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TIL my writing needed more specific details after a beta reader called me out
A beta reader told me my scenes felt flat because I kept writing 'she looked sad' instead of showing what sadness looked like in that moment. I went back and replaced five vague emotional descriptions with concrete actions like 'she pressed her palm flat against the cold window glass.' Has anyone else had a simple piece of feedback that completely shifted how you approach a scene?
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danielr941mo ago
lol yeah i had a beta reader basically tell me my characters were just floating heads with dialogue attached. they said something like "i dont know where anyone is in the room" and i was like oh no all my scenes are happening in a void. so now i have to stop myself from overcorrecting and describing every single piece of furniture in a 50 foot radius lmao. but honestly that one piece of feedback changed everything for me too, its wild how one sentence can crack your brain open.
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alicesingh1mo ago
Oh man, I'm going to play the bad guy here and say I actually think this advice can mess people up if they take it too literally. @danielr94 I get what you're saying about floating heads, but sometimes a simple "she looked sad" is perfectly fine and readers will fill in the blanks themselves. Not every single moment needs a big physical action to describe an emotion. If you go replacing all your "sad" with "she pressed her palm against the cold window glass" it can get real tiring real fast. Don't you think pacing matters more than showing every tiny feeling?
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