Sounds like comedy gold to me....

The thought of how she would describe the cannibalism is actually making me a little queasy.

At least we'd know there was a good reason for body parts to be in odd places.

But Katie, women aren't supposed to enjoy porn, let alone produce it.

Holy cats! I've been doing it all wrong since day one!

If there are positive emotions (doesn't need to be love/like is ok) it's erotica. Just nasty manipulative sex is porn.

I consider this purely subjective. I mean, I like to read about relationships that range from twu wuv to express-train-to-the-special-hell, and the only time I really make a subjective judgment about what "kind" of relationship it is... is when I'm deciding what I'm in the mood for.

No one tell shrift, okay, because I'm rather attached to her porn.

See, it never works when people tell me that I'm doing it wrong, because every time they do, it only makes me want to do wrong.

The thought of how she would describe the cannibalism is actually making me a little queasy.

I suspect Micheal's teeth would snap down on the warmly-basted leg of scrumpishious human fleas. By his side, Nikita slid her waist senseuously up his leg, enjoying the sight of his enjoyment of his food almost as much as she had savoured the delicious moments earlier, when he'd spread her legs in the back of the golf cart and sent his interpid fingers searching for the source of her Nile River of pleasure. She felt glad that she was not to suffer the fearsome effects of inbreeding, her jewel Micheal being utterly unrelated to herself (except for a very distant cousin on her mother's side, but that was only by marriage).

Or words to that effect.

Edit: feel free to improve make this worse. It doesn't seem quite bad enough, but I'm tired.

wince

Oh, I dunno. I thnk it's quite bad enough.

Speaking of bad writing -- Okay, so I know it's not fan fiction and thus not on topic but, I am currently reading a book all too reminiscent of an HP fic written by an eleven year-old. The thing of it is, it was written by my neighbour. Who wants my opinion on it. Can anybody teach me to lie about writing skills before I have to take to diving under the geraniums whenever I see her?

...is your neighbour an eleven year old? 'Cause if so, that's way cool. If not - there will be something positive you can find in the story. Really. I teach 7 year olds, I'm sure you can find something that she's done well and start out by saying 'Well, the .....was carefully done, or was imaginative, or was interesting, or LONG, or something and I was surprised by such-and-such', or whatever. Start off with the positive. ASK if the resemblance to HP is due to a conscious decision to target the same market with a similar product, or whether it might be an uncoscious influence.

Check what her target audience is, and ask what other books she's read that aim at that target audience - if it IS Harry Potter, can she pinpoint what it is that makes JKR's fiction so popular (outwith the media frenzy) - points of style and plotting.

Tell her it's an impressive piece of amateur fiction and a good starting place for writing something more serious, if that isn't an outright lie. I mean, we've all got to start somewhere, right?

Ask her what SHE thinks are the strengths of the piece, the things that set it apart from other stories and make it worth reading. Ask her what she thinks are the bits that need the most polishing.

Tell her that you're really honoured that she respects your judgment enough to trust you with this thing and to seek out your opinion. With that established, point her diplomatically to the parts that you think suck, and say why they aren't as strong as you believe she can make them - that with someone less mature, you'd maybe just lie and say 'it was great', but because you respect her and understand that she wants to become as good as she can, you're being honest about your take on it, in the hopes that this can be helpful. Emphasis that a criticism of the story or the style is not a criticism of her as a person.

If she's still hurt after that much eggshell-treading, then she's a silly cow, and you can just say you regret hurting her feelings, and maybe your judgment isn't the kind of thing she needs after all.

No, see, the thing is, she's middle-aged. The book has been published. She just decided to give me a copy as if to say "See what I did? I'm ever so clever. Aren't you impressed?" And I know she'll be expecting a pat "Yes, that was a remarkably moving piece of literature" or something as a response, but that would be a big fat lie, and I am an appalling liar. Oh dear.

I used a HP fic analogy because the Mary-Suishness of the thing is unbelievable. I can barely get through it. Maybe it's just not my sort of thing. I think I can work that angle...

Huh. Forget all that.

Okay, who are the publishers? What kind of story are we talking?

I ask for entirely selfish need-to-target-those-publishers type reasons. Ahem.