Been thinking about fic, and..

[timepiececlock]

I hate the construction of this sentence:

The vampire the Slayer's troop had rushed into that horrid room to rescue hung directly above them.

It's too, too... something. Am I taking too long to get to the action verb (hung)? Is it too many perpositional phrases? WHAT?

I hate it. But I've tried it six or seven ways and I still can't make it sound good.

Could any of the LJ writer people (or for that matter anyone else) save my mind here and tell me how to make this sentence sound better? Rearrange it, cut it to pieces, whatever... I just hate it as it is and don't know how to fix it.

Comments

[dragolyn.livejournal.com]

Okay, here's my opinion. You're not trying to sell a sentence, you're trying to sell an image. I would break it up, make it more visual. Paint a word picture using, well, more words. :-)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

:nods: right. That makes sense. Sometimes I try to compensate for too much wordiness by being sparce... hmmm....adding more. Ok. Thank you.

Re:

[dragolyn.livejournal.com]

hehe, I make sense! Wow! There's a first for everything, I guess. *g*

[octopedingenue]

Mmmmmm. Yes. Vampire hanging from the ceiling (or something). Definitely deserves its own word-picture or even a paragraph. Hanging by the arms? by the neck? unconscious? squeaking piteously? looking strangely reminiscent of tortured-Angel, without the pokers? or maybe WITH the pokers?

Mmmm..

[octopedingenue]

Suddenly I want to go "Mmmmm, pokers," in a tone like that of Angel's Furies.

My mama raised me to be creepy.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

yes, ok, i get it! But it's hard, you know? I'm all talk talk talk a-mile-a-minute with dialogue, but with description I always fall back on less-is-more, even when it's not really. Damn. Ok. Check. More description. I can do that.

I'll just try and put my mind to where it was when I wrote Aqarius. That fic was all description, with, like, one spoken line at the very end. But that was also all about water and rain and kissing in watery rain, and this isn't really--- damn. Ok. I can do this.

[octopedingenue]

Oh, God, I understand. Hence me making big with the pretentiously-vague-psychological-pomo-artsy-character-vignettes: I don't have to sweat over saying "The sky was dark" without sounding like a five-year-old.

And yes. You can do this. :)

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Hence me making big with the pretentiously-vague-psychological-pomo-artsy-character-vignettes

I typically write character vignette one-shots. Like that "markdown" fic I wrote a while ago in LJ but have yet to re-edit or post... it's all full of pretentiously-vague-psychological-pomo-artsy stuff. Though I'm bluffing somewhat; I don't know what "pomo" means. -_-

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

I don't know what "pomo" means

"Post-modern"

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

oh. Is that a typically used contraction, or just internet short-hand slang?

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

In the art community, it's a commonly-used term.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

ah, ok. Thanks.

[chase820.livejournal.com]

I'd replace "The Slayer's troop" with "they", moving the phrase "The Slayer's troop" to a nearby sentence to designate. The whole thing scans better that way, to my ears.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

hhmm... maybe, maybe. Thanks for the idea.

Just my take

[hils.livejournal.com]

The vampire that the Slayer's troop had rushed into that horrid room to rescue hung directly above them.

Re: Just my take

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

ah... but that's just adding a "that". mOre grammatically correct, but still... nah, I have to re-do the whole thing.

Re: Just my take

[hils.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought you just wanted to make it gramatically correct. Ok, how's this

The vampire, the reason they had rushed into that awful room, hung above them

Obviously I don't know the context of the sentence but that's just an idea.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

The vampire the Slayer's troop had rushed into that horrid room to rescue hung directly above them.

Well, you've got several options. But no matter what you do, it needs to be expanded a bit.

Look, I suck at explaining myself. Let me give an example. If I was going to re-write it, it would be a little more like...

They smelled the blood before they made it through the door. Rushed into the horrid room, eyes straining in the dim light. Blood lay everwhere, splatters and spray concealing what looked like older, more chilling stains.

The creak of chains led their eyes upward, where Spike hung, arms stretched beyond their normal limits, his face a mask of blood.

Now, ignore the specifics (I don't know if your vamp was tortured, etc.) The important thing to notice is the descriptive flavor. The smell, which tells the reader what might be inside the room, what it's used for, the sound of the chains creaking that completes the mental picture of the motion inherent in the scene, the sensation of what it's like to be hung by one's arms, etc. In other words, 'show, don't tell'.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

ah, specifics! Actually, I already handled the entering into the room portion previously, I just need to expand this line, which described that what they'd been looking for was actually hanging above them. But good point about the smell--- that's one lesson I admit I frequently forget. Use all five senses.

THank you for your suggestions. :)

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

The vampire they had rushed into that horrid room to rescue hung above them.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

hm.... ok, cutting also works. thanks for the contributing suggestion! :)