Hello rawrafied,
I'm Aley and I'll be reviewing your style today. Seeing as I haven't read the story, I won't comment on plot or character, but I think I can find stuff to talk about in your actual style, so no biggie really. Hopefully my review will help you!
That being said, let's get started. I like that your style has a good flow. The way you put together words makes them transition well from one sentence to the next. It's a poetic thing, not a novel thing, but it does make for better reading as long as you're not looking at the subject of those sentences or really trying to pin down what is actually going on.
For me, the main problem with your writing style is longevity. You draw out words and sentences that really don't need to be drawn out. That was obvious from the very first sentence of this chapter which I wouldn't have kept reading if I wasn't reviewing because I don't like that sort of drawn out style. I like quick things that get to the meat of the matter rather than things that dilly-dally around the purpose of what they're saying, even if they are saying it smoothly.
Let's take a look at it.
It was, regretfully, Niall’s responsibility to admit that not once, in the past month, had he successfully retrieved in-progress paperwork from storage.
So let's break this down into sentence structure.
We have the subject "It was Niall's responsibility" and the predicate "to admit that not once had he successfully retrieved in-progress paperwork from storage."
In both the subject and the predicate you have clip-ons, more or less. The interjections are supposed to add direction and meaning beyond the meaning of the words. You have "regretfully" and "in the past month" as your interjections, you think.
To me, this looks like a case of a strange grammar structure and meaning. What's actually being said here? What did you want the reader to understand?
I think what you wanted to say was something such as "Niall hadn't once successfully retrieved in-progress paperwork from storage in the past month." I only think that, however, because you could literally mean "Niall's regret admitted he hadn't done his job" as in, his regrets are able to speak, they are able to move around on their own, and they are blabbing on him.
The reason I think this is the sentence you're looking for is because if we boil it down, your subject isn't talking about the actual subject, it's talking about the regrets of the subject. In other words, your first sentence in chapter 6 isn't about your main character on a literal point.
Moreover, you're trying to avoid "hadn't," I think because it's negative, however this situation actually requires some negative language. After all, he's done something negative and therefor you have no escape. You either use "unsuccessfully" or "hadn't successfully."
The problem isn't that it's bad English, it's just that it's confusing. When you attach words together like that, it takes more time to determine what's actually being said. For me, the confusion was early. "It was regretfully Niall's responsibility to admit" is a really long way to say "Niall" and if you really wanted to avoid "Niall had to admit" then you could always just go with "Niall hadn't done his job in a month." After all, it's the truth, isn't it?
The time had to be approximately some period past when it was no longer night time.
This is another sentence where you're messing up by trying to be creative with how you say it. Just say it.
If you're going to approximate time, then approximate it. Mid Morning or Early Evening or Sunrise, Sunset, all of them would be prefereable to this approximation. "Approximately" as a word should be followed by some length of measure. Now unless this is a scallywag who doesn't know the word "daytime" I think we can make a better statement than "approximately after when it's dark." After all, that statement doesn't make much sense. If we're almost, or kind of almost, after the period when it's not night, then wouldn't we just be during day? To me it seems lke you're going a long way out of your way to say something that would be simpler without the approximation. Especially since the "Approximately" makes it sound really awkward.
Given these two examples, I think what you need to do is think about simplifying your writing style. You don't need to be so "creative" when it comes to sentence structure. I know sometimes I get on a kick like that where I want to write really fancy words, and say them in artistic ways, but in a novel, it often detracts from the meaning you're trying to imply. Novels should be about the scene and the actions, not the words making them. We shouldn't be drawn out of the idea that the novel is just in our minds, and I feel like some of your awkward phrasing does that. It pulls me out of reading and makes me wonder what's actually happening rather than allowing me to sink into the book.
Here's another example of what I mean.
Meanwhile, Peter strained himself with finding the generosity to present a nod of his head. Niall supposed he would too if his own was as swollen.
Now, at first I was okay with "Meanwhile, Peter strained himself with finding the generosity to presenta nod of his head." but I didn't understand what was going on. I'm sure you've made this deck worker commically fat after reading the second line, but the first line just made him sound like he was snobby or overworked, like he couldn't bother to nod to this man because he just didn't care, THAT much. It was actually an effort for him to think about and enact nodding to this man he didn't care about. That made perfect sense to me. Then I read the second sentence.
"Niall supposed he would too if his own was as swollen" This doesn't make sense out of context. "His own" What? His own hat? neck? head? face? What's swollen? Is it actually swollen or is it fat? What are we talking about here! I feel like I've just been dropped some giant clue but I don't have a decipher ring, and I don't really think it's that important to the story. Also, "he supposed he would" what? If we want to make that sentence easy to read, we need to fill in these facts. "Niall supposed he would [find it hard to nod?] too, if he was as swollen [in the neck?]" Because I honestly don't know what you were going for, I am just going to leave it at that. Hopefully that shows you why simple writing is better.
It is said in writing books that prepositions, passive voice, and adverbs should be elliminated from a work as much as possible to ensure the work is as smooth and quick to read as possible. Many times what is said using these devices could be said quicker without them.
In your case, I think you get preposition happy. Prepositions are words that tell you what's around something, or the time that something happened in relationship to something else. That list includes words like "of, around, after, before, behind, front, above, below, in, out, on." I think in your case you're getting carried away with these and their partners. In the case of the aformentioned sentence, we have a stack of modifiers a mile high.
"Peter strained himself with finding the generosity to present a nod of his head." Couldn't we just say "Peter strained to nod?" I mean, that tells us who and what better than the other sentence because we don't have to search through "himself with finding the generosity to present a ... of his head" and it gets it down to just 4 words. 4 words are easier to read than 13.
In novels, word count matters. You can get to a 50,000 word book without moving a character if you extend detail and inflate sentences, and you only have about 100,000 words max for most publishing houses to say what you want to say about this story.
This isn't a case where you need to inflate your word-count, it's a place where inflating your word-count kills the story. After all, your judge has to stay interested, and who would be interested to read a bunch of frivolous words?
I think what your style of writing needs at this ponit is some serious trimming. I would love to challenge you to write a 500 word story about a love triangle. That's a good subject for a short story, and I think you can do it, but you're going to have to use concise language and potentially read how other people do 500 word drabbles.
These might not be the best examples, but I think they might help you simplify your style a little better. Here is a list of 500 word stories that you can read. Just click on title or a picture and read away.
All in all, I think simplifying your work won't destroy your flow at all. You're good at writing things which read smoothly in terms of sounds, but you need to work towards clarity and simplicity to get less words/page and more words with meaning on a single page. That will speed up the story and allow you to delve further into characters with internal thought, interactions, descriptions of how they look, or are acting, and that is where the spice of a story is.
If this didn't help, let me know and I'll do my best to find some way to help you!
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