The Passenger - a ghost story

[rachel_bruhn]

Even if he kept "out of season Cornwall", couldn't you hyphenate it: "out-of-season Cornwall"? I think that would read easier and readers would know that "out of season" goes together.

[moderntimes]

Yeah. It's not a matter of typography, but of content.

We post our stories and such here to gain feedback, and what most of us do is provide a reasoned and fair critique of the writing. Our purpose is to help the author.

Here's an example from my end of the stick. I'm writing a series of modern American private detective novels based in Houston where I live. And my stories are very factual and accurate, not fanciful, and so there are scenes of real Houston locales in my writing.

But I can't just start talking about St. Thomas University and assume that everyone knows what it is. So I say in my narrative things like "We drove past the campus of St. Thomas, a top ranked liberal arts Roman Catholic university" or I'll have the characters visit the Hermann hospital and say "I headed down to Hermann hospital and promptly got lost. After all, it's one of the largest hospitals in the USA, huge emergency room and trauma center, stretching for most of a city block" -- and so on.

So when we use an element of a regional area or locale in our stories, we can't assume that everyone knows the local things. Sure, the Empire State building, the Golden Gate bridge, Number 10 Downing Street, and a few other places are understood by everyone. But other than landmarks of history, we need to describe the locales in our stories so that most readers will feel comfortable, or at least not outside totally.

[rachel_bruhn]

Well, I think the focus here is on this writer and this piece. As a short story, I don't think as much detail is necessary. I am familiar with Cornwall and tourist seasons. Had the sentence been worded differently I think it would have been fine. Reading it as is, with no distinction between the words, it read a little clumsy. Knowing that "out of season" was describing Cornwall helped immensely and the sentence made sense when I reread it with that information. I don't think additional language would be needed to clarify that sentence.

[moderntimes]

Again, true. It's not the sentence structure but the content, the reference to Cornwall, which is the slight barrier. But yes, that specific sentence is slightly disconnected, too.