Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Those writers that participate here on "Writers' Corner" cover a wide range of genres. Our intersection of interest is the trials and tribulations of writing and independent publishing - not necessarily the content.
When someone does go so far as to provide feedback on content we try not to react unreasonably, especially when they're right. Yes, I did take a quick look at your preview, more in response to your discussion with meeera than as a result of your challenge. And meera is right. There are still too many errors, and I do mean errors.
There several blatant things (eg: "all my friend", ", so violent, that"), and the perhaps less blatant but still real problem of the paragraph structure: it seems random, makes the text very dense, and detracts from the flow of the story. (And don't tell me it's style or stream-of-consciousness, those concepts do not let you abdicate your responsibility for clarity.) These thoughts from a quick scan of the preview rather than a detailed review.
I don't see anything that unusual or unconventional in the story telling itself. My own reaction (opinion) is that it didn't sound like a 10yo boy, or not consistently (first person can be tricky to get right).
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Thank you for pointing out a couple grammatical errors. The second one, from the looks of it, looks to just be the writing style (I know this probably annoys you, but it's the truth). But, the first one will be corrected and thank you for pointing it out. The paragraph structure is on purpose, actually. It's dense, it can contain stream-of-consciousness elements, it can sort of jump around, but you have to remember it's a young boy doing the narrating and things can get mushed up, purposely. There's a reason it's over 20k words and only 45 pages. I know you won't like to hear this, but the whole novella is supposed to be hazy and by the end, you will be questioning a lot of what you read, which is sort of the point, in a way. It's a very weird read, I admit that.
The narrator's voice is a complaint I understand and have heard before, and I acknowledge that it probably wasn't the voice I was looking for the boy to have.