I don’t enjoy dancing and I don’t understand it as an art form, but my sister was a dancer; my girl friends in high school were dancers, and I was in the party scene of the Nutcracker in the 6th grade so while my knowledge is limited, I have resources to lend me credibility if I ever write about dance (I never have and don’t plan to outside this analysis and edit). If you are not a dancer or do not know dancers, your writing will suffer because your descriptions are inaccurate. Even a professional-level writer cannot imagine the dance moves of ballet or other forms, but also your observations of a dancer’s personality will be general and often wrong. The cracked toenails; the dry, red feet; callouses; blisters; the line of massages that dancers do; the hairstyle, these wow the readers; either your reader is a dancer and will say, “Exactly!” or they are not dancers and enjoy learning the absurdities of the art. Research is important, even if you forget the information a month later. Earlier this week, my friend Lindsay displayed her dance skills and knowledge, and even researched a few moves with me. Thank you, Lindsay.
Before battering the text, I’ll highlight its strengths.
The language is simple and won’t send anyone to the dictionary, though the punctuation is overused.
The author mixes up sentence structure so it stays mostly fresh.
There are few stock phrases so the writing forces you to read each word instead of just the first of a familiar phrase before you skim.
The tone in the first half is suitable to the subject. It feels like a performance. When the author wanders off afterwards, the tone double-downs on the melodrama and makes me sick, but it works in the first half. It emphasizes a writing technique that is difficult to explain without example so because “Dance with Me” brings up the lesson, I will explain it further on. There is a time to be clear, and a time for mystery.
Her text and my suggested revisions are bolded. Analysis will be done in normal font.
Dance with Me by IronHorseXLiveStrong
Vanessa Williams starred in a 1998 movie called Dance with Me; it currently has a rating of 5.2 on IMDB, though Roger Ebert gave it three of four stars. You can use a title even if another creative work thought of it first; however, when it’s a Hollywood movie, that’s usually a sign that it’s not that interesting and you should think of something else.
Tagline: A leaf that dies in the fall does not lose its beauty, its delicate drifting movement as it spirals to the ground, pushed by the wind. Water still runs, be it dirty, or clear. But she, a woman who had found escape in passion and dance and grace, what was she worth?
This tagline doesn’t draw me in, especially after having read the rest. You’re forcing parallels with dancing and falling leaves and running water without showing a connection. And even if you had made connections, they aren’t apparent in the tagline. This is your conclusion but you’re presenting it before making it your argument that proves it. It’s not convincing on its own, so you shouldn’t present it on its own.
A more appealing tagline for your story is a description of dance. Impress us with the performance as that’s the strength of your story. After the dance, your stories dies and but you drag it along like Hector’s corpse attached to Achilles’s chariot. It’s insulting to its former glory.
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Author’s Note: Inspired by AlyTheAwesome1’s story Dancing in the Dark. This is my own idea however, and the only thing I really used from hers was the general idea of dancing. I don’t know why, exactly, I wrote this, but I wrote the first three paragraphs out of the blue and couldn’t stop. So, please read, and enjoy!
Just cut this note to “Inspired by AlyTheAwesome1’s story Dancing in the Dark.” Everything else is uninteresting. We assume this is your own idea. We don’t need to know why you write something. Also this is overpunctuated. Too many commas and we either trip on them or ignore them.
Paragraph 1: A woman stepped out from the shadows of the trees, her long, slim legs bending gracefully with each step. Her skin was startlingly white, and she wore a grayish, black leotard and white ballet shoes. Her black hair was tied back tightly, and her eyes were caked in smokey make-up. She was beautiful.
Sentence 1: “A woman stepped out from the shadows of the trees, her long, slim legs bending gracefully with each step.” This is the first sentence of your story, and in middle school we called these “attention grabbers.” Those teachers instructed us to give a quote, fact, description, question, or say something shocking. There are others and those listed are ineffective on their own as no one is interested in a quote like “Hello, how are you?” –Abraham Lincoln, but the basic idea is right. You need to hook your claws into your readers and pin their attention so they can’t escape. A long-legged woman walking from the shadows of a tree doesn’t do that. Before performances, dancers often exclaim “Merde!” which is French for “Shit!” as a good luck tradition. It’s fresher than “Break a leg” and fits in with the theme of ballet. I would start with that. An alternative could be a description of the waves of the ocean settling down like an audience finding their seats. You want to be vivid with the description of the waves’ turmoil then tranquility and then make the connection to an audience settling in.
Sentence 1 would then get pushed to a new paragraph, whichever opening you choose.
