All Comments on 'An Evening Run'

Getting better every time. Glad he got paid.

Good story!

5

Without that can of spinach tucked away in his, he'd have never made it out of there alive.

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Interesting and entertaining little story! Yeah, there were some Mack truck-sized holes, but for a story like this, I can overlook a few holes! NICE job! 5/5!!!!

Planning a murder to cash in on insurance is obviously a popular plot device, but sometimes the classics work. This one didn't, though. Half-formed characters, flimsy plot, zero tension, no dialog that seemed important. Just felt underwhelming, like the author's heart wasn't in it.

Good little story.

Cheers for the wife. She was tragically a loving wife at the end.

Thanks williepeter.

If this was flushed out it could have been a better story.

3*

Story needs to be fleshed out a bit more.

Too emotionless also.

Too improbable

"My military survival training kicked in," - Of COURSE he has military survival training. At least you didn't make him Special Forces.

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"My boss convincing me it was for the protection of the company." - How does life insurance protect the company?

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Why are there random capital letters?

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"Rob, there was no proof, I want going to destroy a marriage with no proof, I'm sorry." - 1) You get the proof. A "darn good" defense lawyer should have access to PIs. 2) You at least give a heads-up.

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"Then she put her investigator to work." - It NEVER occurred to her to do that while he was deployed?

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"Contrary to popular opinion, all Sailors aren't seals." - What "popular opinion" is that? Just because so many LW husbands are ex-Special Forces doesn't mean that we think all sailors are Seals. Please note the capitalization.

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"I laid the pistol alongside his face" - "Laid" the pistol alongside his face? If you mean you pistol-whipped him, say so. If you just placed it there, why wouldn't he just grab it?

WilliePeter, I hate to let FACTS interfere with a story. BUT... you should have consulted an Insurance expert. I'm a Chartered Life Underwriter and almost nothing you mentioned regarding the insurance was possible. Why would the company he worked for have a Life Insurance policy on him, owned and paid for by the Company? Even if they had, Eve would NOT have been able to cancel it. She didn't own it nor did you. You were simply the Life Insured.

Why would his wife have a policy on her life also owned by the company. (or owned by Jack personally) She would only have been the Life Insured and could NOT change the beneficiary unless she owned the policy. If she had owned the policy the proceeds would have gone to her estate or whomever she nominated as beneficiary. Sorry mate but this was just a minefield of errors. Basic storyline was simple.

Oh, YOUR house? Again, do your homework on who owns assets in a marital situation. Unless pre-nups involved, it would be marital property.

Nice!

Not overly complicated narrative, but refreshing story plot that progressed logically and had a sensible ending. Good job! 4*

I find it a sad commentary on the human race that so many people get their jollies from the depiction of gratuitiou violence. 1*

Just like a sailor to marry a woman because she gave him a blow job within a couple hours of meeting him 😂

It read like it was written in an hour. There are too many gaps and questions. Hit by a car traveling at sixty mph and flung over an embankment. a broken leg and scratches.

*** A WHOLE LOTTA SPOILERS (You shouldn't be reading the comments before you read the story anyway!) ***

As I've said a great many times, I don't usually rate new stories. You got my attention with "wife and boss have visions of millions", so good on your for that.

The first part of this story is a very smooth, easy, and entertaining read. It almost feels like a Robert Ludlum novel at the beginning. I was waiting to see if the protagonist was living under an assumed identity.

The opening hook is good. It grabbed my attention and made me want to know what was going on and what was going to happen with the protagonist. You need to be more clear with it, though; you're not building any tension or mystery by hiding the fact that he was hit by a car. "when I was hit from behind and thrown into the ditch" would have read better than "suddenly I was flying up over the edge of the road". I found the "no telling how many bruises" statement to be an unintentionally humorous thing to say under the circumstances.

The opening hook turns into the first plot point very quickly. I found this enjoyable, but there was some foreshadowing missing because of it.

The story plot and outline are way above average for Literotica of late, but there were a couple of spelling issues as well as persistent issues with punctuation in addition to sentence structure; nothing worth getting into a twist over, but a proof-reader would have caught those.

There were some easily-overlooked issues with story structure. The story has no midpoint and no pinch points or reversals. This is easily overlooked because it is starts off as such an easy and entertaining read.

There are at least two major literary faults with this story. For one, it is over-explained at points. For example, having the wife and lover wanting him dead for the insurance money explains itself; there's no need for the very convenient and obvious -- and overused -- embezzlement device.

