03-03-2017, 06:31 PM
Moved thread to Off-Topic for obvious OCD reasons.
Now, being a fellow writer, there are a bunch of things I'd like to shed light on and some other things I want to nitpick at.
The opening is okay, "I played the earliest version of Pokemon before it was even released. Playing the earliest versions of a game first sounded exciting until I realized what a big mistake I have made."
There should be a better way to reword this, but how it's executed so far doesn't seem to hook in the reader. With this kind of opening, the structure is of a low-end elementary student level. The opening lines should be slightly unique and a bit memorable, and not an introduction to a third grader's show-and-tell.
If anything, I cannot stress enough that being indirect with your audience is the best way to write. What I mean is that you want your audience to assume what you're saying without telling them exactly what a character is doing. Probably the best way to do this is to use as many words as possible in a sentence without making it too confusing to read. I'm gonna pull out an excerpt from my personal story, and rewrite it to show you what I mean.
"Sometimes it was as if Lurrell could no longer count the number of days and nights he had been sleeping..."
"Lurrell had been sleeping for so long that..."
Yeah there is an obvious difference between the two. You want the narration to somewhat reflect a character's thoughts, and be set in a corresponding tone with the story. Avoid using overly simple sentences and work on eloquence. Make sure a sentence is sound, and that it has a nice spark to the story's plot. Now, if I were to write the same sentence in a horror (?) tone for example...
"Even if an eternity passed before Lurrell was able to revive his need to open his eyes, the indefinite blackness that had once engulfed them entirely only continued to stick by. If the insecure child didn't just obtain the willpower to disperse of the noir vignette that seemed to devour his vision up, who knew, maybe said statement would have been true. Who cared though? For one, God surely didn't. He had forsaken the original world that he once created years, years ago."
That was more than one sentence, but you get my point. Details are your best friend, and you'd rather have too many details than too little. It's easier to revise later than to add them as you read.
Two, this is probably the one unwritten rule I try my hardest not to succumb to, but still do anyways. It's the usage of "I"s at the beginning of your sentence. Alternate your sentences, it always makes a difference! This is something I don't realize until I review my story, so I always have to go back and mix it up a bit. Try to make up a detail that eventually leads to your main subject in a sentence. This is why complex sentences should be embraced for their writing versatility.
As for actions that happen, you really need details, adverbs, thesaurus.com, and lots and lots of practice! There's a huge gap between "He quickly ran to the store," and "It was the post-apocalypse and the man sprinted out his home bat out of hell just to greedily hoard whatever was leftover of the bean sprout sales from the dilapidated supermarket." A note to be added, using too many adverbs or in general -ly words might weaken your writing.
Want gore? Actually make the scene obscurely vivid and horrendous. "The vermilion fluid he had coughed up dripped down to the sides of his jawline, and it looked as if the man was gradually turning into a monster himself. Some sort of force just loved to pull at his esophagus, kicking at the pipe and blowing the wind out of him. More blood was gagged up, turning inevitably blacker and blacker... matching the color of what was hell itself.."
Last note, "Thank you for reading my horror story. *smiley face*" instantly removes whatever fear you had from your reader. Just no.
This rant took longer than I expected.
Now, being a fellow writer, there are a bunch of things I'd like to shed light on and some other things I want to nitpick at.
The opening is okay, "I played the earliest version of Pokemon before it was even released. Playing the earliest versions of a game first sounded exciting until I realized what a big mistake I have made."
There should be a better way to reword this, but how it's executed so far doesn't seem to hook in the reader. With this kind of opening, the structure is of a low-end elementary student level. The opening lines should be slightly unique and a bit memorable, and not an introduction to a third grader's show-and-tell.
If anything, I cannot stress enough that being indirect with your audience is the best way to write. What I mean is that you want your audience to assume what you're saying without telling them exactly what a character is doing. Probably the best way to do this is to use as many words as possible in a sentence without making it too confusing to read. I'm gonna pull out an excerpt from my personal story, and rewrite it to show you what I mean.
"Sometimes it was as if Lurrell could no longer count the number of days and nights he had been sleeping..."
"Lurrell had been sleeping for so long that..."
Yeah there is an obvious difference between the two. You want the narration to somewhat reflect a character's thoughts, and be set in a corresponding tone with the story. Avoid using overly simple sentences and work on eloquence. Make sure a sentence is sound, and that it has a nice spark to the story's plot. Now, if I were to write the same sentence in a horror (?) tone for example...
"Even if an eternity passed before Lurrell was able to revive his need to open his eyes, the indefinite blackness that had once engulfed them entirely only continued to stick by. If the insecure child didn't just obtain the willpower to disperse of the noir vignette that seemed to devour his vision up, who knew, maybe said statement would have been true. Who cared though? For one, God surely didn't. He had forsaken the original world that he once created years, years ago."
That was more than one sentence, but you get my point. Details are your best friend, and you'd rather have too many details than too little. It's easier to revise later than to add them as you read.
Two, this is probably the one unwritten rule I try my hardest not to succumb to, but still do anyways. It's the usage of "I"s at the beginning of your sentence. Alternate your sentences, it always makes a difference! This is something I don't realize until I review my story, so I always have to go back and mix it up a bit. Try to make up a detail that eventually leads to your main subject in a sentence. This is why complex sentences should be embraced for their writing versatility.
As for actions that happen, you really need details, adverbs, thesaurus.com, and lots and lots of practice! There's a huge gap between "He quickly ran to the store," and "It was the post-apocalypse and the man sprinted out his home bat out of hell just to greedily hoard whatever was leftover of the bean sprout sales from the dilapidated supermarket." A note to be added, using too many adverbs or in general -ly words might weaken your writing.
Want gore? Actually make the scene obscurely vivid and horrendous. "The vermilion fluid he had coughed up dripped down to the sides of his jawline, and it looked as if the man was gradually turning into a monster himself. Some sort of force just loved to pull at his esophagus, kicking at the pipe and blowing the wind out of him. More blood was gagged up, turning inevitably blacker and blacker... matching the color of what was hell itself.."
Last note, "Thank you for reading my horror story. *smiley face*" instantly removes whatever fear you had from your reader. Just no.
This rant took longer than I expected.
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- Lance Wang
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