wendy" was mentioned for the first time i had to go back to a prior chapter to find her and figure out who she was. maybe its my old age, but the combo of time and many characters can lead to a little confusion. i've seen it done elsewhere - and its very helpful to me and probably many readers.

But keep on writing. your stories are GREAT!!!!

The first time I mention Wendy, I describe her as Jake's former foster sister. How much more of a reminder do you need?

either i missed it, or i was still confused. In any event, i went back to an earlier chapter to reacquaint myself with the characters. its a suggestion - and something i find helpful. particularly when their are a lot of characters with relationships that evolved or been discovered to be different.

I don't really think your snarky response was appropriate. you don't like them when readers give them to you - neither do i.

No snark intended in my question, but I apologize anyway.

There are many reasons for my not using a cast of characters preface in a work like this:

1) Narrative voice. I don't believe a cast of characters preface fits well with first person narration. Why would Derek create one in telling his story? Better to work a small amount of review into his narration.

2) If I collected this series into a novel and wouldn't place a cast of characters before the first chapter, why would I have one before every chapter?

3) The complex inter-relationships between characters makes it difficult to describe them succinctly. Take Angie for example. She's been intimate with eight people in this series, is (now) suspected of being intimate with two more, has had eight relatives mentioned by name in the series, and those lists actually overlap. Write what you think her entry in the cast list should be, please. Then ask yourself if it could be criticized as either too short or too long. There's no way to win, so I choose not to play.

4) Changing those relationships is a main focus of the story, necessitating updates to those cast list entries after nearly every entry in the series. After starting as "Derek's girlfriend" at the start of "Get Even", Angie added Stan and Marcy as lovers in that entry, Tommy and Jessica were added as past lovers in "Revelations" and she got engaged, she had sex with two more men at the swing club in "Swing" and she finally was intimate with Jilly in "United". Now you have to list her mom's suspicion after this one.

It all turns into too much work for its supposed value. I would rather put my effort into writing and working relevant reminders of how characters relate to each other into the narrative. It's much better to write characters who are memorable, don't you think?

if your had thought about the answer to question 2, you'd know why: here's your question:

"2) If I collected this series into a novel and wouldn't place a cast of characters before the first chapter, why would I have one before every chapter?"

WHY!!! BECAUSE IF YOU COLLECTED ALL THESE CHAPTERS INTO A NOVEL I COULD SIT DOWN AND READ IT ALL AT ONCE. I WOULDN'T HAVE TO WAIT 2-3 F*CKING MONTHS FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER TO COME OUT. MAYBE YOU HAVE PERFECT RECALL AFTER 60-90 DAYS - MOST OF US MERE MORTALS DON'T. I CERTAINLY DON'T.

I didn't read the rest of your questions. after #2 i realized they are a waste of time. hopefully i don't feel that way about your next chapter.

Maybe someday you'll do what your profile says - have the courage to write, instead of be a critic. And when you do that and some other critic tells you that you should add something *totally unnecessary* to your work because HE wants it there, remember this conversation. In the meantime, I will write this story the way **I** want it to be written. Just as I would recommend when you write. Not to my specification, but your own.

You might also look around at other multi-chapter stories here on Literotica. A cast of characters is a rarity, so I'm in the majority among authors not using them.

I can only think of two series I've read which have bothered, both of which had much larger casts than this. One of those wound up being 100 chapters, had something like a 30-person group marriage by the end, with other friends who would show up for orgies. The author put a cast list in front of every 10 chapters and it still didn't help in distinguishing between them, since most were never well-defined as characters and wound up little more than a collection of genitals to mix and match in sex scenes.

"The Morrison's" - 27 chapters - many of which are in the "Incest/Taboo Hall of Fame" - unlike any of your works i might add - has a character list in EACH Chapter after the first few - at the suggestion of some readers according to the author.

this is one of your lowest - maybe the lowest - "reader score" - less than 4 - of any of your stories. you can put your blinders on - but what readers you have are finding something amiss in this story.

Enuff you 2. You need character roster for story about fucking youf White Mom? So how many sons doed she have and are they all fucking the White Bitch? Does she rim and allow ass to mouth. And the sons cant find other bitchez to fuck or they just sicko white boys that lovd to fuck their mom. They steal her worn panties and sniff and whack off in em? damn white boys do be on some shit

And last commenter is a dope up black cunt.

"The Morrisons" is one of those exceptions that actually demonstrates my point.

