Thread: Tale of the Psi
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Strato

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Joined: Jan 2002

Posts: 2,588

Strato is doing well so far

Jul 2, 2007, 10:30 PM
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I haven't read your story, but from that tiny snippit I can give you advice.

Firstly, each sentence follows the same formula. Subject verb preposition description. With some minor discrepencies. Reading that for an entire page, let alone book is extremely tiring and hard on the reader. You have a great advantage with your story in that your narrator is established as a person by the first few lines. As such, your language can be very casual in tone. And let's be honest, he's telling a war story, so he'll definitly not have a formal approach to his language anyway. So in this vein, think of writing as if the entire thing is dialogue, since that's basically what it is. A person recanting a story to somebody else, in this case the reader. I can predict that if you get set into this mode, your general use of language will improve.

As Radium stated, initializing shot. To translate that, instead you should open up with a short description of location. You're building a scene, meaning that first you have to establish where and when, then plop characters in there. Generally with prose and depending on your pacing, you can probably spend quite some time illustrating this room. The main problem with this opening is that the description comes at the end. Now this isn't a big deal, but it leaves the reader with an established scene in his or her head because they have to picture the characters somewhere. So your description, although it's the first mention of detail, comes across to the reader as forced onto their mental picture. If description isn't what comes first, they should know why. In this opening, you're able to kind of get away with it, because he's recovering from a state of unconciousness, but by the time the action starts he's fully recovered. I can tell this is kind of an initializing shot, but you're describing objects within the room first, then the room itself. Logically, you should build from the ground up.

On to specific word choices, a lot of that usage of the verb "was". The verb to be just invites passive voice. I can probably guess that you don't have a grasp of passive versus active voice, since not many people do, so I'll break it down real quickly.

Active :
Keiy awoke back inside
He lay on a small bed

Passive :
The innkeeper was sitting
The room was smelling

Can you spot what makes them active or passive? It's the structure of the verbs. Passive voice occurs when you write a sentence as The noun was sitting. You can tighten your writing immediately by re-writing this as The noun sat. Cut the word was when you can, so long as it doesn't compromise the sentence.

The room was smelling -> The room smelled. Minor note, if you use the room smelled, smelled acts like a verb and makes it seem as though the room was doing the action. Instead say The room smelled of smoke.

Funny how 4 sentences can spur so much advice.