Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Last week, I challenged my loyal blog readers to do a one-paragraph summary of Star Wars. Several of you took up the challenge (this is hard!) and posted summaries.

In my opinion, the best summary was posted by Ben:

A young farm boy, who dreams of adventure, lives in a galaxy torn by rebellion and war. He is pushed into the conflict after his aunt and uncle are killed by the Empire for the droids he possesses. After joining a smuggler for cheap transportation, the boy and his mentor are captured by the Empire on their way to rescue a princess and, in the ensuing struggle, the mentor sacrifices himself. The boy and the smuggler save the princess and think they have escaped, only to learn the Empire has followed them to the Rebel base, intending to destroy the planet. Aided by his companions and the last lesson of his fallen mentor, the boy must exploit the hidden weakness of the Empire’s destructive weapon to preserve the Rebellion.

Randy sez: One thing I should have mentioned is that in a one-paragraph summary, you have enough space to use the names of the characters. In your one-sentence summary, you generally don’t have that luxury, but when you expand to a full paragraph, you have room for maybe 3 or 4 character names.

Let’s analyze Ben’s paragraph for the component parts:

Sentence 1 (The story setup): Ben gives us the primary character, “A young farm boy, who dreams of adventure.” He also gives the setting, “a galaxy torn by rebellion and war.” I’d say he scores well on both counts. This is a good solid setup.

Sentence 2 (The first disaster): Ben nails this one, “his aunt and uncle are killed by the Empire”. He also shows how this disaster leads to the first major turning point in the story, “He is pushed into the conflict.” The purpose of the first disaster is to commit the lead character irrevocably to the story. Up until Luke finds his aunt and uncle dead, he can back out of the story. But once he finds Beru and Owen dead, he knows that HE’S DEAD TOO unless he fights back. So he’s committed; he joins forces with Obi-wan Kenobi, knowing that he can never back out.

Sentence 3 (The second disaster): Ben again gets it exactly right, “the mentor sacrifices himself.” This is common in heroic stories. The mentor is there for part of the story, but then vanishes, leaving the lead character to swim in deep waters alone. From here on, Luke must fight his battles more and more on his own.

Sentence 4 (The third disaster): Ben gets this critical disaster right again, “Empire has followed them to the Rebel base, intending to destroy the planet.” The purpose of the third disaster is to force the end-game. In Luke’s case, he no longer has a choice about taking the battle to the enemy, because the enemy is taking the battle to him and to all the rebels. The stakes have been raised as high as they can go. After this final battle, if the Rebellion loses, it can’t fight another day because all its leaders will be destroyed.

Sentence 5 (The ending): Ben summarizes the ending here, “the boy must exploit the hidden weakness of the Empire’s destructive weapon to preserve the Rebellion.” This holds back just a little bit. It’s really OK here to tell the ending.

Overall, an excellent job, Ben! That is exactly the way you write a one-paragraph summary.

Here is the summary I wrote down on a piece of paper after my last blog. You’ll notice that it’s very similar to Ben’s, but I am using the names of the characters:

Luke Skywalker meets two mysterious droids who lead him to an old Jedi master, Obi-wan Kenobi. When Obi-wan asks him to help rescue Princess Leia, Luke refuses — until he finds his aunt and uncle murdered by Storm Troopers. Luke and Obi-wan join forces with Han Solo and Chewbacca to rescue the princess — at the cost of the old man’s life. Luke and his friends escape and journey to the rebel planet, where they learn that they have been tracked by the Death Star. In the final battle, Luke uses the Force and some help from his friends to destroy the Death Star.

One thing to note that both Ben and I did in our one-paragraph summaries is that we “back-loaded” the disasters to the very end of Sentences 2, 3, and 4. This maximizes their emotive punch. You will note that in my presentation of the ending, I tell the finale — “destroy the Death Star.” When you summarize your story for an editor or agent, they don’t want you to be coy about the ending. They want to know if it’s a happy ending or a sad ending or something else. They’ll be OK with either kind, but they don’t want you to write a great story that ends with a muddle ending that leaves the reader saying, “Huh?”

OK, whaddaya think? I have no delusions that my one-paragraph summary is perfect. Are there ways to make it better? Remember that small differences matter. As Mark Twain observed, the difference between the good word and the exactly right word is the difference between the lighting bolt and the lightning bug.

If you can see how to improve my one-paragraph summary, post a comment here.

In my last few blog entries, I challenged my loyal blog readers to write a one-sentence summary of the movie STAR WARS. Many of you responded, and I took some ideas from the best to sharpen my own summary of the movie.

My current favorite one-sentence summary is: “A young farm boy joins a princess in the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire.”

Several of my loyal blog readers have noted that all boys are young, and therefore “young farm boy” is redundant and therefore the sentence should start out, “A farm boy…”

I am going to politely disagree here. “Young” is pulling its own weight here. I have looked at the sentence with and without it, and I think it works better with it. So I’m leaving it in, even if it’s redundant.

But now let’s move on. Perfection is not something we’ll ever achieve. If we’ve got an editor or agent interested in this one-sentence summary, they’ll want to hear more. Not a lot more, but a bit more. My bet is that they’ll want to know the Three-Act Structure for this story. You can learn more about Three-Act Structure in my Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 courses, but I’ll assume you know what this structure is.

I prefer to present the Three Act Structure in a five-sentence summary, as follows:

Act 1: A setup sentence to set the stage, and then a second sentence that tells the first major disaster (which ends Act 1).

Act 2: A sentence that tells the second major disaster (which happens at roughly the midpoint of the second act). Another sentence that tells the third major disaster (which happens at the end of Act 2 and forces the ending.)

Act 3: A final sentence which explains how the story resolves.

There you have it. Three Acts. Five sentences. Three diasters. It’s really not all that complicated.

Now your homework assignment, for those who want to play, is this: Write a one-paragraph summary of STAR WARS. Use five sentences to tell me the setup, the three disasters, and the ending.

I’ll do the same and we’ll compare notes in a day or two.

Post your one-paragraph summary here in a comment.

Yesterday, I challenged my loyal blog readers to write a one-sentence summary of Star Wars. I promised to pick a winner today.

Now it should be obvious that there is no objective way to do this, just as there is no objective way to rate fiction. We all know that some fiction is fantastic, some is good, some is mediocre, and some is tripe. It’s just that one person’s “fantastic” is another person’s “tripe.”

