The Pub Discussion Board

For my part, I'm glad you're keeping us updated.

Thanks again for your insightful comments. I wanted Darlene's POV also, but you're right, it didn't fit.

Don't forget these are very broken, badly damaged people, so their actions aren't necessarily going to make sense. I'm not sure Candy even knows what she wants because she still doesn't really understand what happened to her. She has PTSD.

Maybe the Deana and Evan stuff was a little too out there with the psychic connection?

"I'm amazed at this family, they have more secrets than the CIA." Secrets keep the story moving forward. :-)

This may be a weird post, but I want to praise neolyn for a really good critique.

First, he mentioned things he liked about the story.

Next, he pointed out a specific problem he had with the story.
Then!  He went the proper extra step and proposed a solution!

And then he wrapped it up with a reminder that he still liked the story, even with this issue present.

Kudos, neolyn.

Everyone else, pay attention.

Eric Storm

As I've always said, making a negative comment without offering a way to make it better isn't critiquing: it's complaining.  And we don't need to hear no fuckin' complaints 'round here!



Eric Storm

"This may be a weird post, but I want to praise neolyn for a really good critique.

First, he mentioned things he liked about the story.

Next, he pointed out a specific problem he had with the story.
Then!  He went the proper extra step and proposed a solution!

And then he wrapped it up with a reminder that he still liked the story, even with this issue present.

Kudos, neolyn.
Everyone else, pay attention.
Eric Storm"

And that is why I love this site, and support it with my PayPal account. We have an admin/owner who is an author himself, so he gets it and helps those who want it.

Also, the feedback on this site has been a huge benefit. I read all of it. If not for Eric, tons of internet searches, and critiques, Potential would just be another poorly written My Neighbor's Incest.

neolyn wrote:

I would have prefer to see a Gloria scene. Not  a sex one, or one with Evan, It would have been too soon after what happened in chapter27; no, a scene where she's by herself pondering about what she did with Evan, their relationship and her relationship with the other members of the family.

So far we have Evan's point of View, Candy, Deana, Darlene, Becky and Jason plus some secondary characters like Mary. Yet we never really had one for Gloria who is one of the main protagonists.  I think it would have been the right time for that.

Thanks neolyn. All of your comments were spot on.
Sometimes everything I want in a chapter doesn't fit in the length I'm shooting for and the amount of time between chapters. Maybe one day I'll go back and rearrange all the piece to fit together better, removing or shortening sex scenes if necessary to make it work.

I had to break up the stuff with Evan and Deana to make it fit in the timeline of the day, so the interaction between others could also take place and be interwoven and connected.
The closer we get to the end, the more difficult it is to write this story. I rewrote the scenes with Candy and Sally 4 or 5 times over 3 weeks, changing the details so the rest of the story would be plausible. Candy couldn't know everything that could have been said.

Yes, there should have been additional scenes with the POV of other characters, and there will be.

Don't forget, I may have stayed at a Courtyard by Marriot last night, but I'm not a professional author. I'm leaning this as I go.

"That's too bad because if I want to be rude I don't post at all." And that would suck more than a troll telling me my story was a piece of shit.

For Evan and Deana... timeline(?) it's actually well done. There may be constant change of characters, but it's not messy.

I just don't like it. I don't like interupted action like that. I pulls me back irl. I prefer a focus on the action, and every other actions happening at the same time is dealed with in another chapter.

A good exemple is the conversation on the phone with Candy. That I like it, it satyed focus on Evan and Deana without switching to Candy's point of view. In the next Chapter I would have wrote the same scene but from Candy's PoV. I find it less messy that way.


As far as the sex scenes go, I don't think there is really a need to shorten them if you ever go back to them. Expect the bestiality's ones; those ones you can delete them, but it's a personal preference. : D


Wait, you're saying that the end is near ? The story is about how many % done  at this point ?

bistander wrote:

I can agree with your point, but there are some subtle things being dropped that might be lost if they were too far removed from the scene. As an example(but not a great one), Evan and Deana are fucking around outside while Candy and Sally are talking about the surveillance system. That might be foreshadowing? You'll have to wait and see, but I do see your point and pulling the read out is always something to be careful of

Yep, I saw that.  It would have been too obvious if it was done my way. I did always wonder about the surveillance system. I don't really know (or paid enough attention maybe ? : / ) what and where it can record things. When Evan and Deana started doing things at house's door I knew they were screwed. But anything else in the house? Can't tell.

