/lit/ - Literature

I think it's time for OP to rewrite his paragraph.

>>19427334
>>19427377
Wrong
Show > Tell is the quickest way to stop people writing purple prose and to give basic coherence to the writing.

Sometimes you have to tell the reader something, but it's best accessed through a memory or if a character is reading from a newspaper or something.

>>19364360
All of the details are plainly stated in a similar way, like they are just being listed.
>the rooms were like this
>the object was here
>Meg thought this or that
I cannot remember a very long shopping list - this is why I need to write the list out in the first place. I struggle to follow the narrative, because it is like a long list. It has less story.
This is tell.
You must weave things together and feel some kind of organic journey happening. You remember much more if you enjoy what you are doing.
This is show.

There are certain things that have more gravity here.
>The chest needed a key to be opened, a key which never left Meg’s grandmothers person...the book...steal looks at it....grandmother would often leave for the town and forget to lock the book away...
That could really set a tone. So could the environment of the strange small house with the cramped spiral staircase and the basement.

Here is my suggestion -
Meg has to physically walk in the front door and then up that staircase
You describe the house in a more organic way as she does that. Mention her discomfort on the stairs, and some of the idiosyncrasies of the house as she walks past them.
Build the tension of her sneaky mission as she goes.
>Meg walks in the front door.
>the dust
>she goes up the crazy stairs
>why is she going
>Meg briefly remembers an anecdote regarding the cellar and her grandmother -
What her Grandma keeps in there maybe - or - her Grandma was too old to even enter the cellar these days, and so despite the smallness of the house her Grandmother was limited to even less of it
>you explain the strictness of her grandmother as you mention that she is scared of the bad thing she is doing
Perhaps you wouldn't mention the book until she actually has it in her hands, then that moment is a crescendo to the tension and creepiness you developed