Second, the major plot twist at the end of the story was a great idea, but was unexploited and unsatisfying. I should have been hanging off the edge of my seat instead of yawning. I was not concerned for the protagonist, didn't care about the wife, and had zero interest in the boss and his wife by this point.

If this story were re-worked it would be a solid five-star story. I'm punishing you with only one star for the following reasons: It is not erotic. I mean, c'mon: the word is actually in the name of the website. This has the potential to be a great story, but there's no eroticism. There is only a single paragraph with any sex in it at all, it happens so quickly that it contributes nothing, and it's a paragraph which would actually have improved the story if it had been removed. If I had found this story in Non-Erotic I would happily give it three stars; maybe even four because it's so much better than a lot of stories here these days.

The second reason is that it has been posted in the wrong section (or on the wrong website). Loving Wives is the section which is supposed to be for stories about extramarital sex. The single, unsatisfying paragraph with any sex in it at all was between the protagonist and his future wife. I don't think many sane readers here would agree that producing some large photos with the unerotic description of "doing the nasty" elevates this story in any way to the level of extramarital sex. Yes, cheating _involves_ extramarital sex, but I don't think there are many who would agree that "hi, I cheated" is what they're looking for in a Loving Wives story.

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Tips:

That last major plot twist was great, but was unexploited. I felt nothing when it happened. Tension could have been built around Jesse being killed, followed by police investigating the protagonist because he had been recently listed as the beneficiary, then the tension released when the boss's wife, and later the boss, were both arrested. Of course, changing the beneficiary to the protagonist would have been out-of-character for the wife, but that's a separate issue to be tackled when it arises.

The protagonist felt like he had no stake in the game. Things went too smoothly for him throughout the entire story. His naval survival training helped him at the beginning, his sister is a lawyer who was inexplicably able to get his company life insurance beneficiary changed without his boss knowing, the author's cathartic vicarious revenge against the protagonist's boss was too smooth and without repercussion, the wife signed the separation papers too willingly and without repercussion, and the end of the story wrapped itself up neatly without the protagonist's participation: after he kicked the wife out of the house he was no longer an active decision-maker in the story; he was just carried along for the ride. In fact, the broken leg played such a minor part that it could have been taken out of the story, or you could just as easily have said that both legs and his left arm went flying off, without changing the rest of the story in any way.

"My military survival training" is a little overdone. You have to foreshadow stuff like that these days or it sounds like Bill Murray's character shouting, "if I can sleep ten days and nights in a rice paddy, I can last in this bank!" The grubs and berries were a bit much there, Bear Grylls; travelling between two parallel urban roadways is not exactly the same as being hopelessly lost in northern Canada. I was almost expecting him to chew the bark off a birch tree and wash it down with his own urine to relieve the pain.

What's up with the gas station? Why didn't he wait inside? Was it closed? Did he use a pay phone? If so, how did he pay for it? I don't carry a wallet when I'm jogging, but I do carry my cell phone. There was nothing to indicate that cell phones, which have been ubiquitous for three decades, would be anachronistic to your story. And why did his sister have to drive him to a town six hours away? His wife and boss tried to kill him, not a Central American cartel.

The story tags were above-average, but "sailor" and "survival" don't really apply. Yes, he was retired from the Navy, but we never really get the "sailor" vibe from this story. Maybe "navy" instead. And there wasn't really any kind of "survival" theme or believable subplot to the story, either.

I feel that the segue into how the protagonist met his wife detracted from the story. I certainly didn't care about where or how he met her and didn't find the description very satisfying or that it added anything to the story. A lot of times you have to ask yourself, "if I remove this thing from my story, does it affect the story at all". In this case, I think not.

"dad's WWII pistol" took me out of the story. Remember, this is a Navy guy. Maybe "dad's M1911 that he brought home with him from WWII" would have been better, but is kind of unnecessary. He's in the Navy. It's not unreasonable to expect that this guy has his own weapon in the house which is readily accessible, and would actually have been expected for the wife's protection while he was away on a cruise. Or, for the time it took to have the insurance policy changed and the investigator get the pictures, he could easily have bought one, waited through the cooling-off period, and have had it in his hands before confronting his wife.

"You can't prove a damn thing" raises another problem which has existed since the beginning of the story: hitting anything at 60 (I'm assuming MPH) is going to leave a lot of physical damage and forensic evidence. He knew who did it from the start of the story so it doesn't really make sense that he or his sister wouldn't have contacted the police right away. The evidence would have been fresh and impossible to explain. I ignored that problem because the first half of the story was so well-written, but you really should have explained that in some way.

