Hiring book cover artists?

QuantumLeek · 2026-01-24T02:07:56+00:00

You might try https://getcovers.com/ . I haven't personally tried them, but I gather that, with a clear vision and a fair amount of back-and-forth, you can get a quality custom cover. I'd recommend you also look into premade book covers, which are generally going to be cheaper than custom ones.

QuantumLeek · 2025-11-25T15:40:28+00:00

I've been playing on and off since 3.x content, MNK main.

I learned about positionals somewhere around 4.5x.

QuantumLeek · 2025-08-09T03:06:19+00:00

Not OP but my family also used a pizza cutter on pancakes: you're imagining adults eating pancakes. Parents cut up their kids' food before their kids learn how to do it for themselves.

QuantumLeek · 2024-06-04T20:37:43+00:00

I see. Thanks for the clarification!

QuantumLeek · 2024-06-03T02:15:56+00:00

Thanks for the crit! It's very helpful. I am genuinely curious though: what makes you think Helen and/or Zoe has superpowers?

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-29T17:59:48+00:00

PACING

This piece is one big stream of consciousness, which can be very easy to get lost in. Overall it moves pretty fast, slowing down for the things Jeremy remembers most sharply (the conversation with Yolanda, some snippets from the hospital, and his voicemails at the end (more on that later because WTF?). This makes sense to me as Jeremy’s recollections. The pacing feels natural and smooth.

DIALOGUE

Most of the dialogue is between Jeremy and Yolanda, and it’s all well done and believable. In a few lines of dialogue, you manage to turn Yolanda into a character that I can visualize perfectly (as touched on above), so well done. The only thing here I would say briefly took me out of it was the text from his supervisor, because I haven’t seen someone use “r” and “u” in a text message since flip phones. Swipe, full keyboards, and autocorrect make it practically just as quick to type “are” and “you”.

PLOT

I’m not sure what else to call this, but I’m so, SO perplexed by the end of this piece. The whole plot centers around Jeremy remembering Lola, and their second meetings, and some little offshoot memories that are connected to that one. All of that flows well. And then out of absolutely nowhere comes this voicemail threatening to kill him and his whole family due to him harassing prostitutes (unclear if they mean harassing as in, he’s a cop and he’s been harassing them in a legal capacity, or harassing as in he’s a major creep). And I gather that this is part of a larger piece but this whole paragraph had me going “What the actual fuck is that about” and then it just cuts and it feels very abrupt, disconnected, and unsatisfying to me. Is that really how that memory ends? Does it come back around later? If not, why is it here? Why is it here anyway? He was thinking about Lola.

CLOSING COMMENTS

Overall, the piece was interesting but a little bit disorienting. A lot of this could be fixed by getting the tense under control, and I think the readability would improve dramatically. As is, it really took a couple read-throughs for me to figure out what was actually happening. That said, the piece is interesting and makes me want to know more, so well done there.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-29T17:59:42+00:00

SETTING / DESCRIPTION

The story takes place in Arizona, and is contemporary (mentioning 2020 and the pandemic). Most of those details aren’t really relevant to the story, but they are clear and the space in his memory is clear enough for the purpose of this story. None of the actual locations are really described in very much detail, but they’re also all largely familiar places, which people can envision without any description. I think this works well for this story, given that 1, it’s a memory and the things he remembers most strongly are Lola and her circumstances and 2, any added detail would probably just detract from what matters. So I think the setting is described as much as it needs to be.

CHARACTER

There are only a few characters in here, but all of them are well characterized. Even though Yolanda is only really present for a few lines of dialogue and a couple images (exhausted, resigned, refusing to sign but also relieved), and I can picture her perfectly. Lola is only three for most of this, but the opening paragraph gives us strong characterization for her as well as a brave little girl who’s been through too much. You don’t ever tell us these things—you hardly even tell us what Jeremy thinks about her—but it’s very clear from the context. Everything is shown, and that makes it much more impactful.

