hi everyone, tee here!! so i've decided to use my ocs and make this 'obvi' world into a book series!! this is my first time doing something like this and i'm really nervous jhsdjsdj
so this is my work in progress, i'll be updating whenever i can and i would REALLY appreciate any and all critiquing on sentence structure, description, grammar or anything like that !!
I really love you writing style, the descriptions really give the writing charm and show how Kacey view the world. However, in the very first chapter, you are dumping a lot of exposition. In the first few paragraphs, you tell us it's Kacey's birthday, her parents' and siblings' names, who her close friends are, that she's bad at English because of her dyslexia, and that she plays tennis. This is way too much information to give off the bat, and it feels more like you're going off a checklist of facts about Kacey rather than trying to naturally introduce this information. I'd also advise to slow down the opening scene a little bit more, it felt like it went by pretty fast. Take a bit longer to establish Kacey's family and her feelings about her birthday. Also maybe give more description to the scene, as it's hard to know where Kacey is. In the opening, the reader only know she's at a table surrounded by family to blow out her birthday candles. We don't know if this room is in the kitchen or the dining room or outside. This does sound like an early draft, so these mistakes are pretty common. I really like how you established Kacey's character through her conflict with her parents, the presents she gets, and the clothes she wears. These really show a lot about her in a much more efficient and interesting way than the exposition at the beginning. From what I've seen so far, Kacey seems like a fun character and I hope to see more of her soon!
thanks so much!! i really needed this :-) i'll try my best to fix those mistakes
updating this!! i made a tv tropes page about them and i wanted to see if it was ok!
I liked the story a lot! I do think that it was a little bit of an information dump, like @tiredandconfused mentioned above, but I did think that the dialogue introduced the characters in a good way. I think that you forced mentioning her appearance a little bit, so maybe mention it in a little more of a natural way, but that's it! You're obviously a very talented writer and I'm looking forward to updates!
The TV tropes page was also very fun, just a little advice: I love writing gays as much as the next amateur detective fiction author (which is to say a LOT) but there are more heterosexuals than homosexuals IRL, so I would make sure you aren't forcing it. I do love that Kacey is bisexual, though, my BFF is bi and we're both sick of lack of representation.
okay, thanks a lot for that!! i will be making sure to add straight characters as well :)