I was wondering what people think of the following ending to scene 1.2 (burying alive of Cardinal Vitale):
The last sound he heard was of the Antichrist singing “The Prayer.” How ironical that it sounded so blissful when sung in a deep bass.
Is the idea of the Antichrist singing (The Prayer or Time to Say Goodbye) too silly?
Thanks
Dirk
The opening line of my book is a quote from Macbeth that my character is thinking about (it's foreshadowing). Normally, book quotes should be in quotation marks. However, my character is thinking about the line, not speaking or reading it. Thoughts in my book are formatted using italics. I'm inclined to put it in italics, maybe with quotation marks.
“By the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
Father Gregorio Romano chuckled as he remembered the quote from Macbeth. Strange chills running up and down his spine and a sense of foreboding had brought the memory to the fore, interrupting his prayer. He took a calming breath and dismissed the sensations as nonsense. All was well.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Dirk
Bobbie, are they members of Premium? And are they publishing to Premium? It requires points to publish to this group, and new members often bypass publishing to Premium because they don't have enough points. You need to be a member of a group to which they published.
What error message do you get?
A BoobBaby email reminded me of the importance of the opening sentence. What better choice than to steal a line from Shakespeare? It appears again at the end of the chapter, after Romano's run in with the demonic being.
“By the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
Father Romano chuckled as he remembered the quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Strange chills running up and down his spine and a sense of foreboding had brought the memory to the fore, interrupting his prayer. He took a calming breath and dismissed the sensations as nonsense. All was well.
He returned to his prayer. “Father, I come to you in Jesus’s name. I am a sinful man, not worthy of your grace. I beg for it nonetheless. I have failed you many times. But no more. From now on I will bear my cross with joy. Please strengthen my resolve. I long to feel the Holy Spirit stir within me as he did when—”
Thanks, Gacela. Good summary on deep point of view. However, my gripe was with the idea of switching between 3rd person, past tense (indirect inner dialogue) and 1st person, present tense (direct inner dialogue) in the same paragraph, with nothing to distinguish when you're switching from one to the other and back again. I plan to ignore that fad.
Thank you both. The terms online vary from article to article. Temple's terminology is straightforward, but it was a surprise that italicizing direct internal dialogue is no longer a given. That may be why my writing confused my reviewer. It probably varies by genre. I'll keep doing what I'm doing until there's a clear evolution to something better. Mixing direct and indirect internal dialogue in a paragraph without distinguishing them in some way, as with italics, is nonsense, IMO. One of the articles actually suggested it makes for a smoother read. Uh huh.
I can see why subjective is disliked. :-)
Mine falls under what you call omniscient/close. Why is it considered omniscient? It's limited to Romano's POV.
Thanks
Dirk
In your 3rd person subjective, do you keep the whole thing in past tense?
One of my chapter reviews sent me searching for articles on how to write inner dialogue (as opposed to narration). For years I've seen and written narration in normal font, 3rd person, past tense, and inner dialogue in italics, 1st person, present tense, and both could appear in the same paragraph together. I thought maybe it was a genre difference between me and my reviewer, but it seems the rules are changing. I also thought that switching to inner dialogue on a limited basis actually gave a deeper POV for those thoughts. According to theeditorsblog (see below), it may be the opposite. I visited several websites that suggest it is increasingly common to lose the italics entirely, yet still switch between 3rd person, past tense and 1st person, present tense in the same paragraph. That would take some getting used to. I think most of my reviewers would flag that as a mess, especially if it came in the middle of a paragraph.
https://theeditorsblog.net/2012/02/28/i … -thoughts/
Here's mine using old school formatting (from the viewpoint of another character, Father Romano):
A scowling Father Calabrese stood at the office door, hands on hips. The elderly man wore an ankle-length black cassock, a fascia cinched above the waist, and a full clerical collar. He was the only priest at Orfanotrofio di San Nicola who never stooped to wear the simple uniform of the other priests: black shirt, black pants, and a tabbed collar. Just in case the Pope drops by unannounced, eh?