So the goal here is to learn to write the kind of one-sentence summaries that are going to get the attention of editors and agents. Do that and it won’t matter whether Randy thinks your sentence is any good.

With that enormous load of caveats firmly in mind, let me tell you what I think makes a good one-sentence summary.

First, it should be short. The reason–so you can memorize it easily, say it quickly, and have the editor/agent understand it immediately.

Second, it should be neither too vague nor too precise. The reason–too vague is unlikely to excite anyone; too precise is automatically going to be too long to say on that pesky elevator.

Third, it needs to connect emotively. The reason–because the main purpose of fiction is to give the reader a powerful emotional experience, so the one-sentence summary needs to make some sort of a promise as to what sort of emotional experience is going to be delivered.

Given all that, here is the one-sentence summary that I wrote yesterday in one minute. It’s not the best possible, but it gets the job done: “A young farm boy joins the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire.”

Does this meet the requirements I gave above? Yes.

First, it’s only 11 words, 7 of which are one-syllable words. So this is easy to remember and say quickly.

Second, the sentence is neither vague nor precise. We have “a young farm boy” which tells us what category of person we’ve got, without too many details. We’ve also got a “Rebellion” (capitalized, which tells us something already) which defines what kind of story this is. And we’ve got a “Galactic Empire” which tells us enough to be going on with, but doesn’t tell us all the boring details.

Third, there are several emotive buttons I am punching here. “Young farm boy” immediately punches the “underdog” button. “Rebellion” (capitalized) tells us that there’s a war on, and that the good guys are the ones rebelling. Both of these punch all sorts of emotive buttons in humans. “Galactic Empire” tells us that we have a vast, overwhelmingly powerful evil opponent.

So my sentence is quite serviceable, and I wouldn’t be ashamed to use it to pitch this story, if I were a young George Lucas trying to get this movie made.

But can we do better? The answer, I think, is yes we can. I read through all the ideas posted by my loyal blog readers, and one of them immediately jumped out at me, posted by Destiny. Here is Destiny’s winning entry: “A farm boy journeys with a jedi master to rescue a rebel princess and fight against the empire.”

This is 18 words, which is a bit long, but what I like here is that Destiny is punching some more emotive buttons: “Jedi master” connotes some sort of mystical force to be used; “rebel princess” is terrific, by connoting war, politics, and love all in one shot (any time there’s a princess in a story, it’s very likely to be a love story).

I also take note of runner-up Marcus Goodyear’s entry: “A young farm boy joins the rebellion against an evil empire–armed with secret plans, quirky robots, and a mysterious connection to the Force.”

You will note that Marcus and I independently came up with almost identical wording for the first 11 words. The only differences are: I capitalized “Rebellion” and Marcus didn’t; I called it “the Galactic Empire” and Marcus called it “an evil empire.” I’ll discuss a little later why I prefer “Galactic” to “evil”.

The problem with Marcus’s sentence is that it went on to add more details. In my view, those should be saved for later. When the editor or agent says, “Oooh, that sounds cool! Tell me more!”–that’s the time to bring in the secret plans, droids, and Force.

Let me commend a few other entries. Ben suggested this one: “A farm boy in a far away galaxy joins a courageous Rebellion against an evil Empire.”

Randy sez: Again, this is a very strong sentence. I like the “far away galaxy” because we all know how emotively powerful that phrase was in the opening seconds of the movie–so much so that it’s become a buzz-phrase. There are two issues I have with Ben’s sentence: the words “courageous” and “evil”. I prefer not to make value judgments in the one-sentence summary. The reason is because this is “telling” when you really want to let the editor/agent draw their own conclusions on who is courageous and who is evil. People don’t like to be told; they like to figure it out.

I also liked Sean’s entry: “A farm boy crosses the galaxy to rescue a princess from the man who killed his father.”

Randy sez: This is strong and short and punches many emotive buttons. But it’s missing one thing. Remember how Star Wars made you feel? That there is an enormous, huge Galaxy controlled by an evil Empire? The blackness and vastness of space on the screen gives you an overpowering desire to join the Rebellion and battle monstrous evil. Sean’s entry isn’t capturing the bigness of the plot. Star Wars is about more than the man who killed Luke’s father; it’s about a galaxy’s freedom from oppression.

Carrie’s entry also caught my eye, just because it chose to focus on someone other than Luke: “A dark mystic pursues a farm boy who possesses blueprints of a planet-destroying weapon.”

Randy sez: It sometimes works better to write a one-sentence summary about the villain of the story. In the case of Star Wars, I think it works better to focus on the hero. HOWEVER, I applaud Carrie for trying something out of the ordinary. That is always a good thing. Don’t just try one idea! Try a bunch! Try weird things that you don’t think will work. You can always reject them if they’re not as good. But you might learn something.

Having said all that, can we improve my original one-sentence summary? I think we can. Here’s my next cut at it: “A young farm boy joins a princess in the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire.”

This is now 14 words instead of my original 11, but it adds one new emotive button–the princess. That is good because it broadens the appeal. If I can revert to highly sexist and misleading categories, this changes the story from a story for “boys” into a story for “both boys and girls.” You are all smart enough to know that gender stereotypes are frequently wrong but often have a grain of truth. You are all also smart enough to see that grain of truth here and not waste our time attacking those pesky stereotypes, which I’m sure we all despise.

The fact is that Star Wars had broad appeal–to men, women, rich, poor, old, young. It had action and SF and romance and mysticism. The one-sentence summary that I have given above captures all of that except the mystical element. I don’t know if it’s possible to squeeze the Force into the one-sentence summary. In my view, sometimes less is more.

Any comments, suggestions, ideas? Can we improve this one-sentence summary any further? Do you see any problems I’ve not noticed?

Go ahead and post a comment here if you think we can. Next week, we’ll expand this one-sentence summary out to a one-paragraph summary.

See ya then!

It’s a whole new year, and I hope my loyal blog readers have staggered through the holidays without damage. 2008 was in many ways an awful, terrible, no-good, very bad year. And in other ways it was perfectly fine. But that was then; this is now. Whether 2008 was a good year or a bad year for you, we can choose to make 2009 better. We can take action to make it better.

For the past few months, we’ve been looking at some tactical issues in the craft of writing fiction. I’d now like to switch gears and spend some time talking about how to analyze your novel.

