Postby AlexUSA » Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:05 am
Well, good points shared all around. As far as things being too long, I try to give long, drawn out, intense detail to make it feel as if you the reader are living the experience. It's the details, color, clothing and its color, how the clothing is worn (in this case, shirts, blouses, shorts, pants, skirts, bandanas), how the person is tied. I don't really describe the house much because it's meaningless to describe a house without giving you a map of the layout, and even I don't have that.
The conversations are dragged on like real life conversations so as to give greater insight into the characters. Each child (and the father) is an individual and dynamic entity. A lot of the characteristics of the people are based on my own character traits or the traits of people I know, and a lot the aspects of how the story flows, like the sibling rivalries, the use of irony or an object lesson (in this case Dad ties up Anna to squish her pride) to teach the children, and the feelings of being picked on (Kate sulking, or Sara getting revenge), are reflective of aspects of childhood I NEVER HAD. I had an older sister and a MUCH older brother, and while we never did TUGs (because of my mother being a radical something or other), we also never had sibling rivalries and what not.
Life doesn't go fast. I make the story move slowly. It's not just about reading. I want you to live it out in your mind, and if this were real and you were the dad, you'd be worrying about that pile of spit-soaked socks and bandanas you had to wash too.
I'm a scientist in real life, and detail matters. Notice how I don't just say, "shirt and pants," but rather something like, "a Minnesota Vikings away jersey and blue jeans." I don't say, "Bandana on the head," but rather, "bandana worn like a headband with the knot positioned to be under the hair." Notice how I make observations, like how wearing a bandana like a headscarf plasters your hair down, making it hard wrap tape around someone's head; I don't make it in jest, but rather because it's an observation of the real world. Another one I make is how in a normal tie of the wrists, elbows, ankles, etc. some of the rope is run through the vertical, that is between the wrists or ankles, to make it more secure, and I point out how that doesn't work when the person wears a skirt.
So I admit to dragging it out, but I'm not looking for you to get a boner reading it either, though if any description of a tug gives you a boner like it does to me for whatever stupid reason, then fine, but understand I want you sit down for 1 hour and spend 1 day in the life of what would be an average Catholic family (with a nutty mathematics professor father) without one little difference, TUGs.
Thanks for the feedback, and now I know that in the future, no feedback can be the best feedback of all.
I rite on a tabblit, so speling errurs will hap pin free quintly.