Okay. I'll still try to give you feedback to the best of my abilities though!
EDIT: Sooooo I ended up writing a giant essay (like... it's actually a book report). I'll just leave it hidden so people don't have to scroll for forever to get to the next post.
Summary
I want to preface my feedback by letting you know that I read the first 4 chapters of your story and, though I enjoyed it, it’s not really my cup of tea. The story and characters themselves are interesting, but I’m not a huge fan of 1st person perspectives. That does not mean your story is bad. I’m just one person and even though it doesn’t suit my preferences, it will definitely suit that of others. Also, I’m still in critical reading mode so I am so, so sorry if my feedback comes off as harsh. Now, on to the actual feedback!
I did notice this, especially since you pointed it out. In Chapter 3, I counted 7 lines of dialogue that use “say” or some alternative. Four of those lines use the word “say” and another one of those lines uses “asks.” That’s 5 lines out of 7. Oof. I don’t think switching up the structure of the sentence will help you much more that it already has. You already have a lot of variation in structure around your dialogue, and changing much more of your dialogue in order to (I’m assuming) prevent the need for “say” would make it repetitive in the other direction (i.e. too much dialogue without using it).
One thing that might help with this is to think of the dialogue in context with what the character is doing or how the character is feeling. For example, again from Chapter 3:
“Yes, I’ll be a good boy and follow her wherever she goes.” I say with a toothy grin, dripping with sarcasm.
What is Aderran doing? He’s making fun of Mother, so you could replace it with “joke.” If you want something that feels slyer and encompasses the sarcasm a little more, you can use “tease.” How is he feeling? Is he perhaps bored? Consider “drawl.”
Studying how other people write their dialogue will definitely help as well, but this should assist you in actually putting what you learn into practice.
I don’t think you go off on too many tangents. I really like the inner monologues and the occasional small quip makes him extremely relatable. One issue I have is that you tend to start a lot of sentences with the word “I.” Falling back on Chapter 3, you have one stretch of monologue that has 8 sentences in a row that begin with “I.” The monologue itself is really interesting, but the excessive use of “I” at the start of every sentence pulled me away from the flow of the story and then it started feeling like an unnecessary tangent.
Considering this story is 1st person perspective, using “I” and “my”, etc so often isn’t unwarranted. It’s also much more difficult to vary your pronouns (this is actually the main reason why I turn away from 1st person stories, I get easily distracted by repetition). Aderran's whole language situation makes doing this even more difficult. I really don’t have much advice for you here other than to maybe play around with your sentence structure a little more when you notice long stretches of monologue like this. Some things you could try doing:
- Write out the first three words of every sentence and read through it. You’ll begin to notice words that you tend to default to. It’ll also help you figure out of if there’s too much repetition.
- Listen to a reading of the monologue. Copy-paste it into a text to speech voice reader, sit back, close your eyes, and listen. After staring at the words for so long your brain starts to get accustomed to them. Listening allows you to process the words in a different way and you’ll notice things you didn’t notice before.
I think the actual ratio between monologue and the rest of the story though is fine.
Anyway, sorry for this giant essay. Again, I really did enjoy reading your story! Please please please don’t think I hated it or that you’re a terrible writer because I typed this massive thing!
Weakness: I think I tend to go on tangents and include too much filler that may not be necessary to the story. I want to show the world I've created, but like foxnflames said, it's really hard to find a good balance. This, in turn, leads to questionable pacing within the story. Is it too slow? Does the pacing and extra detail make the story difficult to follow? Really, any input on this would be extremely helpful.