“Unlock the Secrets of Fierce Editing: Transform Your Manuscripts from Mundane to Mind-Blowing!”
The sentence has three events, and they happen in this order:
- Eric approaches Joe.
- Eric gets within punching range of Joe.
- Joe throws the punch.
Now you can see three things that went horribly wrong.
First, the sentence puts things out of order. The sentence shows Joe throwing a punch and then it shows Eric approaching.
Can’t the reader figure out that things are written out of order? Yes, your reader can do that by using logic. But now you’re making your reader’s brain work much harder than it should. The reader has to cut the video you made, reorder it, and splice it back together. That’s a speed bump in your reader’s brain. Readers put down books that have too many speed bumps. They usually won’t be able to say why, other than “it just didn’t feel realistic.” Now you know why. It didn’t “feel realistic” because you made your reader edit your movie.