Which leads into glaring problem number four: the main issue during the climactic confrontation is that the antagonists tried to kill him, not that some investigator got photos of them "doing the nasty". "You tried to kill me so the police are here to arrest you" would have made sense while "you tried to kill me so I want a separation" does not. I know that the events, as they played out, were necessary for the unexploited plot twist that you put in later, but it violates the logic of both the characters and of the world in which your characters live, and draws the reader further out of the story.

Any half-decent developmental editor would have caught all of these problems. On the other hand, they probably would also have pointed out the lack of story structure like midpoint and stuff, which would have been nice to see but which didn't really hurt this story in a major way.

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Picking nits:

When you break a bone, you may not know that a bone is broken right away, but you do know that there is something seriously wrong immediately.

Speaking as someone who has found herself at the bottom of ditches an unreasonable number of times I can tell you that they all share some common traits: they are all wet, and they are all filthy. Describing that would have carried the story a lot further than the grubs and berries thing.

Company insurance policies which are for the protection of the company are always paid for by the company and are always paid out to the company. Unless a third party has a power of attorney to do so, only the primary on the insurance policy can change the beneficiary; and changing the beneficiary of a company insurance policy such as the one described in the story invalidates the policy.

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This story has a lot of unrealized potential and I encourage the author to continue his writing.

Tried and failed to find a story there. The idea of getting hit by a car going 60mph and surviving made it even less of one.

Nothing a good proof reading couldn't cure. Want vs wasn't, still not terrible considering some submittals. No stars off for that. Interesting twist at the end, also a new way to find out she's cheating on you mate! Getting hit by a truck while jogging only to overhear your wife was one of the attackers. 4⭐ a fleshed out plot and a little more character development would have been a fiver!

Jesse was stupid. She would have been dead sooner if their scheme had worked. She was a useful tool and deserved what she got. She wouldn't be missed.

Fun story but waaay too many grammatical errors made it difficult to follow. Read your story out loud too yourself before hitting send. You'll be doing us all a favor.

Not much of a story.

They have a guy in every port😁

The grammar is simply too bad to waste time on this. The story is half-ass as is the writing. 2*

Could have been good, but it felt, and clearly was, just thrown together.

I would call it a bullet point story.

Short, but to the point

LOL, even a 5th grader now writes a story for Literotica and had already learned to become a women hater. Man, what a story, but an idiotic story nonetheless. A BTB moron in the making.

Stories like this are really pathetic. Clearly written in haste by some fool who has been done wrong by a woman and now this is his form of revenge. Sadly it means these fools use very weak plots and silly lazy gimmicks to make the story go the way they want. Such as..."I made a makeshift splint for my leg and started moving. My military survival training kicked in.." Why is it that all of the sudden these guys become Rambo? Weak. Or how about the fact that they always seem to have a buddy/relative that is an expert at something?..."My sister was a defense lawyer " Can you get any more contrived? Whats even sadder is that you will find some our resident troll fawning all over stories like this, only because the wife gets burned, clearly not for the great writing.

And....what happened to the company security chief? *

That's cold man. But funny

Not a bad story. Not great, but, a good, short, read. Could have used more pathos and background. Thank-you.

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Pasqual

*** Short story thanks.

Liked it, to the point without a lot of unnecessary filler.

Looks like Jesse actually was repentant in the end. She knew she was played by her boss and had hubby been killed boss would have had Jess take the fall as he and his wife seemed to have planned to use her one way or another and Jess finally realized it.

Briefly brought us to the point. I liked it!

Meh.

Enjoyed it

4/5

Good storyline with a small twist at the end. Dialogue was a bit choppy, but readable.

Good story line. Could have been developed more.

Dark, efficient little noir story. I like how the wife finally had regrets and came to her senses, knowing she was doomed.

Yes MEH!

Go Navy. I knew I did not take up running for a good reason. I did enjoy you story. Thanks for writing.

Better than the cuckold story but not much. There is no depth to your stories, no action and sure no interest on my park. It’s like a sixth grader writing about his summer vacation. . .BORING

The lawyer, Eve, didn't tell her brother because she had no proof. But she did have an investigator on tap. She didn't use the investigator, why not? Was it because there were no billable hours at stake? Did her firm claim part of the insurance payout?

Your lovers wife killing you is the best karma, hope she burns in hell

Short and enjoyable