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Kdot, I extended the epilogue with the following (after the ellipsis).

I decided I want each appearance of the Holy Spirit to happen in a way that leaves the characters wondering if they'd been sleeping/unconscious. In Romano's case I may yet take out the demonic Swiss Guards that the HS takes out with fire from his eyes. I'd rather Romano not have such obvious proof that the visit actually happened. Still thinking about it. The changes for Campagna are included below.

George, spoilers ahead for the epilogue I recently added to the first draft of Connor (chapter 46). I suggest reading the epilogue instead of the rest of this post. What follows is included at the end of the epilogue.

The Stranger — no, the Holy Spirit — took a deep breath and let it out slowly, glancing up and down the path along which their bench rested. “Great deeds truly do await him.” He rose, then turned back to Campagna. “It’s nice to speak with you again, Maria. Welcome back.”
His expression radiated pure love. “Welcome home, … daughter.”
Campagna nodded. “Thank you.”
He smiled as he walked away. “See you in church.”
...
Campagna blinked, but as she reopened her eyes, she realized she had nodded off sitting on the bench. She looked around for the Holy Spirit but saw only a boy, smaller and younger than Connor, walking in her direction. Had all that been just a dream?
Father Romano said that when he awoke after being thrown out the window at the Vatican, he had no broken bones, whereas he would have sworn he remembered several break in the fall, which left him unable to move. He had no doubt the Holy Spirit had truly been there and healed him. Of course, the priest had lain in St. Peter’s Square and found the burnt remains of several demonic Swiss Guards near him. Not bad as far as proof went.
The boy approached her bench. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“Are you Detective Campagna?”
“Yes.”
He pointed over his shoulder. “I passed an older man on the other side of that hill. He asked me to give you a message.”
“Which is?”
“He said to tell you, ‘The Father chooses his champions wisely.’”
She shivered as a bolt of adrenaline reignited the religion in her soul. It spread like a roaring fire, driving the cold from every corner of her being. The Holy Spirit had just returned to her in full force.
The boy’s eyes widened. “Are you alright?”
She smiled. “Yes, thank you.”
“Do you understand the message?”
She nodded. “He was talking about my son.”
The boy shook his head. “No, ma’am. He said he was talking about you.”
So this was God’s answer to her plea for help. There would be no host of angels to come to her aid. No armor, no shields, no weapons. Because none were needed. For the ultimate reinforcements had just arrived: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It seems to be in reply to my post right before yours (top of page 48). You quoted my words: not scary enough.

I generated a bunch of pictures of demon spirits using an image generator. Most of them look like living skeletons, with frightening-looking "extensions", a mouth full of scary-looking gumless teeth, and a "grumpy" attitude.

If I proceeded as intended, then demonic spirits always look like rotting corpses. It's their spirit form I'm referring to here.
When a spirit assumes control of a dead body, it looks like the dead body brought back to life. When it can no longer maintain that dead body (e.g., hit with too many bullets), the spirit takes off and its spirit form still looks like the rotting corpse it will always looked like. Meanwhile, the dead body it abandoned turns into rotting flesh and/or liquified remains.

The fact that I'm having to explain this in detail tells me to find a different look for the demonic spirits.

Ick. I reread the article. Based on the author's rules, it would be: six expensive (a quality, I guess) large red trucks. No commas needed, but I prefer njc's order.

Sol, I just created a test account for myself (Dirk B - Test) so I can understand how a basic account works (once my trial expires). The email the site sends out that requires the new member to confirm their email address references the obsolete support@thenextbigwriter.com email address in case the new member needs help with that step.

Also, when I clicked the link to confirm my email address (a different one than from my regular account), Google again intercepted my attempt to get to the site because of the security certificate mismatch - same issue as reported in one of my earlier posts on this page, but this time it's for the signup process, and with the incorrect support email address, anyone who runs into this certificate issue will probably abandon their attempt to sign up since it requires them to override Google's warning to get to a site they don't know.

Sorry to inundate you with these posts.
Dirk

PRIORITY: Very High. This one seems pretty serious when we're trying to sign up new users.

Sol,

Unfortunately, a new member created two books today, where it should have been the first and second chapters of one book. This means that not every new member can be counted on to hover over the Create New Work button to discover/read the tooltip.

Is it possible to now move instructions for creating chapters directly onto the Post Your Writing screen? Preferably right below the Create New Work button in a color/font that stands out well enough to not be ignored when the big red Create New Work button draws much of the attention on that screen.

Or, create a second, huge, red button right next to the first one, label it Add A Chapter, and have it bring up a simple popup screen with the instructions of what to do if you want to add a new chapter to an existing book.

PRIORITY: Medium. Not as urgent as other problems on this page, but it still burns (some) new users. For now, I'd suggest we monitor for this to see how often it keeps coming up.

Thanks
Dirk

Thanks, Jack.

I was trying to avoid rewriting it as frowned since the above is really just one example of the kinds of things that come up all the time. I see "he knitted his brow" and "she furrowed her brow" quite a bit as alternatives to frowning, at least from writers on this site. Since I do use them to minimize repetition, I tend to think of frowning, furrowing one's brow, and kitting one's brow as almost interchangeable (there are some minor differences in terms of definition and usage, so I only use the ones appropriate to a given context).

Referring back to my discussion with Kdot, earlier: in a moment of shock for the POV character, one could write (this example is for the purpose of this discussion only, not something real):

a) he shot his eyebrows up (not good)
b) his eyebrows shot up (better but really only works when the action is involuntary)
c) he raised his eyebrows (imprecise without context since it doesn't reflect the speed at which the eyebrows went up)
d) his eyebrows to his hairline, which I could see using in an example like the one below:

When the aircraft engine exploded, Romano jumped in his seat, held down only by his safety belt, his eyebrows to (or at) his hairline. In this example, the words to/at his hairline also don't convey the speed at which the eyebrows went up; once again, context is necessary, which is fine since it's right there in the example sentence.

That being said, I probably wouldn't use alternative c for the example sentence since Romano merely raising his eyebrows seems to dampen just how frightening the event is (e.g., engine explodes, he jumps in his seat, he raises his eyebrows, then goes back to reading). Raising one's eyebrows in an emergency like this one is how Spock might react, but not an ordinary human, IMO).

Hmm. How about: Romano jumped in his seat, held down only by his safety belt, his eyebrows to (at?) his hairline.

That works for both his eyebrows shot to his hairline and him raising his eyebrows to his hairline. For the record, I wouldn't write either since eyebrows can't do that, but I'm pretty sure I do this with other movements that I see regularly, at least on this site (e.g., his eyes popped, his hair stood on end, his mouth fell open, etc.), most of which are cliches and should probably be purged anyway.

Does that mean, in the example of Romano's eyebrows shooting to his hairline, that you would have him shoot them up? That would be weird. I've seen plenty of examples of the alternative, though: His eyebrows shot up, regardless of whether the character is the POV character or not.

Another example from this evening, a character's jaw drops. Did he drop his jaw or did it drop in response to the shock he got? I can't recall any examples of the former (he dropped his jaw), but lots of examples of the latter (his jaw dropped), even when referring to the POV character.