Comment: Feedback

The feedback i'm getting is useful, and has me thinking about a major change of tack. Trying to make things into more of a novel, expanding the fiction side if you like. This comment was particularly good - I hope he won't mind me posting it ehre:

I think drinking to the resignation of Maggie is a good place to start a story. Much better than the prologue.

What strikes me after a few pages is the absence of dialogue. Where is it? A story is only a story if something happens – in particular, if characters interact. This is monologue. Yes, it’s imaginative, it’s well written, and it contains some polished metaphors.

When there is dialogue, I can’t tell who is speaking. Is this a conversation, or is it just remembered fragments of speech? I really don’t know.

My advice would depend on what your intention is. If you want to write a novel, I think you need to shift the balance from philosophical musing to tangible action among convincing characters. More real-world description, more characterization, above all more dialogue. If this is a work of political philosophy in the form of an allegory, a la Thus Spake Zarathustra, then it’s probably okay as it is.

Ironically, it did originally start with the resignation and got changed after some other feedback that that bit wandered too much. Instead of sorting out the wandering properly, I moved up the other bit which became a prologue, 'cos it didn't make sense by itself out there at the front.
But I think the point of fleshing out the narrative side is unavoidably correct. It makes me think that to an extent I've got the notes for a book here, but not a full book. Which does also make me worry that the thing's gonna end up a thousand pages long, but then I'm a fan of Neal Stephenson and look how long his books are ;-)

Things to think about for me. Any comments?