Yeah, absolutely, go ahead. Some of your omakes in the other thread were what led me to finally writing this one. I'd love to get better.
Well, that makes me feel marginally better! I'll try to keep this purely useful so that you can keep on writing.
Right, let's get started.
So, with some writers you can within the first page or two identify a writing sin: like, Yrsillar's is grammar - more specifically homophone confusion. Lucky too, if there's any mistake that can be easily and trivially fixed at the editing stage it's there/their/they're.
You've got a slightly harder job, your sense of rhythm is where people might start to go: something feels a bit weird. Bluntly put: You need to vary your sentence length.
For example:
A lot of your sentences are of fairly uniform length. While that isn't true all the time it's true often enough to be obvious. Sentences of the same length can become tedious and dull. The sentences I am writing now are all about the same length. Can you feel the effect it has on you the reader when reading? These 15 and 16 syllable sentences are not great. If I kept doing this you'd quickly get very annoyed at me.
Now it's not because they're individually bad but because in the aggregate their effect is monotonous. To be fair, you do space things out quite creatively with dashes and commas and semicolons, but even so there's a certain formulaicness to your writing. Short and snappy tend to be MIA.
This weakness isn't obvious at all at the beginning and I think it's no coincidence that I consider your start to be your strongest section.
Ling Qi's visit to her mother's home—her home technically—was prompted by a sudden opening in her schedule. (29 syllables, or, 9 - 5 - 15) She had intended to visit Meihzen for an early morning tea session, but on arrival at the Bai's dwelling had found her absent. (34 syllables or 19, 15)
Neglecting to notify her friend of her visit beforehand would not usually be an issue, Meihzen lived a structured life, and Ling Qi knew the other girls schedule well enough from their time living together. (54 or 25, 7, 22)
Unfortunately, she had failed to consider what Bao Qingling might do to the other girl's carefully arranged agenda. (32 or 5, 27)
Why am I doing all this bean-counting? To contrast it with another part of your writing:
Ling Qi wanted to respond, but knew it would only be playing into the playful spirit's game. (24 syllables) Instead, she refocused the greater part of her attention onto the physical world. (22 syllables)
She had decided to take the walk to her mother's abode at a mortal pace to give disturbed emotions time to settle. (31 syllables) Now she found herself striding up the long stone path to her own front door. (17 syllables) Feeling like a stranger at the awed and nervous glances of her mother's household. (20 syllables)
What makes that last part particularly egregious is that those last two sentences should really be one sentence - the last one is a sentence fragment.
It's a pattern that repeats in your dialogue too:
Jealousy is not an emotion unique to you, greedy girl.' (16)
'Yet, I feel still that I hold more than most in my heart.' (13)
'You also carry more kindness than many of your peers, yet I would not call you kind." (20)
'Thank you Sixiang, you always know what to say.' (11)
'Ahh, but you are not thinking jealous thoughts anymore are you?' (15)
Watch what happens when I switch it up a little:
Jealousy isn't an emotion unique to you, Ling Qi.'
'Isn't it?'
'Of course not!'
'But you can't deny that I'm more jealous than others.'
'Humanity's a spectrum.You're kind too. Kinder than most, even. But, I don't see you getting down about yourself about that.'
'...huh.'
'Also, fun fact: I wouldn't call you kind.'
'Thanks. You always know exactly what to say.'
'Ahh, but you are not thinking jealous thoughts anymore are you?'
Content-wise, it's about the same, but I've speckled in a bunch of short sentences - some might argue too many, and that person might be you. That's fine. The point I'm trying to make is that you should experiment with sentence length and see if you can come up with a rhythm that you think looks and sounds good.
