Though I belong to two writing groups, neither one is a novel-writing group, so the feedback I get from them, though sometimes useful, does not relate to the novel's form. Posting snippets or even whole chapters, equally useful, does not address questions I have about organization. I have a finished work which I have written two different ways, in third person and in first person and with the ending first followed by a long back story and also as a straight-forward chronological progression. It has been beta read in both versions, but no one has read the two different ones (and how could I expect them to?) and these readers are not writers anyway.
What do writers do to decide what works best? Is it just a lonely decision or is there some method whereby I could get the benefit of some trustworthy person's opinion when I have questions like this? My beta readers have been fine at telling me what they liked and what didn't work for them, but they have no clues about other ways I might have written the story.
What do writers do to decide what works best? Is it just a lonely decision or is there some method whereby I could get the benefit of some trustworthy person's opinion when I have questions like this? My beta readers have been fine at telling me what they liked and what didn't work for them, but they have no clues about other ways I might have written the story.