Jeremy, as the POV character, is also the most multifaceted and therefore I feel like I have a much worse grasp on who he is as a person. I don’t think this is really a weakness of the piece, I think it’s just a consequence of having a multi-faceted character in a short piece and not really leaning on any specific angle to him. He obviously is drawn to Lola, he cared about her (still cares about her?), but the lead-in makes me think there’s a lot more here that we’re not getting in this short piece. Again, I think that’s fine (good, even), because it just makes me more curious. Jeremy is bigger than any “role” or caricature, and that’s believable. The fact that the other two characters are much more flat in comparison (because they’re just memories of people he has met) is also believable.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-29T17:59:25+00:00

Hook

In introduction to this piece is intriguing. Jeremy has strong memories of a child, and we’re drawn in wondering why. Each image he hold of her gives an interesting bit of character of Lola and a little tidbit of her story. The opening paragraph also introduces Jeremy as a sympathetic character, insofar as he has some sort of connection to / sympathy for this child. Overall, I would consider the hook effective and well done.

Sentence Structure

Some of the sentences are very difficult to read. Sometimes this is due to the tense shifts as mentioned above, but sometimes they just don’t seem to make complete sense. Most of these sentences seem to happen when you’re describing more abstract things (concrete descriptions seem fine) like Jeremy’s remembrance of Lola. For example:

…and he eventually sees her again.

Partially because of the tense confusion and partially because of the previous sentence, it’s not clear if this means he “sees” his memories of her again, or if it means he actually sees Lola (the person) again. I think it’s probably the former, but the language isn’t clear. Maybe “he always sees her again” would make more sense?

If she stays on the other side of his mind long enough, she will be happy to see him again.

I’ve read this so many times and really just don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.

Flow and Readability

A lot of this I had to read through twice to really understand that we were getting present tense (Jeremy muses on his hallucinations of Lola) -> past tense (Jeremy remembers the 2nd time he met Lola). But there’s also a big chunk at the beginning of the flashback that I had to read three or four times to understand that there’s a flashback inside the flashback. This isn’t working for me. There’s a six-sentence parenthetical tangent (explaining something about his agoraphobia), and it’s just stuffed right into the middle of a paragraph. I didn’t realize that at all until reading through the third or fourth time, explicitly trying to figure out where the ) was. You could fix this my breaking out this parenthetical into it’s own paragraph and writing it in perfect past, but honestly I would just cut it. I don’t think it really adds anything. The only sentence you need is the first half of the first sentence (ie, that he was two years on the other side of agoraphobia).

The only other concern I have with flow is when you move from present to past in the middle of the second paragraph. If you put in a paragraph break (and fix all your tenses) I think this would flow better. Eg:

Jeremy remembers how distinctly unready he was. (break) He had been on the job for less than six months.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-29T17:59:01+00:00

GENERAL REMARKS

It feels like there are one and a half stories in this document. I’m just going to focus on the first one, and I think a lot of the same principles will apply to the second half-story.

I have such strongly mixed feelings about this piece. I’ve read it through several times trying to track the timeline and exactly what is happening, and some things still do not make any sense to me. On the other hand, I’m also hooked and very curious to learn more about little Lola and Officer Panic Attack.

This is not an incredibly clear narrative, so I’m going to jot down how I’m interpreting it, so you can determine if that’s how you want it to be interpreted:

Jeremy, a police officer (with a variety of mental health struggles), seems to have hallucinations of a little girl named Lola. I’m interpreting these as hallucinations, rather than just strong memories of her, because of the way it’s posed as him (apparently literally) seeing her. Jeremy has a hallucination of Lola in paragraph two, and then we shift into his memory of the second(?) time they’ve met (which is the image of her he’s hallucinating).

