One bothersome paragraph!

I'm just not happy with it! It feels like I can't continue before I sort it out! Does anyone have any tips on how to improve it?

Time passed too quickly for Glitch’s liking. The pregnancy was an almost perfect one. It matched one of a female pregnancy. The baby was growing at a fast rate and it seemed very content to be developing inside a man’s body. Soon, its glowing father grew a small bump which held a similar shape to a watermelon. Cain was especially proud, even though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he was completely ready. Everyone in the palace made a big fuss over the expectant parent. He certainly got a big head after that. He deserved some attention, he thought. DG, being queen, couldn’t keep the secret for long. She spread the delightful news by making a thrilling proclamation that everyone listened to and enjoyed. She allowed her subjects, human or not, to become involved with relationships of a homosexual natural, since Glitch and Cain just happened to be the first ones in OZ history. At first, the people reacted unfavourably but eventually, they embraced the idea. The OZ became an even happier place, but there was not one other male pregnancy aside from Glitch’s.

Honestly? I think it's boring. It reads like an outline. A pregnancy, especially the pregnancy of a man, should not be summarized in one paragraph.
You don't like this paragraph because it's boring. There's no dialogue. No thought. It moves to quickly. This is an interesting concept, so why would you jam it into a few sentences?

Hope that made sense,
Antigone

I agree with Antigone. There's too much info here packed into too small a space. The lines read as being very disconnected (jumping from one idea to the next) when you could have maybe a whole chapter out of just this one paragraph.

You first start getting in trouble with the third sentence. Your pronouns don't seem to tie into any nouns from the previous sentences, and this causes the reader to be confused. This is a problem that spans the paragraph.

The time-span is unclear for me. Is he almost due, maybe half-way or even on the newly pregnant side? This is too condensed for me to tell.

What species are these two? It would be impossible for a man to get pregnant should this couple were human. Unless you give some magic as to how that happened. This could be because we don't have any back-history, just this one paragraph, but I think some explanation is needed.

Finally, avoid phrases like "just happened." It makes your characters seem glorified, which can quickly turn readers away.

My biggest tip to improve? Expand this. Such a major plot-point needs proper explanation.

Hope this helped. PM me with questions.

~Rosey

Rosey Unicorn wrote:The time-span is unclear for me. Is he almost due, maybe half-way or even on the newly pregnant side? This is too condensed for me to tell.

The story begins around May, starting with him going through morning sickness. I need to show that the months have passed (to August/September time) How do I do that? I wanted things to speed up because the story was getting a bit slow. *Whine* I'm stuck!

I meant for that one paragraph. The time-span it covers seems to go from him being newly pregnant to almost due. It just doesn't add up.

You can still expand the paragraph. Because you have stuff happen in there, you can slip in some little scenes here and there. Like him getting out of that "big headed" mentality. That would be interesting to read (since I'm a sucker for character arcs) ^^

Also, you can take each idea in there and turn it into its own paragraph. Your summery goes from a paragraph to maybe a page or two, but readers will thank you for it!

Do keep in mind Antigone and I are critiquing with no knowledge of what goes on prior. But, do try our advice and see what happens.

My biggest suggestion on just this paragraph is to make the pronouns clearer. I gave you an example of weird pronouns in line three; look through this whole paragraph to spot other locations. If you make the pronouns clearer, the sentences will be more connected and the paragraph will flow better. The main problem I see in this paragraph is how disconnected it is.

Hope this helped! PM me with questions.

~Rosey

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Also, you can take each idea in there and turn it into its own paragraph. Your summery goes from a paragraph to maybe a page or two, but readers will thank you for it!

I could try and do that. I'll look into it as soon as possible! Now let's see if my brain likes it