Recursion (Book): Difference between revisions

| “What floor?” Barry asks as he steps into the elevator car. ||  || rowspan="4"| What matters here is a suicidal lady dangling off a parapet the 41st floor. Other than conveying the idea that he’s in a hurry to get to her, there’s no real need for any of Barry’s arrival, exit from car, negotiation of revolving doors, conversation with the doorman, journey up the elevator or across the carpeted expanse of the Forty-first floor. These are extraneous paragraphs:  they give the reader no important information and tell us nothing about the characters nor their states of mind. And much of it is just stupid. How does an elevator “belie the age of a building”? Who honestly gives a shit that Barry’s ears pop, or there’s a law firm’s office here, or that there is carpet on the floor?

| In the dim light, the details are all in shades of gray. A sprawling mahogany desk buried under files and paperwork. A circular table covered in notepads and mugs of cold, bitter-smelling coffee. A wet bar stocked exclusively with bottles of Macallan Rare. A glowing aquarium that hums on the far side of the room and contains a small shark and several tropical fish.|| The office is dark and cluttered with the detritus of all night deal-making: papers, files, cold coffee.|| “The details are all in shades of grey” is pretty dreary writing. Does cold coffee smell of anything, let alone bitterness? A small ''shark'' in a fish tank? Seriously? What relevance is the whisky? To point out wealth?

| As Barry approaches the French doors, he silences his phone and removes his shoes. Taking the handle, he eases the door open and slips out onto the terrace.|| Barry slips out quietly through the French Doors and onto the terrace.|| What is the obsession with shoes? Does it matter that his phone is on silent? Do we need to know about the handle? No.

| The surrounding skyscrapers of the Upper West Side look mystical in their luminous shrouds of fog. The noise of the city is loud and close—car horns ricocheting between the buildings and distant ambulances racing toward some other tragedy. The pinnacle of the Poe Building is less than fifty feet above—a crown of glass and steel and gothic masonry.|| The city shrieks: horns ricochet and sirens wail towards some distant tragedy. The Upper West Side skyscrapers of loom mystically from their luminous shrouds of fog. The Poe Building’s glass and steel pinnacle towers above them. || I get it: trying to create a gothic mood and trying to stretch our literary wings here, but you need to do better, Blake. More active verbs, more agency, more presence. For God’s sake don’t be so lazy as to contrive a gothic image by using the adjective “gothic” (especially when you’ve already told us the building is Art Deco!)