Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisha  He said that if you have a character who'd had a terrible childhood, which then led to he/she being a criminal or such, rather than say something like, "After a terrible childhood, Nathan turns to a life of crime...", you'd say, "Throughout his childhood Nathan endured countless punches and kicks from his father, and he grew up accepting violence..."
Agents want to know why and how events happen, not just read a list of adjectives and nouns that state what your character is.
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No, I don't mind. I think Bransford and I are saying the same thing; it's just a matter of definitions. The second sentence he gives as an example doesn't
show Nathan's father coming home, drunk and belligerent, and kicking the two-year-old crawling on the floor out of his way; it doesn't
show Nathan at sixteen in the emergency room getting his jaw wired after being punched in the face by his father. There isn't space to describe all these things in the synopsis, so he sums them up by
telling us that Nathan endured punches and kicks throughout his childhood. And this is exactly what I meant by powerful and dramatic phrasing.