Your Opinion, Please?

[LadyIlsa]

Hi again!
Well, "Strangers to Love" is finally done. One comment said I rushed the end...I didn't think so, but maybe?
I had to tie up the ends, answer the burning questions, at least in my mind!
And the epilogue worked, I thought.
So, please read - hope you enjoy it - and let me know what you think.
Thank you all
​

 

[sr71plt]

Hmmm. Right off hand, my opinion is that you shouldn't use small font size and italics in your postings. Too much of a strain to try to read them.

 

[LadyIlsa]

Hmmm. Right off hand, my opinion is that you shouldn't use small font size and italics in your postings. Too much of a strain to try to read them.

ooppss - sorry

 

[Anna_Malia75]

And you might want to put a specific link in the post to your story, rather than a general link in your signature to all of your work. Some folks have sigs turned off, and some will get annoyed because they'll have to go back and figure out which story you want feedback on, lol!

I haven't read the whole thing yet (I promise I will), but I thought I'd give you some feedback on the first three chapters. On the whole, I think it's very good. You have a good romance going, and I'm eager to read more. So I hope you take these criticisms as constructive, and intended to make a good thing better.

Initially, I think you could do with more showing and less telling. Your second paragraph, for example, sets forth Leanna's entire romantic history:

At twenty-three, she should be married with babies by now. Not running around the countryside, alone. It wasn't proper and she put herself at risk of being thought of as a loose woman. In 1902, women were considered spinsters at her age and if caught out wandering alone, someone might think she was like one of those 'Ladies' that lived in the brothel in town. Her reputation would be ruined and she'd never marry! Part of it was that she had taken care of Grandfather for the last two years - no time for romance. An independent streak that Grandfather said she got from her mother didn't help either. The men that had been interested in her found her too forward and opinionated. Not very good wife material. She also exuded an unconscious sex appeal that men liked in a mistress, but disturbed them when contemplating a wife.​

It seems to me that you can make the same points a little more subtly throughout the story, without interrupting the flow at the beginning with a lot of description. For example, the point about her not being married can be made when James proposes bringing her into town. One line of dialogue ("An unmarried woman riding into town with a stranger?" she said with a laugh. "Why, Madam Bryce will be asking me to join her other ladies next week! Thank you, sir. I think not." The two points at the end, her forwardness and her sex appeal, can be made later, perhaps when James speaks with one of the men in town. I think if you space these things out a little, and show them as part of her, it will quicken the pacing of your story. Similarly, the point about Billy's Downs Syndrome can be made without making it seem as if James has knowledge of the condition. His respect for the boy's mother should be enough.

On a technical level, I saw a few inappropriate dialogue tags.

'Where is he going?', James asked, concern in his voice.​

'I'll be right back....I, um, forgot something.....' and he headed towards the barn and safety.
​

The first is something you do a little too much, putting an unnecessary comma after the close of the quotation (btw, it took me a little while to get used to the single quote marks, but that's just me, lol). The second (which has too many periods in the ellipsis, doesn't have a tag at all. If you want to end the first sentence in the quote, that's fine. But the next sentence should start with a capital letter: "He headed toward the barn and safety." If that wasn't your intention, you need something like, "he muttered as he sidled off toward the barn and safety."

Hope these are helpful, Ilsa. I promise to get to the rest this week (if you still want me to, lol!)

Good job. Anna.

 

[LadyIlsa]

Thank you, Anna. I do appreciate all the help I can get. I do have a habit of using to many commas. When I play out the dialog in my head, I can hear the pauses where someone may take a breath or hesitate on a word. It's difficult to put that into print. And I do so love ellipses for that very reason.

I could probably use a refresher course on punctuation.

I put so much information about Leanna in the first chapter so that the reader would get a real feel for her predicament and the general mores of the time. I do like your suggestions though.

Again - thank you! I hope you enjoy the rest of the tale and your opinions are valuable to me so I look forward to more.

 

[LadyIlsa]

And you might want to put a specific link in the post to your story, rather than a general link in your signature to all of your work. Some folks have sigs turned off, and some will get annoyed because they'll have to go back and figure out which story you want feedback on, lol!

The reason I just kept the link to everything was because there are 10 chapters. I don't know how to link them to make it easier for the reader. Suggestion?

 

[Anna_Malia75]

You can just link to the first chapter, like this:

Chapter One, Strangers to Love​

And after that let 'em find the other chapters on their own.

I see your point about giving your readers a feeling for Leanna and her times (and I've never written anything longer than three Lit-pages, so please feel free to consider my opinion completely worthless), but it seems just as important to me to draw the readers into your story, to get them to go from Chapter One to Chapter Two, and so on. And to do that, you need to pace it, particularly on the net, so that readers keep wanting to know more about those very same things and keep discovering new sides of the character.