A problem you have is that you start every sentence with the same style: noun, action, action. It reminds me of those drills in 2cond grade...

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The man leaned from his seat and emerged with a manila folder and handed it to Shin. Shin took it from him and read the material inside. He glanced through the evaluation and came across the name finally. His eyes widened with exhilaration and surprise."

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The problem here is that none of this rings true. A man doesn't lean from a seat, but he can lean over his seat. A man can't emerge with a manila folder, but a manila folder can emerge out of a briefcase of from inside a overcoat. What is Shin doing -- is he reading or glancing through the material? Can eyes really widen with exhilaration or with surprise? Don't you really mean that because of exhilaration and surprise Shim's eyes widened. This all may seem very trivial, but one key part of good description is that it must be true, and a change of one or two words can transform a sentence.

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A medium sized man, for a fifty-year-old, came strolling down the red tiled hall. He wore a formal military uniform fitting for a man of the rank of a 5 star general, and a long trench coat over that. The hall branched off into a larger network of hallways and doors that connected rooms to these halls. The man reached the end of the hall where a soldier stood in formal military dress, a rifle over his shoulder.

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One problem here is that there's too much telling and not enough showing. Don't tell me this man is medium sized and 50, rather, show me. Don't tell me he's a 5-star general, show me. Here's a question: How can we see his suit if he's wearing a trench coat? Who cares where all these hall lead to. Where is this man going? A simple way to remedy this would be to have the 50 year old comment on how big and/or how young the soldier is with the rifle. You can even do something as banal, yet true to life, as "He's young enough to be my son," or "He's a good looking young man. Maybe I should introduce him to Rita."

Show me something.

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"Commander Jaon," the soldier stated and saluted. The man saluted in reply and leaned to look through a small lens in the wall, right of the protected door. A small red light shone into his eye and a delatch sounded from the door knob. The mysterious man opened and went in.

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Again, nothing here is really true to life. A soldier doesn't speak before saluting; rather, he salutes before he addresses his superior, or at least he does it at the same time. "The man" and "the mysterious man" -- is this Commander Jaon? If it is, don't be obscure. Who cares where the small lenses is? Rather, have him look through the small lense, then have him walk through the protected door.

[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited November 05, 2003).]

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Secondly why can't someone "emerge" with a manilla folder in his hand?

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Emerge from what? You have him sitting in a chair. The folder can certainly emerge from a case or a file cabinet.

It might make more sense if you said something such as "...and produced a manilla folder" or "...and pulled a manilla folder from his briefcase.

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when someone says exhileration is it actually an ajdective, can it not be an adverb as well? Describing how his eyes widened?

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Here I think it sounds better to say "his eyes widened "in" surprise, rather than "with" surprise.

If you haven't already, read through this thread and look what they did to one of my paragraphs. Now I just have to figure out how to do it myself.

That said, in the examples you gave, trim out the unnecessary actions -- telescope some of them. Does Shin know who the man is? If so, use the man's name. We'll assume it's absolutely necessary to call him "the man":
"The man leaned sideways in his seat and handed a manilla folder to Shin. When Shin glanced through the evaluation inside, he came across the name, and his eyes widened in exhilaration and surprise."
However, if this is Shin's point of view, he wouldn't see his own eyes widen in or with anything, though he might feel or think something.

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"A medium sized man, for a fifty-year-old, came stolling down the red tiled hall. He wore a formal military uniform fitting for a man of the rank of a 5 star general, and a long trench coat over that..."

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Work the details into the text. Read your sentences out loud. Watch word placement. When you wrote, "came across the name finally," I don't think you meant the name was "finally."

When you wrote, "A medium sized man, for a fifty-year-old," you didn't mean the man was actually for some fifty-year-old, but "A man, medium-sized for a fifty-year-old." Although I don't know what that means. Medium suggests average, but the phraseology suggests something unusual for a fifty-year-old.

Hmmm...Let me correct myself because context seems to play a part here. You could say "He was a medium-sized man, for a fify-year-old," but when you use the same words at the beginning of a sentence, it just doesn't come out the same. That's why rereading is so important. And reading aloud is priceless. (That sounds like a commercial. )

Anyway, take a walk. Do some jumping jacks. Then sit back down and keep writing.

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited November 05, 2003).]

Play the scene out in your head--use simple words to describe what is going on--then go back later and fill in with sparse accurate descriptions--don't reach so hard to make it "pretty."

And believe me--it is just as hard on us "old-timers" as a new writer to hear this don't work. 'cept some of us get to hear it from an agent or publisher--now there's shell shock for a person.

Shawn

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Lord Darkstorm, am I reading your correctly?

