All Comments on 'Choices - a 750 Word Story'

I failed to put the right tag in and it didn't get published for a week...oh well.

This was my stab at it.

Great story but frustrated that there wasn't more. This is a rare story that got you interested in a short time but frustrated at wanting more. Perhaps you could make this situation a full blown story now you've wetted the appetite. Thanks for the flash story though.

All's well that ends well,.and this.one did. Another idiot woman. Good at any length.

Short and sweet. Don't cheat.

I know it's only 750 words, but how in the hell did he get a picture the very same day she cheated for the first time? Was Roger a plant?

The idea of the 750-word challenge is to tell an entire story in 750 words, not simply cut off the story at 750 words. You had MUCH more detail than was needed in the set-up, then didn't have enough words left to explain what happened.

Nice response to the challenge.

That means she declined with a smile, which indicates she either lied or she did not ride the guys' cock in a hotel room.

Lots of lines but once inside the defenses it is easy.

shook her head. That is responding in the negative. Brooks asks a good question.

story, said a lot in a few words. I liked it for what it was, cheating story. I have to agree with HDK I think the word should have been 'nodded' not 'shook'. IMO small error. I see how Graham came to his decision if she was suddenly trying new things.

Maybe not realistic, but a good story about the consequences of cheating. We don't always get a second chance at redemption.

She rode Rogers cock right into a divorce. Great story!

She had sex with the guy for over four hours before she finally made it home. Anyway haven't you ever heard of 'One Hour Photo'? If it will make everyone fill better I find the three words to take out. What was with the sniled?

Undefined time spent flirting, daily lunches, enough time to give her ideas and then tell Roger later, she's bringing new stuff to their bedroom and restarted a sex life that was dead for six months. All told, plenty of evidence to make hubby suspicious. The only phrase KingB left out was 'Six months later,' Hubby or a PI could have gotten the photo from the window, and hubby could have printed it at the house for the mover. Hubby obviously suspected something though, to have had the movers arranged. That alone indicates he knew enough and had made his decision.

Very well trimmed story. It's a shame you couldn't put one more sentence:

She finally understood that there were consequences to her choices.

Yes sir, 2 thumbs up. Awesome read for 750 words. Hoping there's a chapter two coming. Four stars!

I have to say a lot of great authors did a hell of a job with what they had to work with. This was done very well.

Thanks.

As you know, if you read much of my stories (and some of my comments), being brief is not something I'm known for...

I stopped myself at one point to check word count and was at 1350, with about half the story still to go. So, that required a different strategy. Surprisingly, I actually didn't "cut off" the story. This is how I wanted it to end. What I took out were superfluous things that didn't really affect the narrative, like this part of this sentence after the comma helps explain this point but doesn't change anything. I had another interim scene that I realized wasn't totally necessary and only reinforced the things that you already knew.

As far as having pictures the same day.. I think you can find ENOUGH stories in LW that tell you about 1,000 possible ways that the husband COULD have gotten pictures. This is the digital age and it was at least four hours later. The bigger questions is how did he get them at all.

Also, in Texas you can go online, file for divorce, print the papers and have them in minutes, but I didn't put that in. I didn't have the words to explain it, and I knew if I did I would have someone try to argue about it in comments.

In the end, I actually LIKED not giving so many details on this one, as I think it provoked your own imagination. It gave you enough to be tantalizing, yet left it for you to ponder... how did he know? how did he get the picture? did he have a PI? did he follow them? was Roger his buddy in a clandestine para-military secret society?

It was fun and I might revisit it and do a full story on it... but I doubt it. I've got The List and Slick to get finished plus updates on some other stories that people keep asking me about that are higher in my priority list.

Thanks for the great feedback!

