Sometimes, though, a change of heart just happens to a character. They don’t like someone and then, well, they wake up one day and feel differently and then the writer continues the plot from that new perspective. The only problem is, any emotional turning point is an Event-with-an-E. Or it deserves to be, because it has great power potential with readers. Just like the beginning paragraph of your novel, every chapter opening, and every chapter button are Prime Real Estate in your writing, emotional turning points are hot spots that you absolutely must exploit.

From the smallest changes of heart to the most important, I need to be able to point to the very instant on the page where your character turns a corner. It will usually happen in reaction to something in your plot and be expressed mostly in Interiority (your character’s thoughts, feelings, reactions). After that, their new attitude or feeling about a person or situation will filter down and express itself in how they behave in scene and during the plot. But that moment when they see something differently has to be present.

I talk a lot more about this in my upcoming book, which I swear will have a cover and official title very soon! For now, though, do go back and examine your character’s emotional turning points and make sure that you’re juicing every last bit of resonance from them. This goes double for picture books, where you have a lot less text to work with. Sure, real kids change their minds all the time, but fictional ones need to be very strongly motivated in order for their emotional logic to make sense to the youngest readers.

Johnny headed out into his backyard…

…only it turned into a swamp full of menacing alligators!

And this continues for the duration of the manuscript, until Johnny is safe and snug at last, back in the real world.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this type of story. In fact, my brilliant client Bethanie Murguia makes great use of a child’s active imagination in her upcoming picture book ZOE GETS READY, out from Scholastic in a few weeks. But one child’s imagination and the fruits of it can’t be the entire picture book. Imagination is a sales hook and a universal element for picture books, but it shouldn’t be the only one.

Most of the stories I see have great whimsy–Johnny’s backyard may turn first into a swamp, then into an ancient Egyptian tomb, then into a spaceship–but that’s almost a problem. They tend to be too specific. One kid’s imagination played out. A character who, other than his big imagination, is not well-defined. And they tend to invite clichés in terms of illustration because you’re practically forcing your art talent to illustrate the imagined scenes as if they were illustrating the contents of thought bubbles, which is a tired old trope.

This is basically how I like to explain my problem with these stories: Other people’s dreams are not interesting. Imagine your best friend calling you up one morning and telling you about this crazy, whimsical dream she had. It’s full of crazy adventures and really specific fantastical creatures and it is a thrill ride…for her. I find my own dreams interesting, but that’s because they’re specific to me. I am not nearly as captivated by a purely imaginative thrill ride through another person’s subconscious. If that’s all there is, then I’m less likely to be interested.

Now, it’s not like you can’t have a story that centers around a child’s journey through a land of imagination. We’d lose brilliant books like WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE if that were the case. But there need to be other layers in play, and an actual story within the imagined landscape, not just an episodic barrage of images or crazy adventures. Characters need to be fleshed out. A plot needs to be in motion, with sequential events that go from conflict to climax. Other themes and universal childhood experiences need to be embedded within the manuscript.

For this reason, Flight of Imagination picture books are a tougher row to hoe than most. Just like A Day in the Life picture books, that follow a kid from morning to bedtime and showcase the family, pets, and favorite toys. Neither has an inherent plot and, in this market, that’s a losing proposition. Look at your story objectively and see if it suffers from this colorful–but nonetheless problematic–issue.

ETA: Wendy’s comment, below, is particularly astute. And a lot more succinct than this blog post. Go read that instead!

Romance is ridiculously popular with YA audiences. If you’ve ever heard me speak or listened to a webinar of mine, you know it’s because I think that teens lack the real life experience of true romance (the daring, self-sacrificing, all-consuming kind) and so they strive to live vicariously. Fiction and movies often provide teens with much bigger love fantasies than their daily prospects do–that guy asking you over to play Xbox, that girl texting all through dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. So a big, romantic read is incredibly attractive.

Speaking of which, most YA relationships are all about attractive. In other words, completely superficial. I can’t tell you the number of manuscripts (and, to a lesser extent, published books) that put two characters together whose only real reason for being in a “relationship” is that they find one another extremely hot. Hot is fine for an instant connection. Physical attraction makes us notice other people. But then the relationship has to evolve into something with a bit more substance. To make a believable love story, you need the initial spark, but also the moment when it turns into real emotions. You need those scenes where characters make true connections, where they dream up a future, where they live in the present. And those become part of a relationship’s shared history as the story progresses.

