#6 Into the Cave

Greetings, all you glorious reprobates. Today we are deconstructing a fantasy piece titled Into the Cave by Kirby Ray on Writing.com. I am assuming (reprehensible I know) that it will contain a rather dark and dank structure of natural composition.

Paragraph 1

Everything felt surreal after the declaration of war: all over the city of Arboleda, people were panicking, hiding, and even looting, as if the Black Star Army was on their doorstep. By the time Jay managed to meet with her friends in St. John Park, the air was eerily silent and still; anyone that would have been out to enjoy the beautiful day was preparing for the worst. Thankfully, Bian and Rosa were far more interested in what their ringleader had to say than hunkering down, as they waited for her underneath a tall oak tree on the outskirts of the nature trail.

This first sentence is both awkward and wordy, but these derive more from structure then excessive or unnecessary words. The passive structure also detracts from it, slowing the narrative and clogging the flow. To smooth these issues, I would begin with deleting “everything felt surreal.” It’s disconnected from the rest of its sentence and is never expanded upon or explainedin the paragraph as a whole. It also disagrees with its own sentence on a meta level. To describe something as surreal is to attribute it a dreamlike aspect, but panicking, looting and hiding are far from quite or dreamlike events, rendering them at odds with the description of surreal. Finally, it is also a weak beginning because we have neither attachment to the surrealism nor context for it, leading to the reader feeling disconnected.

In comparison, ‘After the war declaration’ starts the narrative with an immediate, commanding phrase, instantly giving the readers a sense of motion, of events while centering them in the paragraph’s governing instigator. This structure also removes the need/desire for the colon, which is disruptive due to hard breaking the sentence, which foments the awkwardness of the narrative; it doesn’t start and continue through an elegant train of thoughts and events, it stops and starts constantly, repeating the passive verbs and stringing three or four concepts together without transition. (This last comment is the core reason for this sentence’s clunkiness.)

So, remove the colon and replace with a verb,—After the war declaration, the city of Arboleda descended into panic with the people hiding, scrambling to stockpile necessities and even looting as if the Black Star Army had already arrived.—I added the ‘stockpiling necessities’ because ‘even looting’ required a third action in the sentence for the ‘even’ to make sense. It is also a common response when panicking, and thus maintains the author’s narrative. Swapped ‘…Black Star Army was on their doorstep’ to ‘had arrived’ for brevity’s sake, and because I do feel it reads better without the ‘was.’ However, I fear this sentence runs too long and comments on too many things.

All combined, my reworked sentence would have six or seven thoughts, and that’s just a lot without a break, not difficult to comprehend just a proverbial mouthful. But it’s hard to say for sure, and there is narrative coherence to all of these thoughts.

For the second sentence, “By the time Jay managed to meet with her friends in St. John Park, the air was eerily silent and still; anyone that would have been out to enjoy the beautiful day was preparing for the worst.” I would say it struggles with mostly the same flaws. The solution is the same (wild, reasonless sentence massacre.) I would delete ‘managed to’ because it serves mostly as specificity, but the specificity doesn’t really alter the sentence, nor does it overtly benefit it. Delete the ‘with’ as it is unnecessary after the previous cut.

I would also exchange ‘was eerily’ to ‘had grown eerily.’ It provides a sense of passing time, which gives the scene a little more texture. Instead of just operating as a isolated moment in time, it now exists before its immediate relevance, giving it a sense of life outside the immediate narrative. Yes, this adds a word and is technically still passive, but it adds movement to an otherwise sterile description.

Then, I would delete ‘and still’ as it is unnecessary to complete the image, and thus only clutters the narrative. The second half of this sentence is just wordy, but also suffers slightly from the semi-colon separating it. This isn’t as egregious as the colon in the first sentence, but it’s still present. So, combine and streamline. —By the time Jay met her friends in St. John Park, the air had grown eerily silent, with everyone who might have otherwise enjoyed the beautiful day preparing for the worst.—

I think this still conveys all the author’s points, it just doesn’t hold the reader’s hand as much through them. My one concern is this ‘with’ echoing the ‘with’ from the previous sentence. You may be able to exchange this ‘with’ for a ‘because’.

