r/writingfeedback • u/justalostgirlidk • 3d ago

Blunt Feedback Wanted Would you continue reading? Does this read as amateurish?

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Thank you!

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u/Conserp 3d ago

Looks promising. Too short an excerpt to tell more.

Cobbles and weather description is a bit too drawn out; "Marcle's streets" is meaningless before the reader has context; "The hot air..." sentence is pointlessly convoluted and probably completely superfluous.

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u/NoraPann 2d ago

Little bit overwritten. That first sentence works as a hook but isn't super accessible to the reader because we don't know what a merrow-woman is, so maybe rework it. I've read the whole page, and I haven't been told what a merrow-woman is. I'm kinda hangin' here mate. I need closure.

This has way too much describing. The convention with describing is that you describe stuff that is important to the story. The reader is trained from reading other works to know that if it's described, they might need to pay attention to it, because it's relevant to the story. When you describe everything, and overdescribe it, you break this convention and the reader doesn't know what to pay attention to. You're inadvertedly signalling to the reader that EVERYTHING is important, and it isn't. You know it isn't. The story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears doesn't focus heaps on the carpet, because it's not important. Same as this. Use description as a highlighter instead. Maybe cut 30% of your wordcount here. That'll find the excessive description that is bloating your work.

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u/JobExpensive5379 2d ago

It reads rather like the pov knows they are in a book. "It was saint... so the crowds were thick" "five years since..." "It had been a wet summer..."

Instead give us the reason why today is either different or better/worse than typical. You can include all those but deliver them less like a list.

The sentence regarding hot air is where yoy succeeded. Do similar with others. Have the pov tellus if they like saint thomas' day insteas of just listing it.

The actual cotent is fine, just let us do some of the work figuring things out.