Any fiction writers here? I'm close to giving up on it.

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I've been writing a sci-fi story series for about two and a half years now and participating in two groups, one the whole time and a new one on Reddit for the past 2 months. The critique I'm getting from the latter group is making me think writing fiction is beyond my abilities. I wrote my book the way I wanted it to read. The first group gave a lot of critique that I tried to implement in the new draft before going to the second group. This group... Is making me feel like it's completely unsalvageable garbage. I can understand some of it, but a lot of the time it's either something I personally don't consider a problem and thus can't really solve it effectively, or it's something that I consider a crucial element of the story that can't be changed. Has anyone else tried, or dare I say succeeded, at writing fiction?

Some of these issues:

-The "show don't tell" rule. I personally would rather be told than shown. At best, changing the wording from telling to showing has no effect on the story quality for me. This rule is a constant struggle for me. It slips my mind a lot, the difference between the two is often unintuitive.

-Having a lot of dialogue and not a lot of description of the atmosphere/setting. I guess I just don't personally care about describing the atmosphere and doing so doesn't cross my mind on my own, and is a struggle to implement.

-Having a lot of characters. Some of them are definitely minor and can be cut, but some of them are ones I don't feel can be cut without wrecking the plot.

-Not having a lot of characterization of many of the characters. This goes back to having trouble expressing emotion. I don't really know how to do it.

-Despite all these issues I don't notice any real difference in style or quality between my own story and other people's, which the one person I've told this to found hard to believe.

It seems like the overall problem is so subtle that I can't understand it. I don't know if this something that can be solved by writing and reading more, or if it's impossible for someone like me to write a book that other people will like. Any thoughts?

I am fifty one years old, and I just got published - - after years and years of self doubt and soul crushing criticism. I can fully understand how you would get despondent, because I've been there, too. But the important thing is to hang in there.
With the matter of "show, don't tell" - - I have to admit, I love describing things going on in my stories. You said you prefer "telling," but have you described scenes, people, things, etc? I can tell you, readers usually love seeing what their reading.
As for number of characters - - When I write, characters tend to appear out of the air as I need them. As you write science fiction, may I ask if your characters are isolated in space from other people? Otherwise, you may want to look into making new characters, no matter how minor.
Remember, those groups you belong to aren't the ones who finally decide what does or doesn't go into your stories. They are only expressing their opinions, which you can either take, or flush down the toilet.
Don't be afraid to look at self publishing through the more reputable means, such as Amazon. The money might not roll in as with traditional publishing, but then again traditional publishing is getting harder and harder to break into, even for talented writers, as publishing houses are interested only in making money off of a market rather than art.

Show don't tell- this comes up most often with verbs and emotions. I personally would rather read, for example, "He made me angry." rather than "My face boiled." To me changing it to the latter makes it weaker. I also sometimes am left scratching my head at how I'm supposed to show some of these- I just got "Show don't tell" to the line "He hated him with every fiber of his being" and am stumped as to how I'm supposed to show something so specific. For verbs it's more a matter of people thinking they're not showing enough while I don't get why.

My first book has 116 named characters (and 3 hidden, unidentified ones). I did that because I remember every character no matter how minor. Now I get that I should cut very minor characters, either by removing them or not naming them, but I'm also being told to cut or merge some supporting characters when I don't feel it's an option.

I'd like to just reject these critiques but I don't want to assume I know best when I'm so inexperienced. Dunning-Kruger effect. I bet it would flop if I tried to publish it now.

Thanks for the response.
Back in my college days, when I took creative writing workshops, one of my teachers, an old, alcoholic Irish writer, named James McCauley, had said one of the most important things anyone could have told me about being a writer: "Remember, writing isn't easy." Sometimes it takes effort to describe how someone reacts to another person or situation in a story. I'm not saying at all that you don't work hard at your stories, just that we all have to sometimes leave ourselves drained with making the story say what we want it to say. But hey, if you want to just say that a character was angry rather than describing how his/her face reddened, that's your choice as it's your story.
Again, take what advice others give you only if you want. It's your story, not theirs. If they don't like it, F 'em.
By the way, I write horror fiction. Unlike science fiction or fantasy writers, I don't have to build a whole world for my stories, as the best horror fiction happens in the everyday world.

