More notes on editing and revising

In trimming the section I've just posted for Cerelian Gold, and for editing and revising in general, I often look for series of prepositional phrases that I've added to clarify a sentence. Prepositional phrases (on the planet, in the hatchway, etc.) can be very useful constructs, but they are easy to overuse and having even two in a row can be a problem. sometimes they can be replaces with a difference sentence construction, a description in another form, but often I simply delete them as not really necessary. They serve primarily to help the reader see the scene as I, the writer do, but unless it impacts the plot, some later action, it's usually alright if the reader visualizes some details in their own way. The more they can imagine it for themselves, and the less the author contradicts a vision of the scene that the reader has already created in their own imagination, the easier the reader can get into the scene.

I think that is one of the reasons that science fiction can be particularly challenging for some readers to get into, and why it remains less popular than fantasy as a general rule: the writer has to describe scenes that the reader cannot readily fill in from their own experience and including concepts that the reader may be hard-pressed to visualize even when thoroughly described. It's probably also why many SF fans are either scientists or young or both: the scientists can get the concepts from knowledge of current science, and the young always have more vivid imaginations. A specific detail or two can be enough to give such readers a picture, without it being the exact same image the writer had in mind, and that's often enough.