KB

Sorry you got in late but that doesn't change anything (at least I hope not). This was well written and told a fairly concise story. The problem you and the other authors faced was that when you write something good, people want there to be more. Greedy little beggars aren't we? So while what there was of this is quite entertaining I think wanting more is simply human nature. But in my book you met the challenge very well. This was one of my favorites. I did get a laugh out of the comments. Nobody is completely happy it the LW section it seems. But one comment stuck out. Sbrooks103x is around a lot. But having read a number of stories here I answer his comments thusly - The husband knew about her potential cheating in advance. After 6 months of NOT having sex, all of a sudden their sex life took off. One of the classic reasons people get caught cheating is a change in their sexual interactions. It was obvious to her husband that someone was firing his wife up and he simply hired a PI to watch her. Getting pictures in one day? Anyone can. Take a picture, download the image and hit "print". Bingo - a picture. And as far as having too much detail to begin with? Would you have complained had there been less preliminary and more ending that there wasn't enough information about these people? That's the challenge with 750 words. You can't cover everything. This could have been a four page story easily. But Kingbandor had to choose and he did. I, for one, enjoyed it. Thanks for the effort.

You have used the materials at hand and done a good job. My difficulty is that while within the scope of the project this and others are top notch stories, because of the handicapping of 750 words you can't get the depth needed to make them generally top notch stories.

So well done on what you've done, but I don't feel I can rate it and be fair to the story as well as be fair to the rest of the stories published. I've rated none of the 750s, just in case you were wondering.

I'm not talking about how quickly he got the print, but questioning how he knew about, and was able to get a picture of, them cheating for the first time.

The omission of these would definitely have improved the story:

"His thick cock was deeply embedded in my womb"

If it had by some mischance made its way in there,

its removal would also have improved her feelings of wellbeing.

Lue

Thought it was well written for 750 words. I just found the ending jarring. I can get past the photo issue but HOW would hubby know she was going to cheat that afternoon and have the moving truck there already. Did she pick the same afternoon to actually cheat that he picked to move... ? Seemed unlikely.

didn't taste like it was implied, TK U MLJ LV NV

He had been suspicious for some time. He knew about the rendezvous and had lined up everything including the moving van in advance. The photo was just the final proof. He was prepared to cancel if she backed out and ended things. She did 't, so he went forward.

KB

Noticing that many of the protagonists in LW recently have been named "Roger". Not well known in the good old U.S.A.....but in my short time I was visiting the UK I discovered that the name ROGER or Rogering were colloquial for FUCKER or fucking.

Sort of a Brit version of the American use of Dick or Johnson. Maybe someday parody an obvious story by just naming the cucker "Dick Johnson" and the cheating wife "Faith Leslie". Poor clueless hubby Bernie has some things to consider as a consequence.....but amazing how 750 words just bleeds the corpse of these stories.....it's like reading haiku or cliff notes.......Homer's Odyessy: A man goes on a voyage from Asia Minor to Greece .......Old Yeller: boy and his dog in the old West......Woodstock the movie: a musical festival fifty years ago.....I love your longer stories and appreciate you answering the call for this 750 challenge. Keep writing the good stuff.

sniled? Is that facial expression seen at sushi buffets when a novice applies way too much wasabi and has already swallowed the wad of rice and salmon

Other than a standard LW cliche made into a short page.

OK, I know it is hard to make anything with "750" but if you have nothing original why bother writing anything.

Yet another 750-word submission that squeezed all the character development neeeded into a tiny space. And BTB to boot.

5-stars.

Because the end was predictable. To make 750s or Flash stories work, there needs to be a surprise at the very end. A so called Twist in the Tail.

Well done. You included enough detail to keep it interesting. Her friendly, loving companion in crime gave her cause to restart sex with her husband, which unfortunately worked in reverse. The one hour, four hours, and truck made for a quick ending which was a little beyond the pale, but it got you to the end.

and I liked it.

Stories, even 750 word ones, need to be internally consistent and complete. Wand waving without explanation isn't allowed (unless it's a D&D or Wizard's world fantasy).

Indirect reference or implication is OK, but the common reader must know the referent exists and generally how it works. For example you can almost teleport a character with the phrase "jumped on a airplane", but the plot still can't require almost instantaneous travel time.

Your "twist" is the moving van present when she arrives home from her first tryst and her receiving a picture of her hours old ride on Roger's cock.