Many manuscripts and published titles stop at the initial attraction. Every time a girl looks at her newly minted boyfriend, she thinks about how utterly hot he is. Not about an inside joke. Not about the way his feet smell kinda funny but she manages to find it charming. Not about how he always picks out the green M&Ms and gives them to her because he knows she likes it. She instead goes on and on about his sculpted cheekbones and soulful eyes and all manner of other such drivel.

Relationships are like characters in their own right. Putting a complex one on paper, and managing to convey chemistry that’s NOT about physical characteristics is extremely difficult. But if you do it well, you have a vast and hungry audience waiting for you, as demonstrated by the Twilight success and now the more mainstream adult presence of 50 Shades of Grey. (Which, yes, I did hear a lot about at Bologna and finally managed to read…I won’t write anything more about it than that because my grandmother once told me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say…”)

Go back to every scene where your romantic leads interact. For every physical description, insert a thought about the present or future or a characterizing detail for the other character. Give us a bit of playful dialogue that shows us, rather than tells us, how the characters get along as people who are creating a bond. Don’t settle for attraction in the physical sense. Give us the moment when they fall in love–truly in love–on the page. We all know this instant, when our entire thinking shifts and things become magic. The impossible seems possible. Those stinky feet suddenly don’t matter.

Love and attraction are also about action (er, not that kind quite yet). We behave differently toward our beloveds than we do toward anyone else. Love makes us selfless, crazy, impulsive, brave, vulnerable. How do your character’s actions toward their crushes change as the relationship progresses? How do those actions change the characters? The relationship? Make sure that every plot point and action between your lovers resonates emotionally to either build or break down (the course of true love never did run smooth) your Romeo and Juliet as people. This is all part of building that common relationship history.

What plot point touches off the chemical reaction of love in your novel? What happens during? After? What does your character think about when they’re anywhere near their beloved? What do they do? This is the stuff you should be thinking about…not his sculpted cheekbones*.

* Though I just saw the Hunger Games movie** and…yeehaw! Check out the jawline on that Josh Hutcherson! (I feel a little old and cougar-y saying that about a 19-year-old.)

** With my mom, whose birthday is today. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Characterizing detail: Something the author puts into the text that works on multiple levels to give me a deeper understanding of a character’s core identity, worldview, relationships to others, and relationship to self.

Let’s do a quick characterizing details quiz. I’m not going to write full-blown examples of each event for you. These are the simple facts. In fully realized prose, they would ideally be shown, not told to you. But for the sake of this exercise, imagine that this is what you learn from a given piece of information, regardless of how that information is delivered. Which of the following are characterizing details?

1. Jenny has brown hair.
2. Michael bends down to pick up someone’s dropped penny.
3. Ian likes ice cream.
4. Laura tugs at her sweater whenever she sees Greg.
5. Holly has freckles.
6. Debra skips church to go to the go-kart races every Sunday.
7. Beau’s walls are painted a pale yellow.
8. Kyle bought an urn at a thrift store and keeps it on his bookshelf.
9. Amanda takes guitar lessons.
10. Rufus is first kazoo in his neighborhood band.

The last two examples are a bit conflated, perhaps, because musical ability does inform character, no matter what the instrument, but I think you get the point I’m making with this very leading quiz. Notice a few things about characterizing details:

• I don’t care, at the end of the day, what your character looks like–unless something about their physicality is important to plot or story, it’s likely arbitrary
• Characterizing details are revealed through action–Showing, not Telling
• Characterizing details have emotional resonance–when we see Laura tug at her sweater, we get a sense of something else that might be going on beneath the surface
• This information broadcasts into the future–we get the sense that what we learn here will come back at some point in the story and be relevant
• Characterizing details tend to be specific

When you’re dealing with character, and especially at the beginning of your book–whether novel or picture book!–make sure you are choosing details and actions that do double duty and flesh out character on a more emotional level for your reader. You can talk about their favorite fast food and music all day long, but that has a very limited reach. It’s when we know them in action and in relationship to other characters that they truly come alive.

Whether your obstacles are smaller frustrations or major roadblocks, some things just don’t work. One is the internal obstacle of “I can’t.” “Can’t” is a four-letter word in fiction, when uttered by both character and writer. When a character says “I can’t,” my first instinct is to ask, “Why not?” Sometimes it’s valid. In ALCHEMY AND MEGGY SWANN by Karen Cushman, Meggy’s legs are maimed. When she says she can’t go up stairs, I believe her. Or if your worldbuilding dictates that characters can’t fly, it’s good that you’re keeping it consistent. But when a character flat-out refuses to do something, there must be a real reason behind it (like a fear of heights precluding them from climbing the Eiffel Tower that has been established in the book for a long time as crucially important), or the obstacle will feel flimsy. It’s one thing for a character to say they can’t. Writers often stop there. But if the reader is to understand their position, there should be real motivation there, or it’s a nonstarter.