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Yes. I am stubborn, I am determined that I am right more than wrong (even though when it comes to writing I am more often wrong), and I have learned to pay attention to when I am wrong. The hardest part is in understanding what is wrong. If I disagree with something then I will not accept it until I understand how I could be wrong. Besides, Balthasar, how will I get on your nerves if I just agreed all the time?

End result is that I will listen once I understand.

Once I saw Enders Star's reaction to the comments, it struck me as something I might have once said. I probably have said things similar before, although with less of a angry tone. I was hoping to get Enders Star to see that there is a much better way of structuring sentences. Not that I have it all figured out yet, but I know it is an area I am going to work harder to improve.

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Lastly when someone says exhileration is it actually an ajdective, can it not be an adverb as well? Describing how his eyes widened?

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<His eyes widened in exhilaration.>
"Exhilaration" is a noun. "In" is a preposition. "In exhilaration" is a prepositional phrase used as an adverb modifying the verb, "widened."

For "exhilaration," which is a noun meaning the act or state of exhilarating, the adjective forms are "exhilarative" and "exhilaratory." There is no adverb form of the noun, "exhilaration."

"Exhilarate" is a verb that means to induce an enlivening feeling. The adjective form of this verb is "exhilarating," which does double duty as another verb form of "exhilarate." The adverb form is "exhilaratingly," and there's also a noun form, "exhilarator."

So, an exhilarator can exhilarate a crowd by exhilarating about exhilaration. (And there we also have a pesky verbal, in this case the gerund, "exhilarating," which acts as a noun. See how much fun this can be? )

But it's all nothing that can't be cured with a good dictionary.

<swoon> a double negative <unswoon>

(aargh...I must have looked at my own dictionary cross-eyed. )

For example, the document is in a manilla folder. Is this in violation of military procedures? Is this a sign of high security? Are manilla folders anachronistic? If there's nothing like ths, then we probably don't care that it's in a manilla folder. If too high a percentage of your text is things we don't care about, we won't careabout the text as a whole.

If a lot of things are important but we don't know yet, give us a few clues. "A man walked into the train in a five star general's uniform which probably belonged to him." (Note that this sentence absolutely forbids you to write the scene from this character's POV.) If you do this too much, we will probably get annoyed, though.

Only once you do that should you start worrying about other problems, and chances are, that after fixing that some of your problems will just go away.

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The man leaned from his seat and emerged with a manilla folder and handed it to Shin. Shin took it from him and read the material inside. He glanced through the evaluation and came across the name finally. His eyes widened with exhileration and surprise.

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100% of the sentences here have the EXACT same structure. Predicate, Verb, etc.

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A medium sized man, for a fifty-year-old, came stolling down the red tiled hall. He wore a formal military uniform fitting for a man of the rank of a 5 star general, and a long trench coat over that. The hall branched off into a larger network of hallways and doors that connected rooms to these halls. The man reached the end of the hall where a soldier stood in formal military dress, a rifle over his. shoulder. "Commander Jaon," the soldier stated and saluted. The man saluted in reply and leaned to look through a small lens in the wall, right of the protected door. A small red light shone into his eye and a delatch sounded from the door knob. The mysterious man opened and went in.

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100% of the sentences here start with a noun, again.

And this

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"A man walked into the train in a five star general's uniform which probably belonged to him." (Note that this sentence absolutely forbids you to write the scene from this character's POV.)

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I'd leave the color words--but watch how many of those adjectives you toss out there.

Each book, the best selling ones, have their own "music" a rhythm that the author consciously puts in or more than likely sub-consciously does.

You want the words to flow. You do that my using different patterns in your work.

Have you tried reading it out loud?

What they are trying to tell you isn't to use the same pattern, the same structure.

A good thing to do--take a copy of a best seller--paper back, you're going to make a mess of it. Go through and highlight how many sentences start with the same word--say do this in yellow. Then take a look at your paragraph quoted above. You have what 8 sentences? Half start with the word the and not only that they are in a row.

Now get out your pink highlighter--do this in the best seller first--in the same paragraph--how many sentences in that paragraph start with a noun? Then do the same for yours.

The expand this to the first words in a paragraph --by looking down the side of the page.

Now I am not saying that you should call your character's something else all over the place just to not use their name--but you use the man the man again and again--A medium sized man, The mysterious man--and who is that, the soldier? The man The man--you must vary the way you start your sentences.

I've been told I cheat when doing my sentence order--but hey, if it works--LOL so I won't go into examples--but I hope this clarifies what others are saying.

