Another Setting Example

Here's another setting example. We don't have any genre information, but to me, it reads YA or maybe even MG (though the sentences aren't structured like MG), so we will work on the assumption that this is a young character in a book aimed at young readers.


Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. Lucas’s footsteps pounded a staccato rhythm along the trail: you’re late, you’re late. “I’m going as fast as I can,” he muttered, but he pushed his legs faster, hurdling fallen branches and zigzagging through close-packed trees. When the scrub cedar opened up to overgrown pasture, he twisted around and whistled. After much rustling of underbrush and one loud crash, a black head popped out from under a low branch.

The boy whistled again. “Come on, River. Let’s go!”

Ears perked and tongue lolling, the dog hesitated just a moment before launching himself into the field. Lucas turned and broke into an all-out sprint. River loped beside him for a few strides, weaving through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold, then shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.


This is a really strong example of a using motion and setting together to create dynamic text. Remember the recipe for good prose scenes?
1 - Character(s),
2 - in meaningful motion
3 - against a background.

Here the background is conveyed through specific details. Fallen branches, close-packed trees, scrub cedar, overgrown pasture, and more besides, all laid out in neat sequence as the character moves through this environment.

Notice how some of those setting details are presented as obstacles. This is what really stood out for me in this setting example. It's not just that Lucas is running and these things are part of the scenery. It's that Lucas is running and these things are complicating the run. A real sense of tension fills these lines because we know Lucas has a goal, and we see him confronting these small obstacles, one after another, in the quest to reach that goal.

We lose some of that sense of setting obstacles in the final paragraph. Compare the way the setting details are presented in that paragraph to the first paragraph, and you'll see what I mean. The grass is beaten flat, and there's no sense that it's making it any harder to run through it. Maybe it is, but if it is, we don't see it.

That doesn't mean the second paragraph's setting details are presented in an erroneous way. In fact, they're competently written, just with a different focus. The details are clear and vivid and specific to this environment. We can easily see the boy and his dog running in this world. The action continues even as the world around them is described. That's all good.

That said, I'm not wild about this sentence structure:

River loped beside him for a few strides, weaving through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold, then shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.

There's a lot happening in this sentence. Again, it's technically competent, but the present participial phrase interrupts the compound verb in a way that feels off to me. I would edit this by breaking it up into shorter pieces and maybe rearranging some of the bits. Maybe like so:

For a few strides River loped beside him through thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold. Then the dog shifted into a gallop and disappeared into thicker weeds.

Still not perfect, but it does take care of that intervening present participial phrase, which is the piece that looked off to me. I moved "for a few strides" to the front of the sentence because I wanted the movement details at the front of the sentence and the thatches of grass details at the end. Now the concept of Johnson grass still separates the loping from the galloping, but the interruption is conceptual rather than structural, which is what I think the author intended.

Theresa