Friday, October 9, 2009

_I can see the fight_

Halt's second shot dropped the left-hand wargal. Will fired at the one on the right and he realized instantly that he had misjudged the wargal's speed.The arrow hissed through the space where the wargal had been a second before.

2 comments:

  1. Alden,

    I wanted to point out a few things I notice about this little excerpt. On the one hand, the sentences are sort of a boring list of events. If you look at the bare sentence structure, they say "This happened. This happened. This happened." However, that's not the impression I get upon reading it. How does the author disguise, or maybe enhance, the similar sentence structure? Why is it that, when I'm reading this, I'm excited and reading quickly, rather than tediously wading through a list of facts?

    One other writing element I notice, which helps build the excitement, is the use of strong verbs. "Halt's second shot dropped the left-hand wargal" is a lot more gripping than "Halt's second shot caused the left-hand wargal to fall over" or "Halt hit the wargal and he was killed." "The arrow hissed" is an immediate image, stronger than "the arrow sped" or "the arrow flew really, really fast."

    I also notice the details left out. Maybe some of these are explained in the surrounding paragraphs. However, I don't need to know what the landscape looks like, or even what Halt, Will, or the wargals look like to be able to see the fight described in these sentences. We are not told where Halt's shot hit the wargal or what Will's bow looks like. We are only given the important facts.

    josiah

    ReplyDelete
  2. What the heck is that supposed to mean? Are you telling the people whats happening in the book? What is you favorite part of this book and why?

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.