After only starting to write fiction a couple months ago, there’s a lot of things that consistently trip me up when trying to write.
One thing I have found to be difficult when writing is pacing and specifically how to seamlessly change from dialogue into pieces of long descriptive writing and vice versa. I feel that when I attempt this it is a sudden change and can be disengaging for the reader.
Example from my writing (this passage follows a long-ish description of what has happened in the last 6 months):
Today marks six months since your arrival. You've learnt a lot, and every few days Christoph praises you, saying that Ayr is nearly perfect. Today is one of those days, and as you sit in the research lab he approaches you.
"You've done great kid! Your research is really helping us to make great progress with Ayr," he says with a smile.
I think that this example (above) is quite an awkward way to go about changing from a slow-paced description into fast paced dialogue. I’ve been trying to include a sort of ‘linking sentence’ like ‘Today is one of these days…’ but it still doesn’t feel quite right to me, and it’s also not something I can consistently use as it starts to become repetitive.
On a similar note, I also find it hard to change from scenes of lots of description, (where nearly every second is accounted for) into a paragraph describing the events of the past day or so. When I try to do this, I find that it reads as very random and again can be quite disengaging.
Anyway, that’s just what I’ve found the most difficult about writing so far. If anyone has any advice around this or wants to share what they have found difficult when starting out, go for it :)
