underwhere's 3rd assignment

[H Dean]

I have read this and I intend on getting to a proper dissemination soon. I intend on giving Muse her say on the grammatical items since she is far more qualified than I am to do so. I will destroy the rest, as is my penchant.

Actually, other than the ease with which Robert accepted his situation I have few obvious complaints. Then again, it is short and sweet.

[underwhere]

I have read this and I intend on getting to a proper dissemination soon. I intend on giving Muse her say on the grammatical items since she is far more qualified than I am to do so. I will destroy the rest, as is my penchant.

and she is usually right on the money with them too. I have quite a penchant for wordiness and explanation, as she pointed out in her review of this piece (and she has mentioned it in my other pieces too). That might, perhaps, be more of an inherent problem with me personally than with my writing. I've always needed things fairly well spelled-out for my benefit. Maybe I just need to get used to the idea that other people don't need the same level of explanation I do. As my writing is a work in progress, in some ways, so am I.

Actually, other than the ease with which Robert accepted his situation I have few obvious complaints. Then again, it is short and sweet.

I guess what I was going for, and maybe I didn't communicate this as effectively as I had hoped, was that he was simply shocked at being discovered and was therefore unable to really deny or complain because he couldn't even think to deny or complain. In fact, to do so didn't even enter his thought processes. I agree that it might be more believable if he fought just a bit more.

So I guess I'm left with two choices here:

* enhance the expression of Robert's shock to make it more clear that he was unable to formulate a denial to the accusations or a complaint to the resulting situation. I'll have to consider how effectively I can do this given the constraints of the assignment being in all dialog.
* have Robert try to offer a denial or complaint

My instinct about Robert as a character is that this was his "deep dark secret that nobody was ever going to know anything about". When such things are discovered about people, denial is often what results, but shock and the resulting "paralysis response" seems equally plausible to me.

Can you offer any suggestions for how I might try to enhance his "shock to the point of paralysis" to the reader so it comes across as more believable? I'm just not sure that "denial" is in Robert's personal vocabulary.

As always, all comments and suggestions are welcome. I am here, after all, to try to improve my writing skills.