Originally posted by fairlady_xoxo:
Hidden behind the silvery silhouette of the moonlit sky...
my fave
No offence meant, but actually, the sentence is quite amusing if you understand it fully.
First of all, "silhouette" refers to:
sil·hou·ette /ˌsɪluˈɛt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sil-oo-et] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -et·ted, -et·ting.
–noun
1. a two-dimensional representation of the outline of an object, as a cutout or configurational drawing, uniformly filled in with black, esp. a black-paper, miniature cutout of the outlines of a famous person's face.
2.
the outline or general shape of something: the slim silhouette of a skyscraper.3.
a dark image outlined against a lighter background.Since that's the case, the sky, being endless, can't exactly have a silhouette, can it? There's no background for the sky whatsoever.
A less confusing version would be "The clouds covered the face of the moon like a dirty grey shawl across the neck of a beautiful young lady, their outlines glowing a pale silver in the night sky." I realize it's longer, but hey.
Ok, here are some tips:
1. Try to avoid using too many adjectives in one sentence. It's irritating and it holds the storyline up. For example: "The dilapidated, old house stood in the middle of the untamed and forbidding woods, with lush, green grass overflowing onto the worn-out dirt pavement leading up to the derelict front door that was hanging off its rusty, worn-out edges." Quite a mouthful, eh?
2. Vary between using long and short sentences. An example of this would be this excerpt quoted from my blog.
For a drowning person:
"He felt like he was falling in slow motion. Death was coming. He could feel its clammy touch. The cold brought comfort to him in the form of numbness. He could hardly feel anything, except for the sick, nauseatic feeling of water rushing into his chest cavity. His heart was beating ever so slowly."
3. Avoid using colloquial phrases like "blur".
4. Don't drag your story for the sake of making it longer. Long essays != Good essays.
That's all I have for now.