Editor still needed

[Beatnic_jazzman]

Hi,

I've started publishing my first story and it has been reasonable well received, however I'm still in the market for an editor to help me with the 'Touchy Feely' elements.

I feel my writing is clumsy and a bit mechanical when it comes to capturing the emotions of my characters and I want to try to learn to do it better for the scenes where it's needed.

pm me if you'd like to view any of my other waiting stories.

Thanks.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Hi,

I've started publishing my first story and it has been reasonable well received, however I'm still in the market for an editor to help me with the 'Touchy Feely' elements.

I feel my writing is clumsy and a bit mechanical when it comes to capturing the emotions of my characters and I want to try to learn to do it better for the scenes where it's needed.

pm me if you'd like to view any of my other waiting stories.

Thanks.

You really should mention the word count, which was why I felt I couldn't help. The writing is quite good, paragraphs good, should be an easy edit for an editor who has the time to edit a story of this length. Be fair to the editors so they know what they're tangling with before they choose to tangle.

 

[Beatnic_jazzman]

Yes,sorry. I did feature it in the last. Most of my work is over twenty thousand words, soft starting, romantic, set in their own individual worlds.

 

[PacoFear]

Hi Beatnic,

I peeked at your most recent posting, Garwyli chapter 5. Not bad, though you lost me with the foot fetishy fun. NTTAWWT, I've certainly got my own bag o' fetishes.

I see what you mean about needing more touchy/feely; you don't have much emotion built into your work. Your narrator is sleeping with two women at the same time; worse, they're sisters. This could easily read like an emotional cuisinart.

Stretch out on my dime-store psychologist's couch for a minute? I'm curious about where your hang-up happens. Do you have problems visualizing the emotions or is the obstacle more about putting them to paper? I think they're two different skills and call for different guidance.

First we'll diagnose your problem, Beat. Then we'll treat.

-PF

 

[PacoFear]

Beatnic,

I started in on chapter five of Garwyli with the intention of making some suggestions with respect to character thoughts and emotions. I had some trouble doing what I needed to do because I didn’t have a grip on the characters, so I stepped back to the first chapter. I had some trouble there as well, which brings me to my next point.

Buckle in, Beat, I’m going to shoot straight with you.

The problem you’ve got, my friend, isn’t a lack of touchy/feely; it’s a simple lack of character development. Gar and Glyn and Bri aren’t described in any meaningful way, nor do they have any meaningful interactions. They’re robots moving through three-dimensional space. Gar is defined by a couple of mostly irrelevant hobbies. How does his legal survey work or his astronomy help your story? What is the connection between the two. They feel like filler, a sort of hand-waving effort--here let me talk about f-stops for awhile, that’ll be cool and it’ll take up some space.

Glyn and Bri? Non-entities.

I think you need to focus on picturing some personalities for these people. Their personality is the structural support for the touchy-feely stuff produced by the circumstances of individual scenes. If Bri is a shy/insecure teen, just coming into her own as her confidence grows, she’s going to behave a certain way. If she’s an uber-confident bitch, she’s going to behave another.

Once you’ve laid the personality groundwork, I suspect you’ll be able to sense how your characters will behave. It comes naturally to social creatures like humans. I bet you can guess how your friends and family would act given a particular situation. You know them, their personalities. Well, unless your completely dead inside.

Best,

PF