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Eh. A story set in Italy that Americanizes the culture for me might as well be set in Little Italy, New York. Audrey voice: "You can dooo eeeet"

In related news, Project L which is set in Earth Prime (eg our Earth) I'm really enjoying the writing process because it has terms like "midnight" and "o'clock". You wouldn't believe how awful it is to write around time references.

On the other hand, it's taught me (forced) to learn to downplay time.

A: When are you headed to the masquerade?
B: When the second hour tolls

So awkward! No way for B to answer this without using Earth terminology, so I make sure A doesn't ask with such precision

A: Are you going to the ball?
B: Tonight's? Of course

My take is...

a) if you like the prologue, keep it
b) If you're 50/50 on it, dump
c) If you don't like it, carry it to Diane's collider and toss it into someone else's dimension

Humour getting in the way of the dramatic moment is going to be hard to spot in your own writing by nature as we all have to work to distance ourselves and see our words through another person's eyes. However, I can help by showing you my own mistakes.

When you get time on your hands, consider scene 1 of this v1:
https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/postin … blue-18605
The (roughly) 500 words from the start until she first teleports. During the scene, characters trip over each other, and half-fight, and crack the predictable penis joke. (One character ([G a l i a h])never appears again in the rest of the story which also breaks a writer-reader contract  that if you're going to point out the axe, someone at some point should swing it).

I don't believe there is anything /wrong/ with the v1 approach. But I can certainly get more juice out of it if the characters aren't making fun of themselves. It's kinda hard for the reader to stay in life & death mode if the characters won't take their own situation seriously. She almost need not care about her peril. She says herself "She's leaving to escape the madness" and not primarily because of any implicit danger

In v2 (not posted yet), with the zaniness removed, the MC cannot ignore the reality that she's being hunted by someone faster, stronger, and can who sense her anywhere on the planet. I'll link it here when I get time.

I believe this might be what the publisher was saying. That humour is good but can kill urgency

Re: Involuntary reactions... as I've hinted before, they don't bother me as a reader, but I don't see them as useful. if a writer could kind of reach out of the book and ask me what I prefer, I'd say I didn't care what the reactions were as much as getting on with the story

involuntary:

Equivalent:

To me, the above are the same: They both force surprise onto me. It's like an exclamation mark used where there is insufficient context to infer it.

Preferred:

That said, Many mass market high selling authors have sentient body parts. Annette Marie in particular sets records with "My hand reached up to take the letter"and "My feet walked me to the altar" all over the place

Nice

Funny... the site doesn't let me continue a message once I've replied. There's no way to do a followup reply until you reply back

Naw, I get stuck all the time. Usually when I do, I muck around with [L o r r a i n e]'s story because it's just a senseless man-vs-alien free-for-all and can be written on autopilot. She's kind of my healing character when the others break my head.

I switched tracks though, because I'd sorta like to have J3nn@ hit print in December. That timeline is a little ambitious, but I think I can do it or come close to it

"Bad" was about the last thing I thought. My boss would likely have agreed though he might have asked what it had to do with the sales report I was supposedly working on.

Images of Africain American women and women of colour in positions of strength can be hard to find. Best to just accept what you get or rewrite the scene

In reply to your other question, I mostly troll deviantart for royalty free or stock images.

I don't think cursing will work unless you're Heather

I'm near the end of the marketing phase for [K i m]. This phase always seems to feel like starting a fire. You rub sticks together, kinda fan the sparks, before long, there's a tiny flame going and you have to feed it baby fuel until the blaze is satisfying. Sometimes when the fire doesn't burn hot you ask yourself if you used woo much wind or too much fuel, or maybe you're supposed to do it on one foot. Who knows. Anyway, she's at the "sparks" stage so time for the fuel (GoodReads Giveaway) and see if it catches.

While I wait for that pot to boil, I'm back to whacking away at development projects. I also find marketing interesting but exhausting. Zzzz.

oops posted by accident. Editing.

re your italics question, I would like to side-step it and mention there are different kinds of 3rd person narrators, which affects your choice.

I often use "3rd person subjective" which is wildly unpopular on here and will get you told off. My [L 1] short is one such story. Your 3rd person subjective narrator can sit on the character's shoulder and narrate character thoughts seamlessly without needing to switch to italics. It's borderline having the character narrate the story.

Comparatively, [K i m]'s story is 3rd person omniscient so there's a bit more distant. I'f I was going to do inner thoughts, I would definitely switch to italics or risk what Charles called "an uninvited intrusion into the narration". I might also use "(italic)XYZ, she thought" [which Temple would correctly label filtering]. I also use "likely" and its class of words in my 3rd person omniscient to show the narrator is only guessing.

I rarely describe a character from their own pov. I think Tia hits chapter 16 or so before she gets one