“How nice of you to ask. Although it is the gentleman who usually does the ordering. And the correct phrase I believe is ‘what will you have' not ‘what do you want'. All the same I think I'll have the salmon. I hear they make it wonderfully here, with just of hint of lemon and-”

I once heard Christie Craig speak at an RWA meeting. When she started writing, she could barely string a sentence together because of learning disabilities. But she had these stories in her head that just screamed to get out. So she worked hard for years and learned her craft and collected hundreds of rejection letters. Now she’s a published author and you’d never know she once struggled with basics.

In my opinion, creative thinking and storytelling ability are just as important as good writing. You can learn to write better. I don’t know if you can learn how to have a vivid imagination!

Have you considered joining RWA, or attending a writing conference? Both of these things made a huge difference for me as an aspiring author.

You had a dream and you followed it. Don’t stop now.

You know how when you get your carpet cleaned, it looks great when it’s still wet? Then it dries, and blotches and crappy spots show up?

That’s what it’s like to write a book. You think it’s great, and then the ink dries – well, not reeelly – and all these mistakes and weak plotlines and dreaful pieces of dialogue suddenly show up when you come back to re-examine them.

That’s how it works. You just keep spot-cleaning until your book smells like Febreze.

Punctuation isn’t your strong point, but that’s easy to rectify. Give some time to studying the rules about periods, commas,and question marks. Go find some sites that also discuss coordinating conjunctions. Join a site that’s devoted to languages and words in general, like Word Reference Forums.

You seem to have a suspense/gritty bent in your writing. Get an author’s book that resembles that type and don’t just read it. Analyze it. I have found that many times I couldn’t tell you what a story was about that I’ve read lately, but I could give you a list of style points, structure content, and creative energy that I sucked up while reading that book.

You’ve already done the hard part. You started your book. Now you have to do the brutal part: you can’t stop until you finish it.

And it’s more than just about the book. Writing one is a fantastic journey into yourself.

Find the joy in that, and you won’t be able to stop until you get there. Then it’ll feel so good, you’ll want to start all over and write another one.

Good luck, and thank you for having the courage to step up to the plate and take what we throw at you.

To the author- Like others have said, I think you have a good idea here. It’s just that the execution of it loses the idea in the mechanics. The reader can’t tell who’s saying what bits of dialogue, you have a lot of word repetition, and there are other issues.

You refer to this a couple times as your “baby.” I think as authors we all feel like that. But you have to learn to separate yourself from the “baby.” No one’s criticizing you. They’ve offered *constructive* criticism on your writing. You have the imagination. You just need to work on the presentation.

People here have given you great advice. Don’t be discouraged; just learn from what they’re telling you.

Author: I found the whole ‘there were worse ways to start the evening’ off-putting. It totally cut the drama of the gun. The gun made the snark less funny.

However, Job’s much shorter version seemed to work. Because the length of explanation about her boss, took me from the scene.

Then, the ‘more curious than afraid’ didn’t work because I couldn’t figure out if she was pretty used to this or recognized something in the waiter’s eyes that told her it was a bluff.

So, I never got a mood from the scene. I never got a sense of reactions.

BTW, what happened to the other first page.

Then go watch, hmm… “His Girl Friday” and “The Philadelphia Story”. (Possibly also “To Have and Have Not” or “The Big Sleep”, the Bogart/Bacall version). The first two were originally stage plays; the second two have scripts penned by William Faulkner. IOW, not your usual Hollywood hacks doing the dialogue. Listen to the way the characters talk. Close your eyes and see if you can guess who’s doing the talking based on the words they use, the way they put things. Pay attention to what’s being said, and what’s left unsaid. The first two are comedies with damn snappy fast-moving pulls-no-punches dialogue; the second two are dramas with a lot of implication and innuendo doing the heavy lifting. All are excellent illustrations of top-notch dialogue.

Then go back & reread the two books, seeing where Kempton’s and Provost’s advice explains with what you saw in action in the movies. Grammar you can learn as part of the technique of things. It’s the cadence of a voice that’s hard to learn and harder to master, and having a strong voice can sometimes override technical things, if you develop a voice that also breaks grammatical rules sometimes. Thing is, the only way to learn that voice, in my experience, is by studying examples of damn strong good voices: it’s like learning to write your own music. First you start by learning music that others have written, and figuring out how/what they did so you can adapt the technique for yourself.