But to make the twist work, there needs to be an explanation for how the movers and picture are waiting for her. "Black Magic" isn't allowed in the reality chosen for the story, and a reasonable subset of readers must be able to figure out how it all happened so quickly.

Otherwise, the story is incomplete.

But the real thing, so highly improbable as to be impossible and thus demanding resolution, is how things moved so lightning fast.

Hubby would have to know she's decided to cheat, and that didn't happen until the end of lunch on that very day. But perhaps he was already uneasy and had her surveilled.

Organizing the picture taking within minutes of her agreeing to get a room at a hotel that was possibly undesignated until they left the restaurant, and maybe not even identified until they turned into the parking lot, took incredibly good preparation and probably an element of luck.

At the hotel, it will only take a couple of minutes for them to walk to the registration desk and be assigned a room. That's a very short time to contact the hotel staff and have them placed in a room pre-wired for pictures, especially if the contact at the hotel isn't instantly available.

(I'm conceding that hubby found a moving company with available van to be on site in only a couple of hours. Us peons would have to call around and get lucky.)

Perhaps they were under close surveillance including a bug at the lunch table, and so were heard to say "let's get a room at the downtown Hilton". Then they necked for half an hour to allow time in the story for the entrapment to be set up.

But it was never even implied that the hotel was known far enough in advance, so readers are rushed along and wonder how things happen with so little margin for timing error.

And, all this would be EXTREMELY expensive. Some high power detective agency would have to have standing bribes with all the hotels in town and continuously lease a room in each. The room would need monitoring equipment in a networked system controlled from a central location to provide fast access to the data.

Continuous surveillance would take a team and monitoring van to track the wife plus central office support for managing the hotels and updating the client. And just how many hotels are in town?

The hourly rate for such service would make it affordable only to the very rich, and only the super rich could afford an ongoing operation.

But the story didn't even hint that vast resources were available to hubby.

So the reader will generally assume a traditional PI following the wife during lunch time who could not hope to react so swiftly and be prepared for all the possibilities.

So I say, Fat Chance! Clairvoyance and omniessence aren't allowed here.

The story is very unsatisfying because the extreme expenses and/or critical timing this plot demands are totally unsupported by the narrative.

Stories, even 750 word ones, need to be internally consistent and complete. Wand waving without explanation isn't allowed (unless it's a D&D or Wizard's world fantasy).

Indirect reference or implication is OK, but the common reader must know the referent exists and generally how it works. For example you can almost teleport a character with the phrase "jumped on a airplane", but the plot still can't require almost instantaneous travel time.

Your "twist" is the moving van present when she arrives home from her first tryst and her receiving a picture of her hours old ride on Roger's cock.

But to make the twist work, there needs to be an explanation for how the movers and picture are waiting for her. "Black Magic" isn't allowed in the reality chosen for the story, and a reasonable subset of readers must be able to figure out how it all happened so quickly.

Otherwise, the story is incomplete.

But the real thing, so highly improbable as to be impossible and thus demanding resolution, is how things moved so lightning fast.

Hubby would have to know she's decided to cheat, and that didn't happen until the end of lunch on that very day. But perhaps he was already uneasy and had her surveilled.

Organizing the picture taking within minutes of her agreeing to get a room at a hotel that was possibly undesignated until they left the restaurant, and maybe not even identified until they turned into the parking lot, took incredibly good preparation and probably an element of luck.

At the hotel, it will only take a couple of minutes for them to walk to the registration desk and be assigned a room. That's a very short time to contact the hotel staff and have them placed in a room pre-wired for pictures, especially if the contact at the hotel isn't instantly available.

(I'm conceding that hubby found a moving company with available van to be on site in only a couple of hours. Us peons would have to call around and get lucky.)

Perhaps they were under close surveillance including a bug at the lunch table, and so were heard to say "let's get a room at the downtown Hilton". Then they necked for half an hour to allow time in the story for the entrapment to be set up.

But it was never even implied that the hotel was known far enough in advance, so readers are rushed along and wonder how things happen with so little margin for timing error.

