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one year ago

this is for my upcoming story, im not good with descriptions, so adding paragraphs of detail like this is difficult to me. Any type of constructive feedback is appreciated

You turn around from the monitor to wander around your room pointlessly. The soft burr from the PC below fills the room faintly. the room is still. There does not even seem to be a fly buzzing around. Despite a large amount of opened and half-empty cups of noodles and soda. The studio smells of artificial air freshener plugged into an unknown corner of the room. You kick a pile of long-ago homework and assignments to a corner of the room unkept. the fridge emits a bright glow compared to how dark and abysmal the room is, you pick out a random UnbrandedSodaTM as you shut the door to the low-tech fridge and end up shrouded in the darkness. Taped onto the side of the fridge is a small remote with only three buttons. She pushes an unmarked button and suddenly the random LED lights that Noelle turned off as a passive prank glow once more a soft blue, complimenting the grey wall. You slam down the soda on the edge of the table where the monitors were placed and fall down on your bed. The constant talking from the other side of the wall just near your head grows. Classic college students. As you check your phone quickly to see which classes you may or may not have the next day. You realize it is the start of spring break. "Seven solid days to do jackshit" you murmur as you roll to your side to watch outside through the window.
There is nothing out of the ordinary, the usual bird on the lamppost outside. Car rolling by. Occasionally the other people in the same complex run by you recognize them as a pack of freshmen at your college. Most likely high on adrenaline from being let go by their parents, doing stupid kid things. You close the blinds, which only blacks out the lamppost, considering how dark it is out on tonight's starless night. You just lay in bed. Wondering what to do next.

Moonglade

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one year ago

I don't think there's anything wrong with the descriptions, but this has a few other small errors, and I think the paragraphs need to be broken up a more in the middle. If not just trimmed down, it might be a bit much around where you start talking about the fridge.

I'm also not sure who "She" refers to, unless that was meant to be "You".

RiverStyxx

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one year ago

ya im going back to fix it. It is a force of habit, plus you are playing As a character for apart of the story

fresh_out_the_oven

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one year ago

Make it less of a text wall and I'll read it

RiverStyxx

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one year ago

aight swag thanks

RiverStyxx

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one year ago

badabing badaboom i gave it spaces

You turn around from the monitor to wander around your room pointlessly. The soft burr from the PC below fills the room faintly. the room is still. There does not even seem to be a fly buzzing around.
Despite a large amount of opened and half-empty cups of noodles and soda. The studio smells of artificial air freshener plugged into an unknown corner of the room. You kick a pile of long-ago homework and assignments to a corner of the room unkept. the fridge emits a bright glow compared to how dark and abysmal the room is, you pick out a random UnbrandedSodaTM as you shut the door to the low-tech fridge and end up shrouded in the darkness.

Taped onto the side of the fridge is a small remote with only three buttons. She pushes an unmarked button and suddenly the random LED lights that Noelle turned off as a passive prank glow once more a soft blue, complimenting the grey wall.
You slam down the soda on the edge of the table where the monitors were placed and fall down on your bed. The constant talking from the other side of the wall just near your head grows. Classic college students. As you check your phone quickly to see which classes you may or may not have the next day. You realize it is the start of spring break.

"Seven solid days to do jackshit" you murmur as you roll to your side to watch outside through the window.

There is nothing out of the ordinary, the usual bird on the lamppost outside. Car rolling by. Occasionally the other people in the same complex run by you recognize them as a pack of freshmen at your college. Most likely high on adrenaline from being let go by their parents, doing stupid kid things. You close the blinds, which only blacks out the lamppost, considering how dark it is out on tonight's starless night. You just lay in bed. Wondering what to do next.

fresh_out_the_oven

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one year ago

Commended by mizal on 2/9/2023 9:14:14 PM

Appreciated.

Despite a large amount of opened and half-empty cups of noodles and soda.

This is a sentence fragment.

I'm not quite sure what "long-ago" homework is. Homework from long ago? Homework that was due long ago?

Yeah, the "she" problem that's already been pointed out.

"Seven solid days to do jackshit" you murmur as you roll to your side to watch outside through the window.

Comma after jackshit, also I feel like this is a really long sentence for no good reason. The ending part could be shortened to something along the lines of "as you roll to your side to stare out the window" or "as you roll over to look out through the window", to declutter and just to make more sense.

I would just completely rewrite that last paragraph. There are sentence fragments and run on sentences just covering it.