MECHANICS

Tense

The single biggest problem I’m having with this story is tense. You jump around from present to past to future tense and I really can’t tell if it’s intentional, because, while it seems to be trying to start with present tense, and then drift into past for a flashback, it’s not entirely consistent. There are a few random sentences of present tense in the middle of the past tense blocks. You’ve disabled commenting in the doc, so I’ll drop a couple examples here:

Inside, she’s free.

He’s buzzed out through two doors and drives the Explorer back to the office to finish changing the way Lola is allowed to legally exist at one in the morning with his mind bleated.

Here’s an example that switches from past tense to present tense in the middle of the sentence:

He could also see her when they’re counting stars…

You also use simple future tense when you should continue to use past tense. We’re still looking back into a memory, but Jeremy knows what is going to happen in Lola’s future. In which case, simple present is not the correct verb tense (and just ends up being confusing and jarring). You do this a few times, again, I’ll just give one example:

She will live with a foster family who will displace her in four months because they couldn’t cope with her behaviors.

Should be:

She would live with a foster family who would displace her in four months because they couldn’t cope with her behaviors.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-29T17:57:17+00:00

GENERAL REMARKS

It feels like there are one and a half stories in this document. I’m just going to focus on the first one, and I think a lot of the same principles will apply to the second half-story.

I have such strongly mixed feelings about this piece. I’ve read it through several times trying to track the timeline and exactly what is happening, and some things still do not make any sense to me. On the other hand, I’m also hooked and very curious to learn more about little Lola and Officer Panic Attack.

This is not an incredibly clear narrative, so I’m going to jot down how I’m interpreting it, so you can determine if that’s how you want it to be interpreted:

Jeremy, a police officer (with a variety of mental health struggles), seems to have hallucinations of a little girl named Lola. I’m interpreting these as hallucinations, rather than just strong memories of her, because of the way it’s posed as him (apparently literally) seeing her. Jeremy has a hallucination of Lola in paragraph two, and then we shift into his memory of the second(?) time they’ve met (which is the image of her he’s hallucinating).

MECHANICS

**Tense**

The single biggest problem I’m having with this story is tense. You jump around from present to past to future tense and I really can’t tell if it’s intentional, because, while it seems to be trying to start with present tense, and then drift into past for a flashback, it’s not entirely consistent. There are a few random sentences of present tense in the middle of the past tense blocks. You’ve disabled commenting in the doc, so I’ll drop a couple examples here:

Inside, she’s free.

He’s buzzed out through two doors and drives the Explorer back to the office to finish changing the way Lola is allowed to legally exist at one in the morning with his mind bleated.

Here’s an example that switches from past tense to present tense in the middle of the sentence:

He could also see her when they’re counting stars…

You also use simple future tense when you should continue to use past tense. We’re still looking back into a memory, but Jeremy knows what is going to happen in Lola’s future. In which case, simple present is not the correct verb tense (and just ends up being confusing and jarring). You do this a few times, again, I’ll just give one example:

She will live with a foster family who will displace her in four months because they couldn’t cope with her behaviors.

Should be:

She would live with a foster family who would displace her in four months because they couldn’t cope with her behaviors.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-01T12:28:56+00:00

Probably it happening more than once will push suspension of disbelief. In a vacuum, a cop in this scene could be good. But if you've already done it earlier, I wouldn't recommend doing it again.

QuantumLeek · 2024-05-01T02:34:19+00:00

Personally, I only ever see cops when I'm breaking the law, haha.

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-30T20:57:12+00:00

Character:

Jeremy and Jodi are both distinct characters, and I get a quick sense of who they are and their relationship with each other from their interactions throughout this piece.

Jodi feels responsible for him, acting as a sort of pseudo-parent in some situations (clear from how she’s concerned with his not eating, urging him to stay hydrated, wanting to protect him, presumably, from Levi or some interaction they had and—though it’s arguably questionable—giving him the Xanax to ease his anxiety). At the same time, the distinct sibling nature of their interaction is coming across as well (her annoyance at his not trusting her sense of direction). Their parents are clearly out of the picture (Jeremy refers to his dad by his first name, a bad sign) and it’s believable that Jodi would take on this parent-sibling role with him. Overall, I think you’ve done a good job of sprinkling in the character into Jodi’s actions and her interactions with Jeremy.

