It's time to have a little fun here. This is related to the Crisp and Clean? thread. In one of my posts, I put in an example passage:
"What's for dinner?" Fred lifted the lid of the crock pot and dropped it. He stepped back and turned to face Heather. "Fingers? Are those fingers in there?"
One of the tenets of crisp and clean writing it to squeeze as much information as possible out of one's prose. This passage above is totally non-committal in terms of the emotion behind Fred's reaction. Is he shocked? mad? thrilled?
The fun exercise: You are to give some emotion to Fred's reaction (any emotion at all, the more unusual the better). But you have to do it by changing a maximum of only five words. Contractions count as two words. And no exclamation points. The changes can be either word additions, word deletions, word substitutions, or word rearrangements. Also, you can't make an extra sentence with your five words, and you can't totally change what Fred says.
Remember--readers are usually thrilled when a character gives a surprising reaction, so have some fun with it. If you decide to post it, highlight your changes in italics or color or some way. For those who don't want to try it, applaud those who try.
Mount and ride.
Mods, if you feel this must be moved, could you please wait about a day or so since it is closely tied to another thread here.
"What's for dinner?" Fred lifted the lid of the crock pot and dropped it. He stepped back and turned to face Heather. "Fingers? Are those fingers in there?"
One of the tenets of crisp and clean writing it to squeeze as much information as possible out of one's prose. This passage above is totally non-committal in terms of the emotion behind Fred's reaction. Is he shocked? mad? thrilled?
The fun exercise: You are to give some emotion to Fred's reaction (any emotion at all, the more unusual the better). But you have to do it by changing a maximum of only five words. Contractions count as two words. And no exclamation points. The changes can be either word additions, word deletions, word substitutions, or word rearrangements. Also, you can't make an extra sentence with your five words, and you can't totally change what Fred says.
Remember--readers are usually thrilled when a character gives a surprising reaction, so have some fun with it. If you decide to post it, highlight your changes in italics or color or some way. For those who don't want to try it, applaud those who try.
Mount and ride.
Mods, if you feel this must be moved, could you please wait about a day or so since it is closely tied to another thread here.
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