Sooner or later, you’ll need to do exactly that. Some writers prefer to do the analysis before they write the first draft, and that’s fine. Some writers prefer to do the analysis after the first draft, and that’s also fine. You need to find what works for you and work that way. There are many roads to publishing nirvana. Find yours.

As an example of how to do this, let’s look at a story that I think we’re all familiar with: Star Wars. If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it and watch it. It’s part of the lexicon of virtually all writers. It’s a fine example of the Hero’s Journey. And it’s just plain fun, even if you don’t like science fiction.

The first step I take in analyzing any story is to try to summarize it in one sentence. The goal here is to get the Big Picture. What’s the story really about? A one-sentence summary is what some people call the “elevator pitch”–it’s what you’d tell an editor or agent if you were both going up one floor and she asked you, “What’s your novel about?”

You have five seconds to make an elevator pitch, so it needs to be good. It needs to capture the essence of your story. It needs to give the editor or agent enough information to make one of two decisions:
1) This isn’t for me.
2) I’d like to know more.

Door Number 1 is more common. Let’s face it–no story is going to appeal to every reader, and it won’t appeal to every editor or agent either. But every story will appeal to some reader. Your goal is to get published, and so you need to find one agent and then one editor who choose Door Number 2. Just one.

So here’s your assignment for today: Summarize Star Wars in one sentence. (Just Episode 4, not the entire series. Episode 4 was the first Star Wars movie made, and if it hadn’t been good, there would have been no others.)

Post your one-sentence summary of Star Wars here as a comment. Tomorrow, I’ll choose the best of the lot and compare it to the one I’ve already cooked up. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of you has a better summary than mine, because my loyal blog readers are well known to be among the most intelligent people on the planet.

Here are some example one-sentence summaries to get you started:

Harry Potter And The Sorcere’s Stone: A boy wizard begins training and must battle for his life with the Dark Lord who murdered his parents.

The Lord of the Rings: A hobbit learns that his magic ring is the key to saving Middle Earth from the Dark Lord.

The Clan of the Cave Bear: A young human girl in Ice Age Europe struggles to survive in her adoptive clan of Neanderthals.

The Pillars of the Earth: A stonemason in 12th century England battles to build his life’s dream, a cathedral.

Outlander: A young nurse searches for the way home after time-traveling from 1945 to 1743 Scotland.

The Time Traveler’s Wife: A young girl grows up in the company of a strange time-traveling visitor who appears and disappears at random.

Pride and Prejudice: A young English woman from a peculiar family is pursued by an arrogant and wealthy young man.

Ender’s Game: A young boy is brutally trained in Battle School to be the general who will save humanity from alien invaders.

The DaVinci Code: A Harvard symbologist and a female French cryptographer solve the puzzle of the Holy Grail in a race against death across Europe.

The Firm: A brilliant young lawyer gets a fabulous job at a firm that is a cover for a Mafia money-laundering operation.

The Man From St. Petersburg: In 1914, a Russian anarchist tries to assassinate the aristocrat who is negotiating his country’s entrance into World War I.

The Hunt For Red October: A Russian sub captain leads the Soviet navy on a merry chase while he tries to hand over the latest Soviet submarine to the Americans.

Some guidelines:
* Shorter is better
* Tell only the most important piece of the story
* Focus on one or two characters
* Don’t name the characters

OK, now it’s your turn. Post your one-sentence summary of Star Wars here and earn eternal fame and glory!

In recent weeks, I’ve been critiquing selections of novels posted by my loyal blog readers. Today will be the last of these for a while. I think it’s time to move on to something new in 2009, and I have some plans for that.

Today, we’ll look at six paragraphs submitted by Mark Goodyear, who was in my mentoring group last spring at the Mount Hermon conference:

Here’s something from a revision I’ve been working on. I’m especially interested in how MRUs work when the motivations and reactions occur through dialog.

=========================================

“I haven’t been to Decoration since my parents died, Odysseus,” John said.

Odysseus was John’s dog, and John was drunk.

“Every year now, for seven years, I drag out this cheap tent,” he motioned to the wad of polyester flapping in the bed of his truck. “And I tell myself, ‘This year.’ This year I’m going to Decoration.”

The dog was a mottled black and white mutt. Medium-sized, athletic, and just big enough to make a person grunt when she sat on you. She thought she was a lapdog, but she wasn’t dumb. For instance, she knew better than to sit on her owner when he was driving in the middle of the night on a country road.

“I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself, right? Crying about my parents every year same time. Promising myself this year I’ll get over it. This year I’ll go out to the cemetery like we always did.”

John took a curve too fast, and the tires squealed. Odysseus whimpered on the passenger’s seat and trembled slightly like dogs do sometimes when they are scared or cold or nervous.

Randy sez: This is near the beginning of Mark’s very promising zombie novel. John and and his dog get killed early on in the story and become zombies, doomed to roam the earth until . . .

No, I won’t tell any more. What I’ve said so far would be the first sentence of the back cover copy for the novel, so I haven’t given away anything.

I’m going to guess that this is the new opening for the novel. It’s a pretty solid opening. Remember that at the very beginning of a novel, the author often needs to “tell” more and “show” less than he would once the novel is rolling. The question is always, “How much should you show and how much should you tell?” As we saw a couple of months ago, JK Rowling opted to start out with a full page of “telling” in Book 1 of her Harry Potter series. She seems to have done all right.

My own rule of thumb is to do as little telling as possible, but no less. Let’s look at Mark’s paragraphs and see if we can reduce the amount of telling:

Paragraph 1: “I haven’t been to Decoration since my parents died, Odysseus,” John said.

Randy sez: This is a good strong opening. It tells us immediately that John has a goal for this weekend — to go to Decoration (whatever that is). It also gives us a wee bit of backstory: John’s parents are dead. And it also raises the whole topic of death early, which makes good sense in a zombie novel.

It’s a nice start. The one immediate qualm I have is using Odysseus’s name in dialogue. People don’t actually do that too often in real dialogue with real people. When they do, there’s usually some emotive undercurrent — anger, disapproval, or whatnot.

HOWEVER, people do often do it with their pets. I certainly use my cats’ names quite often when I talk to them. The reason is that cats don’t understand English, but they do understand their name, so when you use their name, they react to that, and you feel like they’re reacting to what you said, even though they are really just reacting to the potential for more kibble.

