Okay, soo...
I came late, but would have voted for Cass. Same reason as the others.
Now, Generic, since you compare yourself with me (Also, Verny-Werny, I wuv u 2 <3 ), I'll comment.
What you've done is try to focus on details...but you've missed the ones that actually leave the impact. I tend to be detail heavy, but still.
Hearts This is my battle vs Codincx. In it I clash two world-wide super-organizations, about five or six main chars, and do a shit-load of character development for my chars. This is my longest battle, and it's only 32 pages.
I do a ton of close description on certain parts, but each one has the purpose of telling you deeply about who these people are. You just tell us about the world, with only occasional character revelations. Just read the first 5 pages of my battle to show what I mean about zooming in on
relevant details.
Unlike most people here, I have written a full-length novel that is currently with Literary Agents in the lengthy process of getting copyrights and finding a good publishing deal. I've had to deal with professional editors digging into my work, and know what it means to shave shit down, even if descriptiveness is my style.
RELEVANT details are the key. Every. Single. Fucking. Detail. Must. Be. Relevant. If it doesn't reveal something key about the characters or story, carry some emotional impact. For example, in
My battle vs Vern I told the story from SIX different viewpoints, created immersive environments and a good sense of the various locations, all in 24 pages. Now, Vern and Dickles (Richard "Waffles" Longflop) might say this is still too long, but that's just my way of writing. I often do much less (my shortest battle is well under 10 pages I think).
The point is look at a scene. Set the GENERAL image. Then look at what emotional impact you want to make. Think about what it is SPECIFICALLY that makes that impact. Explode that single aspect alone. Leave the rest to the reader -- they have enough imagination to fill in the blanks. Moby Dick is considered the only true Epic every produced in American literature. The ENTIRE MASSIVE BOOK is written in RHYTHMIC PROSE. That means literally alliteration, consonance, assonance, internal rhyme, etc are used to craft his colorful imagery. Even then, though, he doesn't cover every detail. He lets things peter out. Some little details of the
Pequod you won't notice until hundreds of pages into the book, even though you will have been stuck on that ship for many, many pages by that point. Clive Cussler is the undisputed king of action-adventure novels, and has been since the 80s. He created a char in the late 70s/early 80s by the name of Dirk Pitt (based off of an idealized version of himself, actually). Working on 40 years later he's still writing novels with this char (among many, many others) and you are still seeing the char as dynamic and learning little details you never knew. That's after scores and scores of novels with this char.
Now, in the narrative -- emphasize ONLY what drives the plot. For example, in my battle vs Codincx, I entirely cut the entire set of scenes I had written for David breaking into The Empire of Sin's fortress, because I realized the extra eight pages really weren't necessary. I touched on it in arrears by using other characters later. In other times I've done flashbacks -- that battle starts with Altaer at a point in the middle of the battle, goes backwards to the beginning, then passes the intro scene and moves on to the end. There are many segments you can cut out if you structure a story right.
This is a lot about me, but that's because you said you write like me (which you kinda do, tbh), so I used myself as a reference.
50 pages? The standard length of a full chapter in a full-length novel is about 12-25 pages. You wrote two chapters, or about a sixth of a full novel. At this rate your "novel" would be 2-3x the normal length....we're talking between 600 and 900 pages. WTF? A bit too long, mate.
