Sorry...I realize now that that was an *incredibly* vague comment. I blame the jetlag.
Anyways, what I mean is that you're very formal in your writing ("Yet her feet kept walking," "the more pressing issue was probably how she did not care") which for me was a little jarring, since it's in 3rd p limited from Shannon's pov. I only noticed now that you actually do use contractions sometimes, at least at "He didn’t card her, and she hadn’t expected him to," and the fact that I didn't notice that one maybe shows how much more natural it felt.
I think you're trying to get across how numb and distant Shannon feels, but we get that just fine, and a lot of times the contractions make it seem a little unnatural rather than numb.
(An example of where they are effective, though, is "He would have shown up twenty, twenty-five minutes past." I'm not sure why, but when you don't contract "had" and "would," it does make it seem distant rather than unnatural.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 02:47 pm (UTC)Anyways, what I mean is that you're very formal in your writing ("Yet her feet kept walking," "the more pressing issue was probably how she did not care") which for me was a little jarring, since it's in 3rd p limited from Shannon's pov. I only noticed now that you actually do use contractions sometimes, at least at "He didn’t card her, and she hadn’t expected him to," and the fact that I didn't notice that one maybe shows how much more natural it felt.
I think you're trying to get across how numb and distant Shannon feels, but we get that just fine, and a lot of times the contractions make it seem a little unnatural rather than numb.
(An example of where they are effective, though, is "He would have shown up twenty, twenty-five minutes past." I'm not sure why, but when you don't contract "had" and "would," it does make it seem distant rather than unnatural.)
Anyways, just something to think about.