First of all, don’t drop this story, you like it, that’s good enough. All we can do is write for ourselves, maybe people will like it, maybe they won’t, as long as you enjoy what you’re doing it doesn’t matter. If you want my honest opinion I did not enjoy this and I will not be reading more.
If you want advise on improving I’d say first and foremost there needs to be some kind of opening narration that pulls the reader in and tells them what this story is going to be, something reflective of what’s going to happen at the end, or the general themes, it can be a quote or the last line of dialog, maybe lyrics, it just needs some kind of opener. “There was love all around but I never heard it singing, no I never heard it singing, till there was you.”
Secondly I’d say figure out better ways of conveying information. In the first scene your goal was to let me (the reader) know that Summer has two kids and is basically losing at life, you can do this in a much more interesting way than having her wakeup and tell me she’s a single mother who’s losing at life, always avoid the info dump. Maybe she’s running to work, maybe she’s getting chewed out by her boss for being late, maybe both? Start with action then go into narration. Her Boss is soundlessly yelling at her after we see her running to work and clumsily waiting table and narration reads "I’m Summer Young, elder millennial, single mother, hot fucking mess”.
I would cut the author message at the start, saying it’s your first story is like saying “lower your expectations reader, this sucks but you can’t complain cause hey, I warned you”.
I would also cut Spencer’s POV, there’s no better way to suck romantic tension out of a story than to tell the audience what the love interest is thinking.
There are a lot of little things that just don’t jive for me, like all the name alliteration (Tayler and Tyler, Summer and Spencer c’mon bruh), the amount these characters say “girl” (very repetitive), the fact that summer didn’t remember Spencer was a customer, that Summer just hopped into a car with a stranger, how cartoonishly scuzzy Quiten is (so predictable and one dimensional). The dialog doesn’t feel authentic, individual or realistic. There’s a lot of telling and not a lot of showing going on, there’s also a lot of telling the audience what they can already see happening, Spencer doesn’t need to describe what Summer looks like, we can see her. Also unless Summer wears contacts or she’s some kind of fantasy creature and we don’t know it yet she needs normal colored eyes, no one’s eyes are lavender, it’s possible for people with albinism but still way too rare to be believable. This is just my two cents, I have a lot more thoughts but most of them are nit picky and not helpful so I’m going to leave you with this.
That being said, please don’t give up on your story, completely ignore me if you are happy with your work, leave it the way it is and finish it no matter what response you get or don’t get from readers. Your opinion is the one that matters.
and what is ur story name??