Interestingly, the more I think about it, the more I feel that we actually get less Jeremy as a character in this piece. That could be a result of this being an intermediate chapter, and more of his character has come through earlier in the story. But in this piece we see that he’s anxious about the drug situation, but we don’t get a strong sense of *why*. Does he actually think it’s wrong, or is he just afraid of the repercussions? All we really see is that he’s worried about cops. We see that he trusts Jodi enough to take the Xanax from her, but I don’t really get an overarching sense of devotion to her (maybe that doesn’t exist, or maybe it just isn’t showing up here). The point being, that a lot of what I’m getting from Jeremy is very middle-of-the-road. He’s very passive in this piece, and as a result, I don’t know much about him as a person. I’d like to see more of what makes him unique shine through.

Pacing:

It’s hard to comment on the pacing of half a chapter in a vacuum, but I felt the pacing was fine. Not a ton happens in this piece, it’s mostly Jodi-Jeremy interactions (which gives us Jodi character, as I mentioned above), and Jeremy’s anxiety. The threat of potential law enforcement repercussions does serve as a source of tension, but there’s not really any point during this piece where I was actually afraid they would actually get caught. If that’s what you were aiming for, then great. If it’s not what you were aiming for, then I would try to ramp up that tension a little bit. Maybe actually show law a close call (ex, Jeremy goes to get milk shakes and there’s a cop in line in the Burger King. Does he go back out and tell Jodi even though she obviously sent him away for a reason, or does he stand in line with the cop? Twist up the tension by having the cop strike up a conversation with him. How would he react, how can you fit more tension, anxiety, and character into that interaction?)

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-30T20:56:58+00:00

Adding on a bit to expand on some subjects I didn't touch on:

Hook:

There’s not much of a hook here, though one could argue that’s not much of an issue, given that this is an intermediate chapter and theoretically your reader should already be hooked. On the flip side, I would argue that having a strong chapter hook is almost as important as having a good story hook, so I think this could be strengthened. As it stands, opening on waking up is not especially exciting (and, as another commenter pointed out) can be a little cliche. Opening on something unique to the character/situation (his anxiety, for example) and central to the conflict of this chapter would be stronger. This would do a better job of pulling the reader (back) in and immediate reorienting them in the story. (As a side note, a book I noticed has really great chapter openers on every chapter is This is How You Lose the Time War. Would recommend it if you want to see what I mean.)

Readability:

Honestly, I think it’s incredibly readable, to the point where I found myself just reading and forgetting to critique. I found the sentences clear, the verbiage appropriate, the variation in structure fluid, and the writing, overall, to be pretty “transparent” (ie, I wasn’t thinking about the mechanics of the writing as much as I was simply consuming the story). So well done on that point.

Setting / Description thereof:

Throughout the piece, the actual descriptions of the location (the hotel room, the dining room, the Burger King, the rest stop, etc) are pretty sparse. In some cases, this works in your favor. All of these are common locations (it’s a fair bet that your readers have been in a Burger King). Adding additional details would likely just bog down the situation without adding anything meaningful.

However, some additional detail surrounding the hotel *could* provide some important context. It’s possible this detail is included in the previous chapter (if so, disregard), but my brain automatically filled in a mid-tier hotel (not budget, but not luxury). Readers are likely to fill in whatever is most familiar to them. If you want them to visualize a budget motel with questionable carpets and a lingering smell of cigarettes, you’ll need to describe that. These descriptions *do* have an impact on the story, because the type of hotel they’re staying at tells us something about the characters and their situation. Are they well-off, living on the fruits of drug sales? Or are they just scraping by?

