Hey, don't be mad for posting or anything. I just sort of need help. I just got an email from someone regarding a review of my story.(Which I recieved weeks ago.) And she said this...
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As far as the story goes, your sentences are too clipped, and there is
not much flow. Arrange some of your sentences to incorporate two or
three of the smaller ones. It's best to have them of varying length
to reduce monotony.
and this...
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Your biggest problems are
with smoothing out the beginning and adding more prose and
descriptions to your scenery.
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I had others saying the same thing.
In other words it lacked prose. Like
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I think the reason why the characters seem so...flat... is because you've been writing very passively.
"The chicken looked both ways, and then he crossed the road. the mud was damp and stuck to his feet. he yanked his foot out of it and continued on. and then the car hit him. he screamed, "Save me" and then died."
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I finally know what my problem is and I couldn't say it in words. It's not the "show, not tell" it's passive writing. I read books, regarding narration. I read Bourne Identity, Acts of God, and I was going to read the DaVinci Code. I studied the narration of the stories, and studied for hours. I needed prose in my writing. But I don't know HOW to write the story as prose. I know I should just write the story. But it wouldn't hurt for me to at least try it out and see what happens.
It's like, Jack opened the door. He slowly took off his clothes. He gets into bed and lies next to his wife.
you know, "matter-of-factly" which bores the reader to tears.
I wanna know how to try this out.
2.) How can you balance dialogue and Narration? I seem to have a problem with using too much dialogue to move the story along. What happens if Dialogue overpowers the story?
