From Mark Twain:
“Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
...
Memphis Trace
That is so funny.
I highly recommend the Pride & Prejudice movie with Kiera Knightly. One of the best films I've ever seen. Much better than the book.
Writer's Digest is accepting nominations for the 101 best websites for writers. Please nominate TNBW so it gets on the list. It might lead to more paying members. Nominations are due (roughly) before the end of this year to be considered for their 2020 list. To nominate, email wdsubmissions@aimmedia.com with the subject line 101 Best Websites Nomination. There are multiple categories; of them, Online Writing Communities is the best fit for TNBW. Please mention that in the email.
Sol, it would really help if the trial period was longer than a week (e.g., a month) so new users have a chance to get up to speed on the site and build a few relationships before having to pay for membership. What's the harm?
I had them grouped but didn't like it. I can reword some of them so that the he/she don't all appear at the beginning of sentences. I can also sprinkle in the character names a bit too reduce the number of pronouns.
If you think the last example was bad, check out this one I just noticed in the chapter:
Connor managed to take a breath. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti! Amen!”
She winced and briefly lost her hold on him.
He inhaled deeply and repeated the words.
She convulsed and cried out.
He forced her hands from his neck and spoke the words a third time.
She shrieked and stepped back.
He closed his eyes and moved his lips in silent prayer.
She came at him again, warily, growling wolf-like.
He concluded his prayer. “Bring it!”
:-)
Here's what I came up with.
The nun said, “Connor, the reverend mother is asking for you.”
He walked to where she lay on the floor and knelt beside her.
Palermo took his hands in hers and kissed them, tears streaming down her face. Her irises had turned from red to a natural brown. “Thank you, my child!” She swallowed with difficulty and struggled to continue. “Beware the road ahead… dark… everything depends…” Palermo squeezed his hands. “God is with… Always.” She breathed her last.
A tear rolled down Connor’s cheek and he closed her eyes. “The angels await you, Reverend Mother.”
EDIT: Oops. Ray, I missed your two suggestions on first read. Your first one uses a filter word (noticed), which are similar to saw, heard, felt, etc. When you leave out the filter words, you get a deeper POV. In lieu of your second example, I simply deleted her letting go of his hands. It's implied by him closing her eyes.
Thanks again.
Dirk
Nice catch. I've been encouraged recently to replace name references with pronouns, assuming no confusion. It didn't occur to me how it reads because I'm too close to this chapter.
Thanks
Dirk
Wow! Nana Mouskouri can really belt out Amazing Grace. I've listened to many renditions of the song over the years. Hers is the best so far.
The answer to your first question depends on whether you can make the chapter names important, such as a hook, a little misdirection, or foreshadowing (e.g., The Emperor's Fate). I would definitely include a chapter number, otherwise people have to remember what chapter name they were on when they last read from the book. Given that you probably have dozens of chapters, I would use Arabic.
Slight change to the end of the exorcism chapter. A little foreshadowing/prophesying.
The nun said, “Connor, the reverend mother is asking for you.”
He walked to where she lay on the floor and knelt beside her.
She took his hands in hers and kissed them, tears streaming down her face. Her irises had turned from red to a natural brown. “Thank you, my child!” She swallowed with difficulty and struggled to continue. “Beware the road ahead… dark… everything depends…” She squeezed his hands. “God is with… Always…” She released his hands and breathed her last.
Connor closed her eyes. “The angels await you, Reverend Mother.”
Dune & God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
The Heechee Saga by Frederik Pohl
Kill me now. I just learned about the Dagger of Mortis in Star Wars. There's a whole history (dark/light) about it in the Clone Wars, and it may appear in Star Wars 9. I'm really hoping it doesn't play a huge role, if any, in the movie. I'm within a few chapters of introducing one myself, which was always intended to be central to the climax of the trilogy. I'm screwed if it's central to the Emperor's demise.
I took a look at one of your chapters. They appear to be formatted like everyone else's, so formatting shouldn't be a problem, unless I've misunderstood something. Once you open a specific chapter here on the site for editing, an edit box appears around the text. That's when you use Chrome's Find feature to mark all of the text items that match your search. It actually looks inside the text box for all instances of the search words and highlights them so you can them quickly. Unfortunately, you then have to manually change each one, but you shouldn't have to reformat anything, unless it's to manually apply italics, bold, etc. I don't know of a find-and-replace feature, although I've never looked for one. For minor name changes, it should go relatively quickly.
I should have added that the two ways I suggested have to be done one chapter at a time.
