I Was Told I'm "Too Defensive" About My Characters — So What?

[AshanaArt]

Loving your characters and being defensive about them is a different thing. You can love your characters and still be receptive to feedback, though I understand it can be frustrating when a lot of the feedback is often vague, you can ask them clarifying questions instead of becoming defensive. “this charecter is dislikable” can often mean “this charecters flaws aren’t being acknowledged, they are super rude to the people around them everyone still loves them despite it“, which is a lot more actionable.

Of course it doesn’t mean that you need to listen to every piece of feedback you get, it’s up to you to decide what feedback is helpful and what’s not. There’s no way to please everyone.

[cherrystark]

Here are my first thoughts about your first chapter/episode.

• Don't bold your dialogue. It's distracting and detracts from your story.

• From the formatting, it looks like you're trying to use short paragraphs to build tension. Short paragraphs with lots of dialogue can come across as choppy to readers. One of the best ways to create tension is to use sensory terms. The reader is "watching" the story unfold like a movie in their head.

• Cut a minimum of 25% of your dialogue. Use body language to "show" the readers how your characters are communicating. You don't need a line of dialogue to say "yeep" or "huff huff". It doesn't move the chapter forward.

• Regarding flat characters. The term gets thrown around a lot without people really understanding what it means. If I had to guess what your previous reviewers meant when they called your characters "flat", I think they meant that in the first chapters, we don't know anything about them.

• You refer to two of them as "the boy" and "the girl", while other characters get proper names. We don't know their ages, hair colors, skin tones, or cultural backgrounds. We don't know how everyone fits into the story. Dialogue is usually great for giving context clues, but they all read the same to me in my head. I have real reason to care for the characters thus far, so they feel a bit "flat".

Now, these are just some of my thoughts. Like everyone has said, take what you can work with.

[SugarCube]

Don't bold your dialogue. It's distracting and detracts from your story.

Funny enough, I stopped bolding dialogue in later episodes—not by design, I just forgot . But now that you mention it, I totally agree it’s kinda loud and distracting, so yeah, it’s gone for good. Too lazy to fix the old ones tho .

As for the whole “boy” and “girl” thing—that was intentional . I wanted to keep them mysterious for a bit, but their names do show up later. It’s just those two; everyone else gets a normal intro. I get that it might’ve felt a bit distant early on though 🤷‍♂️.

And yeah… I’m definitely guilty of over-dialoguing 🫣. All those little “yeep”s and “huff huff”s? Probably didn’t need ‘em lol. I’ll work on cutting that down and using more body language instead.

[cherrystark]

As for the whole “boy” and “girl” thing—that was intentional . I wanted to keep them mysterious for a bit, but their names do show up later. It’s just those two; everyone else gets a normal intro. I get that it might’ve felt a bit distant early on though 🤷‍♂️.

I can understand wanting to build the mystery. That's another reason why I recommend using sensory details to paint the picture. You can do a lot to establish character with sensory details without ever naming them. But with that being said, you need to clearly establish "why" they don't have names at the time they're introduced and have a clear moment when they get names.

For example, in the movie "Bird Box", Sandra Bullock's character has clear reasons why she hasn't named her children. There's also a clear moment in the movie when she names the children. They don't get named in some unseen cut scene, if that makes sense.

[NGChloe]

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” -Stephen King.
If your not willing to let your characters be bad people and want to baby them, that's generally considered bad writing. Not saying that's what your doing, I haven't read, but that's the consensus. I personally enjoy letting my characters not necessarily be likable, it makes them very vibrant and interesting
since I have your attention, please my web novel

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