You don’t need the two prepositions so cut “out.” It’s deadwood. Often when there are two prepositions, one can be cut. A side note: it is not incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition unless that preposition is unnecessary to the sentence. “Who are you going with?” is fine, but “Where are you going to?” is not because the “to” doesn’t add anything.
“Long, slim” are repetitive with each other. Something that is slim often appears long, but neither are specific to a dancer. I would use “lithe.” It’s a stronger adjective and brings to mind a dancer, but it’s clear that she’s a dancer so you don’t really need an adjective. It’s up to you. I would assume the dancer is fit without the adjectives “long,” “slim,” or “lithe.”
Even if this isn’t your attention-grabber, you want it to be an interesting sentence, both the style and the content. We don’t need an explanation of how she walks though – no one finds that interesting unless she’s prancing or doing a Monty-Python silly-walk. But if she’s just walking normally, then just tell us that. You’re attempting to slow the pace with description and that can be an effective technique if the description is interesting. I’ll point to where it belong when we get there and show a few examples of how to do it properly. “A lithe woman stepped from the shadows of the trees.”
Sentence 2: “Her skin was startlingly white, and she wore a grayish, black leotard and white ballet shoes.” You need to show the whiteness of her skin. Does it shine in the moonlight? Is it thin enough to see veins through? Anton Chekov said “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Keep that in mind when describing things but there are times when it’s easier and more effective to just tell, like the color of her leotard and shoes.
Make the leotard just black. We don’t care that much about the color. The contrast of her pale skin with the dark leotard won’t impact most readers but if it’s ever made into a movie, then it’ll be striking on its own. The imagination is only so effective at bringing to life description.
The white shoes and the pale skin gives you room to do something artsy. Her skin and shoes are roughly the same color and will appear without a seam in the moonlight, so you can hint that the girl and the shoes are one as though dancing is her life. If you do that, you don’t want to force it though. Don’t hit the audience over the head.
Suggestion: The moon lit her silver skin beneath the black leotard. White shoes blended with her feet.
Sentence 3: “Her black hair was tied back tightly, and her eyes were caked in smokey make-up.”
What kind of black hair? Mediterranean? Arab? Asian? Italian? You don’t need to spend more than a few words on this, but give us a better description of her. Even if she is a nameless avatar, help us along with picturing her. The namelessness is fine but don’t think that it limits the universality of your writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald said something like “Write about everyone and you write about no one. Write about the one and you write about everyone.” The truth of that is arguable but if you ever have more than one person in a story, you need to give them more than just pronouns for clarity’s sake. Here, it works because there is no one else.
How is the black hair tied back? Is it in a bun? Be specific about it.
Make-up is always “caked” in stories. Why is it caked? Is it stage make-up? Does she look like a geisha girl or a hooker? What kind of eye make-up is it? Mascara? Eye-shadow? Specifics will bring it to life.
“Smoky” is the spelling that I know and I don’t think “smokey” is acceptable outside the US though I might be wrong.
Suggestion: Her dark Mediterranean hair was tied in a bun and the eye shadow of her stage make-up made her look like a beautiful Hollywood whore.
Sentence 4: “She was beautiful.”
She doesn’t have to be beautiful. “Beautiful” in writing should be reserved for romantic moments or comical effect. If she had fat rolling over her leotard and a wart on her knee and runs in her tights, then you called her beautiful, we’d know there was something deranged about your view—the whole “love is blind” thing. And if this were a love story, then we’d fall in love with her as much as her lover and then when you said she was beautiful, we’d believe you. Here, if you really want to call her beautiful, I suggest tacking it onto “beautiful Hollywood whore” in the previous statement. It’s a bit of dry humor and social commentary on how hookers in movies are always beautiful when in real life they’re usually rough and worn. If you do a good job at describing her performance, we might fall in love with the dance and assume she’s beautiful and you can state it then. But here, it’s not that colorful or believable.
Paragraph 2: She took one step, then another, before bowing slowly and rising. Suddenly, she was a blur of motion. Her arms were opened wide, as if welcoming an embrace, and her feet leapt and twisted, lifting her higher and higher in the air with each bound. With her arms splayed out, her shadow looked like an angel.
Sentence 1: “She took one step, then another, before bowing slowly and rising.”
You’re trying to slow down the pace so we’re surprised when she’s “suddenly a blur of motion,” but steps aren’t interesting and too many commas are annoying. Before a performance, dancers bow to the audience to acknowledge them. This gives you an opportunity to talk about the “audience,” which since she’s alone the audience is just scenery. Describe the beach, maybe compare where the ocean darkens the sand to the dark orchestra pit with a dead branch poking up like a conductor’s wand. Maybe the ocean has settled but the waves still lap like whispers. You don’t want to force a comparison of course. Even though you’re the God of this universe with total control over land, sea, and air and their inhabitants, you want to manipulate them with a gentle touch.
