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Zudonim3
02-13-2017, 07:55 PM
He walked along a narrow dirt path, separating the meadows on each side, dulled with the autumn.

The tidy, cultivated forest ahead, accompanied by the river current not far to his right; gave the scape and the setting a solemn richness.

Not a soul was to be seen around, and the breeze coming from the mountains, some distance to his left, carried with it a dampness. The sky was dull, and so the sombre scene of fall was exacerbated considerably, as if death himself had crossed the land not long ago.

He walked across a small worn, wooden bridge over a small spring current which converged with the river not far away.

Something had drawn him to this place on this day, and perhaps it was the brooding emotional void which haunted him like a spectre, since the marking event.

He entered the forest, under the overarching trees where the path would take him further towards the mountain.

His steps became slower as the path began to slope upwards, and all he could hear was a faint ringing in his left ear. He looked up through the twisted, sad looking branches above, and wondered whether it would begin to rain.

The hiking path became narrower as he wandered further, and as the groves of slumbering trees on each side started to close in, something nipped at his sanity.

He closed his eyes and ephemerally, everything around him brightened up and became green and alive.

You're so slow. Come on!

As he opened his eyes and looked down at the grimy, moist ground, scattered with decomposing foliage -- a disgusting feeling began to seep from within his hardened core, pushing through the pores of his sickly skin.

He looked back up, hoping it would begin to rain, so that the nuisance of cold water would replace this infernal filth beginning to grasp hold of him, then turned back at the point where the path diverged, and never returned.

Grit
02-15-2017, 12:11 AM
Hi Zudonim,

I'm glad to see you post something of your own. Thanks for sharing.

This reads well for the most part but there's a few issues I can identify.

We need character's names. Instead of 'he' as the first word just give him a name. Much easier for us to follow this way, and pronouns have the feel of vagueness to them. Vague writing is bad writing.


The tidy, cultivated forest ahead, accompanied by the river current not far to his right; gave the scape and the setting a solemn richness.

This needs better punctuation. I think I see what you tried to do here. You took out "...was accompanied..." feel free to correct me if wrong. The thing with removing passive voice is you sometimes need to completely rearrange the sentence.



A river current ran on his right and the tidy, cultivated forest waited ahead, giving the scape and setting a solemn richness.

OR

A river current ran on his right and the tidy, cultivated forest waited ahead; the solemn richness of the scene struck him.

"...giving the scape and setting a solemn richness" is telling. I would try to reword so we experience the sensation through the character.


Something had drawn him to this place on this day, and perhaps it was the brooding emotional void which haunted him like a spectre, since the marking event.

Sometimes removing passive voice is easy. This is an example.

"Something drew him to this place on this day..."

"the marking event." is too vague for my tastes. Details make or break a story.



He closed his eyes and ephemerally, everything around him brightened up and became green and alive.


This sentence could be restructured;

"When he closed his eyes ephemerally, everything around him brightened up and became green and alive."

I would avoid using 'twenty-dollar' words if you can. I knew a guy in high school who scored perfect on the SAT language portion, but he couldn't write for ****. Dude kept trying to fill his writing with words you need to stop and look up. Every once in a while is fine, but I have an extensive vocabulary so if I don't know what ephemerally is, few readers will either. This is your call, but you could just as easily cut the word and the sentence would become more clear anyway.

Thanks for sharing, I did enjoy it and you write with competence. Just keep working at it.

All the best,

Grit

Zudonim3
02-15-2017, 07:51 AM
Thank you for your input, Grit, I really appreciate it, and I particularly appreciate the notes on "passive voice." I have to admit I wasn't even aware of it as a concept; I'm currently reading into it.

The story itself wasn't exactly meant to be a blast to read, like your story -- I just wanted to create prose, to see what others would say about it, because I want to write a full length novel in English, and I'm unsure if my capabilities are worthy enough for such an endeavor.

Sorry if using the word "ephemeral" made me sound pretentious or something, it's just that when I first heard it I had to assimilate it into my vocabulary because it's one of the most beautiful words I've ever come across.

Grit
02-15-2017, 11:25 AM
Thank you for your input, Grit, I really appreciate it, and I particularly appreciate the notes on "passive voice." I have to admit I wasn't even aware of it as a concept; I'm currently reading into it.

The story itself wasn't exactly meant to be a blast to read, like your story -- I just wanted to create prose, to see what others would say about it, because I want to write a full length novel in English, and I'm unsure if my capabilities are worthy enough for such an endeavor.

Sorry if using the word "ephemeral" made me sound pretentious or something, it's just that when I first heard it I had to assimilate it into my vocabulary because it's one of the most beautiful words I've ever come across.

Passive voice is the biggest issue in the prose of developing authors. I'm working with an editor to polish my book and eliminating passive voice from the manuscript is greatly improving the quality of my writing. Replace the passive voice with verbs. The issue with PV is it makes all your writing sound uncertain.

You might not have the skills to write the novel you want yet, that's fine, write it anyway. You won't get better without practice. Alternatively, try writing and polishing a short story until the prose is perfect. Short fiction is great practice.

You're not being pretentious. Too often people try to draw conclusions about an artist based on their art. All I'm saying is ephemeral will cause a large chunk of readers to stop and look up the word. You want to draw your readers into your story, you don't want them looking up the word on google.