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.