/lit/ - Literature

>>17922121
The first thing I want to talk about in context of the pastebin writing is the difference between "showing" and "telling" in narrative. Almost all of the stuff here in the pastebin is exposition.

The immediate way to change this is to start writing actionable scenes. Instead of telling the reader
>If it had been up to him they would have gone to a sports bar four blocks away from his apartment. If it had been up to him this six dollar beer would have been four and this...
You can show the reader by having the character take actions in a scene which depict his internal desires outwardly. Something like, "Johnny leaned back his bar stool and said, ""There's a sports bar next to my apartment with cheaper bear."
"You cheap shit. They don't have a live band at the sports bar do they? You don't have any taste for atmosphere."

This is quickly strung together, but it gets the same or a similar message across to the reader in a more direct and engaging way than a paragraph of indirect exposition, and at the same time it introduces characters, motivations, and starts to swell narrative promises that the reader will subconsciously attune to while reader therefore building narrative expectations which you can deliver on. The most notable in my example being Johnny's conflict with his friends bar choice leading to his eventual resolution of pushing them into changing bars via negotiation or his eventual attunement to their tastes in music and atmosphere even when it comes at a cost (hence Johnny has already expressed an avenue for growth, in that he will learn to let go of money in order to have a good time with his friends). This is, obviously, how you can have a character "grow" in one night. This is in line with a Joycean epiphany, which acts as the narrative climax and the moment of anticipated and precipitated character alteration. This also explains to the reader the "why" question of the story (Why is this the moment of this characters life that I'm going to read and that you are going to write? The reason being, this is the moment this character grows and learns or changes in some way.)

I'm going to jump to the next bit of crit and maybe talk about your '50 character' issue as well as some of the character issues in the existing writing as well as the more grammatical or sentence level things. I'll do a few numbered posts to compensate for the character limit.
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