Start a new paragraph after her bow, then new paragraph for the scenery, then a new one for the “blur of motion.”
Sentence 2: “Suddenly, she was a blur of motion.”
This is telling and you don’t want to tell us that she’s blurred. Show it to us. What movement does she start with? “Her arms whipped open.” A whip is always blurred and always fast so the “suddenly” and “blurred” and “motion” are implied but easier to imagine.
This is a tough technique to pull off – to go from slow paced writing to sudden action. I’ve copied Chapter IX of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway for you so that you can see how he did it effectively. It gets a bit gruesome as the chapter is about being shelled during WWI, but it’s the best example I’ve found.
You can play with sentence structure, long or short; lots of semicolons; colons or dashes; conjunctions; few commas except where necessary; even comma splice errors and run-on sentences. Be careful with breaking convention though as if your style isn’t professional level then the broken rules will look accidental and break your credibility. I would start the action with a long sentence. Maybe start the paragraph with “She rose from her bow,” so you bring focus back to her then go on to “She rose from her bow. Then her arms whipped open, ready to embrace a partner but no one came, no one leapt into her arms so she pranced toward the water and twirled with her foot kicking out over the orchestra of dying waves, and as her momentum slowed she hopped to stage left, then right, back, back, back, spin, leap, twist, hop-hop-hop higher-higher-higher toward the moon, toward the stars, toward the black, then down to the beach. She bowed to the audience.”
Verbs are your best friend for action like this. You do not want periods to break your audience’s reading pace. Instead try to force them to read it without pause so at the end they’re as breathless as your ballerina. Be specific with your verbs, but I’d also keep this wild compared to the next performance so don’t use ballet terms yet.
Sentence 3: “Her arms were opened wide, as if welcoming an embrace, and her feet leapt and twisted, lifting her higher and higher in the air with each bound.”
Focus on what the dancer is doing. She is doing these actions, not her feet, not her arms, unless they alone are widening.
Sentence 4: “With her arms splayed out, her shadow looked like an angel.”
I’d include this description in your action without pause and focus on her action and reserve narrator comments like “her shadow looked like an angel” for another paragraph.
Paragraph 3: Each time her feet touched the ground she was back up, her eyes closed as her body knew the patterns. The full moon overhead made her silver, yet dark. Her hair appeared white, and her skin glowed, but the charcoal dark leotard and make-up made her seem unreal, unearthly.
Sentence 1: “Each time her feet touched the ground she was back up, her eyes closed as her body knew the patterns.”
Include all the description of her actions in one paragraph. If you think of the narrator as a camera filming the performance, when the narrator turns the camera, make a new paragraph.
Sentence 2: “The full moon overhead made her silver, yet dark.”
This doesn’t belong here. If you want the dancer to come to an abrupt stop in the next paragraph, you need to be abrupt when you stop the action. Right now the action is trailing off. If you want to include this elsewhere, such as when you’re lulling us with description before the dance-sequence, then move it above.
If you include it elsewhere, cut the “overhead.” Where else would the moon be? I do this too when I’m not thinking but it’s deadwood.
Sentence 3: “Her hair appeared white, and her skin glowed, but the charcoal dark leotard and make-up made her seem unreal, unearthly.”
Again, move this elsewhere.
“Appeared” is rarely a useful verb. Just use “was.” Actually just cut the detail because I don’t believe black hair looks white from the moon especially if her leotard and make-up don’t also. Combine “her skin glowed” with the previous sentence. “Dark” is redundant with “charcoal” and “charcoal” is more interesting.
I don’t see how dark leotard or make-up makes her unreal or unearthly, but use a positive word to describe it – avoid “not X” or “unX” or “nonX” when you can. Use words like “divine,” “demonic,” “heavenly,” “spiritual.” They are better words, but again, it’s not really necessary.
Suggestion: Her skin glowed silver yet dark under the full moon.
But remember to move it elsewhere, like in the description you gave earlier.
Paragraph 4: Abruptly, she came to a stop, feet buried in the sand, legs straight, with her palms flat on the ground. Her chest moved faster than before, her breath sped up by the exhilaration of the dance. Rising slowly, her lower half not moving, she extended her hands up, and then out, parallel to the ground.
Sentence 1: “Abruptly, she came to a stop, feet buried in the sand, legs straight, with her palms flat on the ground.”
By now she’s already stopped in our minds. When you go on to describe her looks and her clothes and her make-up, she’s no longer moving to us. So to us, she hasn’t come to an abrupt stop because of your narration. If you cut that out, as I’ve suggested, then the stop becomes abrupt and you don’t need to tell us. “Abruptly” is an adverb and they’re typically ineffective writing. Just have her stop.