I'll give you an example:

"There is nothing out of the ordinary; a bird is in it's usual spot on the lamppost outside, a car is rolling by. Occasionally some of the other people in your complex run by- you recognize one group as freshmen from your college. They're most likely high on adrenaline, doing the kinds of things that stupid kids do. You close the blinds, but the only difference it makes is blocking out the lamppost's light. There aren't even any stars shining outside.

You lie in your bed, wondering what on earth you should do now."

Also, you probably have mentioned before now that it's nighttime.

RiverStyxx

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one year ago

Thank you! I have a terribly bad habit of sentence fragments. I will get to work on fixing those, thank you once again.

fresh_out_the_oven

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one year ago

fresh_out_the_oven

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one year ago

Also, if you want to avoid sentence fragments, just make sure every sentence has a subject and a verb. Tada.

Another also: cool profile pic

Lux_Inferni

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one year ago

Commended by mizal on 2/9/2023 9:14:28 PM

First of all, your intro needs to kind of introduce what your story is about. I would've thought this story was about some college student's spring break instead of what you posted in your other thread. The protagonist's upcoming birthday would be pretty important to the story. And who is Noelle? Is she the programmer girlfriend or her roommate? Turning off LED lights doesn't tell the reader much of anything about the relationship between the characters. Second, there's too much pointless description. You don't need to tell the reader the fridge isn't a smart fridge, the room is still and there doesn't seem to be any flies, a corner of the room is unkept (considering the state of the room in general), or that everything is perfectly normal. You can also cut your word count by rewriting and combining sentences. For example, instead of this:

Taped onto the side of the fridge is a small remote with only three buttons. She pushes an unmarked button and suddenly the random LED lights that Noelle turned off as a passive prank glow once more a soft blue, complimenting the grey wall.

You could write something like this:

You press a button on a small remote taped to the fridge and LEDs bathe the room a soft blue, complimenting the grey wall.

I said the same thing in 24 words compared to the 44 words you used. I could've used less words, but my example probably demonstrates my point well enough. Lastly, try to avoid using -ly adverbs as much as possible and work on your punctuation. Instead of wandering pointlessly, you could've left pointlessly out and kept wander (or change it to pace if you want to give the sentence more character). Faintly is redundant because you've already said it was a soft burr. If you want it to be clear that it's a soft sound without telling the reader it's soft, think about replacing it with whir. Fresh did a decent job of pointing out the punctuation issues. Your characterization is okay. Not great, but not bad either. She doesn't care about her surroundings, looks down on her peers and the underclassmen, and doesn't seem too happy about spring break. Think about where you could add more characterization. Would she be more likely to wander around the room or pace around it? Would flopping on the bed be a better choice than falling on the bed? Does murmuring accurately portray how she feels about spring break or would muttering be more accurate?

RiverStyxx

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one year ago

thank you!, this is actually just a single paragraph a few pages in, but all of this is extremely helpful. Thank you so much!!!

Lux_Inferni

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one year ago

You're welcome. Just keep going and don't give up.

Mizal

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one year ago

Commended by mizal on 2/9/2023 9:15:26 PM

There are some rough spots that others have already been pointing out, but I have to say that overall, I like it. This has personality. Although maybe you don't need quite so much description, especially if it's something you struggle with.

Just be aware of the story's needs and don't feel like you have to always include some arbitrary amount of detail. It could be that I'm overexplaining the obvious, but besides establishing things that matter to the plot, the purpose is to set the scene, create atmosphere, and in various ways give us a glimpse of the character's personality by showing the world through their eyes. (In the sense that the same location described by two different viewpoints would be written in noticeably different ways.)

Sometimes less is more, and you can do a lot with just a few lines if you use strong phrasing and know where you want the focus to be. In this case, after a good beginning it started losing me a bit midway through. It's been mentioned a couple of times already, but the fridge passage just goes on for too long given that it doesn't really add anything. The reader already has gotten the point about the nature of their surroundings.

I'd also recommend to anyone new to this stuff that they go to Help & Info and read all of Gower's articles in the Storywriting section. They're all pretty quick and to the point, and help a lot in understanding sentence structure and some of the more overlooked technical aspects of writing in a more intuitive way.

RiverStyxx

feedback on passage

one year ago

this helps a lot thank you! honestly, I do struggle with describing stuff and all that, but just thanks for enjoying it! it isn't exactly the first paragraph of the story but the one I needed help with the most, Thanks again.!