Bad Phone Fiction Is Rotting Your Brain
Updated: Oct 15
An unsolicited line edit of "Kidnapped by My Mate"
It was 4AM. I had woken up at 2:58, cleaned my whole kitchen, then crawled on the couch to play my mindless lil’ matching game until I was tired enough to sleep again.
Because I write and read romance, the capitalistic ad pushing overlords feed me all kinds of crap from cheap pay per episode apps to AI boyfriends. But nothing slaps me into a fit like the pay per chapter “books” folks are out here peddling. As an author, editor, and full-time Judge Judy with a superiority complex, these ugly bits of advertisements enrage me.
That night the absolute audacity was high, the sentences were doing nothing, and the 1009th fictional woman was getting a wave of heat in her bits that meant she was about to mate with a Jacob Black wannabe.
After three sentences, I started losing brain cells. So, for the good of society, I’m going to do a line edit of this hot garbage and show you how just a couple of words could save your mind from rotting when reading. My hope is that you will come away with an appreciation for people who make great books and an understanding of why it takes so long to produce them. Authors spend months and years developing stories for your consumption. Editors meticulously smooth out those fever dreams on paper so that you aren't hiccupping on plot holes and disrespectfully placed punctuation.
For the record, I do not believe there is an objectively correct way to write. I wrote a book that gives the finger to that idea and to industry prudes. An editor's job isn't to polish prose until it turns beige. An editor's job is to make sure the book is saying what it needs to say effectively while retaining the author's voice and vision. You can write whatever you want. Language is an ever evolving tool for communication and sharing. It is not gate others get to shoo you away from because they don't like the way you use it. None of this is to push anyone away from telling stories and developing their craft. It's just me being especially annoyed at an ad I didn't ask for at 4AM.
(( Disclaimer: This line edit will include developmental notes and completely unprofessional language, just for funsies. The tone is irreverent and not reflective of my actual professional work. I assure you, I would never take the piss out of a client like this. I have also never read this story in full (if it really exists), and my comments are my personal editorial opinions on what is visible in the ad. But as this is a public advertisement, it is fair game. The developers should have hired an editor. ))
So let's get in to it:
CHAPTER 1
BELLE
The name of your main character is so important. If it’s dumb, I will not read the book. This one is fine, I guess, but the name is commonly associated with Disney, which feels weird in what is definitely a spicy story. Also it is very close to "Bella," which could be intentional, but ripping off the godfather of sexy werewolf stories isn't a great move either.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the man across the bar from me
Critique: Grammar = Fine. Sentence = Meh.
Developmental Note: The first sentence of a book has one job: Be interesting. Starting with locking eyes right away could be good! I personally hate exposition heavy openings. The eye snap puts us in the story immediately. My recommendation would be to make sure the sentence is truly hooking the reader. Also maybe choose something less cliche than "couldn't keep my eyes off," Frankie Valli.
At that moment, I wished that I had dressed up for my flight to Paris.
Critique: This is an awkward sentence.
Suggestion: Delete “At that moment.” First person past tense naturally communicates where and when we are. We are seeing the moment already, you do not have to tell us that we’re standing in a spot in which we’re already standing.
Critique: The rest of the sentence is fine, it’s technically correct, but it’s doing a lot of telling.
Suggestion: Potentially revise by showing how dressed down she is.
Developmental Note: Telling is fine at times but not at the risk of removing immersion. For example “I hurried to dust the pretzel crumbs off my sweatpants," gives us an action that allows the reader to participate rather than just existing as a voice in FMC's head. It also gives the statement more voice, lets the reader infer the regret/anxiety, and begins to tell us what the character looks like without a paragraph of pure description.
When our eyes met for a moment, a wave rushed through my body, an unfamiliar feeling I had never experienced.
This is a literary war crime.
A monster like this should never walk into a room with an editor and come out alive. Let’s break it down:
When our eyes met for a moment,
Critique: Weirdly placed comma.
The current version of this is giving us how long their eyes met, which is not inherently wrong, but it is weird. Alternatively, this could be timing the wave, which feels more natural than timing the eye contact, especially because we learn in the next sentence that she drops her eyes AFTER the wave. So if the wave happens for the moment, then we know the eye contact does too.
Suggestion: Either shift the comma to be after "eyes" or remove "for a moment" altogether and let the structure of the prose keep the time.
A wave rushed through my body,
Critique: Too vague.
Developmental Note: A wave of what? I’ve looked at some men and felt a wave of nausea. Because I am not the author, I cannot say what Belle was feeling here. My suggestion would be to get deeper into her body. Was it a warm sensation? Where did it begin and end? How long did it last? I want to know what it felt like so I can experience it with her.
An unfamiliar feeling I had never experienced.
GIRL.