It’s wordy to say “she came to a stop” when you can just say, “She stopped.” But if she’s bowed as I suggested at the end of your action sequence, then you don’t need to even say that. Though I don’t know the dance-etiquette as to whether or not dancers bow after each performance. A cloud could pass over the moon, the moon a stand-in for a stage-light, and the ballerina could take a knee or hold a pose—make it an interesting one like “One hand stretched toward the sky while the other held her thumping heart, and a cloud passed over her moon-light.” This implies she’s forlorn without beating us over the head with it. It keeps the tone of the piece.
This is an odd image. My friend Lindsay acted it out to confirm its awkwardness but why would anyone bend over with their palms on the ground after dancing? Is she stretching? You wouldn’t do that during a performance and I think you should treat this solo dance for the scenery as a performance. So cut this pose in favor of another or the one I suggested. You can keep the detail “feet buried in the sand” but put it where it won’t bog down the pace. After the pose, it might be a good idea to shift focus away from her briefly like the audience waiting for the next scene to start. Then you can go backstage to her panting and preparing to dance again.
Sentence 2: “Her chest moved faster than before, her breath sped up by the exhilaration of the dance.”
This is just a wordy way of saying “She panted, exhilarated.” You could mess with the structure so that the rhythm is like her panting. Not everyone will pick up on it but you could do “She panted, exhilarated, tired, covered in sand.” The key is to keep a parallel pattern (so all verbs in the same tense, or all –ed words even if they’re verbs and verbs used as adjectives, or all flat adverbs, or whatever) and ignore MSWords’s suggestion to include “and” after the last comma.
Sentence 3: “Rising slowly, her lower half not moving, she extended her hands up, and then out, parallel to the ground.”
I get what you’re trying to show here, but I’m not enough of a ballet expert to describe it properly. All I can tell you is this isn’t a good way of doing it. It sounds more like a yoga pose than ballet. Rethink whether or not it’s necessary, definitely reword it if you think it is. Remember be positive and active. Don’t slow the pace with empty words.
Paragraph 5: Swiftly, she turned in small circles, her right foot barely grazing the ground as she spun. The movement was more methodical, more controlled than the last, and again, abruptly, she came to a halt.
Sentence 1: “Swiftly, she turned in small circles, her right foot barely grazing the ground as she spun.”
The adverb “Swiftly” makes your sentence un-swift (I recognize that that’s not a word, but I want to emphasize that it is not swift). Again, do the transition showed by Hemingway from an interesting lull to sudden action. You do not need to say “suddenly” or “swiftly” if you show it.
“Circles” and “spun” are redundant, as is “barely” with “grazing.” You only barely touch the ground if you graze it.
I don’t care which foot is doing what so cut out “right.”
Suggestion: Her foot grazed the ground, drawing in the sand as she spun.
Sentence 2: “The movement was more methodical, more controlled than the last, and again, abruptly, she came to a halt.”
If the movement is more methodical here than be more specific that just verbs: use ballet terms. My friend Lindsay helped me some but the burden is on you to choreograph this as you see it. You still want to be clear to the audience – don’t just spit French at us and expect us to visualize it from that, but help us along by mixing verbs and French ballet terms together. You can check the American Ballet Theatre’s “Ballet Dictionary” online at http://www.abt.org/education/dictionary/index.html. There are videos and names if you do not know the terms or the moves. If you are not a dancer, do not attempt to choreograph a huge performance. Any reader that’s also been a dancer will scoff at it. Even if your audience is mostly non-dancers, you don’t want the one or two dancing readers to reveal to the others that you’re a fraud. So do your best to recreate a real performance.
I’ve listed below movements that fit what you’ve described. Remember to italicize foreign words.
Port de bras – Literally “arm movement,” or arms splayed out.
Changement –a leap often done in succession with feet crossed.
Chene –literally means dog, but another name for a turn (I don’t know the specifics of the turn).
Pirouette piquée –A spin on the toes. These can be done with a progression of getting larger.
Sissonne –a jump from both feet straight up and down, often repeated to get larger and larger. A sissonne fermée is to the side, forward or backwards.
Pas de bourrée –a step to the side.
Sauté – more jumping.
And my favorite, the Lame Duck – A small turn on one leg, also called piqué entournant en de hors. This would add dry humor to your piece, as would “Merde!” at the start of the writing without detracting from the overall serious tone. Humor is a good way to charm people so they keep reading. Often we want people to cry over our pieces but you won’t do that if you never get connected to it and humor helps you connect your audience. Even Hemingway, a serious and even depressed writer who as a geezer killed himself with a shotgun, used dry humor and comedic humor. Lame Ducks often turn into pirouette piquée or other turns according to Lindsay.
