Well the idea behind the story, like the idea behind almost every story, is good, and you should keep plugging away at it. What I think of it is that it has great potential. All of the elements of suspense, conflict and so on are there, I just think you need to really fish them out a bit more, and maybe I can be of some help in letting you know how to do that.
Let me take an example of what you wrote: "Jensen is a quirky man. He is opinionated, stubborn, and old-fashioned." Without boring you, I will say you did an excellent job of telling me about Jensen. You gave me a list of character traits you want me to focus on. Where I think it falls short is that you failed to show me. The idea that someone is opinionated, stubborn, or old-fashioned is a good exercise intellectually, but the question is what it really means or what it would look like if I looked at it, heard it, smelled it....so on. To connect with a reader, you must show them this through description which is direct and precise. Instead, what I have here is a dialogue that begins to show those things in this character, then a listing that tends to pull me out of the story so I can pursue, intellectually, what it means to be those things. Confidence is the key. If you are confident that your dialogue has shown these things, you will not feel you need to then list them, just to be sure I "get it." The reason is very simple: it is not my responsibility to "get it," it is your responsibility to show me what to get. Don't think I am being harsh about it by saying that, because I want you to make this story what it can be, but the only way that will happen is if you feed it to me the right way. Give me the dialogue, then trust me to make up my own mind.
Also, I want you to make this story more linear. There is no need to begin with a prologue, especially when the story is short. I know that kind of thing is en vogue in many popular novels now, but here it has the effect of jerking me out of my space-time position and killing the suspense you are trying to build at the beginning. Start with the story itself, how did you come to go on the adventure etc. Just tell it in a linear fashion. This isn't Cloud Atlas (and even then, most of the stories are linear) and you want people to understand where they are in the story.
One key to showing and not telling...a bit of a secret people get to know as they do this more: keep your stuff active. Re-phrase your sentences with active verbs and not versions of "to be." I mean words like was or is. On the first draft, was feels good and that is fine because you want to keep moving and telling the story, but then go back through and replace all that. Here is a sentence that has that passive, wuzzy stuff going on: "This was a new experience that I hoped would bring me inspiration which I desperately needed." This is also telling and not showing. You are telling all about your mindset intellectually, but it doesn't bring the story to life both because it is passive, and because you are just telling me what you hope for. In that case, you would be better writing, "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," which would be more of an essay. Even then, essay writers avoid that passive voice. Even scholarly papers try to avoid it, when they can. Sometimes maybe you have to give me what you are hoping and dreaming, but usually, too much pepper spoils the pot. The whole sentence is passive and sort of says, "Hey, I am going to tell you exactly what I am thinking and why because I haven't shown you, so I feel I must." Which is why you did it that way. I don't care if you need to have your character spell out hopes and dreams in dialogue while they eat dandelion soup or something, as long as it is not passive and as long as it does not take the reader outside of the story.
Now, I will tell you have put things out on this site that are decidedly second-rate, and this is the place for that stuff...the perfect place. What I often got from readers are things like my "grammar" was off. Actually, my style was off. Grammar is a fuzzy kind of thing that I don't care much about in creative writing (nor do a good many published authors). But style is all important, and this is what they meant...I had a great story, but my style was bad. Luckily, this can be fixed by going through the structure and improving on it. A first-draft, or even a second-draft are like bones without flesh. What you need to do is finish putting the flesh on to bring this to life in the eyes of the reader. It will NEVER be perfect, and someone will always find flaws in it, but with persistence, you can get this thing to a point where people are reading, seeing and feeling the story. |
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