We don’t know that Odysseus is a dog just yet, but we will in the next paragraph . . .

Paragraph 2: Odysseus was John’s dog, and John was drunk.

Randy sez: This is straight “telling.” Mark tells us that Odie is a dog and that John is drunk. There’s nothing particularly wrong with “telling” so early in the story. But is it possible to “show” this? The answer is yes, it’s possible. One way to do it is to use an action tag in paragraph 1 that shows both the dog and the drunkenness. I’ll show you a quick attempt at this after we analyze everything.

Paragraph 3: “Every year now, for seven years, I drag out this cheap tent,” he motioned to the wad of polyester flapping in the bed of his truck. “And I tell myself, ‘This year.’ This year I’m going to Decoration.”

Randy sez: This has the feel of wedging in a lot of information — maybe more than a real person would normally give in dialogue. I think it could be trimmed. Whether it should be is a judgment call.

Paragraph 4: The dog was a mottled black and white mutt. Medium-sized, athletic, and just big enough to make a person grunt when she sat on you. She thought she was a lapdog, but she wasn’t dumb. For instance, she knew better than to sit on her owner when he was driving in the middle of the night on a country road.

Randy sez: This is all telling, but it’s nicely done, so I say Mark should keep it. I can see this dog. Can’t smell it, but that can easily be rectified.

Paragraph 5: “I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself, right? Crying about my parents every year same time. Promising myself this year I’ll get over it. This year I’ll go out to the cemetery like we always did.”

Randy sez: The only issue I see here is that so far, John is the only person doing the acting, so it’s starting to feel like a monologue. We need Odysseus to respond a bit. She’s a mutt, but she’s still able to respond. I’d like to see her do so.

Paragraph 6: John took a curve too fast, and the tires squealed. Odysseus whimpered on the passenger’s seat and trembled slightly like dogs do sometimes when they are scared or cold or nervous.

Randy sez: This is a mix of John’s action and Odie’s reaction. In the language of Motivation-Reaction Units, the first clause is a Reaction and the rest of the paragraph is Motivation. The main issue I see is that it’s really telling. I’d like to see this better. “Taking a curve too fast” is narrative summary.

Now let me see if I can tweak all of the above slightly:

“I haven’t been to Decoration since my parents died, Odie.” John took another long pull of his Heineken and wedged it on the pickup seat next to his dog.

Odysseus was a mottled black and white mutt. Medium-sized, athletic, and just big enough to make you grunt when she sat on you. She thought she was a lapdog, but she wasn’t dumb enough to sit on anyone’s lap while driving in the middle of the night on a country road. Odie looked up at John with her big brown eyes that said she wanted to hear all this again for the eighty-fourth time.

“I probably shouldn’t be so hard on myself, right? Crying about my parents every year same time. Promising myself this year I’ll get over it. This year I’ll go out to the cemetery like we always did.”

Odie leaned against John and licked his hand. The reek of damp fur washed over him.

John realized halfway into the curve that he was taking it too fast. He eased off on the gas and gripped the wheel with sodden determination, letting the squealing tires bleed off speed. Not bad for a half-sloshed guy at midnight.

Odysseus whimpered on the passenger’s seat and trembled slightly like dogs do sometimes when they are scared or cold or nervous.

Randy sez: OK, I’m trying hard not to inject too many of my own words here, since I’d rather try to work with Mark’s original. Did you miss Paragraph 3, which I cut out entirely? If so, where would it fit most naturally?

Great news! I just heard a few minutes ago from Richard Mabry, one of my former mentees, that he’s sold his novel to a publisher! Richard was in a mentoring clinic that I taught a few years ago at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Conferences are a great place to help advance your career. I don’t think I’ve talked much about the mentoring clinics here in the past, but those are wonderful “finishing schools” for writers who are getting close to publication. I can immediately think of five writers who I’ve mentored in these clinics in the past few years who’ve gotten their novels published: Debbie Fuller Thomas, Julie Carobini, Katie Cushman, Shawn Grady, and now Richard Mabry. There may be one or two others, but my memory is fallible. I had a very good crew in the clinic I ran last April, and I expect to see books published by several of them in coming years.

It’s been about a week since I last blogged, thanks to those pesky holidays. We’ve been discussing Motivations and Reactions for some time, and I’ve been critiquing samples put forward by my loyal blog readers.

Today, I’d like to move forward to critique the next submission posted here by Ivye, who provided this context for the passage: “In 1453 Edirne, young Sultan Mehmed is watching as his Hungarian renegade caster supervises the casting of “the biggest cannon ever”.”

With that preamble, let’s look at the six paragraphs:

From the liquid iron came a glare that caught the eye. It was pleasant to look at, and Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light.

“Don’t stare at the iron, my Sultan,” Urban had been instructed how to address the sovereign, but his rough Turkish betrayed him now and then into forbidden imperatives. “It is beautiful, but it makes you blind.”

Mehmed blinked just once, and lowered his gaze on a drawing of the gun’s breech. Urban had been right, as was to be expected from a man of his calling: after staring at the white-hot iron, the brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. Lest the Hungarian, the dragoman and the officers of the retinue should notice, Mehmed shoved the drawing off the table, and it fell to the ground in a roll.

“What I want to know is whether this gun of yours will pull down the walls of Qostantiniya,” he said, and he suppressed a smile thinking how far the pretextous question was from being either idle or false.

Urban thoughtfully drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once,” he slowly explained. “This one,” and he nodded towards the huge empty cast, “is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time. This is no culverin. You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. May be the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

“What is the place like?” cut in Mehmed, hoping that both the question’s urgency and his voice’s trembling would be lost in the din. He had suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. He had known it all the time and never thought of questioning him.

Let’s look at each of these in turn to see if we can make them better.

Paragraph 1: From the liquid iron came a glare that caught the eye. It was pleasant to look at, and Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light.

Randy sez: As written, this is one and a half sentences of Motivation plus half a sentence of Reaction. I have two recommendations:

* I’d like to see the description of the molten iron be a little more memorable. I gather that it’s beautiful, but I’d like to SEE that it’s beautiful. That might take two or three sentences to really get across.

