Hey hey, thanks for sharing your work!




1. The premise itself seems good. I'm interested in what's happening, especially since I don't have a synopsis of the plot, so that's a point in your favour.

2. I definitely do see that you do over-explain things. I think that is a pretty common pitfall for more inexperienced long-form writers, especially if they're coming from an RP background where you have to get the circumstances / environment just so to make sure that your RP partner(s) understand the scene. The thing is though, you don't have to do that with long-form prose; it's often better to keep things more vague (unless the specific callouts have a purpose that will be relevant to the story at some point) so that the reader's imagination can be more creative.

To elaborate on that, I've got an example passage below:



You don't particularly need to describe the colours of a forest. Unless the forest had been burnt down or covered in snow (in which case, it would be worth mentioning), the default assumption of a reader would be that a forest has some assortment of greens and browns. It's an unnecessary detail except to establish that the sun is up, which you can put in later in a more 'active' voice by making the sun interact with the character. A couple things I would encourage you to watch out for are some wording mistakes as well — if something is 'eerie' its unlikely to be 'peaceful' as 'eerie' means strange and perhaps spooky, which is the opposite of peaceful. I would re-examine the words used and make sure they match. Is the wood supposed to be a bit spooky? If so, I would leave out 'peaceful' and keep 'eerie stillness'. If they're not, I would take out 'and eerie' to leave 'peaceful stillness'. Also, watch out for sentence fragments and repetition — if we take out the modifiers, the second sentence reads "The stillness of the wood broken by the sound of a young girl," which is only a partial sentence.

If this were me, I would probably do something like this instead:



You'll notice that it's shorter, but also punchier. The opening is in active voice (the cracking broke, the girl trampled) as opposed to passive (the silence was broken). I took out some repetitive wording ("clambered over fallen trees" is somewhat repeated in "scrambled over the bark of a long-dead oak tree") and unnecessary descriptions (removed "husk", as that is already implied by "long-dead"). I also switched it up so that Lily's actions are more active (interacting with her environment by squinting into the sun, pushing aside foliage) rather than having the environment solely described adjacent to her.

It's really not bad, so don't feel discouraged; a lot of this will likely be caught by an editor / beta reader (so be sure to use one) or even the first couple of editing passes. Of course, your style is your own and no one can tell you what's right and wrong in that regard! But some general tips:

- If you want to keep the reader wrapped in the moment, use active voice
- If you want to be more flowery and passive, save it for moments that are more still, with less action / excitement
- Unless the description is particularly important, try to leave things to the imagination for the reader. Assume they're smart and know what generic things look like (woods, trees, pants, shirts) unless there is something special about that generic thing (eg: a door with a strange symbol should have the symbol described, but you don't need to go into the details of the door's construction).
- Use full sentences, and when you need to join up two ideas that aren't full sentences on their own but are somewhat related, the semi-colon is your friend
- Be aware of your words; use descriptors deliberately, with purpose. If you say "cold and frigid" is that adding anything extra than just saying "frigid"?

I hope this helps! And I hope you'll share more as you write :D