One way to really improve your writing is rereading one of your favorite novels or short stories -- not as a reader would, but as a writer. See how he or she does description. Look at sentence structure and paragraph structure. Look at dialogue. If there's something you really like, mark it. Actually, get a couple of highlighters and a pen and mark up the text. (Hence, you'll want to obtain a second copy of your favorite novel or make a photocopy if you're going to work on a short story.)

Another point. It is an infallible rule of writing that a writer needs to find his or her own way. You learn by trial and error. Although talking about the craft with others and reading good books about writing will help, in the end you're by yourself at the keyboard.

I equate studying the craft or art of writing with being a quarterback. (I live in Dallas, so I'm watching the resurrection of Quincy Carter on a weekly basis.) No matter how much a quarterback studies film or game situations, in a middle of the game he doesn't have time to think about what he should do. He has to act, and he has to act intuitively. But the more he studies, the better he gets in game situations.

So, don't try to "learn" anything -- there are no formulas. Rather, seek to grasp the concepts so when you're at the keyboard you're able to use them.

One last bit of advice. You should always write your best whenever you write. One of the best aspects about this forum is that you're forced to write if you want to participate. When you write a post, write the post as well as you can. But don't get crazy over it; you're not looking for a Hugo award. Just say, "I'm going to write as well as I can."

First person, second person, and third person are grammatical forms. If you narrate by saying "I did this and that," it is first person narration. "You did this and that," is second person, and "he did this and that," is third person. You will notice that I also used simple past tense in each of the above examples. Tense is also an important descriptor of the narrative.

POV is a distinct issue. The POV of a story is the point of view from which the story is being told, not necessarily the person or tense used. Think of...gossip. When you tell Pete (all names changed to protect the fictional) about an argument between Jack and Jill, you can tell it from your perspective (how it affected you), Jack's perspective (how you think it seemed to Jack), Jill's perspective (how you think it seemed to Jill) or Pete's perspective (this is complicated and a bit recursive).

In fact, you will tell the story from all these perspectives to some extent (unless some of the people involved are not people in your own mind). But you will cast it predominantly from one or two of them. For instance, you might concentrate on Jill's feelings and how disagreeable Jack was being (seeing Jill from the inside and Jack from the outside). Or you might see both of them from the outside and talk mainly about how their argument made you feel. Or you might talk more about how you think Pete might be feeling about these events (which he only knows about from you).

So POV is the perspective of the story. Person is who is telling the story to whom. With fiction (particularly science fiction), the author usually isn't part of the story, so we (SF authors) usually try to avoid making a big deal about who is actually telling the story. We are telling stories about a third person, neither ourselves nor our audience (again, most of the time). And because we want to readers to sympathize with our main characters, we tell the story from their POV (points of view).

This means we usually write in something variously called third person single character limited ominisicent (various of the words are usually omitted from the phrase, according to preference). We don't consciously make statements about what we (the authors/narrators) think about things or about what the audience is feeling about the situations described, instead we talk about the feelings and thoughts of a particular character in the story for whom the audience is to feel sympathy (literary sense).

This is what is actually meant by "show don't tell" (the most perniciously misunderstood cliche of good writing). Too many writers (having grown up in the age of television) think that "showing" means "panning about the scene". The phrase "show don't tell" comes from before the days of television, when it wasn't literally possible to show anything. It is a metaphor meaning "put your audience into the story, make them feel like it is happening to them."

In other words, it means, 'write in effective POV.'

For the same reason, you should read old books -- books written before the 1970s, which is the decade when those reared on TV began getting their stories published -- becasue too many popular books nowadays are too much of a produce of Hollywood.

(Some on these forums will scream at me for using "was" but I felt like it. So there )
Both are right in certain circumstances. I would prefer to use the first example along with some in depth POV revelation and some "showing": Mirana almost blasted Lor, but she knew that it wouldn't work. Lor was too strong for her to handle, damn it.

[/slightly off point]

Enders star: Here is an example of your paragraph with varied sentence strucutre.

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The man leaned from his seat and emerged with a manilla folder and handed it to Shin.

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Shin took it from him and read the material inside. He glanced through the evaluation and came across the name finally.His eyes widened with exhileration and surprise.

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We don't consciously make statements about what we (the authors/narrators) think about things or about what the audience is feeling about the situations described, instead we talk about the feelings and thoughts of a particular character in the story for whom the audience is to feel sympathy (literary sense).

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"Thank you," Shin said as he opened the folder and skimmed through the papers inside, searching for his name. He found it and let out a sigh of relief.

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Have you tried the highlighter exercises? (I suggested and someone else as well) no matter how silly it seems it does work--so does reading your book and a best seller aloud. Better yet into a tape recorder and then listen to the play back--better yet have someone else read it into a tape recorder then play back--this one works like a charm.