* The phrase “Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light” makes it sound to me like this is a habit that he’s developed over time. It feels like he’s been gazing at molten iron often enough that he knows that he likes it. But in the context, I’m not sure that’s what is intended. I suspect this is his first time to look at it. I’m not sure that we need Mehmed in this paragraph at all. The reader will know that Mehmed is the POV character, so it’s not necessary to inject him here. So I’d suggest just showing us the iron in a truly memorable way. Then the whole paragraph would be a single Motivation.

Paragraph 2: “Don’t stare at the iron, my Sultan,” Urban had been instructed how to address the sovereign, but his rough Turkish betrayed him now and then into forbidden imperatives. “It is beautiful, but it makes you blind.”

Randy sez: This is more Motivation, this time as dialogue from the Hungarian cannon-maker Urban. I think it should be trimmed down just a bit. The comment about using forbidden imperatives is interesting, but it slows things down. Might it not work better to have Urban actually avoid those forbidden imperatives? I’m not exactly sure how this should be done in Turkish, but I’ll bet Ivye does. Showing us with a suitable bit of dialogue would immerse the reader more deeply in the Storyworld.

Paragraph 3: Mehmed blinked just once, and lowered his gaze on a drawing of the gun’s breech. Urban had been right, as was to be expected from a man of his calling: after staring at the white-hot iron, the brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. Lest the Hungarian, the dragoman and the officers of the retinue should notice, Mehmed shoved the drawing off the table, and it fell to the ground in a roll.

Randy sez: I think this could be tightened a bit with no loss. Also, I’m not certain how the others would notice that Mehmed’s vision is blurred, since they can’t see what he sees. So I’d recommend slimming this paragraph down considerably. Note that the middle sentence is arguably a Motivation in the middle of a Reaction paragraph, although there are ways to revise it to make it more of a Reaction. But I don’t think it’s particularly important here. It might be good to insert some sort of emotive response here, if he’s worried about his eyesight being permanently damaged. That, a reader can identify with!

Mehmed blinked and lowered his gaze to a drawing of the gun’s breech. The brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. He shoved the drawing off the table.

Paragraph 4: “What I want to know is whether this gun of yours will pull down the walls of Qostantiniya,” he said, and he suppressed a smile thinking how far the pretextous question was from being either idle or false.

Randy sez: I don’t have enough context to understand the final clause here, so I’m not really understanding what’s going through Mehmed’s head right now. I’m assuming the reader will understand. So my only comment is that I don’t think “pretextous” is a word. Also, I’m going to assume that Qostantiniya is the Turkish spelling of Constantinople. I rather like this spelling. It’s fun to learn the names of places in the language of origin.

Paragraph 5: Urban thoughtfully drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once,” he slowly explained. “This one,” and he nodded towards the huge empty cast, “is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time. This is no culverin. You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. May be the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

Randy sez: I would eliminate the adverbs here: “thoughtfully” and “slowly”. I like the description of Urban’s face, which shows me that he’s been in the cannon-making business for a while. I would substitute the action tag you already have for “explained”. I think the paragraph is too long. The easiest way to break it up would be to insert the unasked question that he answers. So maybe something like this:

Urban drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once.” He nodded towards the huge empty cast “This one is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time.”

Mehmed leaned forward. “Yes, but how fast–”

“This is no culverin,” Urban said. “You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. Maybe the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

Paragraph 6: “What is the place like?” cut in Mehmed, hoping that both the question’s urgency and his voice’s trembling would be lost in the din. He had suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. He had known it all the time and never thought of questioning him.

Randy sez: The key word here is the word “had” in the phrase “he had suddenly realised.” Whenever you see the word “had,” you should ask whether you’ve got something out of order. In this case, I think you have. Show us that realization first, then show us the dialogue that it prompts. So it might read better to reorder things like this:

Mehmed suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. Mehmed fought to keep his voice from trembling. “What is the place like?”

This past week, I have been in the final throes of bug-fixing on a software product I’m working on. Looks like I’ve beaten the one remaining major bug into submission at last. In my last blog post, I did some rather minor rearrangement of a short section of a scene submitted by Lynda. Before moving on to critique the next submission, I’d like to respond to a few of the comments:

Daniel wrote:

I think two commenters said that this should be broken up into separate paragraphs based on the MRUs. I haven’t read Swain yet (it’s in my Amazon wish list for a Christmas present) but is this a hard and fast rule? Most of what everyone submitted including my own was not so strict. So, is this more of a rule or more of a guideline?

Randy sez: The only hard and fast rule is that there is only one hard and fast rule, namely this one. I don’t know of any rule in writing that can’t be broken somewhere, sometime, somehow.

So all those writing rules you learn in writing conferences or books or even on my blog should be considered (like the Pirate’s Code) as mere “guidelines.” If a segment works, then it works, so don’t mess with it.

There were a couple of issues that I had with Lynda’s submission. First, it felt a little fuzzy. It was just a little out of focus, and I couldn’t quite see why until I analyzed it using those pesky Motivation Reaction Units. One reason that I emphasize MRUs so much is that they are such a powerful tool for figuring out why a segment is out of focus.

You will notice that I violated the rule in the first paragraph of my suggested rewrite for Lynda. The reason is that it just worked better to put the Motivation and the Reaction in the same sentence. So I put them that way.

But there was a second issue that I had with Lynda’s work that I haven’t mentioned yet: The paragraphs seemed to me too long and too uniform. My eye looked at these large blocks of text and complained that this was going to be hard reading.

Luckily, the MRU analysis sugested how to break up those long paragraphs. The new rendition I suggested has some very short paragraphs (where the action is a bit quicker) and some longer paragraphs (where there’s more description). This is what you want–more variety in the paragraph sizes.

That brings us to Adam’s comments:

I was thinking the same thing as Daniel, actually. Although Randy’s version here is definitely better, I think following the MRU paragraph break rules this strictly leaves it with too many paragraphs. The paragraph breaks cease to mean anything.

I admit that breaking paragraphs by MRUs usually does improve a piece, but I don’t think it always works.

Randy sez: I’m going to disagree here (nicely, I hope). The paragraph breaks now actually DO mean something–they mean a switch between a Motivation and a Reaction. In Lynda’s original version, the paragraphing felt a bit haphazard to me. Now it’s much more logical. I purposely combined some of Lynda’s Motivations together into larger blocks (in their own paragraph) and I also combined some of her Reactions into their own blocks (again in their own paragraph). So I did a bit of unshuffling so that there were fewer Motivations and fewer Reactions, but now each was more appropriate to the pacing of the scene.

