Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 61

>"Her teeth lightly biting it in concentration." For some reason we thought you were talking about her biting the brick and then we just kind of looked at each other and thought "huh?" We reread, and it makes sense! :D But you still might want to clarify that she's biting her tongue and not the brick. ;D

>"--not that they weren't." Sorry we have to praise you on this awesome use of sentence structure because so many people wouldn't think to put an em-dash claiming the 'not that the jewels weren't valuable' but rather a comma or something, so we praise you on this formation. Great job!

>"Something that would distract the family she (was) stealing from."

Consider making the word 'was' in this sentence italics since you were just talking about how she was a thief and she had not stolen the jewels because of it a second earlier.

>"Pulling it out in the limited space she had to do so." We notice you use the term 'to do so' a lot' and it isn't needed in this phrasing. Try just this: "Pulling it out in the limited space she had."

>"Her jaw slammed shut, her teeth snapping down on her tongue." First, 'snapping down on her tongue,' is a really cool description and we can see it ever so clearly! Second, take out the second 'her' in this sentence because it isn't needed and disrupts the sentence flow. Try just "her jaw slammed shut, (teeth) snapping down on her tongue." OR you could describe the word tongue and replace the third 'her' if you really wanted to or if it's your style. So you could say something like "Her jaw slammed shut, teeth snapping down on a dried-out tongue."

>"which screamed 'pricey.' " Clever word choice. Should pricey be in italics instead of inside of quotation marks? This would be the right grammar but then again, it's up to you.

>"Her eyes widened of (their own accord.)" Could you go a bit deeper into this sentence? Maybe explain the meaning of 'their own accord?' We didn't know what that meant.

>"into (a) fail-safe elastic strap she always wore to sneak objects into." If she always wore it, then try saying the word 'the' fail-safe elastic strap.' The word 'a' makes it sound like a random one even though it isn't.

>"making sure not to make any unnecessary movements...' (congrats & great job on spelling the word unnecessary correctly. Sometimes it takes one of us like thirty seconds to spell it ;). But you have the word 'make' in here twice in two different forms: 'making' and 'make.' Consider changing one of these words. Maybe something similar to this? "Making sure not to (create) any..."

>"Standing up as she did 'so.' " Again, this so is not needed.

>"Bad move." Clever wording.

>"She momentarily raised her foot off his back and took it back before swinging it..." (And we'll work more with this paragraph a bit later) but for now the word back is used twice. Try something like this: "She lifted her foot ever so slightly off the man's 'spine' and took it back before full out swinging it, sending it flying into his ribs." Also, in this paragraph, a lot of your sentence structure sounds the same. Be mindful that there are a lot of "actions, add-ons to actions," and that sometimes shorter sentences work better. (But like we said, we'll work with this paragraph more towards your second paragraph).

>"Rolling around so that his back touched the floor." 'So that his back touched the floor' is not needed because a second ago our protagonist (who is quite the good fighter, must we say) kicked him in the back, so the reader already knows that he's rolling onto his back and was previously on his stomach.

>And in the paragraph that starts with 'ugh' keep being mindful that after almost every sentence, there's a comma linking to another thought which makes it sound repetitive, so you could always do short sentences and paint them with short-cropped descriptions.