THEN begin revising, and this time, you’ll be able to do it with a trained ear, for both the dialogue AND the narration.

Nobody’s born knowing this stuff.

There is this also. In creating the character ‘voice’ you have sacrificed crisp, straightforward writing.

What I mean. Take this passage:

This probably wasn't the best start to a night Amicia ever had but she was pretty sure that there had been worse. She might not have been able to think of any right now but she was pretty sure that there were some somewhere back there. Of course being seated in a restaurant with a moron who doubled as her boss and having your waiter poke a gun to the back of her head had to rank pretty high up there.

I find this fairly unfocussed and repetitive. Does a shorter version lose too much of the voice?

The waiter poked a gun into the back of her head. Her idiot moron boss gaped and dropped a buttered roll into his lap.

Amicia was pretty sure there were worse ways to start the evening. Maybe. She couldn’t think of any.

Don’t stop working on this. You have something here.

The critique you’ve received is honest and fair. You need a better grasp of writing’s technical aspects to make your story shine.

Despite the tech issues, though, your voice and storytelling are coming through and I enjoy them. I really want to see/know “what happens next.”

Nurture your ideas and creativity as you learn more about creative writing. Some good books that may help you better understand technical writing are Strunk’s “Elements of Style” (this book is a mini “bible” for almost any kind of writing project) and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Recognize that, no matter how good the quality of your work, there will probably always be A) people who really like it, B) people who are neutral about it, and C) people who loathe it. Writing is an art and art affects different people differently. Criticism may be tough to swallow, but no art is above criticism, favorable or not.

Author, thank you for sharing your work with us today. Good luck with your project. : )

Okay I’m better now. I have occasional episodes of melodrama. I blame my mother. My baby, the story, is going to continue to be worked on. I’m sure it’ll get better.

Your right my writing has never been reviewed/ edited/ critiqued before. Only I ever see it. Maybe the first one always makes you feel like you want to hide in a corner lol. Maybe it gets better. There you go silver lining.

Okay?

Book. Not you. Grammar problems. Not YOU problems.

This shouldn’t make you quit. It should make you look at your work more critically and identify its problems, and give you some tips how to fix what needs fixing.

Here’s a tip. Go buy ELEMENTS OF STYLE. Read it. Read it again. Then get SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS. Read that one a couple of times too. Forget about this book while you read those. Give yourself a little time.

Then go back to this book and read it again, keeping in mind what you learned. You’ll see what needs fixing, and it will be fun to fix it (I promise!) because you’ll be able to clearly see the difference. You know what I mean? Like how it’s fun to wash a really filthy car, and se it become all shiny again.

Go have a drink, and relax. We like you okay, we just didn’t think your work is ready for prime-time yet. That’s all. And it’s honestly no big deal.

I promise, almost every single one of us wrote terribly in the beginning. You didn’t start a complicated, demanding new job expecting to be perfect at it immediately, right? Writing is the same. It takes time and work and practice. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Chin up. Keep trying.

Edited to add: Editors are not reviewers. You should keep writing; you just need an honest editor. You need someone to point out the kinks and show you how to smooth them over. If you can’t take this criticism ( which isn’t brutal in the least, just honest) then someone has done you a great disservice in the past by never pointing out ways your writing could be better. The story premise is really good, it just needs some serious editing.

p.s I believe I told Jane that this was a contemporary but in actuality it is an urban fantasy/paranormal….My bad.

Also, your dialogue is kind of cardboard (as is the characterization. Especially the boss/date. I get that he’s some kind of proper, stuffy arse, but it feels like you’re throwing WAY too many shorthand “he’s a dick!!” clues in here. He isn’t well-rounded, she isn’t well-rounded. I’m not invested or interested in any of these people). Overall, the whole scenario seems impropable as written.

All of this is unfortunate, because the concept is interesting. Do some serious rewrites, get a good proofreader, and keep working!

It has a ‘part of a greater scheme’ things going to it with all the guns, city lights going off etc that I liked despite it needing some tightening up

The tense errors, awkward language, and repetitions of “pretty sure” made me stop reading after the first para. I only finished it to make sure the problems continued so I wouldn’t feel like a twat mentioning them here.