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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 3376269" data-attributes="member: 9225">Elements of all of them have merit. I will make a few comments that come from my reading but are not directed at specific people as much as trends in each.* The word "said," is a fine, fine word. People really don't notice when you use it repeatedly. It's transparent. So there's no need for "cried," or "whispered" just to break up the pattern. Especially when such cries and whispers would actually sound pretty silly if taken literally.* One of the most annoying things for me to read is 100 words about a horse, describing its every attribute in detail with as much lyricism as you can mention, followed by this dailogue:"It's a horse," said Bill.It's even worse if there's another huge descriptive para. It Makes People Seem Very Slow. Try to balance dialogue and description. An example of how to change gears skillfully is in Lions of Al-Rassan, where the duel at the end is full-on fancy prose, but the lead up is not choked with excess description.* Avoid passive voice. There are a few constructions in a couple of the drafts that are unnecessarily long thanks to being sentences that were written using passive methods (<-- if you get my drift).* Every step you take from describing what's happening as it is experienced by a character or the narrator is a step away from verisimilitude. That's things like the character being happy or depressed being described with just "happy" or "depressed." People do things and have sensations and images that represent their emotions. Actual reportage is second hand. You sometimes have writers who will use a gesture or sensation to effectively transmit and emotion, but they don't trust themselves and "back it up" with telling you the emotion anyway. "He sighed," is elegant. "He sighed with depression," is overmuch in many (though not all) cases. Trust in your ability to imply the emotion.</blockquote>

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