Please post any comments, critique, and other feedback here for Week 373: Dissection and Damage by MoonlitRain014.
Reviewed Week 373: Dissection and Damage - Feedback
- Thread starter MoonlitRain014
- Start date
"The body that lay on the flat metal table was not a sight for those with weak stomachs." By now, we've all heard the old adage of "Show, don't tell," and this is a place where it would apply perfectly. There's two directions I could see here, and what I would recommend, with minimal changes to your writing, would be as follows:
While I added some to the opening line, you'll see that most of my recommended edit is removing words from places without changing the content. Two more assertive changes would be taking a stronger tone with Calvinia's reaction, and removing the contradictory adjective 'banal.' Something that is banal is boring while something obscene is repugnant; one implies the absence of reaction and the other a visceral reaction.
Why these changes? You want to be painting a picture with your words, setting a scene. My suggested edits were minor, but you could take them further, emphasizing the clinical, sterilized feeling of the mortuary, describing the body using more butcher-like terms to drive home the idea that the body is less a person and more a collection of cuts. When you add lines to say "this was horrifying" or "this was unpleasant," you are actually downplaying what you're describing. It's like an analysis of your own writing, before it's finished, a technique used in documentaries or sometimes in satires. In these situations, you want to describe what is there, not why it's there for what it means. Allow readers to draw their conclusions, right or wrong, from what you've presented them.
While I added some to the opening line, you'll see that most of my recommended edit is removing words from places without changing the content. Two more assertive changes would be taking a stronger tone with Calvinia's reaction, and removing the contradictory adjective 'banal.' Something that is banal is boring while something obscene is repugnant; one implies the absence of reaction and the other a visceral reaction.
Why these changes? You want to be painting a picture with your words, setting a scene. My suggested edits were minor, but you could take them further, emphasizing the clinical, sterilized feeling of the mortuary, describing the body using more butcher-like terms to drive home the idea that the body is less a person and more a collection of cuts. When you add lines to say "this was horrifying" or "this was unpleasant," you are actually downplaying what you're describing. It's like an analysis of your own writing, before it's finished, a technique used in documentaries or sometimes in satires. In these situations, you want to describe what is there, not why it's there for what it means. Allow readers to draw their conclusions, right or wrong, from what you've presented them.