So expand your sentence a whole paragraph of dance terms and verbs to help us understand them. I’ll do my best to show you but I’m not a dancer so forgive the awkwardness: “Her lame ducks turned to greater twirls, pirouette piquée, arms wider with each turn, then a step to one side, then back – pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Sauté into the air then more spins – chene, then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. A small jump, repeated higher, sissonne, sissonne, sissonne till her legs couldn’t push any higher. Pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Her arms splayed out, port de bras then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée, and changement toward the dark sky. Pirouette to a full stop where she faced the sea.” It’s tough to do when you’re not an expert on the subject but hopefully that gives you a few ideas. Write it like you’re doing the choreography for new dance students. Give enough hints that we know what each move is, but also use the name of the move to give you credibility as the choreographer.
Paragraph 6: Turning, she faced the sea. Her legs folded beneath her and she crumpled down like a wilted flower. Her face looked to the night sky as she closed her eyes, the faintest beginning of a smile wrinkling the edges of her mouth. A breeze flew over the sand around her, caressing her bare skin.
Sentence 1: “Turning, she faced the sea.”
Include this in the choreography so she spins and ends the spin facing the sea.
Sentence 2: “Her legs folded beneath her and she crumpled down like a wilted flower.”
Include this in the choreography, but my friend Lindsay says this would be a weird way to end a dance. Usually it’s done with a pose like taking a knee and hugging the other. The wilted flower and knees buckling are tired images anyway. They’re not that dramatic because of overuse. Find a genuine end to a dance use it because those are often dramatic.
Sentence 3: “Her face looked to the night sky as she closed her eyes, the faintest beginning of a smile wrinkling the edges of her mouth.”
Start the paragraph after the dance here.
Her “face” isn’t looking at the night sky. She is. Don’t isolate her body parts unless they’re the only piece of her doing it.
“Night sky” is repetitive; just say “to the sky” or “to the night.”
If she’s looking to the sky, in writing, she shouldn’t immediately close her eyes after. It’s just odd. If she looks at the sky, we assume she wants to look at it for some reason but then she doesn’t. It’s odd for readers. If you say “she closed her eyes to the night” it gives a happier meaning because “night” could be symbolic of sadness and if she closes her eyes to it then we recognize that dance made her happy, especially if she smiles after.
“The faintest beginning of a smile wrinkling the edges of her mouth” is a wordy way of saying “she smiled.” There’s no difference to the reader between the two. She can grin, smirk, beam, or simper, and those have a different meaning from the basic smile but watering down your meaning with a lot of words is not good writing. You could get away with “a smile wrinkled her lips” as a fresher expression than “she smiled,” but keep it as economical as possible.
Suggestion: She closed her eyes to the night as a smile wrinkled her lips.
Sentence 4: “A breeze flew over the sand around her, caressing her bare skin.”
I’d switch this with the previous sentence. It has less punch to it and you want to end a paragraph with punch. You could also bring some humor in and say sad blew up her nose or in her mouth, just so you don’t get too melodramatic and chase away mature readers.
Paragraph 7: Her lips as delicate as rose petals, she opened her mouth ever so slightly, breathing deeply. She bit down slightly on her bottom lip, her smile melting down to a frown. Her brow wrinkled in concentration, distorting her beauty. A silent tear rolled down her cheek, turned black from the powder under her eyelids. A small hiccup of air escaped her lips.
This paragraph is where you start to lose my interest. The drama was present throughout but it was believable, the kind found in ballet, but suddenly we’re on the rise and you don’t slow at all in the coming paragraphs. Climaxes are important but because there is no clear plot aside from the dance, a climax is a harder thing to escalate towards. It would be better to leave us hanging with a bit of sadness in our mind or with happy resolution through dance such as closing her eyes to the night. I would cut everything after this paragraph because we’ve moved from the dance to this boring personal stuff. It would be interesting if your character had any personality, but we don’t know her or her name so why should we care that she’s lonely? We care about the dancer up on stage but when they go to their dressing rooms, we don’t care anymore unless we’re their friend or family. This cliff-hanger end would also leave us wondering if the dance was a practiced performance of sadness or the ballerina’s actual sadness expressed through dance. Artistically, it’s more interesting if you don’t explain it.