It's usually a mixture of showing and telling. You can't always show because it may take more words or you may make things more complicated. You show when it is important.
But it is true that for most people a book that always just tells never shows would be boring to read and they'd realize this within the first few pages.


Sometimes you don't need either of "He made me angry" and "My face boiled". For example if it's in a conversation and your character yells something impolite as a response, the reader knows he is angry. You have already shown it without specifying that he is angry by either telling it or mentioning his boiling face. If your dialogue is well written it sometimes shows how your characters feel by the words they say.
What you need to find is a healthy mixture.
"He hated him with every fiber of his being" will show by how your characters interact with each other or think/talk about each other. If you introduce a new character and your character hates him, then you should show this early on. How you show it depends on your character's personality and why he hates the other character. Maybe he turns away in disgust as the other enters and has a hard time not walking out of the room but since the reason why they have to work together is important he stops himself from doing so. Or maybe he clenches his fists and someone rushes by to be able to stop him in case he attempts to punch the other character. Or maybe they're openly hostile and immediately start to insult each other. Or maybe he puts on a forced smile and tries to be polite but can't keep it up for long because the other character says something he thinks is repulsive. ...
"He hated him with every fiber of his being" is not something very specific. Any kind of reaction and continuous interactions would be more specific about why he hates him, how he, due to his personality, expresses that hate or why the other character deserves to be hated.


Yes, that's the same problem as your problem with "Show don't tell" and one reason why show is sometimes better than tell. How your character reacts to an emotion also reveals something about their personality. "He was angry" just reveals that he was angry. If he turns red in the face and starts yelling, he might have problems controlling his temper. If his voice turns low and calm instead and he says something threatening he may seem very collected and dangerous. If anger brings him close to tears he is probably not the most confident person. Or he (more often she) responds in a honey-sweet voice but says mean things, refuses to talk to people who he feels don't treat him well ...
If you know how your character would react to an emotion you also have an easier time showing it instead of telling. It works in both directions.
Characterization can come later though. It may lack in the first version of the book, especially when the character was recently introduced and you can refine it in the second version.


And this contributes to the above problem. The more characters you have the more difficult characterization will be.


Yes, your reader won't remember all those names. If it's a minor character that shows up once it won't matter but not giving all of them names may make it easier for the reader to remember the important characters.
You probably can't merge supporting characters without changing any other details of your story. Merging them is only feasible if it won't screw up the entire plot. It's a mater of how are they relevant to the plot. Do they have special abilities? Special knowledge? Are they manipulative and cause a misunderstanding between two other characters or do they help your main character out at some important point? ... Things like, if your character has three younger siblings he needs to protect, one might do. If he has six close friends that are always around maybe two or three are enough. If one character is only important because he knows one thing about one past event (that e.g. reveals what the evil guy could be planing) maybe another character who fulfills another role could know that.


At the time of writing it, no one is objective about their book. It's not at all hard to believe that you don't notice the difference. If it's your story you have the story in your mind too in addition to on paper. It's a lot harder to notice if something does not come across how you imagine it. If it's someone else's book that's easy as you only have the version on paper, not the in-mind version of what the book should be.
You also create a story you like with characters you like. If it's someone else's book you may or may not like the story. Your book can get plus points just because you wrote the story you like.

Nothing you said above indicates that it's impossible for you to learn these things. Do you have a favorite (fiction) book? Maybe reread it carefully. How much 'show' and 'tell' does the author really use? Do you not like 'show' but only 'tell' unlike most other people or do you only like 'show' when it is well done and doesn't feel forced? How much description does the author use? What personalities do the characters have?
If your favorite book can do without showing and only telling and this is a published book, maybe it's written for a niche-audience and you need to write for the same niche. If it uses a lot of 'show' and you never felt like 'tell' would have been better while reading it, maybe you never paid attention to if it shows or tells because it is well done and nothing disrupts the flow. Maybe you need to force yourself to show instead of tell until you learn to do it well enough that you don't feel tell would have been better and you can do it more automatically.

