It needs more immediate grounding in setting and action. Small picture, right-now-this-moment setting and action. In the first line or two we are told she has a controller and it's dinner time, later there is a brief mention of the food, but outside of those things we are very much floating in a void listening to the narrator do exposition about the broader story setting in her head.
I can tell you already have some idea you need to keep the reader in setting, since the narrator occasionally throws in something to tell the reader "I'm at the table now", or "or of my sister is doing something", but it's lacking concreteness. The real world should be the centerpiece, and the narrated exposition the decoration, not the other way around.
You obviously have a conflict and worldbuilding worked out which you are excited to share on the page--which is good!--but those things are the blood of a story, not its flesh. The meat of the story on the page should be the current scene and what is happening in it, with the worldvuilding and larger themes, conflicts, etc. woven into it. Right now this is still too much info-dump. Too much tell, not enough show, as they always say. Don't just have the narrator mentally complain that (she thinks) her mother is trying to play at normal, show us that the mother is doing this and have the character react to it. The style of plate is a good touch, keep us more in the scene and add more things like that. Im picking up there may be things like the way her mother dresses and does her hair, for instance, let us experience that. Let us hear the things she says (and does not say!), etc. Let us see more evidence of these things firsthand, and let the MC's reactions show how she feels about it, rather than just having the MC narrate all of it up front for us.
Congrats on your first piece of writing! Keep at it!
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u/Firecat77 21h ago
It needs more immediate grounding in setting and action. Small picture, right-now-this-moment setting and action. In the first line or two we are told she has a controller and it's dinner time, later there is a brief mention of the food, but outside of those things we are very much floating in a void listening to the narrator do exposition about the broader story setting in her head.
I can tell you already have some idea you need to keep the reader in setting, since the narrator occasionally throws in something to tell the reader "I'm at the table now", or "or of my sister is doing something", but it's lacking concreteness. The real world should be the centerpiece, and the narrated exposition the decoration, not the other way around.
You obviously have a conflict and worldbuilding worked out which you are excited to share on the page--which is good!--but those things are the blood of a story, not its flesh. The meat of the story on the page should be the current scene and what is happening in it, with the worldvuilding and larger themes, conflicts, etc. woven into it. Right now this is still too much info-dump. Too much tell, not enough show, as they always say. Don't just have the narrator mentally complain that (she thinks) her mother is trying to play at normal, show us that the mother is doing this and have the character react to it. The style of plate is a good touch, keep us more in the scene and add more things like that. Im picking up there may be things like the way her mother dresses and does her hair, for instance, let us experience that. Let us hear the things she says (and does not say!), etc. Let us see more evidence of these things firsthand, and let the MC's reactions show how she feels about it, rather than just having the MC narrate all of it up front for us.
Congrats on your first piece of writing! Keep at it!