And, all this would be EXTREMELY expensive. Some high power detective agency would have to have standing bribes with all the hotels in town and continuously lease a room in each. The room would need monitoring equipment in a networked system controlled from a central location to provide fast access to the data.

Continuous surveillance would take a team and monitoring van to track the wife plus central office support for managing the hotels and updating the client. And just how many hotels are in town?

The hourly rate for such service would make it affordable only to the very rich, and only the super rich could afford an ongoing operation.

But the story didn't even hint that vast resources were available to hubby.

So the reader will generally assume a traditional PI following the wife during lunch time who could not hope to react so swiftly and be prepared for all the possibilities.

So I say, Fat Chance! Clairvoyance and omniessence aren't allowed here.

The story is very unsatisfying because the extreme expenses and/or critical timing this plot demands are totally unsupported by the narrative.

-----

Ah, stupid me. KISS!

Hubby knew she was ready to fall and wanted her gone.

Roger gets paid to seduce her, and signaled when they reached the room. The moving van got a 4 hour head start.

Roger also posed for a picture with a model similar to the wife, and some photoshopping had the picture ready weeks before it was needed.

("Real" photos from Roger's concealed camera were given to the lawyers.)

Still, some hint that hubby was proactive might be considered fair play...

I've already explained how it all happened. It was not as far fetched are expensive as you imply. Your KISS was close, but not right.

He knew what was going on at least a couple of weeks in advance. He had prepared everything in advance, including the movers. All he was waiting for was confirmation. If she didn't do it, he would cancel his plans. If she did, he would go ahead with his plans. She did. So he did.

The timing seems magical only because you assumed he couldn't have known in advance.

KB

By the way, it is 2019. Digital photography and streaming make picture taking instantaneous. He had multiple hours to be ready for her return. If I recall it was at least 4 hours.

They don't know WHERE the tryst will happen, so how can they QUICKLY prepare the camera?

I only see 2 options:

1) Roger (the plant) took it (streaming video to the cloud reviewed real time for hubby to pull and print a selected frame). But you said my KISS was in error.

2) The room already had a camera in it (wifi, hubby watching and printing a frame).

But how did they know WHICH hotel and WHICH room the lovers would take?

How much time advance time did they have to prepare the room? And prime the front desk to assign the bugged room to the lovers?

Minimum is that to enter the hotel parking lot and reach the desk. (This assumes PI has to follow to see where they go.) 5 minutes?

Maximum is from overhearing the lovers at lunch indicate a specific hotel plus time kissing plus transit time to hotel. (Assumes table bug at lunch AND lovers announcing hotel name before they left the restaurant). 45 minutes?

I can't accept a setup so big that it didn't matter which hotel the lovers picked. Nor do I believe a large surveillance team with connections to set something up in under an hour at an arbitrary local hotel.

They did know where they planned to meet.

The goal of this was to have a 750-word story. In order for that to happen, I had to leave out much of the preliminary setup and back story. It was not needed. There are THOUSANDS of stories in LW with similar circumstances and an active imagination can easily cobble together ways for this to have worked. I've already explained how it all came about in a prior comment.

If you have so much to say and want to change my story so drastically, why don't you write your own story and post it for us all to read? See what you can come up with and respect the 750-word limit. I would look forward to reading it.

That Graham got suspicious after wife started trying new things. Hired a PI to follow her. She spent the afternoon fucking Rodger. After they go what they needed, case closed. Graham didn’t need all month or like most of the men here, needing to know why. She cheated, case closed marriage over, life goes no. 5 *****

On the husbands part. But I do suppose the change in sex life might have been a tip-off.

Six months, no sex. Sex suddenly resumes, and gets crazy better than in 22 years.

Hubby gets suspicious and has friend or PI sit behind them at their DAILY lunches.

Long lunch (1.5 hours?), an hour later, four hours later. Plenty of time for the PI tail or whomever to follow to hotel and email first pic to hubby, who activates pre-arranged movers, and prints one photo at home before leaving. Hubby had plenty of reason to be wary, and then to be on Ready Five as he watched her fall.

