Writing Forum

Hi, Randy Ames

Right, so my comments are pretty much going to say the same things A E Willcox's did, but hopefully I'll be able to highlight it from another angle.

I think the main issue here is that the scene is mostly dialogue. That's not a problem in itself, especially since the dialogue is loaded with conflict and advances the plot very effeciently. Though, the focus of the exercise was to show the character and setting through a deeply rooted POV, which dialogue doesn't do all that well.

We only get two setting details, the bartender wiping the bar and the crowd gathering behind behind Meredith. We get a few more details about Meredith. Her size (since she's towering over a 6 foot tall bartender), her rippling muscles, the way she can make the crowd part, and the fact that she's prone to violence.

Of those details, I think it's worth noting Meredith muscles and the scowl she uses to part the crowd, because of those are described in a way pulls us out of Meredith's POV.

"the statuesque woman her muscles showing greatly under her sleeveless vest." - Describing Meredith as statuesque and how her muscles look makes it seem as if we're suddenly inside the bartender's head instead. We know Meredith is tall, so you could leave out "statuesque" without losing any information, and Meredith would probably feel her muclse tighting instead of seeing them, or she would make an effort of appearing bulky.

The same thing goes for her scowling. It's something the other characters see not Meredith herself.

On the other hand, the way Meredith punches the bartender and pushes the crowd apart works well, because it's Meredith's actions that shows what kind of character she is. We now know she's prone to violence and makes an imposing figure without being told directly (which would've been jarring).

In my experience, it's far more difficult to get the setting across through characters action, so you'll probably have to rely a bit on character thoughts and/or small info dumps for that, but sometimes you can use character actions. Here, for example, instead of describing the bartender wiping down the counter and Meredith punching the bartender in the face, Meredith could hammer the bartender's face into the counter, which could show us both what the counter looked like and Meredith's violent nature.

I hope some of this was useful.