Starting writing for the first time in years, mind giving a sample a quick look over?

[Yagababa]

I have recently started writing again. Disability has landed me out of work and with not much else to do.

The last time I wrote anything creative was school but I've had an idea so I'm just running with it. I'm about 20000 word in to my first rough draft.

It's intended to be a series of fiction/fantasy books for children.

For some reason tonight I'm filled with a lot of self doubt and have convinced myself that it's all rubbish.

If you could read a short extract and give me a few pointers that would be extremely helpful, thanks.

(I'll post it under the op)

Hi Yaga, I enjoyed reading your excerpt there.
I always wanted to ask people who write fantasy - how do you come up with the strange names/places?!

Thank you Teepish 😁

I do actually have a bit of an obsession with 'real' monsters, folklore etc. So some of my names are just plays on those.

Other times made up ones just pop in to my head (like Pengledarts - little gits they are ) but I do have to google those to check I really have made them up or if I'm just remembering something I've read!

Hi Yagababa. I enjoyed the extract and there's certainly promise of an interesting story. Not too much to add to pp but just to agree re dialogue tags and adverbs: for example, your first 'tag' reads rather awkwardly - Gwen looked up. 'please Sable I need to find them,' she stared pleadingly. I think you can reduce that right down and instead of using the tag and the adverb show us Gwen 'staring pleadingly' - eg

Gwen gazed at Sable, her eyes widened. 'Please. I need to find them.'

Something like this takes a few things out which slow down the narrative - the adverb which is telling not showing, the tag which is clunky and the use of the name in dialogue which is an easy trap to fall into - in real life, you wouldn't usually use the name of the person you were addressing - on rare occasions of course this can add something but if used too often it interrupts flow.

It's all about trying to make it as seamless as possible for the reader - that's why 'said' is an excellent tag, it's pretty much invisible and the reader will skim over it, whereas they might stumble over something like 'pleaded.' Hope that makes sense!

Also agree with establishing characterisation and being sure of the age this is aimed at - if middle grade, Gwen needs to talk and think like a 12 year old.

Have fun learning all this stuff - I would also heartily recommend the Creative Writing Coursebook and take a look at the Emotion Thesaurus for some help with balancing the showing and telling.

Good luck!

Excellent, thank you Madhairday I will check those out!