On a side note, it really irks me on a logical level when writers say “can’t.” This often happens when I give them food for thought during a critique and they have the knee-jerk reaction of, “Oh, that would take too much revision and I simply can’t.” Why not? You are making everything up. If the way you’ve made something up precludes you from trying something new, simply dream your way out of the old rules and come up with another framework. “Can’t” has no place in fiction. (I often hear it for what it most likely is: “Don’t wanna.”)

Another flimsy character obstacle is one that depends entirely on another character’s will. This is often a true non-starter. If your plot is riding on your character borrowing their big brother’s car, and they ask their brother, and the brother says, “No,” well…you’re SOL, aren’t you? You’re at an impasse. There should always be other avenues to reach the objective, other actions your character can play, etc. Plus, it’s frustrating to read a situation when the other character’s refusal seems arbitrary. Just like with “can’t,” if I feel like they could easily change their minds, then I’m not buying that it’s a real obstacle.

So just like your characters, objectives, and motivations, your obstacles should be more dynamic.

That’s why I get frustrated with writers who expect me to rise to serious emotions without giving me a reason. A great example is putting a very emotional or traumatic moment in the first chapter, before I’ve had a chance to bond with the character. Let’s say the book opens with a funeral for the character’s father. They are a wreck, weeping all over the place, inconsolable. You’d think that a funeral scene would automatically elicit strong emotions in the reader, but you’d be wrong.

I don’t sympathize with anything or anyone unless I care about it first, even a little bit. If I’m just meeting your character, I don’t know anything about them. And while funerals are sad, yes, and crying is sad, sure, I will not automatically match emotions just because they are presented on the page.

Similarly, I don’t much like to see crying for crying’s sake. There are manuscripts I’ve read that have characters screaming, raging, crying, laughing, and every other powerful emotion in between. But they fail to strike a chord. Why? Because rather than seeing those external displays of emotion, I’d rather know the exact thoughts that bring those tears about. Instead of saying, “She wept bitterly as they lowered the casket into the ground,” I’d prefer to read something like, “Of all things to think in this moment, she remembered the stupid joke birthday card she was planning on giving him next week, and how she’d never hear him laugh about it.” The thought that triggers the tears, whether it’s rational or completely random, like the above, is always much more powerful. I know more about the character and her relationship to her now-dead father from the specific second example, and that makes me more invested. It helps me to form that emotional bond.

Another thing to think about, and this I borrow from Robert McKee and his scriptwriting Bible, STORY: The Law of Diminishing Returns. The first time you see something, it’s powerful and it gets your attention. Like a rip-roaring action sequence in a summer blockbuster. “Awesome,” you think, “that semi just totally just clipped that low-flying police helicopter,” or whatever. But if the movie keeps throwing insane chase sequences at you, they’re going to have less and less of an effect. This principle makes many things in life possible. Think about doctors. They may feel queasy digging into their first cadaver, but by the end of medical school, they’re mucking around in bodies like champs.

Don’t hit your reader with strong emotion over and over again because you mistake this for making your audience care. If people aren’t attaching to your characters or their struggles, the answer isn’t to make them cry or rage more or more often, it’s to carefully choose your moments of high emotion, motivate them well, and really let us into the character’s experience.

Again, I’ve read many manuscripts (especially YA), where a vexed and emotional teen cries all the time, constantly flying off the handle. Instead of bringing me into that character’s world, it turns me off, and keeps pushing me away the longer the tantrums continue.

We all are hard-wired to respond to emotions, but it’s the way in which you present those moments in your fiction that will make all the difference.

I am under the impression that when you have a topic that could be traumatic to a child using animals lessens the effect. Example: Corduroy or Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Also there are wonderful stories such as CLICK CLACK MOO, BEAR SNORES ON, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK that simply can’t be told any other way. Or is that if you use animals in your story, it has to be a story that couldn’t be possibly told with any other setting/character?

