Well, if she's attractive she's bound to get lots of attention, but personally, I wouldn't want to create a Bella-in-Forks type sitch where you spend time making every guy around fancy her like they've been in Em City and haven't seen a woman for a year.

I wouldn't want to create a Bella-in-Forks type sitch where you spend time making every guy around fancy her like they've been in Em City and haven't seen a woman for a year.

Suh-nerk.

It's not everyone who knows Twlight and OZ, I bet. Thank you. ETA: If Guy 1 and Guy 2 are strutting preeners and Third Guy is more the hang-back-and-yearn type, it might work.

I wouldn't want to create a Bella-in-Forks type sitch where you spend time making every guy around fancy her like they've been in Em City and haven't seen a woman for a year.

Yeah, that would be the concern and she isn't a great beauty for that matter.

ETA: If Guy 1 and Guy 2 are strutting preeners and Third Guy is more the hang-back-and-yearn type, it might work.

Well, guy 3 would never do anything about it so he's definitely a hang-back-and-yearn type. For that matter protagonist isn't ever aware of it. Guy 1 and Guy 2 are sort of dud and mensch and don't overlap.

Well, ok, at least you're not setting her up to stop traffic.

Looks like I've picked up a second beta reader exchange. Hopefully exchange person one won't go into high gear all of a sudden.

Naturally, I got chapter 1 from beta reader exchange people at once.

Exchange person one decided to restart so what was chapter 3 is now been expanded to become the new chapter 1. At first glance, 3700 words of backstory, mostly narrative. Um...

Exchange person two I'm finding suggestions for, but I think she's a significantly better writer than I am. I just hope I can be helpful.

Okay, I am going to freaking purge myself of this goddamned paragraph on which I've spent the last three hours. Because if I post it here, then it's out there. And once it's out there, I can't take it back, right? Unless y'all tell me it sucks. Because you will, right? Tell me if it sucks?

And quite possibly, I'm insane.

Oy.

Anyhow, fly little paragraph, be free!

He turned into a driveway which angled down into a ravine in such a way that only the roof of the house was visible until the last possible moment. And even then, what appeared before us seemed less house than fantasy. A series of asymmetrical planes and angles, the spans of glass and natural wood planks with mossy green trim gave the overall impression that the building had emerged one segment at a time from the earth on which it sat until nature decreed it done. Behind the house the Pacific stretched to meet the horizon, white-capped waves sweeping in before suddenly disappearing with a crash and hiss, the occasional fine mist springing up over the cliff's edge, sparkling against the burnt orange horizon.

It was a scene out of a fairy tale.

That's a lovely little paragraph setting up all sorts of delights. Except for the first sentence, which seems composed entirely of prepositions.

"The driveway he took angled down a ravine. Only the roof of the house was visible until the last possible moment, and even then," etc.

Or something like. Those preposition thickets are deadly and seem to further ensnare you the harder you try to fight free. Or at least they do me.

They are a pain, aren't they? I'm just having fits because I have this very specific image in my mind, of not just the setting, but the motion as well. And while it's not evident from this passage, it is in first person, so she's describing it as she sees it, from her vantage point as the passenger in a car.

Let me see if I can streamline further.