"the peculiar thing about it are the profound descriptions of the characters feelings... your style is very articulated, the introspective digressions of the characters sometimes stop the fluency of the story,but if the story comes short the characters most definitely benefit from it. besides from that the story has a good flow, that particular detail can be a characteristic of your own personal style. compliments for the way you describe certain feeling of the characters, it makes you feel them rather than seeing them." this is the comment one of my friens made after having read a piece of a story that I was writing (maybe is not perfectly translated because I had to try and translate if from italian, but I hope it's ok) and I don't really know what to think about it. should I take it as the constructive critique it is and try to change some things (less thorough descriptions?) or just take it as one persons opinion and keep doing what I do and hope that someone else will appreciate it better? Is this something worth considering and something I should work on or was it just him not appreciating it as much?
wonder what happen if instead of changing it you included body language and talked about what the character was doing at the time they were feeling ? Feeling a character isn't a bad thing.
yes, I try to do that too, but maybe I should expand that part, to put in some action more often and not give in to feelings for too long at a time.
I think we all have the bits we do well - clearly feelings are yours. Mine is dialogue and character placement and as a result I over do it. I now do mostly dialogue on the first draft then on second draft build in more description of settings and feelings. Maybe yours would work if you did the reverse ? You can play with it and if you don't like it you can go back to what you were doing lol
Reading this, it sounds like criticism that could probably be made of a lot of my fiction. I do a lot to try to evoke the feelings of the characters, and I'm starting to think that maybe I overdo that a little bit. If it seems like an accurate description of the way you write, I'd say to take the criticism seriously, and challenge yourself to make things a bit more action-focused.
elgaisma; that would be an idea, thanks for the tips. sidewinder: I'll do that, I think it can be a valid critique. But then people are different, some like it and some doesn't. I guess there is a too much of everything though. It's hard to find that right amount of all the components. And maybe it would be ok if it was further ahead in the story but It might have been too much in the begining and therefore it stopped the story from taking off properly?
Hard to say without seeing some of your writing. Have you posted anything in the writing workshops that would serve as an example of this?
something i find useful is to take just one paragraph out of my work and play with it. That way it doesn't matter if you don't like it you don't change the main document.
I haven't because I write in swedish and I don't feel confident enough with english to write the stories in this language. How do you mean you do that more exactly? what do you look for? what do you change? and how do you think when doing that?
'What were the documents Mark?' Joe moves over to the french doors, normally the view is stunning. Snow is beginning to fall obscuring the edge of the cliffs and the sea. Joe tries the doors they are locked. 'They were relating to Emma's business. The Flash Bean.' His eyes scan the desk. They were here last night, Emma came in, Well um couldn't resist. This is the last paragraphs I have written. When I am editing I will copy and paste a snippet no longer than this into a blank document s. First of all check for punctuation. Go through the words see if I can make it clearer. Does the whole thing flow right. Then I look to add more description and feeling. Can I change the intent etc Sometimes I move it around a bit. Then after changing it I look at the original paragraph and see if there is anything I liked better in it.