When I made my first attempts at writing a book I did not see there were problems with it. In hindsight it was atrocious. Characterizations were missing or exaggerated, there were lots of scenes that were completely pointless for the plot, long internal monologues that repeated themselves, too few paragraphs, few dialogues much indirect speech, characters solved problems in ridiculous ways when they must have been able to see an easier way... the list goes on.
When I wrote my second book I could see that the first wasn't that good, but I didn't notice most of the reasons and made most of the same mistakes.
Now I'm sure I still make many mistakes I don't notice and some I notice (like using too many useless words 'very', 'really', 'so' ...) but have a hard time avoiding(English is not my native language. The likely wonky grammar is only something I do in English.).
I'm not there yet. My books are not good enough yet and it seems neither are yours. Improving is possible though.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd trust a bunch of randos on Reddit to tell me whether my writing is any good! Redditors have a reputation for abrasive "honesty" to uphold. So, no constructive criticism from there. The first group sounds like it might actually be doing you some good. Remember, these are not experts, they're your peers. Some of the advice may be good, some may be misguided. You're the final judge of how to go about things. Especially as amateur writers have this nasty habit of asserting nonsensical Absolute Rules of Writing that make the professionals shake their heads and sigh...

I wonder if there's a way to play to your strengths, rather than treat all these issues you listed as weaknesses? For example, many authors make a deliberate stylistic choice of cutting description down to a few key details. And a viewpoint character who doesn't understand other people that well can do really interesting things to the story. I'm thinking of of someone like Haruki Murakami, who has this odd, rather distant style that's uncannily effective.

Do not feel bad at all about your feedback! You’re just starting out, of course you have much to learn! There is a saying repeated often by my fellow Amazon authors to newbies - the first million words you write are just practice. It takes everyone loads of time and hard work to learn professional writing skills!

Writing for an audience is very different and much harder than writing for fun. You have to see your work objectively from a stranger’s point of view and know what will please them. (One of the many, many reasons to hire an editor!) Thousands of books are released weekly just on Amazon, not to forget all of the other works on other sites coming out at the same time. To compete, you have to offer buyers the best version of what they want to read. I don’t want to agree with the reddit meanies, but underneath their frothing they shared some good advice. People get turned off by writing styles they don’t like, or having too many characters to track. If you want to sell, you have to write what people want. A great quote my friend sent me - the first draft is for the writer, the second for the editor, and the third for the reader.

From my experience, the main reason ‘show don’t tell’ matters is flow. Flow is important - what a reader usually wants most is to get lost in the story. Your goal is to make your reader forget they’re reading, by chosing descriptive and non-invasive wording that best reflects real human interactions. Phrases like ‘she said dejectedly’ or ‘he was morose’ kick people out of the flow, especially if they show up often. Practical advice: listen to your writing using a read aloud function in your word processing program. You’ll hear what sounds odd or stilted. Think about how people convey their moods and emotions in real-life (which is rougher for us spectrum people, I know!) I’m still working on this too - I have characters sigh and shrug way too often. We all have ways to improve!

I’m in 99% agreement with your post, but don’t knock Zon for the money! I’ve known several successful authors who either left trad publishing for the dark side, or refused trad offers. Authors usually still have to do their own heavy self-promotion to gain any traction with trad published works, while Amazon offers a much higher royalty rate, cheap and easy promotions, and you maintain ownership of your works.

Just let me add on to your warning to new writers: the con artists are getting sneakier, so be extra cautious with anyone who asks for money before publishing your work!

That is all correct. I belong to a writers group where one member by the name of Erik Schubach has been able to turn his book sales on Amazon into such a lucrative career. He has grown himself a substantial fanbase, and has learned all the ins-and-outs of self promotion, and is more than happy to teach the rest of us tricks of the trade. In all fairness, though, as most authors on Amazon don't self promote, they make little money.
Last year when I thought it in my best interest to find a publisher on line, and so I got into contact with "so-called publishers," who I quickly realized were vanity presses. A couple of them tried pestering me, but I thankfully got rid of them. So, yes, there are certainly scam artists out there who want to take advantage of new and aspiring writers.

