While waiting to hear back from my friends with their feedback and comments, I’ve continued to think of ways to improve the story. Which is kind of backwards, given that I’ve asked someone to edit the first draft.
I’m thinking the characters need to be painted more as pictures. I tried to do my best to describe them as people, but I’m realizing that it’s likely going to be tough for people to imagine what they look like, based on how they’re written. Perhaps going back through the scenes where we meet our main characters and doing a better job of describing them would be beneficial.
I also have some notes about the story itself. While I’m confident that the meat and potatoes (so to speak) are there, I think there’s some tweaking that can be done; dialog enhanced, scenes fleshed out more.
To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never done this before, I’ve never taken any real writing classes (aside from high school English). I’m dying to know what other people think about the story, but don’t want to be that guy who’s nagging them all the time. So I’m trying to be patient and hang in there, waiting for the time to pass and for them to finish reading.
For now, I’ve started outlining the story for my next book. I suppose I have nothing better to do while I wait, right?