This is where clarity versus mystery is important. Young writers, especially poets, try to be mysterious with their writing but they do so through obscurity. The readers have no idea what’s going on. We can’t imagine it. We can’t relate. Even if we could sort through the details, we have no interest in pursuing the meaning because we don’t see even a hint of one. However, what you’ve done here is a good way to leave meaning mysterious. You’re clear about what’s happened on the surface-level. Once you touch everything up we can visualize clearly what’s going on. It’s like we’re there – that is what you want! And in real life, just because we are there, doesn’t mean we know everything that’s actually happening behind the scenes. If we saw this girl dancing in real life, we wouldn’t know why she’s doing so but we could theorize based on some clues provided and so as the author, you do not need to explain to us why she’s sad. You don’t need to tell us she’s forced to dance alone. She doesn’t need to draw a rose with bitter thorns. She can just dance, be sad, and leave and we’re left to figure out why.
That being said, you have to describe it vividly. We need to be able to picture it perfectly and there need to be details we can interpret as clues. We might be misled by our biases or we might have differing opinions than our friends and some will be more believable such as “She’s a jilted bride” and others will be less believable, “She was abducted by aliens and her tushy is still sore from all the probing.” There will be incorrect interpretations as poetry and literature cannot just be interpreted as whatever comes to mind—however, there might not be one right answer. In philosophy they call that “pluralism” as in multiple right answers.
Sentence 1: “Her lips as delicate as rose petals, she opened her mouth ever so slightly, breathing deeply.”
Again, you’re stretching out the meaning into 16 words when you only need a few.
Rose-petal lips are trite. It’s too common of a comparison. They don’t need to be delicate either. Most ballerinas aren’t delicate even if they look so. Most are strong, muscular women with rough feet and knots in their backs.
Of course she opens her mouth to breathe deeply after that dance. It’s just deadwood. “Ever so slightly” means the same as “slightly,” but it’s an adverb and not an effective one here.
“Breathing deeply” is a vague verb with a weak adverb. How is she breathing? Wheezing? Panting? Inhaling? Sucking in the salty air and choking on grains of sand? Give me a strong verb.
Suggestion: “She wheezed through rosy lips.”
Sentence 2: “She bit down slightly on her bottom lip, her smile melting down to a frown.”
We assume it’s her bottom lip that she’s biting. Rarely do people bite the upper lip unless they’re stressed and looking for something to chew on or the lip is chapped and they’re peeling the flaking skin off it. So cut “bottom.”
Cut “slightly.” Cut “down” too. It’s implied and then it forces you to use “on.” You can just say “She bit her lip.”
It’s a little stale for a person to bite their lip but I’ll allow it. It implies sorrow and you don’t want to go into it too much.
Sentence 3: “Her brow wrinkled in concentration, distorting her beauty.”
Everyone is always wrinkling their brow, or furrowing it. You also used wrinkle one paragraph up so you shouldn’t use it again already.
I don’t see how this distorts her beauty.
Just cut this whole line. It’s not an interesting image.
Sentence 4: “A silent tear rolled down her cheek, turned black from the powder under her eyelids.”
Tears in writing are overdramatic. True sadness is rarely expressed through tears unless there is a tragic event that just happened. You see someone die and you cry. Or if there’s a reminder of it, e.g. someone dies and you’re hearing the eulogy, you might cry. But in writing, tears should be implied or just not present. Especially if there’s no personality to your dancer because it’s hard to look at someone crying. It’s not beautiful when they cry like in movies – it’s gross and snotty and hard to watch. So your tone should imply the sadness and don’t do anything with tears.
Sentence 5: “A small hiccup of air escaped her lips.”
“Of air” is verbiage. What else do you hiccup?
It’s a wordy way of saying “She hiccupped.” You’re missing content here which is why my interest wanes. I would end it before then. End it quickly after her dance ends. She smiles at the night and closes her eyes. Her eyelids are then the final curtain and you can describe the waves as picking up again like applause. But don’t wander off into stuff that isn’t interesting or relevant to the dance.
Paragraph 8: Just as she had fallen, she carefully rose. Her white shoes were flecked with wet sand from the tide, and her legs were dotted with grains of sand where her skin had touched the ground. Walking unsteadily inland, her past grace gone, more tears fell, dotting the sand with black drops.
Again, cut, boring, overdramatic. The sand dotting the shoe is interesting imagery but can go elsewhere like between the two dances.
Paragraph 9: She slowed as she approached the crest of a hill. There, resting against a small, shriveled tree, was a large rock. The rock was obsidian, and shone like glass in the moonlight. Her hand reached out to touch it, and her delicate fingers ran along the lines forever molded into it. She knelt on the ground beside it, her eyes distant and bleary.
Boring, irrelevant, overdramatic. Cut. The obsidian could be a prop/scenery used during the dance as dances occasionally have that. You’ll want to describe it before the dance but do not describe it the same way you’ve described everything else, as shining in the moonlight. Find new images. But everything else here is uninteresting.