A word on pacing: When the pace of the scene needs to feel fast, you can create that illusion by using shorter paragraphs. When you want to slow the pace down, you create that illusion by using longer paragraphs. That is the logic behind the paragraphing that I used.

Lynda asked:

Question. If you have a sentence that reads: A therefore B, does it count as a motivation followed by a reaction? Or should it be divided?

Randy sez: Hmmm, I’m not sure. Can you give us an example?

If the sentence is merely the internal thought processes of the POV character, then I would say that it’s all one Reaction and should all be together. But that’s the only example I can think of right now that fits your question. So I don’t know if some other example might need a different splitting.

In general, a Motivation is objective and external to the POV character; a Reaction is subjective and internal to the POV character.

Hannah asked:

I have a question. Is it ever okay to start a scene with a reaction? Something sort of like this:

“Ow!” Ava glared and rubbed her arm. “Cole Travis, I know that was you!” She shook her head. Just like Cole to slam you with a dirt clod when you weren’t looking.

Randy sez: Yes, I think this works. I like to always start a scene by referring to the POV character, which means starting with a Reaction. So I’m good with this example you’ve given. It works. That’s the main thing.

OK, that’s enough on Lynda’s piece of writing. in our next blog, we’ll critique the submission by Ivye, which is set in 1453–a fine year, if there ever was one.

For those of my loyal blog readers who celebrate the US Thanksgiving holiday, Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you who don’t celebrate it, we’ll remember you as we stuff our faces with turkey (or some tofu imitation thereof), potatoes and/or yams, cranberries, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and numerous other goodies that we rarely eat.

In my last post, I first congratulated one of my loyal blog readers, Christina Berry, on the sale of her first novel. I invited her to leave a comment here if she wanted to share details (since I wasn’t quite sure how far along in the process the sale was). Christina left this comment:

I’m the not-so-mysterious “CB” and was thrilled to finally spill the beans about Moody contracting Undiscovered. It’s been a contract more than a month in the making, and remaining quiet ranks right up there with waterboarding for me.

I’ll be blogging about the particulars for the next week or so, but Moody was not the first house to say they had an offer on the way. However, they were the first to actually submit one to my agent and to negotiate a few tiny things. I will also be sharing something I asked my agent to do that will shock a few people.

I could go on and on, so I’ll close with a few intriguing notes: the title has already been changed–before the contract was signed, the slated release date is Sept. ‘09, and Randy’s statement of support was one of the most meaningful ones I read today!

Randy sez: You can read more details on Christina’s blog at AshBerryLane.net. Christina also has some projects she’s working on with her mother, Sherrie Ashcraft–hence the “AshBerry Lane” URL.

I note that Christina and Sherrie have a link to a recent novel, Tuesday Night At The Blue Moon, by Debbie Fuller Thomas. I had the fun of mentoring Debbie a few years ago in a mentoring clinic at a writing conference, and I immediately introduced her to a couple of agents because I knew she was going to be something special. Her writing is terrific.

Getting back to our last post, we had a look at a segment of writing posted by Lynda. I challenged my loyal blog readers to critique the segment first, because I think it’s a good exercise for you all. I know it’s good exercise for me, and I most always learn something when I critique something here.

To review, here is Lynda’s submission:

Rumbles roused Alejandro to half-consciousness. Overhead a succession of sky shattering cracks increased in intensity, each answered by waning reverberations. Something cold splattered against the back of his neck. His eyes flew open, and he stared into dank soil that emitted the moldy stink of decaying leaves. More droplets struck his neck, bled down, and seeped into the depression that cradled his face. He gathered his strength and rolled onto his back.

Excruciating pain shot through his arm. He screamed, clutched a wound, and writhed. The agony decreased by degrees to a fiery throb that radiated into his shoulder. He wiped his eyes and stared into the underside of a shrub that dripped with moisture.

Where was he? He reached up and parted some twigs. The jungle?

The forest around him steamed, producing an earthy cloud. Its heaviness hindered his breath and dimmed the light.

It would storm soon. He had to find shelter. Tangles of Passion Vines reached the forest floor. He grabbed a fist full, hoisted himself to a sitting position, and scanned the area. No outcrops. No hollow logs. His gaze went to a Giant Kapok that towered above adjacent trees. It would have to do. With his good arm, he dragged himself over the thickly mulched ground and hid amid the tree’s buttress folds. The jungle exploded with light. A crash followed. Then like the opening of a spillway, a torrent poured through the rainforest canopy.

He rested his head against the bryophyte encrusted bark. What happened? He’d been in his office at the university. How did he get here? And, what happened to his arm? Through the deluge, he studied the wind ravaged surroundings. Nothing seemed familiar. His temples pulsed with concentration. There had been soldiers. Running. Rifle fire. Pain. Terrible pain. He closed his eyes. The nursery appeared on the inside of his eyelids. And, the bloody bodies of Elena and their baby. Anguish crushed his heart, dwarfing the pain in his arm. His fault. Everything was his fault. He grabbed his face and sobbed, “Perdóname, Señor, Perdóname.”

Here is my analysis of the passage:

First, I think the setting is strong, the descriptions are vivid, and we have a character in some danger. It’s hard to tell just how much danger, because the real danger is experienced as backstory. We don’t know for certain whether Alejandro is now still in danger, though it seems very likely. However, the current story feels a bit out of focus. I don’t quite know what Alejandro wants right now, other than that he would presumably like to rewind the clock to before the soldiers came. Presumably, that goal will become clear shortly, so we won’t worry too much about it here.

Second, if this is the very beginning of the story, then I would suggest that a stronger beginning might be just before the soldiers arrived at his office at the university. Then we could live that bit in real-time, rather than seeing it in narrative summary here as backstory. But it may be that in Lynda’s novel, she’s already shown that. Lynda, can you comment on that?

A number of you made guesses at the number of Motivations and Reactions in this passage. Most of your guesses were different, and they ranged from 5+5 to 13+13. My own best guess is 8 Motivations and 8 Reactions, but I’m not really certain.

