Play-by-Play
Play-by-play is a style of writing that excessively rehashes the events of a story, conveying every detail as much as possible and thus regulating the reader's imagination toward exact portrayals of various illustrations and ideas.
Play-by-play involves overboard descriptions, including but not limited to:
the premise of the story (setting, tone)
character appearances/personalities
descriptions of interactions (either character-based or in other forms such as relationships between two entities; for example, two nations)
MAL Rewrite strongly discourages play-by-play writing in synopses. Be on the lookout for this aspect during your edits, and do your best to address such cases. As much as possible, try to also leave explanatory comments for your adjustments to help the writer better understand why such changes have been made.
The easiest way to address play-by-play writing is to ensure the synopsis retains only elements that you decide would effectively help the reader—especially someone new to the series—better understand the story.
Another aspect to be wary of is calls-to-action, a set of words or phrasing that shifts the text from a neutral point of view to directly addressing the reader, subsequently breaking the omniscient third-person POV. Address any and all call-to-action usage by finding the means of expressing the same idea in a neutral third-person perspective.
For a more in-depth explanation of what play-by-play and calls-to-action involve and how they can be addressed, refer to the Play-by-Play section of Writer Instructions.
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