For the third sentence“Thankfully, Bian and Rosa were far more interested in what their ringleader had to say than hunkering down, as they waited for her underneath a tall oak tree on the outskirts of the nature trail.” The problems are mostly just wordiness, the narrative is straightforward and flows through the thoughts with transitions and cohesion. So what do we cut? First, the ‘far’ as with or without it, the meaning remains unchanged.

Next, reduce “in what their ringleader had to say” to—more interested in their ringleader’s words—(you can exchange ‘word’ for whatever synonym best suits your fancy, anything from ‘advice’ to ‘schemes’.) This is where it gets tricky. ‘as they waited for her underneath’ is a fundamental error both in this sentence and the paragraph. First, the paragraph indicated at the start to be from Jay’s POV, but this sentence can only work if it’s from their POV because it’s expressing their thoughts in relation to an action they are currently preforming. Without that action, Jay could just be surmising their thoughts. That’s the grammar error for the paragraph, for the sentence structure it is that the first half of this sentence is referencing a specific time in the overarching narrative (when everybody was panicking and hiding) while the second half references a time further along (after the looting and whatnot has attenuated, as indicated by the silence), but the ‘as they’ indicates they’re happening as the same time.

Continuing, delete the ‘for her’ as I believe that is implied from the paragraph as a whole, and will become self-evident, if not. I would also delete ‘tall’ as a boring adjective that doesn’t really affect the scene in a meaningful way while also adding another word to an already cumbersome sentence.

Finally, exchange ‘on the outskirts of the nature trail’ to ‘outside the nature trail’ same meaning, just more concise without the glue words.

This leaves us with —Thankfully, Bian and Rosa were more interested in their ringleader’s words than cowering, as they waited beneath an oak tree outside the nature trail.—(Didn’t change the fundamental error because it’s likely to require a significant structural and meaning change, and swapped to ‘beneath’ because I think it reads smoother, and to ‘cowering’ because it one word instead of two, and is a stronger word in my opinion.

Paragraph 2

         “So good to see you guys,” the bespectacled girl greeted her companions as she rode up on her bike. “My mom went out to go get supplies and my dad is swamped at work. How’d you manage?”

Mostly just refining for the paragraph. Delete ‘her companions’ as there is no one else for her to address. And you may be able to swap ‘rode up’ to ‘arrived.’ For the dialogue, you can cut the possessive and just do—My mom went to get supplies and dad’s swamped at work. — You only need the first ‘my.’

Now, for my final comment, the one that fills me with unutterable horror, I don’t like the first line of dialogue. (Take everything that is to follow as deeply suspect, dialogue is not my strong suite.) so, my problem is that it sounds like two friends meeting up after a long time, or an aunt coming to visit, not a teen girl visiting her friends after a catastrophic war has been declared. My advice on what to change shall be withheld due to summary execution for the aforementioned reason of it being terrible. Let’s just leave it at be careful what your words say both upfront and below. This leaves us with…

“So good to see you guys,” the bespectacled girl greeted as she arrived on her bike. “My mom went to get supplies and dad is swamped at work. How’d you manage?”

Final with all my perfidious edits applied… (23 words removed from the original 140.)

After the war declaration, the city of Arboleda descended into panic with the people hiding, scrambling to stockpile necessities and even looting as if the Black Star Army had already arrived.By the time Jay met her friends in St. John Park, the air had grown eerily silent, with everyone who might have otherwise enjoyed the beautiful day preparing for the worst. Thankfully, Bian and Rosa were more interested in their ringleader’s words than cowering, as they waited beneath an oak tree outside the nature trail.

“So good to see you guys,” the bespectacled girl greeted as she arrived on her bike. “My mom went to get supplies and dad is swamped at work. How’d you manage?”

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