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

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Here's an example of something that everyone else is in agreement on but I don't get, even if it hasn't come up that much for me. Varying sentence length.

http://i.imgur.com/8usNRMy.png

There is no difference between reading the first paragraph and the second to me. I have no issue reading tons of sentences of exactly 5 words in a row. I don't understand why it's a problem for other people.

We had a discussion on a different thread about the tendencies of Aspie writers/readers - I think you’re right that many Aspies share your writing style. These are not my fandoms, but the way you describe your style sounds similar to some of the noir crime books from the twenties, and some modern hard SF writers. You likely have a niche out there of readers who share your preferences and would love your work, and I hope you find them, but most NTs will find it challenging.

Odd thought popping out- if you have a favorite TV or movie character, check out a set of fan fics written about them. It’d be interesting to see if you notice how different writing styles affect the portrayal of a character you already know well.

What was that thread? I really don't want to rely on Aspies and the like to carry me over; that sounds like too tiny a niche.

aspie authors writing social interactions. It just had some new activity in the last couple of days.

Whoops. Sticky topics usually fly over my head. I'll give it a look.

It might make sense in that context. As I don't know your book I wouldn't know. Simply stating a character's feelings absolutely can work in the right context.

As a rule of thumb I'd say, if the scene - whether it's action, dialogue or other thoughts of the character - make it clear how the character feels, it's usually repetitive to explicitly write it down. If the reader has no other way to figure it out it doesn't have to be the wrong way to get that information across.



Readers are often better at telling you what scenes of your book are not good than at telling you how to fix them.
Assuming that there really is a problem with those additional characters, removing them is one way to fix it. It may require changing a lot of other things, details about your plot, details about what skills or knowledge your main characters posses or parts of the past of some characters...
It's probably not the only way to fix the problem. Improving the characterization of these additional characters, like you mentioned, may be another way to do so. It depends on why readers don't like them. If they are boring but take up a lot of space that could be filled with actions and interactions of more interesting characters readers won't like them. In that case improving them might make readers less annoyed with them.
Another alternative may be to degrade some of them to minor characters. You could have these additional characters to keep the fight plausible and to have some die without investing much time into them. You could keep the focus on the main characters and possibly on one or two new ones if they will be important later on and not allow the other new ones to distract from the better developed characters.
And there could be a lot of other possibilities to resolve the issue. You'll have to find one that works for you. Since I don't know your book anything more specific I say would be a blind guess and likely not at all relevant (even so it already is a quite blind guess).

Writing good fiction (esp. stories that retain their continuity) presents a challenge; hence it's easy to give-up. Yet, the experience of writing can offer healthy challenges!

By any chance, has anybody considered the genre of metafiction? I've read informative books on writing written by.......authors of metafiction. (METAFICTION LINK) at bottom of post.

Another development I'm following with interest is a word-processing program applying artificial intelligence TECH. to assist with writing (LINK); that is a word-processing program piquing the interests of both amateur, and professional writers alike!

(LINK): UC Berkeley Professor Invents Word Processor to Catch Plot Holes in Writing.
http://www.dailycal.org/2017/10/04/uc-b ... g-process/

(METAFICTION LINK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction

The offer still stands to review your writing if you wish for me to do so.

I'm not nearly so far along with my fiction writing, but this thread has got me thinking about how I'd respond to technical criticism. I'd agree with North Wind that readers may spot the problems but not give the best advice on fixing them. My experience in my local songwriting group was similar- I learned to consider all suggestions as just another thing to try. And to hastily discard in many cases...

One idea: go back to the real experts! Say there's an issue with how your characters express emotion. Take a chapter of a novel you admire and know quite well, and re-read it. Instead of following the story, take notes. Is this writer naming emotions, or describing facial expressions and behaviour? Using vivid metaphors, or matter-of-fact description? Or letting the dialogue and action do the work? Gets you an insight into the nuts and bolts of a kind of writing you have some affinity for.

My main problem is that I cannot plot to save my life. Recently I've deliberately paid more attention to the structure of stories, re-reading some old favourites to ask, "OK, what happens when, and why does it happen then?"

Oops, I completely overlooked your first post. My first book was ~182K words at the second draft. The group I'm showing it to now is on the third draft. They finished the first story arc last week, which as of the third draft was ~41K words. I haven't gotten to incorporating their line edits on any part of it yet, but once I do that I could send you the first arc.

182k words?? Wow, that’s a lot! You may want to consider splitting that into two average-sized books. You’ll make more money than with one big book.

I really don't want to split it when I already have 12 sequels planned

If you just need pointers as to your writing style...prose and syntax and perspective, then I would just need a few pages, as I would be looking at your inherent writing patters rather than focusing on the story as a whole.

Oh, yeah, that would be way easier for both of us. I think I have a scene in mind. I'll get it ready soon. How do you want it?

You can PM it if you want or provide a link to it if you have uploaded it somewhere.