Deconstruction by Dean


"Guards, take her to the dungeon and toss her in a cell with those rogues you captured last week." Queen Epithymia ran the nail of her right index finger underneath her bottom lip and smiled as she looked down at the shackled blonde girl. The prisoner kneeled at the foot of the Queen's throne, sobbing uncontrollably. "I think she needs to learn a lesson about patriotism and what it truly means to defy your country."

Your dialogue is missing any sort of life. It is stilted and run of the mill - mostly due to one factor. You refuse to acknowledge who is talking or how they are talking or what the sound of their voice is like. I assume this is because you aren't sure how to add in "he said" or "she said" into a sentence.

Well, you do it like this:

"Guards, take her to the dungeon and toss her in a cell with those rogues you captured last week," spake the hardened voice of Queen Epithymia.

Then you build the moment with fewer words than you generally use:

She ran the nail of her right index finger beneath her bottom lip, smiling as she gazed upon the shackled blonde girl.


Through her sobs, the girl screamed in protests. "It wasn't me! My sister was the one that slandered your good name, my Queen! Please, take her instead!" Her cries grew quieter and quieter as the Queen's guards led her off. Epithymia sank bank into her golden throne with renewed joy at her ability to destroy the lives of others with a single utterance.

This paragraph suffered from the same lifelessness. Put life into your dialog - make it now. Describing how things were said after the words are delivered can be quite powerful. You are losing your power by failing to really give life to the words.

You also lump one person's dialog with another person's action. You want to make these pleas hit hard - want to make them real. As they are presented they are sort of passing things that occur. Ho hum - she is crying. No biggie.

Life as the queen of an empire was thrilling, as usual. Not only was there a fresh load of criminals to condemn, but research on the Great Seal was finally making headway. The Queen was wet with anticipation toward seeing out what was on the other side of the The Veil, but tormenting her subjects helped pass the time.

That should be two sentences. As it is it's confusing.

The Queen waved for the guards to bring in the next subject, making sure to jostle her barely covered bosom as much as possible for her guards to see. Every part of the Queen's attire and decor was selected to be as tantalizing as possible: her short and loose purple dress, her stiletto heels, her crimson lipstick and nail polish, and, of course, her meticulously well kept golden curls. That, is, save her sapphire pendant.

Let's see - a barely covered busom. That should sound exciting but it doesn't. Give me more, Razor. Excite me - own my mind. You are holding my hand and giving me a story but you aren't pushing me into it and immersing me. Excite me with this bosom!

The Queen hated the color of the heavy pendant that dangled around her neck, but the gaudy appearance was a small price to pay for the mystical protection it offered her. Besides, she had no doubt in her ability seduce any man she came across, even with the jagged gem dangling near the base of her neck. And, in the end, that was what mattered.

The Queen the queen the queen - yeah. Find another pronoun. find a better way to describe her. Give us a bit of description in her presentation. The more "the queen" we get the less we care. How about - "The buxom monarch hated the color (what color?) of the heavy pendant..."?

Get rid of "And, in the end" and replace it with "Ultimately". Starting a sentence with "And" is bad form - yeah, I have done it too - but in this case it's really bad form.


Towards the end...

Without ceremony or warning, the monster speared the smooth tentacles into his captive's mouth, anus, and vagina. The monster let slip a satisfied sigh as the tentacles began to undulate, clearly absorbing the fluids from inside the deflowered princess. The expression on the princesses face change from one of unimaginable fear to one of unending shock. As the tentacles continued to do their work on the Harmonian princess, The Queen brought herself to orgasm, her moans echoing in the chamber as Sir Malus watched.

Well, the third person - focussing on one persons POV limited you here. But you could have given us that one person's emotions during this. The parts in red are just things I disliked. You could have done so much more - "Began to undulate" - that's pretty damned passive. "clearly absorbing? - how about sucking the fluids or drawing the fluids - absorbing is not exciting it's passive. The tentacles continued to do therir work? Come on, this is a moment that begs for description. Don't leave it flat like this. Even Sir Malus was bored - he just watched. Ho hum, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. How did the poor fellow watch? Were his eyes wide - did he appear excited? Give me more here.

Okay - I could go through and completely rip this piece to shreads. I am not going to do that. I think you get the gist.

Razor, you did pretty damned well going through the previous levels. This is where it gets rough, though. Your major weakness is poor choices in phrasings and your dialog. Reduce your phrases - get rid of the excess words. Then, learn to write dialog that I care about. I never have a feeling for the sound of the voice or the feel of what they are saying. It is just said and then it goes on to the next bit. That ain't exciting - it certainly isn't interesting and I sure ain't gonna believe it if I don't feel it.

Finally, writing a scene like the last one I ripped is like playing chess. The white side moves first. It has the momentum and can control how black moves. If white loses the momentum it usually loses the game. As an author, you are the white side in chess but you never grab the momentum. You leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks - the excitment. You are gonna lose that game every damned time.