Hi all
Following a short story submission to a magazine, I have received the usual rejection but also some feedback. This was very welcome over and above the usual response, but not 100% sure what it means:
"You might also want to look at your use of exposition and summary as this tends to dilute the tension in several scenes."
I'm guessing I must be being a little obvious with the plot development.
To many lines of exposition or description can kill the pace. As much as I love Hardy's expositions they would not be acceptable today. His brilliant descriptions of settings were necessary in his time because people living in various parts of England didn't travel like they do today. They had no idea what other parts of the country looked like.
A tip I read about novels that's equally or more applicable to short stories.
It's possible to relay all or most of the information in a novel through dialogue.
The advantage of using dialogue is that it's an action and more 'Show than Tell'.
Thanks for your input everyone. It is a short story about 6k words, planning on it being the first of three in a collection about the war in heaven, the war on earth and the rapture. There were a few elements of backstory so that would definitely make sense - perhaps some more work required weaving in those parts.
It's sometimes difficult to avoid explanations in shorter pieces, as one tends to expect readers to need to know exactly how or why something has happened. It's often tied to backstory, or can be a shorter substitute for the same thing.
Maybe that's what they mean. '...which is/was...' is exposition - explanation, basically - so if you write similar passages try to cut them out.
Summary's much the same but easer to get rid of. Just think that you've already told the reader what's in the summary - it wouldn't be one otherwise - and edit it out.
Yes, I know it's much harder than it sounds. That's why I stick to novels - too lazy to precis ;)