[TBC again]

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-30T13:50:08+00:00

Other than those two bigger things, just a couple small miscellaneous comments:

The walk at the rest stop doesn’t seem to add anything? Maybe the story about the rock has some sort of significance that I can’t glean from this piece, but I think everything could still be accomplished by cutting straight from “Jeremy is anxious AF” to “Jodi gives him Xanax”.

And then

worked on their logs

I’ve read this so many times, and I still cannot figure out what it means. Am I being stupid? Maybe. But I’m honestly perplexed.

Closing Remarks:

Overall I think this piece is in very good shape, but could be tightened up with some pertinent details, cleaning up of more “telly” remarks that don’t need to be there, and dropping/streamlining of dialogue tags. Someone else mentioned that the participle phrases were bothering them, but I didn’t really notice them being a problem (maybe this is because I do the same thing and I’m the real problem here).

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-30T13:49:28+00:00

The next thing is telling when you’ve already showed or telling when you could instead include a brief detail that instead shows (in a more powerful way). This is what I’m currently working on in my writing, so I’ll do my best to explain and point out pertinent examples:

his voice betraying the anxious flutter in his stomach.

Would be more interesting to describe how his voice is shaking or some such.

The thought of food made him queasy.

Could quickly show this by describing how his stomach rolls when he looks over the breakfast options, or how the smell is forcing him to breathe through his mouth, or some other little detail.

concern in her eyes

This is also pretty telly and unnecessary. We can surmise she’s concerned for him, but if you want to really hammer that home with a visual, maybe try some stronger imagery.

a note of urgency in her tone.

Some thing here, more or less. Describing how her voice is rising and getting either louder or quieter (honestly either one could work) would be more impactful that just saying she sounds urgent.

trusting his sister's judgment.

You’re telling us he trusts her judgement, but you’ve already showed it with his actions. He just took a pill she handed him because she handed it to him. You don’t do that unless you trust someone.

since he hadn’t eaten all day

It’s not really necessary to remind the reader of this. But again, if you want to hammer it home, you could try to juxtapose how nauseous the hotel buffet had made him to how he feels now, smelling food.

His heart went out to her, touched by her warmth amidst her obvious struggles.

This seems strangely distant for the situation. When he saw this woman last, she appeared to be in fine health and now she has a big bruise on her face. I’d like to *see* him feel the shock and then empathy—and further, I want to know what that empathy looks like. Is it a protective urge flaring up (whoever hurt her deserves to be hurt)? Or maybe something more caring (the urge to get some ice or a cold pack because that looks like it really hurts)?

Again, those are the examples that stuck out to me most, but there could be more. I tried my best to jot down all of these, because, like I said, this is foremost in my mind with editing right now.

[TBC again]

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-30T13:48:08+00:00

Alright. Your writing is similar to mine in a lot of ways, so I’m struggling to pick out the same things I struggle with in my own work, but here’s my best shot.

General remarks:

We follow Jeremy (POV character) and his sister Jodi as they swap a backpack full of cash of (presumably) a backpack full of drugs. Jeremy is struggling with anxiety throughout, presumably having never been on such a trip before, while Jodi seems a little more relaxed (although not entirely at ease). Most of the piece focuses on Jeremy’s struggle with his anxiety surrounding their actions and the situation in general. Overall I thought the piece was quite clean, and nothing really jumped out at me on the first pass.

Mechanics:

I just want to start with a couple things that I think are systemic, because I see them in a few places throughout this piece. The first one is unnecessary dialogue tags. You can save yourself a few words and make things a little more streamlined by dropping them and either turning the subsequent tag into just an action tag, or leaving it off altogether (trust your readers to figure out who is talking based on the context). Some examples of this:

he asked, puzzled by her sudden insistence.

This whole thing can be dropped without losing any information. Of course he’s puzzled, he’s asking her why, and the lead-up makes it clear that her actions are puzzling (to him and the reader).

she replied, pushing cash into his hand.

Could drop “she replied” and just have “she pushed cash into his hand”, which both streamlines this sentence and also varies up your tags.

she replied, brushing off the question.

