Back to the Drawing Board

Finally I receive some feedback from a Lit Agent, ok it wasn't the news I was expecting to hear but at least it was honest and I'm going to have to rewrite the story again. According to Artellus it was full of commentary which is distancing. I need to practice more on the narrative and who is telling the story. So this week of the school break I will be reading other works by other authors to get to grips with narrative practices.

I have to say that Artellus were right, having looked back over the first few pages of my story, I have been doing exactly that. I can see why they lost confidence in my writing. I couldnt read the last paragraph they wrote mainly because I couldnt read their writing, but as the first pointed out my flaws, perhaps being unable to read the second paragraph is ok.

So this weekend I'm reading as many books as I can to understand where I'm going wrong, then the second week I'll be looking at ways of improving my writing and beginning to rewrite the story as a story and not a commentary.

I think part of my problem is I don't feel that the reader is being given enough information, so I add to it, I think I have to stop adding. I think to be honest if I can be at this point in my writing, I need to let the reader discover the character without over explaining everything. I'm sure Terrance Dicks didnt over explain the Daleks but let the reader experience the idea of a metallic robot calling Exterminate in their heads.

It was a knock back, but I'm taking it on the chin I'm obviously not as ready for publication as I thought I was, but I want to make sure that this book is well polished before it goes onto the shelves. I don't want my first book to be a disaster, because nobody will want to read the next book if that is the case.

Put it this way, if JK wrote a bad first book, how confident would you be in reading the second?

So back to the drawing board, or computer screen.