Thorn Wilde

I can't understand why that should be incomprehensible. I understood it just fine.

Welcome to GA!

@jamessavik, I love that song!

Those aren't infodumps, though. The definition of infodumping is giving too much information too quickly. All those books (and I've read a few of them) present information organically, many through dialogue. An infodump is when you present all your worldbuilding in the first few pages. Much like people confuse omniscient third person with head-hopping, some confuse exposition in fantasy and sci-fi with infodumping.

I gotta say, I think there's a definite middle ground between minimalist storytelling and infodumps. All the best sci-fi and fantasy I've read has the worldbuilding organically interspersed throughout the story rather than presented in big chunks. There's nothing minimalist about it.

They're very lucky that way. And now that Dave's family situation is improved as well, it's doubly true.

Their friends just worry for them. They don't want them to get hurt. They're good friends, really.

The early drafts of my story Storms were in third person present tense. I thought I had to use third person because I had more than one POV character. But when I rewrote it, I tried first and it fit really well. The story has four main characters (though two of them are more in focus than the others), and I write one chapter at a time from each POV, labelling them with the name of the POV character. That story's YA too, though it's set in the real world so there's not a lot of world building involved. That said, my favourite science-fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, is written in first person with a single POV character, and that book takes place on a planet where people don't have gender, so there's a considerable amount of world building that needs to be conveyed. (I cannot recommend that book enough, btw.) It's absolutely doable, it just becomes that much more important to portion out the information about your world in a believable way. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the MC is an envoy to the planet in question, and so is learning about them and their customs. In the case of your story, given that Ronnie is learning as he goes, you could have done something similar. (But finish posting the third person version first, maybe? So we can see how it ends. )

To be fair, as it costs nothing to self-publish a book and get it onto KU (and there's little to no reviewing process on Amazon's side; I think they have an algorithm check for anything illegal and that's about it), a lot of the stuff you find there is from internet story posters.

OMG, the 'one finger-two finger-three finger' trope... I was guilty of this before I actually tried this stuff for myself. I mean, if fingering is the point, then sure, but otherwise, totally unnecessary. I've also never put actual penis length in my story, that I can recall. If I want to tell my audience that a character has a big dick, that's what I say. No need to go into that much detail. I've also had the narrator compare. 'His was slightly bigger than mine.' Because in the end, the only reference most people have is the size of their own equipment and/or that of their parters. For the rest, readers can use their imagination.

I think the nature of our community here on GA has something to do with it. We most of us know each other. Leaving a bad review on a story written by someone you know can feel disloyal, and the ones we don't know are newbies we don't want to discourage. I also think there's a tendency to stop reading a story you don't like, and since reviews can only be submitted once the story is complete, a person who quit reading halfway through is unlikely to go back to review the story after it's been completed. It's my experience that a lot of constructive criticism on this site tends to be delivered privately by PM rather than in comments or as reviews. I've done this on multiple occasions, with authors who asked or whom I knew could handle it. I wish we were all more open to both delivering and receiving criticism in public, but on the other hand, we are all happy amateurs or self-published authors here. A lot of us just write for the joy of it, and a negative review might spoil that joy. Maybe instead of holding back on giving our honest opinions even when they're not glowing endorsements, authors who aren't prepared to receive less than favourable reviews should be able to disable reviews on their stories?

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm very fond of Alan. He has a lot of character development over the course of the books, but most of it is off the page, since the books are from Dave and Nick's perspective. That's why I started writing these stories in the first place, for Alan's sake. Then the project expanded to include other characters as well. I've toyed with the idea of writing a whole novel about Alan and Matt, but I have a million other projects so it would have to wait.

Funny thing about this chapter... I hadn't really planned a reconciliation with Nick's mum. I'd been focusing on Nick and Dave, their relationship, how to get them back together again, and then a reader asked me about it, and it was like... oh. Yeah, I should probably give everyone some closure there. So I think I wrote this chapter after I had finished the rest of the book. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

He very much earned it, I think. He's such a good guy. I love him. lol

There are a few chapters to go, yeah, so they're not entirely out of the woods yet, but... it's beginning. Thank you for commenting!

He is starting to realise this, I think. I'm glad to see you so invested.

They've a ways to go yet, but it's looking promising, isn't it? Thanks for commenting.

Thank you, Fae!

I think people warmed up to him considerably after this. As for Dave's parents, you'll soon have all your questions answered. Thank you so much! I had a very nice day. Thanks again for commenting! ❤️

Thank you. I'm glad you think so. This chapter and the one before were hard to write, because there's so much pain. But I think there's a lot of hope too. Thanks as ever for commenting!

Thank you, molly! It was very nice.

Yeah, poor Patrick especially, I think. He turned into such a good guy... Not what I had planned for his character originally at all. Thanks for reading and for commenting again!

Still 43 minutes left of my birthday, my time. Thank you!

Thank you. I'm glad you think so. I'm fond of these two, and very happy with the dynamics between them. Thanks for reading!

Thank you!