by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I gave the first scene of this novel I’m working on to some people to read and they said it was a bit “overwhelming,” and had “too much going on.”
Oh boy.
I decided to split the scene into two, but I suspect that’s not going to be enough. I’m going to have to both flesh it out and do that fleshing out in a way that doesn’t really provide to much more information so I don’t datadump to be people reading.
This is when I wish I had a wife or a girlfriend to be my “reader” who could read the same thing over and over and over again. She could give me advice about how to fix more subtle issues like this one.
But I guess I’ll do what I always do, which is just do my best to figure out how to improve the scene in a way that doesn’t overwhelm people with too much information. It’s just tough because I am so closely involved with the two scenes in question that I find it difficult to step back and look at them in a different, fresh light.
Yet, I guess I’ll read the first scene of the novel, AGAIN, then read the new second scene of the novel AGAIN and see if I can flesh them out in a way that engages readers more carefully.
