: Re: Critique: Make excerpt more visual/flow better I have this excerpt I'm not sure is fluid and visual enough: Peter came out of the café rubbing his tummy. The chipmunk had a smile on the

@Deb2945533

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You are very concise, precise, sterile in your writing, and I see you are asking the correct question to make this text better. If your text was a dish, it would be well cooked but rather dry and in need of a good sauce.
What is missing here are more emotions. You are reporting events in a very soldier-like manner. The sentence you asked about is a good example of that.

Peter turned to Ariett, who stood motionless in the middle of the street, focused on something in the distance and ignoring all the surroundings. His own gaze followed to the source of her attention.
There was a little crowd near the tree house.

Try to lube it up by more, stronger displays of emotion, attaching meaning to the events. In your story things happen but I go by them with a shrug, "so they happened, so what now?" - give them a sense of foreboding, make them more interesting to the characters, draw the reader in. Immersion is important, and for that the world must feel more alive.
One trick I can suggest for increasing immersion: If there's a story within a story, and the inside story is at least partially immersive, the moment of ending the inner story and "resurfacing" to the upper layer leaves us very much immersed in it. This is a golden opportunity to deliver some quite enjoyable content. In your case you could try to report a major part of the speech under the tree literally, and then the "Come! It's perhaps a new rescue mission!" (or something like that, maybe rephrased to more catchy form) should ring very well, as a sweet, juicy one-liner.
oh, and you overuse names a bit. Use more pronouns. "He", "She".

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