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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Dakota Krout
Read between
October 18 - October 19, 2019
“Mana storm!” a screaming voice woke Dale from his uneasy slumber as an alarm began to howl.
"'Mana storm!'
Dale, woken from his uneasy slumber by the sentry's yell, winced as a shrill alarm began to howl."
There, doesn't that sound better? You have a real tendency to try to cram too much into one "dialog + 'said phrase'". Break things up a liitle and it won't sound like you're running out of air and rushing to get everything out before that happens.
making the awakening process much swifter.
Too bland and explicit. "..., shaking the last remnants of sleep from Dale's mind." Words and you should avoid using when describing someone's reactions: "had the effect, a response, a reaction, etc." We should KNOW it's an effect/reaction from the dialog and/or action. You don't need to keep explicitly telling us.
using his battle gauntlets to ‘soft block’. This meant that he didn’t directly block the entire attack, but instead angled himself and pushed so that the attack passed him while his actions deflected the soaring bunny into the wall.
Again, too explicit. You want to avoid using phrases like "this meant" when simply defining a term, as it makes it sound like you're speaking directly to the reader. There's also no reason to put "soft block" in quotes like that. A colon or double hyphen and some verb tense updates would give you "... using his battle gauntlets to soft block: not directly blocking the attack, but rather angling himself and pushing to redirect the soaring bunny's momentum, sending it crashing into the wall."
His voice was becoming smoother, and other small characteristics were becoming noticeable. His skin was perfectly clear, all signs of scarring vanished, and his hair was slowly turning a silvery-blond.
The "other small characteristics" phrase is totally unnecessary since you immediately go on to list them. It comes off as padding.
An arrow punched into the meaty paw, slicing flesh but failing to penetrate the bone, though the force was enough that the Cat was twirled around
What are the important details here? I'm guessing it's the cat getting spun around. If so, you can dropl the whole phrase about slicing into its paw but failing to penetrate, as that phrases makes the sentence too busy. You generally don't want to put "but" and "though" in the same sentence... at least, not one after the other like you did here.
and forced the verteb...
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Even if this was the end result, it's not very exciting action. "Tom swung his ingot hammer at the Cat's spine like a wrecking maul, driving the head deep into its back, forcing metal-sheathed vertebrae apart and severing its spinal cord."
I ‘inhaled’ deeply as I thought
How does this make sense, even with the quotes? It was one thing when you were talking about him sighing or taking a mental breath, but "inhale" is a pretty explicit verb that DEFINITELY requires lungs. You could say "sucked in a huge breath of essence" if you had to, just not "inhaled."