You can hear where the person stumbles over things.

The other thing to do is to understand that we all started somewhere--no one turns out perfect book son their first run. ON another form some argued with me saying but but J.K Rowlings!!!!! Uh huh--she went through rejections as well, she had an editor and did edits. Unless you have sold mega best sellers--you have an editor. SO you are going to be facing editing no matter what. Get over it.

The fact that you are asking for help is great--but as you said yourself you are ego trapped yet--once you get past that your writing will take off.

You're looking to hard at the examples--instead of the spirit of them and what they are trying to teach. I know that one--"HA! See your idea is wrong!"

DO you belong to a crit group? If not join one. And when you do see if someone will do a line by line for you.

I used to offer to do this for people, I can't anymore--no time. Have dead line on a second book--

And I wouldn't have that or a first book being shopped around by my agent if I had not gotten past the ego, and been able to see the lesson and not the words. This even goes for how to books---man I used to read those things all the time and thought they were total trash because I couldn't seem to apply them to my own writing.

One of the best things I did was set aside "my great ego novel" and go one to the next one--guess what? As I wrote all those offered lessons and read how to books started working. I recognized when my sentence structure was repetitive--etc.

Try the ideas offered. Take a page and look at the nouns or pronouns starting each sentence and say--OK I will try this. Go through and even if you don't feel like you understand--do it. Replace the start of the sentences, vary the form and structure.

The listen to the tape of that page how it was. Read again and listen to it "fixed"--I think you Will be surprised and pleased, and with that practice understanding will come.

Well, I've had my break now, back to the grind of rewrites.

Shawn

Your voice as a writer is your voice. C'est...no wait, that's a gallicism.

In fictional POV, the character doesn't exist outside of how you describe him. So you tell the reader with perfect confidence what the character is experiencing. Only when you are using a fictional narrator character that 'believes' the POV character to be (or to have been) a real person would you impute doubt that the thoughts and feelings of the POV character are perfectly known.

I think the first step in any recovery process is admitting you have a problem. You admit you have an ego problem, that you think you Shakespeare in waiting. Way to go. You made a giant step.

Now let's get on to some business.

I fear that you are going to get overwhelmed very fast about POV on this board if you don't hurry up and read Card's Character and Viewpoints. Another good book is Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction, which has a good introductory section on viewpoints.

But perhaps the best exercise of all is to start reading as a writer.

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Also, "Mirana was mad" is pretty weak, but is better show don't tell than, "Mirana ground her teeth, slowly, started breathing heavily, and shaking her fist." By concentrating on her actions and not her feelings (or the POV character's feelings about her being angry) you are distancing the reader from the scene. To 'show' Mirana's anger, let the audience know what it means that she's angry, don't just tell us what she does. If you don't give the reader a reason to care, then sympathy and understanding will not occur.

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Are you saying describe what she is thinking? Explain not only she is angry but the thoughts that are going through her mind that would make her angry?

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To answer this question, you have to determine what viewpoint you're using. If use a detached viewpoint -- if you only want to show what your characters do and allow the reader to interpret their feelings by their actions -- then you can't say, "Mirana was mad," nor can you tell what is going on in her head. You can only show what she is doing. If you can, get a hold of Anton Chekhov's "The Lament" to see what I mean.

On the other hand, if you want to use a character-viewpoint, then you have to decide if you want to write in a subjective way -- that is, if you want to get in the head of the character, but you can't tell us what he looks like, and you probably won't tell us about some kind of actions, since people are usually unware they are clenching their teeth when they're angry. Or, you can write in an objective character viewpoint, in which you can tell what the character looks like, but you can't say anything directly about the character's feelings.

http://www.sfwriter.com/ow07.htm

Mirana swept everything from the table onto the floor. The kicked it around the room before she picked up all of john's things and tossed them out the door.

First person:

A dull throbbing began in my temple, it spread as tight tension into my neck. I clasped my hand into a fist so tight that my nails dug into my palm.

"F . . . you," I screamed at Susan.

Omni: Mirana felt anger like she never had before. Everyone in the room knew when she got mad. She clasped her hand into a tight fist etc--but that is all knowing and you can get into trouble with that one very fast if you jump around from character to character too much.

First person seems easy--it's not.

Limited third works well for most starting out writers.

It's the he she said POV from one character's head.

I agree, though, that it seems you need to read a good book on POV or lesson on POV, then you can address the issues of how to describe what is going on.

I think the entire thread turned into POV when you have other issues as well in the short block you posted.

Start with POV--