When I talk about animal stories, by the way, I mean mostly picture books, chapter books, and some MG. It’s highly unusual to see anthropomorphic animal characters in YA. And it’s true that there seems to be less excitement in general about animal stories than there was a few years ago. Sure, in ye olde days, animal protagonists were de rigeur. Now, I can acknowledge that they’ve somewhat fallen out of style, though publisher’s catalogs are still crammed with all sorts of critters, especially on the PB side.

There’s nothing wrong, per se, with writing stories starring animal characters. Ask Erin Hunter, the creator of the WARRIORS middle grade series. I’m pretty sure you can find her on the road to the bank…she’ll be the one laughing. And, as I said, there are tons of creatures on shelves today. But why is there this aura that animal stories aren’t quite as popular as they used to be?

Darshana brings up an intersting point. Are animals better suited for difficult stories that need one step of remove from reality? This could be a reason for choosing animal protagonists, though lots of the animal stories I’ve read are simply stories with critters who act very much like human children. In fact, as an interesting counterpoint, I know that one publisher, Lee & Low, will not publish stories with anything but real children, because their mission is diversity and they want the opposite of that remove, they want the human experience only so that their readers can instantly relate. In this vein, I think that we, as people, are so used to relating to protagonists in stories, whether animal or inanimate object or kid, that I don’t know how real this psychological distance is. I’m guessing it’s negligible, though it is good food for thought.

As for the other examples that Darshana mentions, she’s right, they can’t be told any other way, but I think the reason there is just because…they are stories that happen to include animals (or Little Blue Trucks and their animal friends). Her last point is true of all stories, I think, or at least it should be: You make the choices you do in your fiction because you simply cannot make any other choices. Your particular choices are so right that they seem like the only ones. This should apply to characters, of course, but also to setting, plot, word choice, etc. THE VELVETEEN RABBIT is a story about a discarded toy looking for a home. It literally cannot star anyone else but a toy character.

I think anthropomorphic animals are very much a case-by-case question, as well as one of very personal taste. Personally (and here I speak for me and me alone), I do not like chapter books or MG with animals. And most unpublished picture books with animals fall short for me. From what I see in the slush, I get the distinct feeling that some people are writing animal stories simply because they remember reading a lot of animal stories when they grew up. This is a red flag because it shows that they may not be as familiar with today’s market and that they may not be making the strongest and most inevitable choices.

Overall, across the tens of thousands of submissions I’ve read, animal stories tend to cluster near the bottom of the barrel. This is by no means true across the board, it’s a huge generalization, and it has nothing to do with the canon of successful animal stories out there, but this is a clear effect I’ve noticed. (Again, just speaking for myself here.) So I’m wary of them most of the time. And it could very well end up being my loss.

However, I’ve personally broken that mold on my list with BUGLETTE THE MESSY SLEEPER (Tricycle Press) by Bethanie Murguia (and its sequel, coming from Knopf in 2013, SNIPPET THE EARLY RISER), WHEN BLUE MET EGG (coming from Dial/Penguin in 2012) by Lindsay Ward, and POCO LOCO (coming from Marshall Cavendish in 2013) by John Krause. It’s important to note that none of these books deal with issues so difficult that we needed to project them onto animals. It’s more important to note that all of them are tales that could only happen with these particular characters, because their creators made very active story choices. I think that’s the bottom line, right there.

I’m looking for clever ways to write physical descriptions of first person narrators. It’s just so awkward to have people describe their own looks. I’ve heard that editors are sick of the old “I stared in the mirror” approach. I’ve used the self-effacing “I wish I were better looking” approach, but that too seems overdone.

I have to admit, when I read some bad character self-description in a manuscript, it makes me wince. Never in my life have I, for example, “examined my dark brown locks in the mirror, giving my tall frame a once-over, and wishing, for once, that my blue-green eyes would just pick a color and stick with it.” Who thinks like that? The obvious problem is, of course, that we may think like this if we were seeing ourselves for the first time, but most of us are very familiar with what’s in the mirror. In this case, I feel like we’re all expecting the contrived, super unique self-description, and we’re already groaning about it. What you can do instead is stop trying to make the character’s self-description into a creativity moment and just tell us the details that we need to know.

“I swatted a clump of black hair out of my eyes and ran down the field,” or whatever.

Don’t be too precious about it, don’t put physical description in dialogue unless you can get it to sound organic (none of this “But gosh, that skirt looks really great with your hazel eyes” stuff, that doesn’t sound like authentic speech, we would just say “your eyes” because both characters know what color they’re referring to), and don’t think this is your big opportunity to revolutionize character self-description. Less is definitely more, so just tell us (yes, you can tell and not show in this case) and move on. That’s what I say. This is a frustrating question because I’ve seen it done very poorly, and most likely not noticed when it’s done really well, and would just rather have the necessary details out of the way. I’m guessing your character’s look isn’t the most important thing about the story, so all we need are a few details peppered in.