Paragraph 10: In the sand surrounding the dark rock, she drew a heart, and inside it a rose with thorns on the stem. The thorns were jagged, and fierce, and not at all sweet. They spoke of beauty, yet bitterness, and the woman could not contain herself. A sob racked her body, and she pressed a dirt-caked hand to her mouth, willing herself to be silent. She closed her eyes against more tears, and still they came.
Cut this melodrama. You’re explaining too much and since we don’t know her or who broke her heart, we don’t care.
Another note, if you tried drawing a rose in the sand it would not look like a rose. And if you tried drawing thorns, they would not look like thorns. The drawing would turn out like a sunflower with a hairy stem, which if you ever reuse the image could be a good antidote to the melodrama. Too much sentimentality is repulsing but if you throw in some humor it helps us get through it. You don’t have to be irrelevant, but real life is rarely melodramatic despite what teenagers and the depressed often see. Even they smile regularly and laugh and have fun, though many claim to fake all of it. Life, even tragic moments, have wit and humor to them and as the writer you have to present these in a way that does not undermine your overall tone. A little dry humor won’t undermine you and will help your readers enjoy your piece. Writing is a form of entertainment first, and art second. If you can’t entertain people, you won’t get them to see the art.
Paragraph 11: The blackness of her tears fell on the rose in the sand at her knees. They splattered her creation, the grains turning black and inky, not unlike blood in the shadow of night. As she opened her eyes to see what she had done, she could not take it.
Black, shadow, night, tears, blood, even ink – these are all words that connote melodrama. Cut down on them. A few throughout gives us the tone. Too many suffocate us.
Paragraph 12: The woman jerked herself to her feet, similar to a marionette, and threw herself into the air into what seemed an endless leap. Her feet caught her as she landed, and she turned, leaping and kicking and moving her arms in a way that she moved in and out of the shadows.
My friend Lindsay and I disagreed about where to end it. We agreed to cut the melodrama, but she thought you should have another small performance like this whereas I’ve told you where I would’ve liked it to end.
Paragraph 13: She danced passionately, tirelessly, and did not stop. As she reached the beach, her movements became slower, more fluid, and she pushed all of her focus into precision and beauty. Not an error was made, yet her tears did not stop, for what was dancing worth, when she was in pain?
If you’re really a dancer, you’d express the pain through dancing. It’s therapeutic and all that. It breaks your credibility as the author if you can’t understand how dancers actually feel about dance. To them there’s a reverence to it. It’s an escape. You wouldn’t ask, “What’s it worth?” unless this was a full-length novel in which through the struggles of life and dance, you lose your faith.
Paragraph 14: A leaf that dies in the fall does not lose its beauty, its delicate, drifting movement as it spirals to the ground, pushed by the wind. Water still runs, be it dirty, or clear. But she, a woman who had found escape in passion and dance and grace, what was she worth?
Sentence 1: “A leaf that dies in the fall does not lose its beauty, its delicate drifting movement as it spirals to the ground, pushed by the wind.” A common poetic sentence structure used to emphasize a point is to give one noun, comma, another noun. Here it is “beauty” then “delicate drifting movement as it spirals to the ground, pushed by the wind.” It doesn’t work here though. The narration starts by talking about losing the leaf’s beauty, but it can’t lose its “delicate drifting movement.” The sentence should be split into two or rearranged.
Before we can do that, we need to fix the basics of the sentence. We don’t care when the leaf dies, do we? “The fall” is irrelevant to the leaf dying. Most leafs die in the fall, but many drop from their branches in spring and summer too. Cut “in the fall.”
“Delicate drifting movement” is a wordy way of saying “drifting.” Drifting is an action verb so of course it’s a movement too. Drifting is always gentle or delicate.
When a leaf drifts, we assume it’ll head “to the ground.” Where else would be an obvious place to land? If it lands somewhere other than the ground, it might be interesting to note, but the most conventional landing zone will be assumed and so you don’t need to include it.
Suggestion: “A leaf that dies, drifting and spiraling in the wind, does not lose its beauty.” This is still a sentence I would cut. The profundity here is phony.
Sentence 2: “Water still runs, be it dirty, or clear.” If I wanted to be obstinate, I could point to thick mud which does not run though it still is water. But mostly I don’t understand why you need to point this out. It’s false profundity. You’re marketing it as a shrewd observation when most people know that water runs in different forms. Just cut this.
