The Writer's Gradebook | Closed For Requests

━ 002. Grimm Games by L. L. Sanders

In the first paragraph, my thoughts are somewhere along the lines of: thank God this was written by someone who knows how to write prose, at least on a basic, comprehensible level. Although the style is a little repetitive at times ("sadistic" is used twice in the span of a few lines of dialogue; the headline emerged from my lips as I read it aloud is pretty obviously unnecessary repetition) and could use editing, it's more than readable. We are immediately introduced to two characters: Kam, the protagonist, and Jade, the girl who I assume based on her excessive physical descriptions is the love interest. Both names I like, by the way. I'm going to start out immediately with critique because I'm just a mean person. In the first five paragraphs, three describe Jade's appearance. Personally, I don't vibe all that much with so much description of one specific person. I'm a big believer in spreading out the details; a comment about hair here, a remark about a nose there. However, every once in a while, it works to do a nice little paragraph describing the overall appearance of a character — I do it. Everyone does it.

I'm going to show you the description that I didn't particularly like in Grimm Games, and then I'm going to compare it with an introductory description that I did like from another story (don't worry, I won't use my own story this time, mostly because I'm not all that good at concise descriptions either). Out of the first five paragraphs, only paragraph one and paragraph three don't focus on Jade, so I'll cut those out.

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"Isn't is so uncannily sadistic?" Jade walked through the narrow doorway with a crisp sheet of paper in her grip. She approached my secondhand desk with urgency. Her stunning brown eyes that usually light up with admiration toward me narrowed in disgust. "You see this, girl? We're nearing one-hundred thousand signatures and that's still not enough to get the State's attention."

[...]

"No one wants to die competing for a one in six chance at a few million dollars and have their death broadcasted to the masses, their families." Jade scanned the sheet, her dark, kinky ringlets hung from her head to obscure one eye. The urge to swipe it back behind her ear nagged at me. "These people are desperate, Kam. Desperate for an easier life, a chance at life, and who's fault is that?"

She slipped the paper on my desk before meeting my gaze. Her cute button nose reminded me of my own but complimented her face and complexion so well, as the tone of her rich brown skin contoured her facial features naturally.

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Dialogue seems pretty good so far, right? I'm enjoying the clever manner in which the author decided to infodump, slipping in worldbuilding through casual conversation. The dialogue is believable and flows naturally, which I applaud. But take a look at that last paragraph. The nose-complimenting-her-complexion and the skintone-contouring-facial-features sounds a little weird, doesn't it? Unlike the dialogue, these physical descriptions feel stilted and awkward, as does the comment about her eyes above. Her hair falling in front of her face to obscure one eye is the only one that seemed to work very well. Here's a couple of paragraphs of introductory physical descriptions in No One Mourns The Aftermath, from the perspective of a character who is seeing these characters for the first time just like the reader is.

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Aria froze. Two dresses dangled in front of her, one a sequined red and the other a modest tan trimmed with lace. Both were rugged and at least two sizes too large, dangling on hangers that were moments away from falling apart. Aria's heart raced; she tried to pull away but found duct tape snagging tight on her limbs. Dangling the hangers was quite possibly the ultimate contrast from the dresses' halfhearted girlishness: an array of slender limbs and peppered scars, scowling mercilessly as his eyes scanned every detail of the room as if it were unfamiliar to him. A biting gray as they scanned the escapes and rafters, the hangers and closets, the people.