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Spend less time describing the nervousness, and more time describing what is making your characters nervous. Neither of them moved a muscle. Elias could hear his own heartbeat; he could even he...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T06:20:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27574 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
FlyingPiMonster
·
2019-12-08T06:20:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Spend less time describing the nervousness, and more time describing what is making your characters nervous. > Neither of them moved a muscle. Elias could hear his own heartbeat; he could even hear Jamie's nervous breaths. Two sets of footsteps were coming toward them. One was heavy and slow, like an adult's; the other seemed quicker and lighter. > > _(from something I'm writing)_ In this short paragraph, only one sentence is devoted to actually describing nervousness: hearing one's own heartbeat and someone else's breath. Readers know from that sentence that Jamie and Elias are nervous; there is no need to tell them again. Instead, the rest of the paragraph is about their situation. _Why_ are they nervous? They need to avoid detection, and two mysterious figures are moving toward them. This heightens the tension in the scene and gives Elias and Jamie a reason to be nervous, which is much more effective than continuing to describe nervousness itself.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2017-04-16T23:08:49Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 5