I liked having a lot of other people's opinions on my piece. I had a lot of different and constructive comments. But some of the advice contradicted itself so it made it hard sometimes to choose what to do.
Grammar:
I needed some help with my grammar. So many books these days that I read will have blaring grammar errors, which drives me nuts as a reader. It takes away from the reading experience.
I do not wish to do that with people reading my work. I changed as much as I could find from everyone's suggestions. I also have a bad habit of presenting awkward sentences. I used every line edit I could and went through it page by page each time.
Date, Where at, and Location:
I love books that go over long periods of times, but sometimes it is hard to figure out how much time has passed and where the scenes are.
A lot of people did not know the year or where the scene was taking place. I decided to do what I have seen in some fantasy books. Gives readers dates, where they are at, and the location the scenes are happening.
I'll see how that pans out.
Internal Dialogue and the Protagonist Talking to Herself:
One of the biggest problems that people commented on my piece was the internal dialogue and my character talking to herself. Some thought there was too much of my protagonist talking to herself while the other half were fine or liked the amount.
First there the grammatical problems I had with the internal dialogue. I changed that to make it less confusing for the reader. Then I tried to streamline some of the internal dialogue and tried to make more clear when the protagonist talked to herself.
Hopefully it will work out better, but I still left a lot of it in there. Readers got a view of the protagonist's personality and about her motivations. I will probably cut back on it in the future, except for big moments to the protagonist.
Description and Detail:
A few people said I had too little description of scenes, a few others said I had way too much description, and the majority of comments wanted more description of my protagonist.
After reading the description of my character, I really had to completely agree. How could I describe so little of her?
Next, I added small bits of sensory details that did not have to do with sight, like smell.
As to the too much detail. There was a good chunk of people who thought I described the characters way too much, like with they wore and how they looked while others said I did not describe the characters or the club enough. I decided to keep the description in.
I kept it in because the club and the characters I described in detail will keep making appearances in the story. I decided to describe it so I would not have to later on. I also tried to streamline some of it.
As to the too little description people, I re-read through the characters and the scenes I was describing. Some parts, I just had no clue how much more I could add. Others, I added a line and tried to spread some of the descriptions out.
Flashback Opportunity:
I had a chance to fill in some of my protagonist's background and to let readers see a glimpse into her life. I did not take it. In truth, I wanted to, but I did not have time. And guess what, almost everyone noticed!
So I went back and took the opportunity to flesh out and hint at what people will learn in future. I tried to make it not too long since she was at a club and in the company of others. People get caught in memories all the time, but if you do it too long, someone usually pops you out of the memory or moves on.
Ellie's Strong Language:
A chunk of people did not like or understand why Ellie talked the way she did and felt it was too strong. Some people had questions on what she was saying.
You ever listen to what some people say when you're walking around? I hear people say literally LOL or OMG and other texting speech all the time. This is what Ellie, the protagonist roommate, is studying for her English and Sociology senior thesis. The changing of the English language due to social media. She is blogging about it and tweetering or tweeting -kind of like birds talking is what I have thought about twittering- about it.
I thought about scarping it, but I really liked the idea of making fun of this type of speech while trying to poke at the idea that times are changing. It is one of the themes of the piece. I told myself to be bold and if I did send this in to try to be published, it could be changed if the editor really hated it.
What I did do with my re-write is that I introduced this idea earlier than I was originally planned and explained some of what Ellie was saying.
Thanks again for feed back everyone. I used what people gave me and your thoughts made me consider and think.