I think that my feeling of fuzziness in this passage is due to the lack of clarity in the MRUs. Here is how I broke out the Motivations and Reactions:

Paragraph 1: 3 M + 3 R
Paragraph 2: 2 M + 2 R
Paragraph 3: Continuation of the last R from previous paragraph
Paragraph 4: 1 M
Paragraph 5: 2 M + 2 R
Paragraph 6: 1 R

Might I suggest that the passage should be shuffled around a little to combine some of the one-sentence Motivations into larger units and some of the one-sentence Reactions into larger units? Also, I would recommend that the Motivations and Reactions be broken out into their own paragraphs.

Here is what I have in mind, in which I change almost no words but just shuffle things around a bit and delete a couple of sentences near the end. The first paragraph is a single sentence, part Motivation and part Reaction. But all other paragraphs are either all Motivation or all Reaction. It is now easy to count 7 Motivations and 7 Reactions (counting one of each in that first paragraph):

Rumbles roused Alejandro to half-consciousness.

Overhead a succession of sky shattering cracks increased in intensity, each answered by waning reverberations. Something cold splattered against the back of his neck. More droplets struck his neck, bled down, and seeped into the depression that cradled his face.

His eyes flew open, and he stared into dank soil that emitted the moldy stink of decaying leaves. He gathered his strength and rolled onto his back.

Excruciating pain shot through his arm.

He screamed, clutched a wound, and writhed.

The agony decreased by degrees to a fiery throb that radiated into his shoulder.

He wiped his eyes and stared into the underside of a shrub that dripped with moisture. Where was he? He reached up and parted some twigs. The jungle?

The forest around him steamed, producing an earthy cloud. Its heaviness hindered his breath and dimmed the light. Tangles of Passion Vines reached the forest floor.

It would storm soon. He had to find shelter. He grabbed a fist full of the vines, hoisted himself to a sitting position, and scanned the area.

No outcrops. No hollow logs. A Giant Kapok towered above adjacent trees.

It would have to do. With his good arm, he dragged himself over the thickly mulched ground and hid amid the tree’s buttress folds.

The jungle exploded with light. A crash followed. Then like the opening of a spillway, a torrent poured through the rainforest canopy.

He rested his head against the bryophyte encrusted bark. What happened? He’d been in his office at the university. How did he get here? And, what happened to his arm?

His temples pulsed with concentration. There had been soldiers. Running. Rifle fire. Pain. Terrible pain. He closed his eyes. The nursery appeared on the inside of his eyelids. And, the bloody bodies of Elena and their baby. Anguish crushed his heart, dwarfing the pain in his arm. His fault. Everything was his fault. He grabbed his face and sobbed, “Perdóname, Señor, Perdóname.”

What do you think? Is it clearer? Does the scene feel a little more focused?

Let me be clear that there is never just one right answer in writing fiction. There are a million good answers and a thousand extraordinary ones. So I am always cautious about changing a writer’s words or style. I prefer to just buff up a writer’s work so their individuality remains. It would be a dull world if everyone wrote like me — or like anyone else for that matter.

Last week, I resumed my regularly scheduled series of blog posts on critiquing the snippets of fiction posted here recently by my loyal blog readers.

We’ll continue that today, but I wanted to note that I heard today via the grapevine that another of my students/friends sold her first novel today. Her initials are CB, so if she wants to post the good news here in a comment, I’d love to hear all the details, or as many as she’s willing to share. Of course, she may be so busy celebrating that she forgets to read my blog, but let’s hope not.

I met CB at a conference a couple of years ago and have been following her progress with interest. I absolutely loved the sample chapters that she let me read last summer and I told her that she was very close to getting it published. So I’m thrilled to hear the news, because I really want to read the rest of the book.

In any event, today we’ll critique a submission by Lynda. Here it is:

Rumbles roused Alejandro to half-consciousness. Overhead a succession of sky shattering cracks increased in intensity, each answered by waning reverberations. Something cold splattered against the back of his neck. His eyes flew open, and he stared into dank soil that emitted the moldy stink of decaying leaves. More droplets struck his neck, bled down, and seeped into the depression that cradled his face. He gathered his strength and rolled onto his back.

Excruciating pain shot through his arm. He screamed, clutched a wound, and writhed. The agony decreased by degrees to a fiery throb that radiated into his shoulder. He wiped his eyes and stared into the underside of a shrub that dripped with moisture.

Where was he? He reached up and parted some twigs. The jungle?

The forest around him steamed, producing an earthy cloud. Its heaviness hindered his breath and dimmed the light.
It would storm soon. He had to find shelter. Tangles of Passion Vines reached the forest floor. He grabbed a fist full, hoisted himself to a sitting position, and scanned the area. No outcrops. No hollow logs. His gaze went to a Giant Kapok that towered above adjacent trees. It would have to do. With his good arm, he dragged himself over the thickly mulched ground and hid amid the tree’s buttress folds. The jungle exploded with light. A crash followed. Then like the opening of a spillway, a torrent poured through the rainforest canopy.

He rested his head against the bryophyte encrusted bark. What happened? He’d been in his office at the university. How did he get here? And, what happened to his arm? Through the deluge, he studied the wind ravaged surroundings. Nothing seemed familiar. His temples pulsed with concentration. There had been soldiers. Running. Rifle fire. Pain. Terrible pain. He closed his eyes. The nursery appeared on the inside of his eyelids. And, the bloody bodies of Elena and their baby. Anguish crushed his heart, dwarfing the pain in his arm. His fault. Everything was his fault. He grabbed his face and sobbed, “Perdóname, Señor, Perdóname.

Randy sez: I have some thoughts on this, but I’d like to see my loyal blog readers exercise their own critiquing skills on this passage. What is Lynda doing well here? What could she improve and why would it be an improvement?

As a first exercise, I’d recommend counting the number of Motivations and the number of Reactions in the passage. If you have never heard of Motivations and Reactions, now would be a marvelous time to read my summary article on them, “Writing the Perfect Scene.”

Let’s resume tomorrow, and I’d like to see some brilliant and incisive comments from you all. Post a comment with your thoughts!

Life is finally getting back to normal around here. Thanks to those of you who’ve been asking about my mother-in-law. She’s doing a bit better, and my wife has been back home for about the last week. My oldest daughter even persuaded us to paint the living room/dining room/halls on Saturday, which turned into a three-day project. And we still haven’t quite put the living room back together again, but I think we’ll finish on Saturday. Gotta love those “one-day projects.”

