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Putting "substance" into my writing

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Earlier, I thought my problem was descriptions, which kind of remains a problem. But the actual problem is deeper.

Here's a demonstration. I have a story to tell. Let's say its a detective who is woken up with a call about a murder.

>He was woken up by a phone call at dawn. It was still raining outside. He got up and started getting dressed. His wife, still half-asleep, asked him what happened. He told her that the hairdresser had been found dead.

So this is very amateurish, and I thought that my problem is that I am not making the scene vivid by inserting description.

Take two:

>Raindrops pattered on the roof obscuring the low, rhythmic hum of the cellphone vibrating on the bedstand. It moved slowly across the table as it rand and stopped and rang again, the caller dialing back relentlessly. The phone crawled over the edge of the bedstand and fell over. There was a shuffling under the covers and a hand emerged from the warmth of the blankets, probing the floor for the cellphone.

>He put it to his ear and listened silently.

> “It isn’t dawn yet,” his wife said, half-asleep, as he put it down without having spoken a word.
> He got up and mechanically puts on his navy blue trousers and light blue shirt, the lapels say Police.

> “Somebody died,” he says nonchalantly.

>“Who?”

>"The barber," he replied.

Now I look back at it and its worse.

So obviously, what I'm lacking is not "description" but substance.

How do I explain this? My story is very barebones. The characters and setting do not seem alive. They do not appear like real people or real settings.

I've seen this mistake in a lot of amateur writers on places like wattpad too. Its like this happens then that happens and then there's this thing and that lying around, and she picks it up and does this with this....

How do I get out of this amateurish trap? If a professional writer would've done the above scene, you would've felt you're there in that bedroom, like you know the couple. Like you can feel the wife's frustration and the husband-cop's weariness from his job, etc. How do I do those things?

(I cooked up this example for the purpose of this post, btw. It isnt my story).
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>>8946988
Stop reading novels and start reading poetry. Interact with more people and try to develop empathy. Keep practicing, good prose is unspeakably difficult.
>>
...so, the previous owner still lives in the house, or...?
>>
>>8946994
Recommend poetry that would suit my requirements
>>
The way you're writing makes the story seem inconsequential in comparison to the minor details you're throwing out. The first paragraph is essential to telling the reader how the writing is going to play out for the rest of the story and you're giving us the impression that you're going to prioritize that kind of shit over meaningful expositions. For Christ's sake it took a paragraph and a half to tell me that the main character is a police officer and that statement was written with less weight than the sentence that told me he answered a phone. Is this going to be a novel about a guy answering phones?
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>>8947469
chill out man, he said himself that the longer version was shittier

>>8946988
I think the problem with the first part isn't a lack of substance, it just doesn't flow well. You have to vary up your sentence structures and length so that it doesn't scan in a flat, monotone voice. It's fine to leave out details if they're not important.

One reason the second example sounds really amateurish is the overuse of adverbs: slowly, relentlessly, silently, mechanically, nonchalantly. It's kind of cliche of writing advice, but you should avoid using adverbs, especially "-ly" adverbs. Instead of "moved slowly" say "crawled" or something.
Thread posts: 6
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Read more on this topic here - https://archived.moe/talk/thread/1694/


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