This writing style?

[Rosewaterspray]

Hi , I’m just trying to develop my writing style to something which makes others want to read my work.
I’ll just give an example of my writing from something I’ve already wrote.
Here’s the passage from one of my creative writing stories:

Summer. There are so many memories that come to mind when I think of summer. Memories of sitting on the park with my friends Hannah and Marie , the warmth of the sun kissing our skin , the gentle breeze blowing through our hair while we swigged kopperberg mixed berry ciders, watching the local estate boys play football.

Memories of family bbq’s , Mum dancing to Bob Marley , in her stripey print sun dress , a glass of rose wine in her hand, her face happy and her mood relaxed and mellow. My little baby brother Milo joining her in dancing, not quite dancing as slowly and in time as Mum but rather doing a stomp , jump dance. Dad flipping burgers on our new bbq grill, the delicious smell of sizzling meat being cooked wafting into the air , filling our nostrils. My mouth waters at the thought of one of my Dad’s homemade burgers. What I wouldn’t do for one of my Dad’s burgers now,or any of his cooking. I miss my Dad being at home cooking for us.I miss my Dad full stop.

I don’t think back to the end of summer though , it hurts too much , it feels too raw in my mind still. When the accident happened and my Dad lost his life wasn’t really anything that could describe it. To this day I feel stifled by the numbing pain. Losing a parent is never easy and the pain never seems to really go away. His absence is always apparent.

What do you guys think? And how did you feel reading it? Any feedback would be welcome , tia

Well done, OP.

It's less overwritten to me than most of what I read which have too many adjectives and adverbs and description and seem more focused and trying to appear clever than tell a story. Stylistically, some still jarred for me 'kissing skin', stifled, numbing, apparent... but I realise those are stylistic choices to my only feedback is to ask if you deliberately want these in.

Trivial comments but do you want to put a space before commas and to capitalise 'Dad'? There seems lots of commas though that may be deliberate.

Feel free to ignore the above as I'm more focused on driving the story forward in genre fiction. If you're going for a genre story rather than literary then how could you grab the reader more strongly than a 'looking back and alluding to something bad that happened'?

Good luck.

Thank you and I think if I were to write this again I would take out the word apparent and maybe change it to ‘there’ so it would be read: “as his absence is always there” which to me sounds more fitting than apparent in my opinion.

Also I apologise for the typos in the passage and the grammar I’ve just noticed these reading back on the passage, grammar is definitely not my strongest skill in writing . If I were to use this in my writing I would probably use it as a prologue and maybe change the ending of it so it’s slightly more dramatic and captivating to make the reader to want to delve further into the story and begin reading chapter one etc.

Thank you for your feedback it’s definitely given me some new things to think about when writing

Why are there spaces before commas?
“Little baby brother:” babies are all little.
Change “quite dancing” to “dancing quite.”
Lose the phrase about your nostrils.

Missing word. “When the accident happened and my Dad lost his life there wasn’t really anything that could describe it.”

Not bad. Not guaranteeing it’ll sell though!

Do you sit on the park or sit in the park ?
I would prefer the latter.

No need to apologise, OP. IME, most adults in England weren't taught grammar systematically in state schools until recently unless they studied foreign languages and English grammar is somewhat inconsistent. The only reason I mentioned it is that when you submit to agents, they can be keen on grammar in the covering letter. They and publishers have editors if they like the story though everything you learn and correct when writing is one less thing to correct in edits.

You don't want to drive your own voice out once you've found it and not everyone wants to write like Hemingway (according to Fame, anyway).

Some agents can make a decision based on the first page so if you're writing story-led genre fiction, you might want to grab them as early as you can. Easier said than done.

Good luck.

Thank you all for your feedback I definitely find it all very helpful. I think I’m going to edit slightly , taking your points on board and @Zilla1 thank you So much for explaining this to me as I don’t know much about how it works with agents and publishers but what you’ve explained to me has definitely given me some understanding of it.

And thinking about it, sadly there are a lot of good writers and authors who write good pieces of creative writing and novels but don’t get the recognition they deserve , it can be very competitive to have a top best seller now a days but I guess just having a piece of work you have written and that you are proud of is an achievement