All Comments on 'Horny in Manila'

While I'm not exactly an expert on Filipino culture, I have had the good fortune to know a good many Filipinas, and know them well. Also, I do look for a little bit of development, verisimilitude, and some evidence that the story is something you could buy in general.

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Could I buy that this situation could have happened in the real world? I actually can. Could I buy that somebody went there strictly for this purpose? Yes I can. However can I buy that this character sounds innately Filipina? Not at all. Why not you might ask? First of all, while probably the average Filipina in Manila is going to possess a pretty good amount of English, you need to reflect some difficulties that she should have in communicating, despite that average kind of understanding of English there. Also, you need to show a little bit more of a connection with the main character and this girl, because at the end of the day, even though Filipinas are known for being lusty, you still have to connect with them on a personal level to some extent to actually expose that. One more thing is that you should have invested some research in using at least some token Tagalog phrases, because there's lots of literary examples that point to when characters engage in this kind of activity, their native language comes out. This reflects zero use of Tagalog in any way either incidentally by the bartenders, or by taxi drivers, or even very well- known things that happen in manila, like the taxi drivers deliberately trying to take you on a longer route to make you pay more. I realize he was with her, but this is something that you could have done or you made the main character getting a taxi thinking he was going straight to her apartment to meet her there, and injected some reality into the story, and therefore boost your credibility. Unfortunately, none of that is in it.

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While the story establishes this as a direct form of erotic communication, it's still too convenient. There's really no chemistry established between the characters in it all, and it's really just a very mechanical exchange, with no real tenderness, and no real connection. In fact, I really skipped over most of the intimate scenes, because I felt no connection and I couldn't even see where anybody reading this would think the characters established any real connection except for what the story said. Normally I limit myself strictly to what the story structure states, but in this case when you know about the culture, it does tend to short circuit certain things that even a story may state is true, so you have to be careful of reality and the actual cultural facts when you're writing. For example, they could have even gone out to a sari sari, which is a kind of kiosk restaurant where you eat with your hands, and it usually involves eating some kind of chicken and rice. Why this is important is that this guy could have found himself not understanding anything about this, she could have told him what to do, and it could have led to a very comical kind of interaction where he just can't imagine eating this way. Then for example she could have gone to the people that had the kiosk and asked for a spoon and brought it back one. This could have led to a lot of teasing later on in the story, and then her teasing him about how little he really knew about the Philippines. There's no cultural connection at all. This is very much a wham-bam-thank you-ma'am, and the story ends.

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I would like to think that there's some type of redeeming qualities I'm just missing in the story, but nothing at all stood out in my mind. Nothing really anchored me to the story, nothing really gave me any reason to buy into it as well, and so all I can say is I would suggest you invest more time researching these characters, establishing a good and plausible connection between them that goes beyond one simple premise- - in this case just an intimate exchange--which really didn't feel intimate either.. because both of these people were just paper thin. We don't see any of their real thoughts, we don't really get anything more than a passing mention about the girl in question, and we've got really nothing to hang our hat on here. So I would suggest spending more time building up these different aspects of a story, because it's a big enough challenge to write a short story that will grab people and keep their attention, but it's very easy to lose people if you don't spend time developing the different parts that you need to. 2