So in relation to the 250 words post, anyone want to post the first 250 words of their novel?

Okay, so... here's the thing. You need to explain the concepts (or at least that they are foreign concepts) for me (American) to understand this. I get that. And it does help -- if this is a story that will only be marketed in India. You won't be giving explanations to the average reader, so if the story is marketed elsewhere, it will need to stand on its own.

So I'm going to review the writing that way. :) If you'd already thought of that, fine -- if not, now you know. No big thing. I don't think it's an issue that needed addressing at all, in this story -- just like any area I don't know (New York City, for example) the meaning should be clear from the context.

 

It was the last day of the Ranji Trophy Final. The freshly cut grass shimmered in the sunlight and a hint of cold in the air held every person at the Ferozshah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi, inside their sweaters.

So the first thing is, you're throwing out a lot of proper names, really fast. This isn't a language or culture issue. It's just the way people process information. When we hit a proper noun (with the attending capital letter) we're trained to remember it. It helps us pick out important details. But it also switches us to a different part of the brain. Away from the emotional parts that we need to connect with a story.

It was the last day of the Bismark Trophy Final at the Apple Pie Stadium in North Dakota.

Doesn't matter the language/location. It's those capital letters.

This problem persists in all but the final paragraph of this page. That's a large part of the reason I couldn't get into it... Proper nouns should only be used this prolifically in non-fiction (Maybe hard sci-fi, those usually overwhelm me.)

Try giving the readers a little time to assimilate one piece of data before giving them another.

Moving on -- the grammar issues (not as many as there could be)

The freshly cut grass shimmered in the sunlight and a hint of cold in the air held every person at the Ferozshah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi, inside their sweaters.

So, there's a lot of prepositional phrases and adverbs and so on here and whatnot, and it makes it easy to miss things. I like stripping the sentences down to their most basic form to find errors.

The freshly cut grass shimmered in the sunlight and a hint of cold in the air held every person at the Ferozshah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi, inside their sweaters.

This doesn't make sense. First of all, it's two sentences:

The grass shimmered

and

A hint of cold held every person inside their sweaters.

(yes I'm aware, "of" is a preposition, people, but it's necessary here)

Anyway, "A hint of cold held everyone inside their sweaters" doesn't make a lot of sense. I know what you're getting at, but it's phrased really awkwardly. Maybe something like the cold kept them huddling into their sweaters? Had them drawing their sweaters closer around them? Forced everyone to wear a sweater? Idk. Something like that.

At the Pavilion end of the Kotla stadium, inside the main hall of the team's dressing room,

There's nothing (grammatically) wrong with this (or if there is, it's beyond my humble skills) but it's overkill. Does it matter exactly where the location is in relation to the rest of the pavilion right now? No. They're in the main hall of the dressing room.

eating their lunches joyfully.

Joy is a word that contains a lot of implications. It's an extreme emotion. I often eat my lunch happily, but I've only been "eating joyfully" a few times in life. Once at my wedding. There were those (horrible) "celebration" meals in the hospital with my SO when the kids were born. The point is, that (except for foodies, which it would be unlikely to find an entire team of) people are rarely "joyful" over simply eating.

That means you have to give me an outside reason for this "joy" they are feeling. Had they just won a game? That's important. Say that. Is food scarce right now for some reason? Say that. Otherwise, they're just stuffing their faces, and you can leave out the joy.

pacing up and down

This is redundant. Pacing implies "up and down" or "back and forth". It doesn't need explanation.

Team hadn't been performing well since the past few months

in the past few months.

news channels throughout the country didn't let any opportunity slide by them to remind the nation of the poor state of their national cricket team.

This is the only sentence that reminded me of the language issues.

There's nothing blatantly wrong, it's simply got a strange cadence you don't find a lot in native English.

I'd say something more along the lines of:

news channels throughout the country seized every opportunity to remind the nation of the failures of their cricket team.

It's still rather unwieldy for a single sentence, but it reads a bit more naturally.

World cup is only 2 months away and we can’t even win a test series at home. This is pathetic, said one of the cricket experts

First of all, quotation marks are mandatory.

"World cup is only 2 months away and we can’t even win a test series at home. This is pathetic," said one of the cricket experts

Now, this is subjective, because it's dialogue, but "The World Cup" would be better. (And it's a specific event, so the word "Cup" must be capitalized.)

channel. They need to restructure the team. We have to give more chances to our youngsters, said the other. Midst all the well-meaning advice and the unduly exaggeration, Yusuf knew that if there was any chance,

Same issue as before, and another. When you have two people speaking, each person gets a new paragraph. So you have 3 paragraphs here: 1st teammate. 2nd teammate. Yusef's thoughts.

the national cricket team,

It's awkward to keep repeating the entire phrase. "If there was any chance for him to make the team" is much more natural. Once you've indicated which team you mean, "the team" is all you need.

This could be his opportunity that he had always dreamed of since he was nine.

This sentence has a lot of issues, and I don't really know how to explain them, so I'll just show you a few more acceptable examples.

This could be the opportunity he'd always dreamed of.

This could be the opportunity he'd dreamed of since he was nine years old.

This could be his opportunity -- the one he'd dreamed of since he was nine years old.

So... overview:

There are a lot of areas with confusing wording. The excessive number of proper nouns (in just one page!) make it difficult to connect with the characters, and take up space you could be filling up with more action. More of the plot.

They're relatively minor/easily fixed issues. I think that once you've addressed these problems, it will make a pretty interesting story!

/r/writing Thread Parent