If you don’t, clean up the punctuation. You don’t need the comma as “dirty.” If this is poetic prose and you do more with that, then you might be able to get away with the unconventional punctuating but you still can’t over-punctuate without readers being annoyed or without them skipping it. If you do view this as poetic prose then think of commas as a rest in music, semicolons are slightly longer rests, and periods are full stops. Dashes and colons speed up the pace. You should use punctuation either conventionally or sparingly though. Too much trips up your readers.
Sentence 3: “But she, a woman who had found escape in passion and dance and grace, what was she worth?” My dancer friend Lindsay was confused by this; dance should be the most valuable escape in a dancer’s life. You lost credibility as a believable narrator with her when you said this and I have to agree. Personal self-esteem issues aside, dance is an art form that many worship whether they practice, practiced, or not. So for an author to question the worth of dancing and dancers, it makes them seem like they’re not a dancer.
On a basic stylistic level, you don’t need “she, a woman.” What else would “she” be but a woman? It’s just wordy and the pretense that amateurs think is poetic. For a new reader to say it aloud, they’ll probably stumble over it.
You don’t need “and grace.” Too many items to a list bog it down and it’s really just repetitive with “dance.” Readers assume dance is graceful.
Suggestion: “But she had found escape in passion and dance, so what was she worth?”
Paragraph 15: A ballerina, forced to dance alone.
I guess that’s sad, but this story isn’t about character and so we don’t care if the character is pained, lonely, or whatever. This is a story of dance and while there can be sadness choreographed in, it should be hinted at instead.
Now that the analysis is over, it’s time to reveal the rewrite but it needs more hammering from an expert on dance. The somber tone is also not my preference and I tend to be more irreverent and jokey, but I did what I could to point to the weaknesses. Even if my suggested revisions are not to your liking, consider new ones. Other writers might say it as well or better in a different way as there is not one way to write. There are many bad ways and I’ve attempted to steer you away from them. Do not accept my revisions without attempting your own that will shore up the faults. My revision is 452 words, about half the length, with more vividness and specificity and credibility. I used the second performance as the tagline, though the first would work too.
“Dance with Me” by IronHorsexLiveStrong
Tagline: Her foot grazed the ground, drawing in the sand as she spun. Her lame ducks turned to greater twirls, pirouette piquée, arms wider with each turn, then a step to one side, then back – pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Sauté into the air then more spins – chene, then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. A small jump, repeated higher, sissonne, sissonne, sissonne till her legs couldn’t push any higher. Pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Her arms splayed out, port de bras then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée, and changement toward the dark sky. Pirouette to a full stop where she faced an applauding sea.
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“Merde!”
The waves broke and the foam was silver under the moon. They lapped the beach, grabbing hermit crabs, darkening the sand, depositing shells and driftwood. The clouds covered the moon-light and the sea settled to whispers before going quiet.
A lithe woman stepped from behind the tree’s shadowy curtain. The moon lit her silver skin beneath the black leotard. White shoes blended with her feet. Her dark Mediterranean hair was tied in a bun and the eye shadow of her stage make-up made her look like a beautiful Hollywood whore. She bowed, acknowledging her audience of waves.
The dark sand touched by water was like the dark pit of an orchestra. A branch stuck up like the conductor’s wand which rattled in the wind, demanding silence from the waves. A few tap-tap-taps and the waves obliged, settling, calming their whitecap applause. They still lapped like eager whispers. The cloud drifted on, uncovering the moon-light which shined the beach stage, shined the dancer.
She rose from her bow. Then her arms whipped open, ready to embrace a partner but no one came, no one leapt into her arms so she pranced toward the water and twirled with her foot kicking out over the orchestra of dying waves, and as her momentum slowed she hopped to stage left, then right, back, back, back, back, back, spin, leap, twist, hop-hop-hop higher-higher-higher toward the moon, toward the stars, toward the black, then down to the beach. One hand stretched toward the sky while the other held her thumping heart, and a cloud passed over her moon-light.
She panted, exhilarated, tired, covered in sand. Grains dotted her shoe. The moon-light shone only on her and the waves were dark. Footprints pounded into her stage would remember the choreography till morning when high tide washed away her sweat.
Her foot grazed the ground, drawing in the sand as she spun. Her lame ducks turned to greater twirls, pirouette piquée, arms wider with each turn, then a step to one side, then back – pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Sauté into the air then more spins – chene, then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. A small jump, repeated higher, sissonne, sissonne, sissonne till her legs couldn’t push any higher. Pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Her arms splayed out, port de bras then pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée, and changement toward the dark sky. Pirouette to a full stop where she faced an applauding sea.
Kneeling on one knee, she hugged the other and the ocean clamored with the wind that rattled the conductor’s wand. Wheezing through rosy lips, she bit the lower one. As a smile wrinkled her lips she closed her eyes to the night.
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