I meet with my fellow writers on Thursday, July 12th at the Hartford Coffee House in St. Louis, MO to discuss my novella, Price of Command. I got a lot of feedback. There were some good points and bad points.
People liked my man character. My dialogue is solid and natural. But it makes up 85% of the story. The story flowed well.
However, my readers felt there were too many characters. Many of my dialogue tags didn't work. Because there so many characters, people often got lost in the dialogue. I needed more description. A few people suggested going back and adding more back story to the novella. Many of my chapters felt more like an outline. And they felt the story ended too abruptly. It was felt I needed to add more emotional reactions to my characters. Violent things happened and my characters just went along for the ride.
That's something I'm guilty of. However, I don't know when I'll be able to go back and rework Price of Command. I'm hoping to do it in September. Right now, I've been working on Straits of Magellan trying to write a chapter a week. I'll see how it goes. My goal is to have the rough draft done by New Years Day, 2014.
But I do need to rewrite and revise Price of Command.
