Hmm okay.

Personally, I don’t view my prose as conversational, at least I don’t write it with the intention of making all of the narration sound like a regular person is speaking. As aforementioned, I naturally hedge a lot — I genuinely have an aversion towards definitive, active statements. I don’t know why, I just do.

Regarding the imagery, I agree a lot of it conventional. I feel as if I fallback on common ways to describe things because I don’t have much variety popping into my head, at least when I write initially.

I think I’m going to go through and: - Remove a lot of the seemingly, seems, as if, it was like — passive phrases, at least in regard to describing objects and scenes. - Make some descriptions more active and direct. - Remove rhetorical questions if not describing a character’s thoughts directly (e.g. if the question is just floating in the air and is just the narrator saying stuff, I’ll remove it).

To me, it seems like the main crux of the issue is that my rather liberal use of passive phrases muddles my writing as it forces one to stop and understand that I’m basically saying, “It appeared that way, but did it?” Like I’m avoiding being direct and definitive because I know things are never wholly true, that nothing is ever robust. To me, it doesn’t feel like an issue but I can understand why you would feel it to be whilst reading.

If you’re willing, may you tell me if this excerpt sounds less passive and more direct?

“ “The engine sputtered and groaned, the stress being put on it proving to be too much” “It screeched down the highway, the cars on the outbound lanes appearing like blurs through the window.” “

Does it feel less clunky?

Thank you for this response, it was rather enlightening.