RecHiker added a list of character names to the ENDS of his chapters starting in Ch. 7. And while I would argue that the size of his cast and the length of his series both make SOME kind of reminder useful, the list he adds doesn't do much to help, because the character descriptions are too brief. In Ch. 7, there is a partial list of 24 characters, most listed just by name, with a few listing either their profession or a friendship. Does that really help me remember past events for each character, or the different connections between them? Not at all. By Ch. 27, his list of "main characters" has grown to 121 characters (even without listing characters crossing over from the Dr. Mitchel series) and is arguably less useful as a result, as quite a few are really minor characters, not present in more than a scene or two.

By comparison, I have a main cast of seven. Except for "Swing", I haven't depicted sex between any other characters and only now introduced the incest plotline in Angie's family and Wendy and Pat haven't even been "onscreen". Angie saw them, not Derek and wasn't descriptive. To compare my series to "The Morrisons", my cast is tiny. And my series will end in less than a year.

I'd also point out that most of "The Morrisons" first dozen chapters are twice my chapter length and then doubled and tripled in length after Chapter 12. His Ch. 26, at 18 Lit pages, is as long as my whole series to date. His series has been running since 2011, with increasing gaps between chapters, due to his health issues, with a year gap between Ch 25 and 26 and TWO years between 26 and 27. Yet, despite it already being 9 months since his last chapter, which I read when it posted, I remember his story.

Why is my rating or his relevant to the discussion, other than as your attempt at a jab? Do you think I worry about the ratings in the first couple of days after a story/chapter releases? Those are always the lowest, because certain people out to give every incest story a 1 rating vote early, resulting in the average rising over time as more votes come in to offset them. It's at 3.62 with 40 votes right now. With just 40 votes, each 1 can have a large impact. But if the average without them would be a 4.5 (an even mix of 4s and 5s) the average will tend to rise towards that over time. Check back in a month or two.

As for The Morrisons being in the HOF, it's the last five chapters which are in there, none of the earlier ones. A lot of series will see their best ratings for later chapters, because readers who didn't like earlier chapters don't continue reading, so don't vote. The Morrisons starts with a 4.57 for Chapter 1, but doesn't see a 4.70 until Ch. 10, breaks through 4.75 at Chapter 16 and 4.8 at Chapter 20. 70% of my stories are rated 4.57 or higher, 35% are 4.7 or better, with my highest incest story at 4.76, with the Incest HOF threshold at 4.81. What does that prove? Absolutely fricking nothing.

I stopped reading after the first few chapters as I was totally confused about who these people were. As this story is obviously a continuation of a previous story/series, a simple "For context, please see (insert name of previous story)" at the beginning in italics would have been sufficient. I could have gone back and read from the beginning and be clued in as to who was doing what and why. Since you listed this as chapter 1, I thought it was the beginning of a new story.

This is part of a two grouping - so a Ch. 1 & Ch. 2 notation tells me!

It actually starts out as a continuation of some other story of which there is no reference.

It's very confusing. There about 7 or 8 characters introduced in the first few paragraphs that had to have come from some previous story - so, which one(s)?

I gave up; came to the end, gave it one star so I could voice my opinion.

I decided to run a test - omit a "This is a continuation of..." note and see how many readers would actually be unwilling to take the simple step of checking my complete list of stories to see five preceding stories beginning with "Mom and I", posted in alphabetic order. Those stories were titled differently because they had different themes. XXXmastime doesn't have a distinct theme, but is longer, so I divided it into chapters. But the assumption that a Chapter 1 must be the first appearance of these characters is YOUR assumption. So, you give me a 1 vote, not because of the quality of my writing, but because you are irked that I didn't hold your hand to lead you in the right direction.

No, it means you don't give a fuck about your own story or the readers.

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Whether figuring out the order is easy or hard is immaterial. You are the "writer" and therefore you know the order. It is a writer's job to provide readers with such information, not the readers job to do the writer's job.

for those complaining about the lack of a for reference start, the content of the first chapter should indicate that it is a continuing story and a simple click of the mouse and you cab catch up. For those of us who read the first series it dosen't hurt torescan those chapters to being you back up to speed as long as you aren't to lazy.

For those of you to lazy to check authors story list stop complaining. It only took me one paragraph to stop and see if was a continued story. If you are lazy don't blame author, this is not the only story like this in Literotica.com. Grow up. I like it keep putting out good work please.