Friday, September 7, 2012

Finished reading

Oh gawd.  I've finished reading through my first draft of this fiction story I wrote.  I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to respond about what I think.  Maybe no one will ask me and I won't have to say.  I've never been known to hold back on my opinions about things I've read.  I've been known to have some pretty strong opinions about the things I read.  I guess the question right now would be if I can do the same with my own work.  But really now.  Do you really have any doubt?  Reading is what I do best.
Where do I start?  The beginning was poor and it went on to become worse.  Then it got boring and then worse than that it got boringly confusing.  The main character kept messing with her hair so much I wanted to cut her hand off.  The characters abruptly stopped at places where they should have gone on.  There was way too much internalizing and too much repetition and then too much more internalizing.  The ending was the only saving grace (well, yeah, it ended)! but besides that it seemed the consistent day after day writing sessions that were going on at the time proved to produce better writing than the whole of the rest of the book.  At least I feel a little better since that part was done most recently and maybe from that I have some kind of direction of where it should be at the beginning.
It's going to take a lot of revisioning.  It's going to take a lot of reworking and editing and changing.  A lot.  Lots.  I wonder if there is really a story in there somewhere.  Maybe so.  But who ever started at the end and went back to make the beginning better?  Usually people start strong and run out of steam at the end.  Leave it to me to be the first to do it backwards.
TT

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What you don't understand is, fiction requires us as the reader to connect. Which takes that internazing,repetition, physical things" playing with one's hair. All the triggers that make us ,the reader, identify with your characters, what else do we have? It's your story, and with time you have become good at it. Keep writing......

Chetta said...

Anonymous - I really appreciate this. I haven't started yet but have plans to begin revisions.
Your timing for encouragement is impeccable!
TT

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