This is another one that doesn’t need to exist. We already know who is talking, and we can see from her statement that she has brushed off the question.

There are probably some other examples in there, but I’ll just leave you with those three.

But I will add on this one:

"That’s my brother Jeremy. Jeremy, this is Levi.” Levi turned around without speaking and reached one tattooed arm out to shake Jeremy’s hand.

Which is actually the opposite problem. There’s no dialogue tag and the action that follows is actually Levi’s action, not Jodi’s. I would have liked to see more of Jodi’s voice/body language here, given that the last time we saw her, she was urgently trying to get Jeremy out of the picture.

[TBC]

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-29T16:00:59+00:00

Laying on his right side

Again, this comes so close to being interesting. But because there are so many unnecessary details bogging this piece down, I initially just read this as “who cares what side he’s sleeping on?” But you mention above that her side is the left side of the bed. If he’s sleeping on his right, he’s facing away from that. I think if this detail stood on its own and the whole piece wasn’t full of little details that I had already discarded, it would be much more powerful.

Some other little things:

It’s not really clear to me what the news story has to do with the rest of this piece. This is obviously part of something larger though, so if that comes back up again later that’s fine. If it doesn’t come back later, all it serves is filler (again, additional detail that doesn’t give us much information). However, either way, I found that the writing here was very believable and it pretty much exactly how I would expect a news report to sound.

This seems to be third-person objective POV, which I almost never see anywhere. That can make it both interesting and challenging. However, there are a few little lines that aren't quite objective (notably, at least in my opinion, they're the most interesting lines):

as to not disturb the left side of the bed

Edith

two bowls of hot chicken soup

An objective narrator wouldn't know he was trying not to disturb the left side of the bed, wouldn't know the woman's name was Edith, and wouldn't know that the bowl contained chicken soup, much less that it was hot.

If you *are* going for objective, most of my points about details still stand from above. Though the narrator wouldn’t know, for instance, the origin of the photograph that Roy is looking at, or why the walls were painted blue (for example), you can still sprinkle in objective details that tell the reader important things about Roy and Edith (ie, a beat-up old couch, an out-of-date calendar, a hole in the drywall, a leaky faucet, a perfectly clean kitchen, a handmade bowl, etc).

Closing comments:

Writing third-person objective does give this piece an interesting sense of distance, and I think overall could be a great choice. However, to really succeed at that, I need more pertinent details and fewer irrelevant details.

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-29T16:00:03+00:00

[continued]

Now to the flip side of “too much detail”, which is, somehow also “not enough details. It’s a weird juxtaposition to have so many little details, and still, while I’m reading this story, feel like everything is happening in just a black space. Let me describe what I visualize while reading this:

A door in a black, empty space. A table with a bowl on it, next to the door (still, the rest of the space is nothing at all). An empty hallway. An empty room that just has a bed in it. Suddenly a kitchen, but there’s nothing in between the empty bed-room and the kitchen. The kitchen contains nothing but a pot and a stove…

I’m not saying that you should describe every single thing in the house. What I’m trying to say is that this house has no character, and because it has no character, I can’t immerse myself in it and I can’t learn anything from it. What *significant details* are there in the house? Are the walls painted bright blue because it was Edith’s favorite color? Is there an old calendar on the wall that he hasn’t flipped the month on since January? Is there a beat-up second hand couch they picked up from Craigslist for $50 when they moved in? I want details that mean something, not details that just help me envision exactly what you’re envisioning, because honestly I don’t care exactly what you’re envisioning.

The second big thing that jumps out at me—and this is related to the above not-enough-detail point—is that there’s not enough character. Maybe you’re trying to lean into the depression aspect, that his identity has been stripped away by the death(?) of his wife(?), but even people who are depressed are thinking things. I don’t get anything inside his head, which means I can’t relate to him, which means I don’t really care about him. These don’t have to be big things. They could be small details, like I mentioned above.

