Humdinger

I went to Amazon and read the excerpt. It reads like you're writing a report for school. You, alone are on stage to talk and talk AT the reader, with no live scenes, only the narrator, reporting and explaining, as if the reader can hear and see your storytelling performance. So in reality, you've given the reader your storytelling script–A script that must be performed to work. But how can the reader know where to place gestures, change facial expression, or when to change cadence and intensity?

Answer? They can't. For you, who are the storyteller, and who performs as storyteller when you read it, it works. For the reader? Have your computer read it to you to hear how unlike what you get it is. It's a powerful editing technique, one you should now be using.

What you've forgotten is that Commercial Fiction Writing is a profession, and as with all professions, its skills and techniques are acquired in-addition to the nonfiction writing skills we're given in school, as they prepare us for employment.

Since the day you began to read, every book you've purchased or taken from the library was written with those skills. And while you weren't able to see the tools that were in use, or know the decision-points, you do appreciate, and expect to see, the result of their use—as your reader expects that in YOUR writing.

And given that the pros feel those skills are necessary, and sell books because they use them, who are we to argue?

So...grab a copy of Jack Bickham's, Scene and Structure. He won't make a pro of you. That's your job. But he will give you the tools to do that with. And you'll be amazed at how much of it seems obvious once it's pointed out.

For what it may be worth, my own articles and YouTube videos are meant as an overview of the traps and gotchas that lie in wait for the hopeful writer.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”
~ Alfred Hitchcock

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

Posted 12 Hours Ago