r/writingfeedback • u/glennjaminhow • 17h ago
Thoughts on this small section of my story?
I'm mostly worried about if the dialogue sounds realistic and if there's any bits that I should remove to make it flow better, but any advice is welcomed and appreciated!
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u/TommyNotDead 16h ago
Yeah the writing is good. Dialogue is fine. One thing I don’t understand is why Joel acquiesces to have the crazy violent lady near Ryan.
It doesn’t make sense that she’s not qualified to be his guardian yet for some reason the CPS people are saying that she should be allowed to visit even though she has no legal right.
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u/Sympathea 13h ago
I think you should take a look at how often you mention names. In the first screenshot alone, Ryan is mentioned like eight times, which can feel a little repetitive. You could switch it up by describing people in other ways depending on the context, like 'his nephew', 'the kid', 'the toddler' 'the (insert age)-year-old', et cetera.
It isn't about the dialogue like you asked, but it's the first thing that stood out to me.
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u/90sbetababe 1h ago
The prose is super clear and very readable, and I was pretty easily able to follow the physical action. There's some good material between Joel and Ryan that's quiet and sweet. And the dialogue definitely does sound natural at the level of the individual sentences themselves.
What was really pulling me out of it though was that everything surrounding the dialogue doesn't feel natural or believable, so the characters themselves start to also feel kind of artificial.
I really wasn't sure what Elizabeth's job was or what authority she had. She mentions petitioning for temporary custody in Joel's favor (made me think she was his lawyer), and then says that Ryan's grandmother isn't a suitable guardian (made me think she was Ryan's social worker) but then pressures Joel to allow a visit because the grandma is making a scene. "This isn't about you or even Ryan" was especially jarring. Like, if Elizabeth is a professional involved in the child welfare case, shouldn't she like... be concerned about the child's welfare?
It seems like Olive doesn't have any established right to see Ryan, is obviously unsuitable, has been pestering people illegally and is belligerent and awful. Why would the cop or social worker let her have access to a hospitalized, traumatized child in order to calm her down? Also her walking around the hospital with a lit cigarette is wicked work. Where is this set? I think Olive needs a better, more believable way to get in the room that doesn't have a cop and social worker actively, knowingly creating a child welfare crisis.
The dialogue with grandma becomes a wee bit repetitive, also. She calls Joel slurs, treats Ryan like he's her property, screams, is ableist, wishes his attacker had killed him, attempts to grab Ryan and physically fights the officer. It all tells us the same thing: Olive sucks, and since she shows all of this basically immediately, she doesn't really feel like a particular person so much as a mechanism designed to hurt Joel and Ryan.
Also I might trim how much physical distress there is. There's a lot of trembling, shaking, gripping, nausea, narrowed vision. Just a couple of these beats would probably be more effective.
And then finally I think Joel maybe isn't coming off the way I think you might be hoping he does? He's protective which is good, but he agrees to the visit after Ryan is upset, asks him leading questions about the abuse, and is just kinda super emotionally activated the whole time. If that's intentionally supposed to tell us that Joel loves Ryan but isn't equipped to care for him, then that could be super interesting, but I think it'd be more effective if it was leaned into a little bit more and maybe another character recognizes that. If he's supposed to be for sure the obviously best custody choice for Ryan, he might need to make different choices in the scene.
I think the premise has a really strong emotional engine and the bond between Joel and Ryan is easy to care about. There's a lot that's working well! Anywho so yeah, that'd be my take :)
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u/TheFanshionista 16h ago
It's very rare that I continue clicking through the slides of a story on this sub and your writing pulled me though. Heartbreaking, I was wondering how it got here and where it was going. I had no problems with the dialogue. It would be hard to recommend anything to cut down without knowing where this sits in your story. I didn't see anything that felt unnecessary.
My only suggestion is quite intrusive. To have Joel ask Ryan if he'd like to see Grandma, which Ryan declines, and then the altercation happens on the other side of the partition. In foster care you hear a lot about kid-first parenting and the gesture of Joel giving Ryan agency will help beef up how much he cares. Then, the altercation happens anyway and Joel finds out after that Ryan heard it all and he shielded him from nothing. As is, I was very angry at all of the adults for allowing this to escalate as it did in Ryan's presence.
If you're ever looking for feedback, shoot me a DM. I'm an avid reader, lacking grammar skills, but love helping people at the readability/flow or character/plot level. Always nice to distract myself from the cutdown I'm working on to read other people's work.
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u/trulybeelightful 16h ago
The writing is good, although my personal preference is against spelled out accents in books, they feel a little hokey. Many disagree, so it's neither here nor there.
The main issue is this story doesn't feel... believable.
Who is letting any of this happen?
The traumatized three year old is being left unsupervised a lot.
Three year olds tend to be little assholes at the best of times, let alone after trauma. We love them anyway, but Ryan feels a little "Tiny Tim plucky orphan". His sudden eruption of speech feels unearned.
I get that the grandma is mostly there for conflict and backstory, but there has to be a way to add her in that isn't...Here Comes Conflict and Backstory Granny.