Soooo, I wrote the last scene of my story. And… well… it's supposed to be sad. It is supposed to tug at your heartstrings and make you feel the hopelessness of the situation. I've written it twice already, this is the second draft, and I want to know from an outward look, how can I make this even more sad? Or do you think this is sad enough.
I have some pretty general feedback that would add to the overall impact of the scene.
Try to reduce the use of adverbs. I only really noticed it in: "Thunder rumbled slightly" Maybe a bit nitpicky though
You could try to go a little deeper in the descriptions of how the character is feeling. For example instead of saying that she was near hypervenilation it would flow better if you described that in some way.
Filter words separate the reader from the character. "Her chest felt tight" would be more impactful if it said something like "her chest was tight". I recommend looking up filter words because, as the name suggests, they filter the reader's experience and make it feel less real in a way. I'm bad at explaining.
Overall, I think it would be a pretty impactful scene as long as the characters were likeable and well loved etc. Hopefully this helps a little
Yes it does help quite a bit! Thank you so much!
Honestly, I think it's pretty good. One thing that I would also add is your tendency to overuse ellipses. Ellipses can be fine when used at the right moment, but when they're overused they kind of lose their effect and it feels a little bit cheesy which is the opposite of what you'd want in this kind of scene.
Luckily though, there's other ways that you can still get that dramatic pause without ellipses.
One tip I saw is to get rid of the ellipses and just have the sentence on it's own.
So instead of this:
Little spatters of rain were hitting the ground and her. Freezing winds cut right through her as she raced along the top of the ridge.
Everyone…. Everyone was gone.
You'd have
Little spatters of rain were hitting the ground and her. Freezing winds cut right through her as she raced along the top of the ridge.
Everyone was gone.
Something about short sentences on their own like that really creates an impact (I wish I could find the original article where I found all this advice because it's explained so much better). You still get that dramatic pause but without using ellipses. In other places you could sub it out with a period or a comma. And honestly, in some places you don't even need that pause.
Anyways, that aside, I think you've done a good job at capturing the hopelessness of the situation. I noticed a couple more minor things but since this post is already getting long and I've already covered the main point and I'm tired I'll just leave it at that for now.
Thank you! I really appreciate the advice.