by tlaero » Sat, 17Dec30 03:01
Everything we're going to talk about here is minor grammar. They're small mistakes that many people won't even notice, but that jump out at some of us. I'm going to say a lot more words than is justified for these minor things, but please don't think I'm trying to be pretentious. I'm just trying to teach you to fish.
>She draws a long, slow gasp as her body shudders above you then releases it just as slowly.
This reads as though "then releases it" modifies "as her body shudders above you." But, even if you didn't have the shuddering in between the two parts, you'd still need an "and" to join them. Consider the simplified "She inhales then exhales" and compare it to "She inhales and then exhales." "Then" is almost never sufficient for joining parts of sentences together. You almost always need an "and" with it. When writing, look distrustfully at any place you use a lone "then" outside of an "if-then" structure.
Here, minimally the sentence should be:
She draws a long, slow gasp as her body shudders above you and then releases it just as slowly.
But there are other issues. A gasp is a sudden intake of breath. You literally can not draw a long, slow gasp.
Also, the shuddering confuses the sentence. There are 3 parts here. She inhales, she shudders, and she exhales. If those three things happen independently, then you'd have to order them the way you did. But, since you said "as" the shuddering is happening during the inhaling and exhaling.
Finally, always look to remove words. If you can say the same thing with fewer words, you're usually better of doing so. In this case "above you" is unnecessary. We've got the picture to show us that she's above you, and, realistically, the deep breathing and shuddering is the important part. WHERE she does it is less so. She could do that in the next room and it would still be erotic.
I would write it like this:
Her body shudders as she draws a long, slow breath and then slowly releases it.
>"Watching her jerk upright you quickly fill your lungs, holding your breath."
This has a similar temporal problem as the previous one. Think about the ordering of what happened. 3 things happened here. You watched her, you filled you lungs, and you held your breath. As it's written, all 3 things happen simultaneously. Clearly that didn't happen, though, since you can't hold your breath while filling your lungs. The watching might have happened simultaneously, but it's not clear, grammatically, why it's part of the sentence. Did you fill your lungs and hold your breath BECAUSE you watched her jerk upright? Or did you just happen to be watching her when you took a breath? The answer to that will affect how the sentence goes.
In general, I recommend avoiding the whole "doing something he did something else" structure. People get it wrong more often than they get it right.
Maybe:
When she jerks upright, you quickly fill your lungs and then hold your breath.
Better, though would be an explanation of why you're doing this. It's not really because she jerked upright. I'd do something like:
When she jerks upright, you quickly fill your lungs and then hold your breath in anticipation of what's about to happen.
>"She falls forward lying on you, regaining her breath while staring at the fire in her hand."
This is similar. "She falls forward lying on you, regaining her breath" means that she did all three things at the same time. You need temporal markers to separate these actions.
>"Slowly closing her fingers around the flame, they die down..."
If I'm successfully teaching you to fish, then you know what's wrong with this.
>"That was intense," as your hands caress her.
There's actually no verb in this. It should be something like:
You say, "That was intense," as your hands caress her.
>"It sounds it but you know I don’t do the boyfriend experience, Cynthia," your tone, gentle and diplomatic.
>"Well, you should," pouting, she bites your nose playfully.
Same issue. There needs to be some equivalent to "he/she/you say" in the sentence somewhere.
>"Then leans forward and kisses you on the head."
I'll let you decide if this "then" is a perch or a salmon...
>"Then you remember the phone call she was on when you arrived."
This "Then" is actually okay. So, be careful. Don't just add "and" to all of them. (-:
>You'd be early if you headed there now which wouldn't be too bad."
This is subtle. It's awkward because being early is socially kind of bad, so you need an "although" or a "but" to show the that in this case it isn't.
>Staring at your phone without seeing it you continue to think about Cynthia.
Salmon. (-:
>A nearby car horn rudely pulls you from your reverie and you look up.
This is one I struggled with forever. One of my editors starting writing in ALL CAPS every time I did it, and that was a lot.
You're joining two things together with an "and," and you need to know whether to add a comma or not. Here's how I remember it. If you could add a period and remove the "and", then you need a comma. The punctuation karma has to balance. If you remove the period, you need to replace it with a comma.
In other words, if the thing after the "and" has both a subject and a verb, you need a comma.
Consider:
"He went to the store, and he got milk."
"He went to the store and got milk."
Both of those are correct. "He got milk" could be its own sentence. You could do. "He went to the store. He got milk." If you're going to join these two sentences together and remove the period, you have to balance the punctuation karma with a comma.
On the other hand, this does NOT work. "He went to the store. Got milk." There you didn't join two sentences together, so there's no need for a comma.
That should be enough to get you started.
Tlaero