forum Opinions Please

Started January 28, 2018 by Mio

tune

(The following is something I wrote just a bit ago. I'm pretty happy with it. What do you all think?)

Her sleeves slip down her arms, revealing bruises, scratches, and small scars that were hidden to the world before. Her balance appears to be off, probably from spraining her leg in the earlier battle. In the middle of the red mark on her cheek, a thin crimson line slowly becomes less subtle. I move forward slightly, inspecting her face. The left half of it had been hidden by her hair, something I hadn’t really minded before. Now, the only thing covering it is her hand, which seems to move slightly, reminding me of how she traced the lines in the wood table yesterday.

Annalise takes a deep breath in and out, folding her arms and closing her eyes. She seems to be trying to regain her composure. I move to stand in front of her, tilting my head and looking down at her now fully uncovered face. My eyes widen a bit. A long scar, starting a bit above her eyebrow, follows diagonally through her eyebrow, barely missing the corner of her eye, and curves slightly, traveling the rest of the way, vertically, down the center of her cheek, stopping just as it gets under the chin. I raise a hand, barely holding her face, and tilt her head up a bit, starting to trace the scar and make sure it’s actually there.

Annalise’s eyes shoot open in surprise, as if she had forgotten I was here, and she shoves me away while taking a step back on her injured leg, nearly having fallen backwards into the floor. She would have, if I hadn’t quickly held her hands and pulled her towards me, causing her to nearly fall into my chest. But, she stops herself before she does, taking a moment to steady herself.

“Don’t!” She says sternly, covering the scar with her left hand.

She backs away some, slowly this time, before she turns and swiftly leaves to another room.

I like it but it's a lot of description. it gets tiresome after a while. how long can you describe this girl's injuries? its repetitive. because of the descriptiveness of the section, there are a few run-on sentences. if you're feeling kinda ernest hemingway-esque, leave it in, but as a general rule run-ons are lengthy and confusing. bogging down your writing is never a good idea. u say slowly, slightly, and nearly often. imo the less adverbs and adjectives, the better. Otherwise I like it. good luck

@writelikeyourerunningoutoftime Ok, I understand the using slowly, slightly, and nearly too much. Other than that, I'm describing different parts of her, so I don't find it repetitive. If I don't describe it now, then later she'll be doing something and "Oh, where did that injury come from? It wasn't there two seconds ago." In this case, I wanted to describe all of this to this detail. It's in first person point of view. Someone is looking at Annalise and seeing all of these little things.

And, there are no intentional run on sentences. I think a good example of what you see as a run-on is:
"A long scar, starting a bit above her eyebrow, follows diagonally through her eyebrow, barely missing the corner of her eye, and curves slightly, traveling the rest of the way, vertically, down the center of her cheek, stopping just as it gets under the chin."
'A long scar follows diagonally through her eyebrow and curves slightly' is the main sentence. I did mis-punctuate, but it is a rough copy. I'll admit that I add too many interjections into the sentence though. And, that makes it seem like a run on sentence…

Look, this is going to sound really rude, but there's no way to word it to where it doesn't. It's hard for me to take your advice over run-ons and grammar, because you can't even be bothered to do it yourself when writing a simple paragraph critique. You're using text speak (at least twice) like "u" or "imo", which I didn't understand at first. Most of your sentences aren't capitalized, but there aren't any run-ons. I'll give you that. But, you did use the wrong variation of "it's" once, and absolutely none of it is punctuated correctly. It made it all very hard to understand.

Oh, sorry. I always slip into text speech on the internet. My bad! I love descriptive paragraphs, I was just saying that the narrative seemed just a liiiiitle bogged down by it. Don't get me wrong. This is a good paragraph. You asked my opinion so I gave it. Really long rambling descriptive sentences are a stylistic choice that some people just don't like reading through. People might just skim the surface and not really read everything you've written because of the length. It's great description! It's just a lot at once.

@writelikeyourerunningoutoftime All's good. I'm sorry if I sounded rude. I'm not used to text speak, because I've trained myself to always write in full sentences. (Mainly because, I have a spelling problem that I'm trying to shake. It just means twice the fun while my friends are trying to read my texts.) I did ask for your opinion, and I appreciate it. You are definitely right about my over use of the same few adjectives for everything. And, no not everyone likes long descriptive sentences. Sometimes I get a bit carried away and want to describe every little thing I see.

I liked reading it! It was a bit short, so I can't really comment on the writing style overall. I think that yes, you used run-on sentences, but that yes, it was a specific style that I thought worked well for this scene. I would say maybe you should consider changing it up (you probably do, I don't know), so that your writing isn't always stylized, if that kind of makes sense? Not saying it was bad here though, it would just get old after awhile.

I do have a few questions out of general curiosity. Did she hide that long scar with her hair this whole time? How long have the two of them known each other? Has the other person never seen that scar before?

Lots of the time scars (and secret ones) are kinda cliché, but I think it depends on where she got it and what it means and stuff. I like clichés in general as long as they're still interesting or written well. thumbs up

Keep it up! You've definitely got talent!

@Masterkey Thank you, and I understand what you mean. I do change it up though.
This is a very rough draft of the story, so the two characters haven't known each other very long. (I think it's been a whole day maybe…)And, she does always have her her pulled in front of it, where she just doesn't like all the questions about it. It brings up a pretty bad memory, and it is awfully cliché. I haven't written a character with a scar like this before, and I thought it'd be a nice touch. Despite how others may see it. When the narrator saw Annalise for the first time, he didn't see any of these scars. He thought for a second that she could even be royalty due to her looks. So, when he see's it, he's in great disbelief at the battle before hand and at all the scars. He is especially surprised by the one on her face, so he follows it with his thumb to check if it's real. Annalise is a very short, beautiful young lady. She's not the type that looks like she would get in any sort of trouble. It all sounds a bit too fast paced, but it's how I see it in my head. I might rewrite the whole thing to slow it down.

Oh, so the narrator's name is not just narrator. I couldn't think of one when I started writing. I wanted it to start with L but also be kind of regal, like Annalise. So far, I've just been calling him L. It might just stick.

It's not a reference to Death Note; I've not even seen the anime. I just wanted to clarify that, because fandoms are everywhere…

Okay cool. I think it came across that he was super surprised, and the scene makes MORE sense knowing that they haven't known each other very long.

It took me forever to name my protagonist, and I called him X since I was 12. Five years later I FINALLY pick a name for him, but nothing ever really felt right BESIDES X. Even my family can't stop calling him X. So his first name is X, and his middle name is Asher. The X will forever remain a mystery–everyone will just call him Asher.

@Masterkey That's cool. It's sort of like your own personal thing for you as the author.

Yeah, I'm glad I got to keep the X. ^.^