If you're using Google Chrome, you can use its Find function to highlight all instances of a word in a chapter, then replace them one at a time. You have to be in TNBW edit mode for your chapter. The other way is copy your new chapter from your manuscript into the same chapter here in the site. Use Ctrl-c to copy (eg from a Word document), open your site chapter in edit mode, hit ctrl-a in the text box to select the entire old version of the chapter, then ctrl-v to paste in the chapter from Word that contains all your changes. Then save it. Hope that makes sense.
Ray is right. Don't publish it to the internet if the book is to be sold in stores/Amazon/etc.
But does this trouble most readers, or only those looking for trouble?
LOL
Violá!
While the senior exorcist continued to pray, Connor clenched his eyes shut. His brows bunched, and he turned his head slowly from side to side, like a radar dish.
That's a combination of mine and Temple's, although I ruined hers by keeping the radar dish ... for now. :-)
My thanks to everyone for an interesting/helpful discussion.
Dirk
My latest attempt. The reference to radar suggests he's scanning, which is confirmed the next time he speaks.
While the senior exorcist continued to pray, Connor closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. He turned his head slowly from side to side, like a radar dish.
Technically, he might still be smelling a fart. :-)
Thanks, Temple. He's actually doing more than concentrating. He's sensing things others cannot. Think of it as scanning from side to side with his mind. I want to avoid "tell" words and realized that the technical POV slip is a reasonable assumption for the POV character to make. Why is it that we can allow the POV character to use all of his senses down to level of minutiae, but don't allow him to use his brain to make a commonsense assumption, allowing for a faster pace? The slip is a little jarring, even to me, because I've had modern POV rules drilled into me. Doesn't mean I always agree with them.
Just thinking of loud...
Dirk
While, technically, the words in concentration are a head-hop, i'm leaning increasingly to the idea that the words are a reasonable assumption by Romano, although not necessarily a guarantee that they're the correct assumption. It's not always possible to show without killing the pace, and I find "tell" words like seemed to, apparently, as if, etc. to just fill the sentences with words that add nothing to the scene, except to demonstrate to the world our understanding of how to avoid head-hops. I'd argue this particular case is clearer without the extra verbiage.
Absolutely. Go for it JP.
I'm curious of what others think about the first example shown below. It includes a potential POV slip, highlighted in bold. My question is: why is it a POV slip? The sentence is from the POV of Father Romano, a priest in the room where an exorcism is underway, and he makes a reasonable assumption as to why Connor has closed his eyes, furrowed his brow, and is turning his head. Connor has healing gifts and was brought into the room to see if he could help explain why the exorcism is failing. Technically, Connor could be smelling a fart or experiencing a migraine, but given the context, those are unlikely. Besides, even if the priest is wrong, it was his POV and he's entitled to make the assumption that Connor is concentrating. Isn't he?
Connor closed his eyes and furrowed his brow in concentration. He turned his head slowly from side to side as the senior exorcist continued to pray.
Compare this to something more classic:
Connor watched the chief exorcist closely as the priest prayed over the reverend mother.
I think most people would agree there is no POV slip in the second example. However, how does Romano know that Connor is watching the exorcist, as opposed to Connor admiring the exorcist's shoes or looking at the possessed woman lying right next to the exorcist? There's really no way for Romano to know for sure what Connor is looking at, yet I've seen many stories where a reasonable assumption is made about what a character is watching, listening to, smelling, etc. Romano could be wrong about any of those reasonable assumptions. Why then should we exclude Romano making a reasonable assumption about why Connor is doing what he's doing?
For those who think my first example is not a POV slip, imagine if I simply said Connor closed his eyes. Here, too, Romano could still make the assumption that Connor is concentrating, although it's a more obvious slip at that point.
FYI, I'm not trying to eliminate the POV slip in the first example. There's enough information to simply eliminate the bolded text and allow the reader to make the reasonable assumption. I'm more focused on why Romano can't make the reasonable assumption himself.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Dirk
My Galaxy Tales was loaded with characters and mayhem. I didn't realize it until I looked at the row count in my spreadsheet. Some were historical, though, such as Dr. Amy Ess.
Oops. Misunderstood your last comment on first read. I'm trying to limit the body count, although I'm not doing very well. Alessandro was unplanned, as was the reverend mother, but both seemed obvious once I wrote the scenes. Since they're both destined for heaven, it's not so bad. The dead gravedigger evolved out of a prior version of scene 1.2 (murder of the first cardinal), but I decided it might be useful to keep him dead. Not sure yet.
