Leaderboard

I am a bit infrequent here for the moment since I have no steady internet in the summer house...but BronxWench gave a very good explanation of what I was trying to say in my previous post. If such things happen...why are you not showing such an event for the reader? How does he feel about his work situation? What are his reasons for working at the Inn? I would be much more interested in reading such at the beginning at the story than how Janina has blasted some fellow with her magic.

Oh, MC and them are coworkers? And, he’s ogling them? That’s a HR nightmare waiting to happen. So, is this annual-review-time and he needs to write something flattering about his coworkers? Is he a pervert and makes a habit of gawking at them (& their reactions)? An idea is to have a customer make that out-of-line remark (see previous posts), and MC remarking how restrained Janina is being this time? As to verb tense, I recommend past tense. I’ve tried present tense and it’s… a beast all to itself.

[MC] looked around the tavern, assessing his coworkers. They were a diverse bunch, but he had grown fond of them. Janina, a young elf with blond hair that was always tied up into a folded ponytail bun, stood at just over six feet tall and had blue eyes that has had a slight glow to them. Her green top gently hugged her athletic body, her fair sized breasts pressing against the fabric were the envy of many women, as were her strong toned legs hidden by a pair of grey pants that held on to her round shapely buttocks. Only once did anyone ever try to force her to do something she didn't want to do. She had the man pinned to the wall with a spell in one hand (What was the spell? You describe the fire ball in her other hand, so is this spell visible? If so, describe it!) and a blue fire ball in her other, ready to kill the poor drunk. After he had pissed his pants, she smiled at him and told him it was time to go home before he gets got into any more trouble. He quickly paid his tab and ran home. Janina simply returned to work while the entire tavern was dead silent, not one person taking their eyes off her, until she asked if anyone needed another drink in one of the sweetest voices that challenged anyone to try something like that again. So, to explain my edits… Give us some context in the form of a sentence that lets us know whose point of view this is. If this is from MC’s point of view, he doesn’t know what other women envy about Janina, unless they’ve all decided to drop by and tell him. If her legs are hidden by the pants, he can’t tell that they’re strong and toned, unless he makes a habit of peeking when she’s changing. Also, his absorption with the way her clothes fit makes him sound like a pervert, or a fashionista. You need to watch verb tense. You keep popping off into present tense when the sentence starts out in the past tense. Pick a tense and stick with it, please. The gods of grammar will thank you. Avoid endlessly complicated sentences. It’s confusing for a reader to keep track of what’s happening when they have to unravel all those clauses. It’s as bad as all those endless (and breathless) sentences that begin with “Then… And then...” Most of the time, unless it’s in the form of a scroll, you don’t see a spell. You see the effect of the spell. You got it with the blue fire ball, but the other spell? We readers have no clue what it is, or what she’s doing with it. Help out a poor reader and either describe it, or just have her hand around his throat as she pins him to the wall.

I injoyed it keep up the good work

Sunburns are good things, happy things, ought to make you feel good. So, no, positive thinking can’t overcome everything.