Candy fleing because of it the previous chapter was really impactful so it isn't really necessary to put a hint in this one. But it's jsut me, so maybe other people would not remember or pay attention.


You really do a marvelous job at hinting, it's really subttle. Hinting makes readers see the story in a different way when they read it again.
And I'm a sucker for that.

Last edited by neolyn (2019-03-19 13:18:00)

Well, first off, you forgot to "double post" this, if you were going to... and second, I'm not sure what you're apologizing to me for.  Your post is a bit too vague on details for me, at least, to draw any actual information out of it.  I know you're talking about the point of view switches in Potential, but I'm not sure at all what you're saying about Justice Seven.

Eric Storm

I know nothing about double posting, and unfortunately, haven't read Justice Seven, but I do know about POV. Maybe if the chapters were much shorter I could do that, but only if the whole story were written already. The way it is, how much would it suck to have only gotten to read about Evan in chapter 28, without knowing what happened to Candy after she puked and ran off?

I think I better keep doing what I've been doing before I start exploring, but I do want to write a story with the antagonist POV being first person and in separate chapters from the third person POV.

BTW, no, the surveillance doesn't exist in the house, other than Candy's spy cam.

bistander wrote:

. Maybe if the chapters were much shorter I could do that, but only if the whole story were written already. The way it is, how much would it suck to have only gotten to read about Evan in chapter 28, without knowing what happened to Candy after she puked and ran off?

I think I better keep doing what I've been doing before I start exploring, but I do want to write a story with the antagonist POV being first person and in separate chapters from the third person POV.

BTW, no, the surveillance doesn't exist in the house, other than Candy's spy cam.

It would have suck to not know about Candy, but it would have build some suspense, so it wouldn't not have been so bad. The phone scene from Deana's side would have be a huge tease.

Yes, keep doing what you've been doing, you've done a great job so far, there is not point of messing it up by exploring.
I'm just analyzing, so if you start a new story and want to do even better than potential you already have some leads to where you may improve.

After reading neighbourg incest I can say that you improved more than a lot with potential. ( By the way, if you happened to have the rest of this story somewhere could you send it to me  please ? : D)

About J7 ( and that's the last I'll be talking about it in this thread, because it's not the place to do it):
When I say fast paced, I'm talking about the time line in a single chapter. From The moment Jim save Jen to the end of the chapter a few weeks happened and we don't really experienced them.

With how you did the story, I thinks it's normal that it's that way, I just don't like it because it made it very difficult for me to care about the characters. By comparison, in potential time flies so slowly that I care a real lot about many characters.

Eric Storm wrote:

I would recommend against this in the strongest terms.  Not only is first person point of view very tricky to pull off by itself, but switching types of POV in mid-story is bound to jar the reader badly.

Eric Storm

I'm not disagreeing because I really don't know, but Lisa Gardner(I think) did this in a novel, and I thought it worked very well. Yes, of course, I'm no Lisa Gardner. Whole chapters were told by the bad guy, the killer, and whole chapters were third person from the main detective's side. I read it a long time ago, but I think I remember liking the book.

neolyn, if you were saying you want the rest of the unedited My Neighbor's then send me an email and I'll send you the files. they are OpenOffice docs.

Eric Storm wrote:

Well, I'll make this my last response in this thread-within-a-thread, as well, but...  did you really want to read about nothing happening?  Unlike in Potential, where some dramatic event seems to happen every five minutes, in the weeks I skipped over in the chapter you're talking about, nothing of interest happened.  They went to school.  They chatted with each other.  They went to a few places together, where nothing of note happened.  In short, they lived normal teenage lives.  I can't imagine anyone really wanted to read that...

Eric Storm

I do ...  I find this moments important because it's  an occasion to get to know the characters better, what they feel , think, like and dislike. Then add something happening(can be small or big) that appears trivial but is not.

Last edited by neolyn (2019-03-22 23:50:09)

chapter 5 and still going strong.great writing

(posted from Chapter 5 Youve got the Devil Inside)