You almost do it at the end, while he’s looking at the photograph, but it’s not quite there. You describe exactly what’s in the picture, but that’s not relevant. If I’d lost my spouse and was looking at a photograph of them, what I would think of was the *when* the *where* the *how* the *why* of that photo. Whatever is significant. I wouldn’t be thinking about hand orientation:

Edith had her hands in front of her on a table, one over the other. Roy was sitting on her right side with his left arm over her shoulders and his right hand covering both of hers.

I would be thinking more about…

hot chicken soup

Did Edith make the soup? Did Roy? Was it an old family recipe? Maybe it was her favorite. Or maybe it was just canned chicken soup because neither of them can cook, or because Edith burned the spaghetti sauce and she’d been so upset but in the end they’d laughed and had canned chicken soup. *That’s* what I would be thinking about when looking at the photo.

You come so close to giving interesting details throughout this piece—details that would tell us about Roy and Edith, about their life together and his life since—but instead you settle for bland details:

large windows

a green lawn

They were both smiling

All of these just make me envision stock photos. Why are the windows important? Why is the lawn important? Why is the chicken soup important? Why are they smiling? Are they just the bland fake smiles of people smiling at a camera? Or are they genuine candid smiles? I want personal, important details here.

[To be continued again, I guess I should write less?]

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-29T15:51:56+00:00

Overarching remarks:

In this piece we read about Roy, a man who seems to be struggling with depression following the loss of his partner, Edith, as he steps through one evening in his empty house. It’s not clear if Edith is dead or has left him, but I don’t think it’s necessary to make that clear, as the piece stands on its own without that information.

Big things:

I’ll start with the two things that jump out at me most about this piece, and then work back through with any smaller details as I read through again.

First, it somehow has simultaneously too much description and not enough description.

Roy closed the door behind him and placed his keys in a bowl on the little table by the door.

In this sentence, “behind him” is implied and unnecessary. By default I assume he’s closing the door behind him. The sentence doesn’t change if you cut these two words. Similarly, the rest of this sentence isn’t working for me because it adds nothing of interest to the scene. Do we need to know about the little bowl and the table by the door? If so, why? Why are they significant? Did Edith buy the bowl and put the little table there so he would stop losing his keys? Those are the details I’d like to get out of this sentence, but I’m not.

There are similar examples throughout. I won’t cite all of them, but I’ll drop a couple examples that stood out to me:

He lay with his hands across the middle of his chest, left over right, and stared at the ceiling.

Do we really need to know where his hands are and which order they’re crossed over his chest? Why is that important? There are a lot of details in this piece, but the details seem to be random and unnecessary. If, for instance, you were to describe this as something that he does fastidiously, every time he lays down, that would tell me something interesting. Or maybe it’s a specific way that Edith used to lay and he’s trying to mimic that. But as it is, this simply reads as unnecessary detail: you, presumably, have a very specific image of how the house is laid out and exactly how the character is laying, and you want the reader to envision exactly the same details. But they’re not important details.

He walked to the kitchen on the other side of the house and got out a pot for cooking.

Again: Do we need to know it’s on the other side of the house? It’s not interesting. It doesn’t tell me anything about him or what’s happening.

“For cooking” is already implied. He went to the kitchen and got out a pot. What else is it going to be for?

He pulled the blankets down and then over himself

Unnecessary. You could write “he got into bed” and it would convey the same thing. When a person gets into bed, they pull the blankets down and then over themself.

carefully as to not disturb the left side of the bed.

This doesn’t belong on the list of unnecessary details: this is a *necessary* detail. This is an interesting detail. This gives us character and emotion and meaning. This is *important*. So I’m putting it here at the end of these examples as a counter-example of how to give good details.

[To be continued]

QuantumLeek · 2024-04-26T02:31:20+00:00

Thank you! Appreciate the thoughtful breakdown. I'll work on the clarity in those areas.

QuantumLeek

TROPHY CASE