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alpha reader notes on Nice Tie
May. 25th, 2013 05:15 pmOn Thursday Predatrix sent me some comments on the rough draft of Nice Tie, which I will be trying to work on over the bank holiday weekend. Not that I've got to it as of late Saturday afternoon... The gist of it is that a) the story works overall, b) the first four fifths is mostly pretty good, the last fifth has a bad case of plot being obtrusive.
I'm not surprised by (b). When we discussed it, the section she pinpointed was precisely the section I'd been wrestling to get down over the last two months. A couple of other comments about spots earlier where the characters were doing things for the sake of plot also mark points where I was hit by an inspiration particle that changed what I was doing with the plot. So one of the things I need to do is go back and make that all blend together a bit more smoothly. (Amongst other things, I need to do a bit of in-cluing much earlier on about Alex having seen a colleague's problems with an abusive/controlling partner, plus make it clearer that the reason for the lack of "why did you not mention this boyfriend before" is the lack of privacy to have that conversation.)
The other thing that I think is going on is that for much of the last section it's almost all dialogue and very little description/business, which makes the pace feel forced and is adding to that feeling of things happening for the sake of Plot. Predatrix agreed when I suggested that -- she hadn't consciously noticed it, because she's even less visual a writer than I am, but on having the possibility pointed out to her she thought it was a likely component of her reaction.
But (a) is good. Given the way this story changed and grew as I was writing it, I did wonder if it made sense outside my own head, and if there was enough story to support the word count it had grown to. (b) I can fix, as long as I have (a).
It's gong to take me a while yet to get this ready for submission, which is a shame because I'd hoped to have it ready to send off to my editor by now. But at least I've got something novel-shaped to work on, which is a distinct improvement over the last few years.
I'm not surprised by (b). When we discussed it, the section she pinpointed was precisely the section I'd been wrestling to get down over the last two months. A couple of other comments about spots earlier where the characters were doing things for the sake of plot also mark points where I was hit by an inspiration particle that changed what I was doing with the plot. So one of the things I need to do is go back and make that all blend together a bit more smoothly. (Amongst other things, I need to do a bit of in-cluing much earlier on about Alex having seen a colleague's problems with an abusive/controlling partner, plus make it clearer that the reason for the lack of "why did you not mention this boyfriend before" is the lack of privacy to have that conversation.)
The other thing that I think is going on is that for much of the last section it's almost all dialogue and very little description/business, which makes the pace feel forced and is adding to that feeling of things happening for the sake of Plot. Predatrix agreed when I suggested that -- she hadn't consciously noticed it, because she's even less visual a writer than I am, but on having the possibility pointed out to her she thought it was a likely component of her reaction.
But (a) is good. Given the way this story changed and grew as I was writing it, I did wonder if it made sense outside my own head, and if there was enough story to support the word count it had grown to. (b) I can fix, as long as I have (a).
It's gong to take me a while yet to get this ready for submission, which is a shame because I'd hoped to have it ready to send off to my editor by now. But at least I've got something novel-shaped to work on, which is a distinct improvement over the last few years.
