Well, this is a little disheartening. Someone who hasn’t read my work in a while just went through a story for me and in all honesty–which I completely appreciate–made the remark that my new found “voice” comes off as choppy.
Seems I’ve gone overboard with description as well, while at the same time, curing my former bad habit of “tell” (why leave anything to the reader’s interpretation?) to the point of complete vagueness. This is not the proper way, I’m sure, to leave the reader with questions. I’ve also juggled time around but ended up dropping all the balls.
Back to the drawing board.
(SE: Creative Writing: Fiction, you said?)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Go do some smoothing out, if you hear that in the voice, keep working on the piece, and if you think the amount of description is required to the needs of the story then keep it or refine it. Also, seek out a “reader” only with the “intent” of getting tough advice. That’s my recommendation!
Nancy’s tough, which is exactly why I asked her to read it. While I did not agree on many of the voice and sentence restructuring she suggested (it was in her own voice, which sounded a bit too grammatically correct for my style), I did indeed mark down every word and comma she mentioned as well as the overall impression of the story. Great dialogue, great help.