A while ago, a literary agent hinted to me about my bad style and it took a while for me to pick up on this hint. Recently, a publisher gave me some feedback about my long expositions and info dumping, which I had already picked up on, but decided not to act on until I’d received all replies from my first round of submissions.
Now, I’m on a mission to optimise my novel, whomping my exposition into a barely noticeable dust, exorcising the 'tell' to hell, streamlining my sentences and adopting a more active, less formal prose. As a writer who loves descriptive literature, I’ve been scouring Google and discovering tips to show the scenery without over describing. I’ve also been making it more believable for information to be delivered during dialogue.
62,000 words edited and only 18,000 left to go. I won’t be posting for critiques, though. I don’t mind being critiqued, but not in an online forum; I remember someone saying that their publisher wanted them to remove their critique from this site.
I'm just here to practice my writing, although I do respect other people's guts for posting excerpts to be critiqued. Different strokes for different folks.