Absolutely not.
Critique: This is doing nothing for the senses. I don’t know what the feeling feels like because it was not described in the previous section. So now I have two attempts to convey a feeling that neither truly describe.
Suggestion: Please just tell me what the feeling feels like.
Critique:
ON A LINGUISTIC LEVEL MY BROTHER/SISTER/OTHER IN CHRIST
“Unfamiliar” and “had never experienced” are communicating the same information. Choose one or the other. I personally think unfamiliar is the better word.
Mandatory: Delete “had never experienced.”
Critique: This redundancy is also an appositive phrase sleeping on the job. The role of an appositive is to modify a noun to give the reader more information. However, the noun in this case is "wave" which is already an abstract metaphor. Modifying it with "an unfamiliar feeling" doesn’t clarify or add anything, it gives us another vague abstraction. So instead of being an effective appositive, it reads more like a sentence fragment.
Suggestion: We can fix this a number of ways. To retain the style and message (tragic as it may be), my suggestion would be to slap “unfamiliar” before “wave” to make “An unfamiliar wave rushed through my body.”
Developmental Note: “An unfamiliar wave” declunks the sentence, but has the same problem I mentioned earlier: it does not let me feel what Belle is feeling. My suggestion to this author would be to go back to the drawing board and discover exactly what the feeling is and describe it.
It was like I had found all the answers I was looking for.
Critique: Vague subject. It is unclear in this sentence what "It" is referring to. She could mean the feeling we can't feel or she could be talking about the actual action of looking in his eyes.
Suggestion: Please clarify.
Developmental Note: I need some exposition. Like, is she taking a math test or what? What exactly is she finding answers to? I mentioned earlier that I hate starting in exposition, BUT that is because it's usually six paragraphs of info-dumping. Good exposition is revealed quietly in doses. This sentence almost does that, but without knowing what question Belle is asking, or the subject to which she is referring, the answer is useless. Especially being that I still don’t know/understand what the feeling she felt feels like.
Again, my suggestion is to revisit this and do some soul searching to identify exactly what we’re talking about here.
I dropped my gaze, turning to the drink in front of me.
Critique: This sentence isn’t terrible. But, I do think it lacks intensity considering their eye contact apparently just changed her life.
I needed to calm my nerves. Flying made me nervous.
Critique: Structurally, these sentences are fine. But both are all telling. Additionally, the sentence about flying seems unrelated to the present situation.
Developmental Note: What does being nervous feel like? Did her hands rattle against the glass? Maybe her chest was tight or her feet were sweaty. What action did she then take to try to calm those sensations?
Suggestion: Delete “I needed to calm my nerves” and replace with more descriptive prose.
Flying made me nervous
(Absolute Read of a) Development Note:
I don’t care.
Her being nervous about flying means absolutely nothing to me at this point in the story. It adds nothing and it takes us out of the moment. Because when you have earth shattering eye contact with a gorgeous man why in frickity f*ck would you think to yourself “I hate flying.” However, if that is the path the author insists on taking, an I-statement is the better approach.
Suggestion: Replace with "I hate flying."
Note: Generally, I statements are the devil in first person narrative. Too many start to distance us from the character's experience. But the devil isn't all bad. Just remember, we can dance with him, but we can’t marry him.
Slowly, my eyes drifted back to the man, who was now looking down at his phone.
Critique: Semantic redundancy/Unnecessary adverb
Suggestion: Delete "slowly".
“Slowly” is unnecessary here because “drifted” is a verb which implies slow movements. Kill your adverbs, my loves.
Developmental Note: “Who was now looking down at his phone" is fine, but not my fave.
This is the final sentence I can see in the screenshot, and I promise I didn't read any further. Before I suggest anything here, I would want to know if the phone matters. If it does, keep it. If we’re just saying it to say it, my suggestion would be to fill this moment instead with some physical descriptions.
We could absolutely do both depending on the author’s intentions. For instance if whatever is on his phone is meant to be bad/frustrating we can say “His darkened eyes dropped to his phone. Whatever was on it made him clench his hunky, chiseled Ken-doll jaw."
Drama, physical description, furthering the plot.
Again, many of my edits were preferential and stylistic. I do be opinionated af. However, tightening the prose in some areas, and stretching moments out in other could make this weird kinky advertisement into a functional, gripping intro to maybe a good story. I wouldn't know for sure, but let's just say I've got a familiar feeling, I've definitely felt before that this piece could use a little work.
The biggest lessons here are:
If the sentence isn’t moving the story it is useless
If the sentence pushes us further away from the character's experience, it is unsuccessful.
Buy real books because this werewolf brainrot crap will lower your IQ.
Also, linguistics are for everyone. If anyone needs me, I’ll be outside selling semantics lessons for 5 cents.
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