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 Review #4802905 |
 | Crown of Thorns: Chapter 1 (Intro)  [13+] A little taste of 50k novel project I'm working on  |
| (4.0)| Hi, I found this on "The Shameless "Plug" Page" , and thought I'd take moment to offer my thoughts on the writing with you.I'd like to mention that in some of my reviews you may see a word with a dotted underline like this. This is a spot in a sentence that I've marked for your attention. I've packed a comment within the notes that you can read simply by mousing over the word or phrase with this dotted underline. *** Opening *** I like a little bit of tension right from the gate, but I doesn't really hook me to want to read more. The first line is your one and only shot at really grabbing the reader's attention. The best first lines pull on a reader through emotion. While there is tension, there's no emotion. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ▼ A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens ▼ One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest by Ken Kesey ▼ A line in your writing that hooks, hard on me is the opening line of your 2nd paragraph. Crown of Thorns:Chapter 1 (intro) by Korosus92 ▼ *** Style and Voice ***  Reaching up with trembling hands to his temples, Henry rubbed them in circles as the pulsating throb could be felt under his fingertips The second half of this sentence is telling me he felt the throb rather than showing me through his eyes. Telling a reader leaves the story feeling drab and uninteresting because it lacks the vivid imagery to prime the imagination. As Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  says: Think of a story as a guided dream. A good way to accomplish this, is by avoiding weak words like feel, smell, taste, seems, etc., use action and vivid images to instead show the reader what's happening which I will make an example below.This line is pretty passive in its delivery and in the first paragraph I think it's a good idea to avoid as much passive voice as possible to get the reader and the momentum of the story going. Passive voice is a style of writing that is usually overly wordy, and has action landing on a subject, rather than the subject performing the action. This makes the entire first half of a sentence abstract, as the reader is left waiting for who or what the action is going to land on. Really, this sentence could be divided into two, in active voice, using less words and giving a better image to the reader: Passive Voice:Reaching up with trembling hands to his temples, Henry... ▼ Passive Voice and Telling:Henry rubbed them in circles as the pulsating throb could be felt under his fingertips. ▼ Using these examples you can restructure this sentence with Active Voice and better imagery:  Henry's hands trembled as he reached them to his temples. A pulsating throb pounded against his fingertips as he rubbed them in circles.Pushing himself off with an audible groan escaping him , Henry got to his feet and felt the familiar plush carpet that was warm and yet unremarkable as ever.Again, this is another line of Passive Voice mixed with telling verbiage. There's really not a whole lot of this in the writing so you seem to know what you're doing, but when it does show up, like this, it really stands out. The same method above can be used to fix this. I'm going to avoid all the formatting examples here and simply type what I would suggest as a restructure. Henry groaned as he pushed himself off the bed. The plush carpet tickled the soles of his feet with a familiar and unremarkable softness.He turned it to a decent temperature and began to splash water on his face, the distinct smell of city piping filled his nostrils.This sentence is another example of telling vs. showing that could be better explore more if you dug a little deeper into the key words I've marked. At first glance they appeared just as another boring aspect of himself. Yet there was a glint of depth deep within them. The structuring of these two sentences makes it all passive and abstract, and is granting the emphasis being on the statement At first glance because it's front and center in the sentence. Looking at the entirety of these two lines, this could flow much better and put the emphasis where it ought to be: his boring eyes. They appeared just as another boring aspect of himself at first glance, yet there was a glint of depth within them.This delivers the message quicker and puts emphasis on the boringness of his eyes, also segueing into the next sentence without any seams. *** Grammar *** Nothing that stood out. *** Typos *** With a annoyed exhale, Henry shifted himself*** Ending *** Not really an ending that I could see, I think there's a lot more to this story. *** Summary *** Overall, this is a well-executed writing. To me, so far, this doesn't necessarily read like a story at the moment, but more of a long description of your main character. Granted, I know its only a few paragraphs and maybe there's some conflict in this chapter later on. But as it stands at the moment, the conflict isn't there. What I can say, is Henry is well described, and I have a pretty good image of him. There's not an overabundance of faults in any particular category that I could find other than what I mentioned above. I will say, because of the method and voice you use throughout the narrative, being predominantly active voice, the times where there's a long sentence started with gerund phrasing and telling verbiage really stands out. Sadly, the few instances that it happens distracts me with a sequence of gray, uninteresting words in an otherwise distinctly vivid exposition. I think you have a handle on writing a narrative to keep a reader's imagination involved in the story, but I have included a couple of articles that discuss Active vs. Passive voice and Showing vs. Telling.
Both of these are terrific articles written by excellent writers. These can help you better understand the faults of both of these common mistakes. I hope you found this review helpful, and I thank you for sharing this writing.     My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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