[ SECRET POST #5169 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5169 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #740.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

(Cozy Werewolf Anon)

Most of the ones on the white side are reading purple prosey, like they're writers who are trying too hard. All of them though, are pretty much passive voice. They're telling stuff instead of showing. Some examples of how to fix this (and my head hurts so...)

"A scream rang out. Hip Hop music blasting through his over sided headphones almost made him miss it. Stopping his cursory inspection of..." what is he inspecting?

"Hello," Jen said answering the phone, her voice higher in pitch than normal. She didn't recognize the number and didn't have time for telemarketers." Okay, this one really depends on POV. Is this from the POV of Jen or who called Jen?

"Rain ran down obsidian walls, slowing or changing direction...." obsidian is glass so calling it jagged is not going to really WORK. Maybe if they're SLATE walls. -forehead rub- yes, I like ROCKS. And you don't want your obsidian to be JAGGED in any way. B/C OWWWW. Maybe they just meant black walls, but that's purple prose again.

The bottom two aren't really fixable with the info given.

"The waves lapped against the side of the ship."

'"You know, I'm pretty good at baking pie," Lisa said, slamming the plate of pie down in front of me.'

This next one is telling. Nothing entertaining going on here. It'd need a scene.

Again, sort of purple prose. I'm kind of betting unless this is a thriller, it's not where the story begins. It doesn't really hook me into anything.

What stopped Tom from retorting to Jack? I can't do anything without knowing what stopped Tom.

I mean, I don't know if you're picking up indie or picking up trad pubbed. Indie is your slush pile made visible or stuff that's published too soon b/c of 'Zon algorithms. I dunno what I'm trying to say other than I feel your pain and have gotten a LOT of Indie books I've back buttoned out of b/c they needed editing. And yeah, I've seen worse. Sigh.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh. Sometimes passive voice has its place and the whole "never tell if you can show" doesn't necessarily make things better. It's a nice general ground rule but you don't absolutely have to follow it every single time.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with the way you chose to rewrite the first two. I think, however, that the problem in the first may be more related to the clumsiness of the sentence... It does, as you said, depend largely on how deep the POV is, but the order in which facts are presented doesn't create a very coherent image in the reader's mind IMO

For the second, "agitated yet confused" suffers definitely from too much tell (also why 'yet'?), but I would be willing to bet that op considers "in a ___ tone" bad writing, though YMMV on that one XD

I deffo think that your re-writinf versions fix these issues too, though.