Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-4127849-20140323174827/@comment-4832646-20140323185904

Ryonne wrote: I believe semicolons in the first sentence scare away potential readers.

Your criticisms seem kind of broad. Do you have any examples of areas where awkward phrasing or heavy descriptions are detrimental to the story? The heavy descriptions in general tend to be detrimental if overdone, as is slightly in your story. For example, the first paragraph barely progressed the story; it was mainly description. Also, semicolons don't scare away potential readers. It's a form of punctuation. And the awkward phrasing tends to spawn from heavily done description.

I'm not saying heavy description isn't good if done right, but that tends to be extremely difficult to do and only good in extremely long stories that need it. A lot of writers think that if they describe too much it makes the story good, but this is actually a mistake. It's fine to be wordy, but again, use as few words as possible to get the point across while still giving the reader the image you want them to see. Find a way both to describe how the man looks at the city and how it actually is, and make the climax a little less vague.

Where did the man plant the bomb that caused the explosion? Give more of a hint that it was a bomb and a terrorist attack.

Basically, spread the description out more so that important things can be more easily grasped but you can still describe the non-important things to reflect the man's view on the city.