So, hello everybody at the forum! (my very first post) I'm not intend to waste your time, guys with this, so let's get straight to the problem, with which, I hope you'll be able to help me. When writing in prose, my humble self, intends to form sentences, paragraphs in a way in which they become hard to follow. According to my diagnosis the main problem is that I use a lot of nominal structures, and do a lot of stacking. I would really like to share some of my writings with you so you could get a better look at it, but the fact is that I'm hungarian, so everything is in hungarian... Anyway I hope some of you will havea handful of tips to share with me!
I hope we can help, but Hungarian is completely unfamiliar to me. (I almost said Hungarian is Greek to me, but I guess that doesn't translate ...) Welcome to the forum!
I have been working a lot on rhythm lately. The best idea I read was that you should just break the rules of grammar and write whatever sounds good to you. My own idea is that I think it is important to be clear what is the focus of the sentence as you edit. Some sentences just have to be simple while others have more than one idea and thus need to be more complex. This helps me with rhythm as I have a clear idea about sentence length. I think you need to provide a sample of your writing though. Even if it is a little paragraph.
Perhaps you could translate a small portion of your work? Even though it wouldn't really resemble the original, it would still be enough to give us some idea of your written style.
And here it is (probably much worse than the original, and probably the text is also filled with mistakes. Feel free to correct them, it's good to learn something new, aye?): "Blood and water squirted on Faralian Velianas's face as the galley's nose tumbled over another wave, and as the Armada recieved another volley from the defenders. Velianas stood in the end of the vessel, looking over the two hundred veterans on the ship. The slaves moaned, the injured soldiers cried, begged and bawled, but they recieved neither mercy nor help, the world lef them alone with their pain. The hearts filled with fear, otherwise so gentle, now became crueler than a hunting necromant. Velianas heard screaming and rumbling, deep sound from a ship next to them, a catapults shell nearly snapped the deck. A bank heaved to the light, the ship's mast sinked to the water. The slaves jolted their shackles bitterly, until the ocean's fangs closed around the ship, and they disappeared in the depths."
Too much happening too fast, in my opinion. Give some setting and some introduction on the character's thoughts and reactions - how does he perceive all the crying and fear in the people around him? You use a lot of big, "wordy" words, if you get what I mean - perhaps it's a problem with translation (for example, English translations of Japanese adverts always sound ridiculous - it's not the Japanese that is ridiculous but simply that some things don't translate). Anyway, it makes it hard to read, in English, at least. Btw, just a heads-up - the word "squirted" is highly likely to be a mistranslation. Squirt is always a thin, concentrated projection of, usually, liquid. So say, you squirt ketchup from a bottle, for example. You probably mean "splashed" or "sprayed" perhaps, or "splatter". Splatter is probably the best one. Another heads-up - you need to read the site rules on when and how you can post work up for critique - you need to wait a little while as a new member. But feel free to ask any questions and enjoy the forum
Teuthan, welcome. And, may I say, as with all of our forum members who speak English as a second language, I am so awed by your grasp of the language. I look forward to seeing some of your work in the future.
Yeah. There are some marginal errors (mistakes first language English speakers also make). As to the prose itself: I was immediately taken with the imagery here. I could practically feel the salt spray of the ocean waves on my face, hear the soggy deck boards groan with the pitch of the waves and shudder as the catapult's ammo struck home. Very solid, vivid picture. Nice work! (Not at all hard to follow)
teuthan... the problem is that what may work well in hungarian won't necessarily work well in english, so even if you can translate it accurately into english, unless any here are hungarian, no one can tell you if it would be considered good writing there, or not... are you wanting to have any of your work published in english?... unfortunately, you will not be allowed to post any work here for review [in the proper section of the workshop, not up here], till you fulfill the site requirements... read the site rules carefully, to learn what you must do first... meanwhile, welcome aboard! love and hugs, maia
Oops, than sorry for posting, i'll read them carefully now anyway thanks for the responses! and i have realized that yeah, things happen too fast, however with that i tried to shock the readers mind, i intended to share the same shock as they would received if they were on the ship.
