If you're writing a 600-1,500-word story the scene is one of your most powerful tools to make the story come alive for the reader. In the scene there is conflict and action and dialogue. You are showing and not telling.
But to break up this blur of movement you may want to throw in some description: let the reader know where the story is taking place, what your characters are wearing and what they look like. Excellent. Just keep in mind that the locale of your story, what your characters are wearing and what they look like should be "intentional." Description must have a purpose.
Don't mention a character's blue eyes simply because you think blue eyes are pretty. Don't mention that the color of a woman's dress is red because it's the color that popped into your head at the time. You want to be in more control of your craft than that. What pops into your head during that rush to get words down on paper during the writing of the first draft is fine; but during revision ask yourself, does the color of his eyes move the story forward? Does the color of her dress explain something about her?
In other words, description must do at least two things. It must ground the reader in the physical world of the story and it must tell the reader something more about the story than the reader's senses can detect. So that in the world of your story a kitchen is more than just a kitchen. A river is more than just a river. And a color is more than just a color.
When you get a pattern of these signifers going your story will begin to echo with an undercurrent of meaning, an undercurrent of meaning that you are in some conscious control over. You won't have total control over your signifiers because your subconscious will have something to say about that. The control that you do have will make your story deeper. And the shorter a story is the deeper it should be.
very good and useful advice/i will try to put it into practice though planning and succeeding are 2 different things, as you probably know...also, go change "then the reader's senses" to than and "fellow" the prompts to follow. i surely know you are not stupid, it's like you said, after you type something you are blind the next moments, etc. much luck with this one
This programmed, self-paced lesson focuses exclusively on the use of postpostions (ga and (w)o) with grammatical objects in the Japanese language without wavering or getting off track in the labyrinth of Japanese syntax and other grammatical issues.