Today, I’d like to pick up where we left off a few weeks ago–critiquing those of you who were brave enough to post examples of your writing. We’ll mainly be looking for good structure with those pesky motivations and reactions. For those of you who read my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, you’ll know that yesterday’s issue had quite a long article on the virtues of “tactical writing.” And a big part of tactical writing is getting your motivations and reactions right.

Exactly right. Because the difference between “sorta right” and “exactly right” can be huge.

Today, I’ll critique Davalynn, who posted the following:

OK, here goes. Porter (with a flashlight) and James are 10-year-old cousins who have made their way into a forbidden tunnel beneath a small town. They hear a sudden noise coming from another opening in the tunnel:

“Be quiet and listen.” Porter switched off the light.

“What are you doing?” James’ voice chafed with fear as he groped for Porter in the darkness.

“Shut up and listen!” Porter took a deep breath of musty air and held it in as he tried to figure out what was making the scuffling noises. “Hear that?” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

Porter heard his cousin make a tight little squeaking noise like he thought a girl would make, so he grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the bar. “Come on. Let’s hide back here,” he whispered. “And stop squeaking!”

“I’m not squeaking.”

“Shut up!” Porter rasped. He could feel James beginning to sweat. He could smell James beginning to sweat. But he had little time to think about it because a spot of thin light was growing inside the hole and soon spilled into the room followed by two hunched-over men who stood straight up as they stepped out of the opening.

Randy sez: This is good. The tension is wound pretty tight here. But can we do better? Maybe just a wee bit better? I think we can.

For starters, we’ll note that Porter is the viewpoint character (also known as the Point-Of-View character or POV character). So Davalynn’s goal here is to put the reader inside Porter’s skin and show us exactly what Porter sees, hears, thinks, smells, etc. Which means that if Porter can’t see it, hear it, think it, smell it, or sense it in some other way, then Davalynn mustn’t let the reader see it, hear it, think it, smell it, or whatever.

Let’s look at each paragraph and see how it works.

“Be quiet and listen.” Porter switched off the light.

Randy sez: Well done! We’ve got four words of dialogue which set the mood very well. Then we’ve got a good strong action tag–Porter switches off the light. I wouldn’t change a thing here. This is what we call a Reaction because it shows us the POV character acting.

“What are you doing?” James’ voice chafed with fear as he groped for Porter in the darkness.

Randy sez: This is a Motivation, because it’s done by a non-POV character. The first half of this is excellent. The reader can hear that quivery voice in the pitch darkness. But . . . the reader CAN’T see James groping for Porter. Because it’s dark. So that needs to be cut. Many readers won’t notice this small glitch, but those who do will suddenly lose the illusion that they are Porter. For just a second, the reader will be a God-like person able to see in the dark. But your goal as a writer is to help the reader maintain that illusion of being Porter.

“Shut up and listen!” Porter took a deep breath of musty air and held it in as he tried to figure out what was making the scuffling noises. “Hear that?” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

Randy sez: Well done again! This is another Reaction. Normally, I flag that word “as” because it implies that two things are going on simultaneously. And all too often, the writer presents things as simultaneous that can’t be. But in this case, the two simultaneous things are: 1) Porter holding his breath, and 2) Porter trying to figure out what’s scuffling. These can both happen at the same time, so it works. All is well with this paragraph.

Porter heard his cousin make a tight little squeaking noise like he thought a girl would make, so he grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the bar. “Come on. Let’s hide back here,” he whispered. “And stop squeaking!”

Randy sez: We can tighten this just a little. The reader knows that Porter is the POV character, and therefore if there is a noise, the reader knows that Porter is the one hearing it. So there is no need to say “Porter heard…” It’s better to shave those two deadwood words and get straight to the sensory perception itself. The second minor thing is that it’s not necessary to say that Porter thinks a girl would make a noise like that. We know it’s Porter doing the thinking. Better to just say “like a girl would make.” This is of course a monstrously sexist thought that would be a terrible no-no in a novel for adults. But Porter and James are kids, cootie-hating boys, and such beasts are allowed to be sexist for a few more years yet.

There is a larger issue to resolve though. Now that we have disentangled Porter from what he hears, we realize that this paragraph starts out as a Motivation (it’s about the girly-squeaky noises James is making), but then it morphs smoothly into a Reaction (with Porter reacting to those pesky girl-squeaks). It’s really better to separate them into two distinct paragraphs.

“I’m not squeaking.”

Randy sez: Nice! This is a Motivation again–something said by James, who is not the POV character. Three words, and the reader is immediately wondering what the heck is squeaking if it ain’t little Jimmy. What else is in that tunnel?

“Shut up!” Porter rasped. He could feel James beginning to sweat. He could smell James beginning to sweat. But he had little time to think about it because a spot of thin light was growing inside the hole and soon spilled into the room followed by two hunched-over men who stood straight up as they stepped out of the opening.

Randy sez: OK, I like this. There are a couple of sentences that begin “He could feel…” and “He could smell…” Earlier in this critique, I flagged a sentence just like these and surgically removed Porter from it. But I’m going to argue that it makes sense to leave Porter in these. The repetition of “He could…” works nicely. And the two sentences are tightly bound with the first sentence of the paragraph and the last. So I say that this whole paragraph is really all about Porter, and so we’ll leave it exactly as is.

Now let’s put it all together and see if it reads just a bit better with my edits:

“Be quiet and listen.” Porter switched off the light.

“What are you doing?” James’ voice chafed with fear in the darkness.

“Shut up and listen!” Porter took a deep breath of musty air and held it in as he tried to figure out what was making the scuffling noises. “Hear that?” he whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

James was making a tight little squeaking noise like a girl.

Porter grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the bar. “Come on. Let’s hide back here,” he whispered. “And stop squeaking!”

“I’m not squeaking.”

“Shut up!” Porter rasped. He could feel James beginning to sweat. He could smell James beginning to sweat. But he had little time to think about it because a spot of thin light was growing inside the hole and soon spilled into the room followed by two hunched-over men who stood straight up as they stepped out of the opening.

Randy sez: Does that work just a bit better? I think it does. I didn’t add anything; I just cut a few words. The pacing here is very nice. Davalynn did a great job of mixing up long and short sentences, of action and dialogue and interior monologue. The tension is thick and the reader is RIGHT THERE.

Tomorrow, we’ll critique Lynda’s submission. See ya then!