I agree with ReadyOne on the time issues. KingBandor's response is not satisfactory as it is not an answer. It just says that there are dozens of stories on this topic and that the reader only has to choose what suits him. But nothing is suitable. And as another comment said, a story in 750 words is not a story cut in such a way that there are only 750 words left. It is an original whole. I have no explanation and do not try to guess. Just for the sake of the few sentences at the end, KingBandor has botched the above. It is not because it is brief that the reflection should be short.

LOL!! Graham doesn't waste time!!

KB, your story was short, sweet and fast paced. Apparently that left some commenters stumbling about trying to catch up. My reading of the words in the story indicates one hour elapsed between arriving at the motel (hand on door handle) and the picture taking. Another four hours elapsed until the unnamed (!) cheating wife arrived home to find a moving van. No problem for a well prepared Graham.

WTF? - maybe Lit. should limit comments to 750 words or less!

KB, Keep 'em comin'.

Again, great no words wasted BTB , with these amazing comments that are longer than the story.

Sometimes less is more. This is just exactly enough. You got into her head, you know what she did, and you know the consequences with just enough between to hold it together. Great job!

Beautifully done.

Does open more emotional questions than it answers but still. Well done.

Graham had a friend who overheard Roger and my conversation This friend had also informed Graham that Roger was a known player who chased married women.

Graham had employed a PI to get the evidence.

Graham had me served a week later. However, Roger did not turn up for work the next day. Or the day after or the one after that. My husbands text message after 4 days sent chills down my back.

It said "Roger has learnt not to seduce and fuck married women. You will never see him again."

It was only during her last days that she found out what happened to Roger.

Her ex-husband came to see her and showed her a video of Roger being tortured. Then a second video showing roger being fed into a burley grinder on a fishing boat. She realised with horror that Roger was alive when he screamed when his body was first lowered into the grinder. She died soon after that.

When I first finished reading this I thought it was great but would have liked to see an expanded story that answered some of the questions most people were thinking.

But then I thought about it another way, from the wife's point of view.

Which on seeing the removal truck and being given the envelope would have been WTF, how?, when? etc.

Love it

I understand that is the purpose of these 750 word stories but it just ended too abruptly for me. I have read others where the ending did feel right, this just wasn't one of those. However I did appreciate it for what it was. I have found that I can appreciate a RAAC story but it has to be really well written. But I am firmly in the BTB crowd.

Ha!

Re-read this. How stupid can you be? What did she expect the fucking cunt. Short and sweet. And that's the bane of that tune.

Graham already had the gun loaded, he just had to pull the trigger.

I love and prefer short stories. However, this one is disconnected.

Adulterous meeting, PI, Photos. Husband moving out, letter and lawyer

all in less than 8 hours. Doesn’t work. Too bad.

shr.

Shake head = no

Nod head = yes

not much! won't bother with abbreviated again,, typical cheating story but with 2 pages cut out! lol..

well written .

Three stars.

Maybe 50 different words sharing what Graham knew and was planning may have helped. As written the ACME anvil just fell out of the sky and landed on her like in a Roadrunner / Wild E. Coyote cartoon

Boom!

This was a lazy and stupid attempt at a story, and obviously deficient in terms of plot. Why bother to do something so half-assed?

Lots more than three unnecessary words. Actually, enough to stay within 750 AND pick one of several plausible endings which don’t suggest magic or extrasensory powers!

3*

Shaking the head means no. Nodding means yes.

Nope. I looked everywhere - no story here.

Other than this stupidity of the woman trying to justify her infidelity because of her husband, could have been a good story. But without any accountability on this comeback predator, it falls way short of anything adequate. Not a very good writer if you can't stand up for what's right, or against what's wrong.

No retribution, no justice.

No justice, no peace.

The main goal of a 750 words story has to be to send a worthwhile message or fact pattern within the word limit. I think more of a plot or more of a message was needed to accomplish the goal here.

It was momentarily confusing when the writer chose shaking a head to be a positive rather than negative answer.