To make your reader feel.

Whenever I speak about queries at conferences, I always have one request: Make me care. This is the same idea. I want to feel my interest piqued with the query. I want to feel something, even if it’s just a stirring of feeling or concern or nervousness or longing. Most queries fail to elicit even one feeling (other than boredom).

The manuscript itself, however, has to do much more than just make a reader care (though that’s an excellent starting point, and it will set you apart from most readers). When your character  — who is the focal point of our feelings and our gateway into the story — feels hurt, the reader should ache. When they fall in love, the reader should feel her heart quicken. When they think all is lost, the reader should reach for the Ben & Jerry’s.

If you’re not going to be manipulating your reader’s emotions and taking your audience on a journey of feelings, thoughts, and realizations, what’s the point?

How do you make your readers feel emotion? You do it through crafting a character with feelings and goals, and also by knowing your own feelings. At the VCFA Alumni Mini-Residency I attended this July in Vermont, COUNTDOWN author and master writer Deborah Wiles said the following:

Allow your character’s heart to break. How? Know thyself. Feel what you feel. Allow yourself your heartache. Share it with your character. Heal together.

As your character encounters a thrilling roller coast of emotional ups and downs, of victories and disappointments, you must always be thinking of their emotions. How are they reacting to this event? How are they interpreting it? What is the emotional context? Where do they think they go from here? Use your character’s interiority.

More importantly, use your own emotions and thoughts as guides for what your character is going through. That will lend your writing truth. Pour your heart out a little bit. Always think of the character’s feelings (usually a version of your own) and the feelings you want to evoke in the reader.

Readers expect to pick up a book and be transported and transformed, not only to another world or time or unique point of view, but to emotional places own hearts, minds, and lives.

Last week, I watched The Notebook for the first time, just because it was so wildly popular and I wanted to see how it was put together. (I didn’t much care for it but that’s beside the point.) Has anyone ever recommended this particular movie to you? If you’re a woman and you have girlfriends that are crazy about it, what did they say to convince you to watch?

I bet it wasn’t, “You’ll really love the dialogue” or, “You should see how the filmmakers introduce the complication of the rich fiancé.” It could just be my own experience here, but the only thing anyone ever told me about The Notebook (and this came from about ten different people) is:

“It will make you cry your face off.”*

Readers couldn’t care less about the craft and framework behind a tale when emotions are in the mix. (You, of course, have to care very much about it, as the writer, but that’s another story.)

Emotion is going to be your reader’s biggest takeaway…and their biggest expectation when they’re considering reading a book. And if you do it right — if you write a book that’s not only cathartic for your character and your reader but for you, too — you will definitely give your readers a journey they won’t forget.

* My eyes stayed dry and my face intact, unfortunately. Incidentally, some things that do make me cry: Swing Kids, Titanic, the second half of the BBC Office Christmas special, the last scene in The Royal Tenenbaums (happy tears), “Levon” by Elton John, BEFORE I DIE by Jenny Downham, IF I STAY by Gayle Forman, LOVE, AUBREY by Suzanne LaFleur, WHEN BLUE MET EGG by Lindsay Ward, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, the scene with Harry’s family near the end of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, etc.

Ellis opened the front door to the Wonderland Gardens Retirement Community. He could kick himself for not seeing this before. The “it” here is vague, especially for an opening. Doesn’t ground the reader. So, this is how Alicia Swanson beat him again and again in sales contests. Still unclear…does he see her or what? What does he see? It was a good thing he called her house to ask about that algebra assignment. Her mom told him she was out selling tickets in the northwest part of town. Sentence ends with “of town.” After searching the few existing housing additions in that part of town, Town the only place left was an old retirement community which sat isolated near a cornfield on the edge of town. “of town.” The sheer size of the Wonderland Gardens complex led one to believe there were many residents. This is a prime example of dry voice. “Sheer size,” “complex,” “led one” and “residents” aren’t words that a 13-14 year-old kid would use. This reads more like a business memo. Many elderly residents who could fall prey to her It’s been a while since we mentioned Alicia, reintroduce her name. syrupy sweetness sales pitch and buy her tickets to the upcoming Plainfield Youth Summer Theater’s production of Alice in Wonderland, The Musical.