I don’t know Erik, or maybe I know him by his author name instead, but he sounds like a great guy. I find just about every author I meet to be really nice and generous with their wisdom. Except for the two-star troll. Ever hear of him? He’s two-starred over 400 SF books on Amazon as a way to down his competition. Everyone else is kind. But I digress...

Self-promotion is a whole lot of no-fun, but it makes a big difference. I was lucky enough to get into Amazon’s ads program while it was still in beta and cheap. I’m still running some ads, but they work better with a full catalogue of books to sell so I’m holding off any new major marketing campaigns until I have a few more books finished. If I had it to do over again, I’d finish the first four books then publish them one by one, every three months, and build up some sales momentum.

I understand that in theory, but since I never want to show, how am I supposed to know when it's okay and when it's not?



That specific quote came up while my MC was privately thinking about someone he was suspicious of for a while but proved himself to be a monster. I personally think having that line made sense in context...



Well, that's a better way of putting showing than I had seen before. That's all stuff that doesn't even cross my mind. It all kind of blurs together for me.



This is currently an issue with my 6 main characters befriending 6 other characters in preparation for a battle against extremely long odds. My group wants me to cut all of the 6 other characters, but I have specific roles for 2 of them, want 2 of them to die in battle so the fight isn't too easy without killing off any of the main 6 at this time (it's the first battle), and the remaining 2... to cut them would weaken the significance of a much later scene. Unfortunately these extra 6 came up kind of suddenly and I didn't give them a lot of characterization, but I'm hoping just changing that could be enough to fix the problem. I also don't think it would make any sense for my main 6 to do this fight without that amount of support, and that long story short, I've basically boxed myself in as far as that fight goes and see no alternatives to how I'm handling it.



I haven't read that many fiction books. That's something I'm working on. But I don't really pick up on differences in style between books I've read. When I both write and read something, I basically take the position that anything works so long as it's coherent and doesn't contradict anything that came sooner. That often makes it real struggle to understand when people say my story has problems.

Last edited by SpreadsheetMaster on 09 Mar 2018, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I understand the position that I don't need to take what the Reddit group says seriously, but none of the people in this particular group are trolls, many of them are more experienced than me, and I know from experience that the way I want a book to read is very different compared to most people, so I don't think rejecting all of it out of hand is something I can do and expect my book to be "good" to many people.

I don't know two-star troll... thankfully.
Yes, Erik is a cool guy.

Send it to me. I will review it.

Writing is the fun part, and it's free. Unfortunately, editing and promoting are the expensive bits that make it hard for newbies to make a dent in the literary market.

The next book I'll be releasing is called "Obey the Darkness: Horror Stories." I've already solicited offers from professional editors online and they quoted me from $1450 to $2000 for editing it. I simply can't afford that, so what I did was go through the book with a fine tooth comb looking for errors.

As far as online critique goes, I accept them all. I'm from Trinidad & Tobago so my speaking, and writing, style is different from the American norm. That's to be expected. In essence, I have to unlearn my own English, a difficult but necessary hurdle.

There are lots of sites that connect writers with editors. In the end, they're worth their salt. I belong to Absolute Write Water Cooler and those guys are BRUTAL. They WILL make you rue the day you decided to put pen to paper. However, if you can survive their critiques, you'll be playing in the big leagues.

http://www.writersandeditors.com/

http://www.writershelper.com/

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-edi ... ing-advice

https://nybookeditors.com/2015/11/11-to ... n-and-why/

Yeah, I don't really understand how show don't tell accomplishes that. To me there's no real difference between the two when reading. Maybe I just don't get submersed into stories the way other people do. Unfortunately I already tried reading aloud dialogue people pointed out as stilted per their suggestion and it was fine to me. I think these are both Asperger's issues.