I’m missing some of the motivation. Are both Ellis and Alicia in the production? How are they connected? What do they get if they sell the most tickets? Etc. Build up the stakes. Dry voice here makes for a dense first paragraph.

Of course she would win most ticket sales, Italicize verbatim thoughts… Ellis thought as he stepped across the threshold. She always won, especially against him. Every lead in every show, every spelling bee, math contest, art contest, science fair, etc., etc., etc. (or at least that is how it felt). Even after leading the 8th grade football team to the city championship as quarterback last fall, he was still mercilessly harassed for getting beat out by Alicia for the 7th grade QB position the year before.

There is a lot of telling as he talks about his feelings here. Also, a co-ed football team? My school didn’t have a football program, so maybe I’m missing something. The last sentence is overlong. Try reading it aloud.

He dreamed of being able to seek revenge for the thousand ills of Alicia he had endured “The thousand ills of Alicia he had endured” is clunky…a convoluted way of saying something simple, and this is not the voice of a 13 y.o. boy, even one who is steeped in Poe. like in his favorite Edgar Allen Poe story, THE CASK OF THE AMOTILLADO. The title of the short story, which should be in quotes instead of caps, is “The Cask of Amontillado,” with a missing “n” in there and without the second “the.” Maybe not sealing her in an underground vault to die, but…

“Oh, Mr. McGregor!” An ancient, but bubbly voice came from the shadows inside the lobby. “Another visitor!”

Actually introduce the speaking character, especially for their first dialogue. It’s always a stronger image when characters speak, not their disembodied voices. We do get some of Ellis’ character her, maybe even a spark of a sense of humor, which is good.

The door closed behind Ellis. He took a few measured steps toward the voice as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine to the shadowy darkness of the lobby. This is play-by-play narration, we don’t need all of these details, and they’re crammed into a sentence that could otherwise be cleaner. The smell of old flooded Flooded his senses. The flood Flood of memories from his experiences visiting his grandfather reminded him of how he disliked these places, places where they send great old people to get older and wither away, like his grandpa did.

Try to rephrase this last sentence without having to say both “grandfather” and “grandpa.” The implication that his grandpa went to an old age home is clear…if an old age home reminds him of his grandpa, that’s the obvious inference. There’s some over-explaining going on here.

A shiver ran up his spine Physical cliché as he walked into the lobby. He saw the origin of the voice Convoluted way of saying something simple, “origin” is also dry voice, a frail elderly woman. She sat behind an oak table in a red velvet arm chair and next to her, in a matching chair, was an equally old tall man. On the table sat an old fashioned black rotary dial telephone and a gold sign that read, “Welcome to The Wonderland Gardens Retirement Community, Angus and Matilda McGregor, Hosts”

A vivid bit of description here, but the syntax could be smoothed out for all the writing so far. Read the work aloud. I don’t have a finger on Ellis’ voice, and don’t really know much about him as a character, nor why he cares about this ticket sales contest (other than to beat Alice). I’m finding that I’m not connecting as much as I need to be in order to hook into a beginning.

“Young, sir.” Comma before a “said” tag…a period goes after dialogue only if you’re moving on to an action tag. said the old man. They stood up and walked around the table to meet Ellis. They wore matching khaki slacks and red flannel shirts.

Ellis is a bit of an impartial observer. All of this is told in a very measured way. There’s no reaction, no Ellis spin on any of what he’s describing. He’s acting like a camera, just recording the scene. That is one of the reasons why we aren’t bonding with him as a character…there’s no personalized spin on what he’s telling us about. Reactions? Thoughts? Etc.

“Welcome to Wonderland Gardens Retirement Community,” This one would be a period, then. Why do we need dialogue welcoming him if there was already a sign? Redundant. The man swung his long arm in a arc Before vowel-beginning words, h-beginning words, and acronyms, you use “an” instead of “a” motion “Motion” here is redundant… “swung his arm in an arc” implies “motion.” As Strunk and White say: “Omit needless words.”, his fingers at the furthest point in connected space from his lanky body. Don’t know if you need to describe the layout in this much detail, we all know that fingers are at the end of an arm…The entire lobby seemed to fall under the sweep of his arm.

Lots of play-by-play narration still going on, not a lot of emotional involvement. Some dry voice and basic writing issues here. I’d urge the writer here to work on grammar and syntax and giving us more of Ellis as a character. Then he can tackle voice.