Welcome back, Will. And congratulations.
I thought I'd never get these done. Scenes 1.3, 1.4, and 2.1 are up. Scene 1.3 is all new, but very short. 1.4 is a major rewrite of the beginning of the investigation of the murdered Cardinal Vitale. Scene 2.1 is a cleaned up version of the same scene from before, about the visit of the Secretary of State to the orphanage, where he first meets Connor.
My thanks to Bobbie, who jumped right on them. Her feedback has been incorporated.
Quick, go read!
Dirk
The last season of GOT sounds a lot like the last episodes of the British Merlin TV series. It was based on a young Merlin (late teens/early twenties) who serves a young Arthur in a land where magic is forbidden on pain of death (burning!). Merlin had some great episodes, lots of references to Merlin's and Arthur's destinies, a dragon, and supporting characters from the real-life legends of King Arthur and his knights. It built up to a near-hopeless battle against the magic-wielding Morgana and her forces. I won't give away the ending because some of you may be casting around for new shows to watch and I recommend it. However, the final episode is primarily about Merlin and Arthur really getting to know each other than it is about wrapping up the series. They do that, too, but it felt unimportant compared to the Merlin/Arthur arc. I've watched the last episode about a half dozen times. Merlin ran for five seasons and is currently streaming on Netflix.
There's a petition on change.org to redo the whole final season. They were going for 35K signatures but have already exceeded a million. There's also a petition for Disney to remake the Star Wars prequel trilogy. If they do, I hope they hire the same director who did The Last Jedi. The internet would explode with dark side rage.
You may have heard that Tim Conway passed away recently at the age of 85. He was a big comedian when I was young, part of the Carol Burnett show. They would do comedy sketches where they were supposed to stay in character and not laugh. Problem was, Tim Conway used to ad lib and make sh*t up to make the other actors laugh. The link below is probably their funniest skit. Vicki Lawrence played a recurring character called Mama, who was a no-nonsense bitch in these skits. Carol Burnett (sitting next to Tim Conway) was always trying to get the other actors to be serious in the skits and not laugh. The last line from Mama was a riot. Keep in mind that this was in the early 70's, and you couldn't swear on TV, so this unedited version wasn't aired until much later.
I just tried publishing a short story containing part of my book's outline, including multiple levels of bullets. The site handled it perfectly.
Cersei: haha! I'm the villain you've hated for years. Arya thinks she can kill me? Bring your worst
Later: *randomly trips down stairs and dies*
I haven't watched the show and may never do so, but an arch villain dying by tripping down stairs sounds like something you would write. Have you forgotten your elevator full of restaurant patrons who escaped a mass killing from assault weapons only to plunge to their deaths in the elevator? And all that in a romance novel. I cheered the whole time.
Also, if you want to do brainstorming beyond what you can get from simple reviews create a discussion thread with the topic "story name - pen name" in the Medieval/Fantasy Magic group. I know that's a weird place to put it, but I don't know of any other active groups besides that one and Premium. A bunch of us hang out there when we really should be writing.
Not really, although my outlines takes the form of nested bullets in Word. Whatever your format, try posting it as a short story and see if the structure survives the cut and paste. Short stories feature prominently on the home page, so you should get good visibility. Don't forget to set the genre. And review other people's work to build ongoing relationships and get more reviews in return.
Mariana, I'm not sure I understand your proposed approach. Are you saying we should offer up extra points to anyone who reviews a piece? That could quickly bankrupt the generous publisher of the piece and wouldn't guarantee that they get better reviews, just more of them.
My own idea was the ability to simply transfer some points to a particular person as an added thanks for extra effort, whether for one particularly helpful review or for long-term mentoring. It would be simple to build. Simply pick a connection, select how many of your points to give, add a thank you note, and the transfer is made.
One of my reviewers mentioned that I hadn't described anyone in my first 2 or 3 scenes before I took them down to rewrite. I'm curious to see what Seabrass says about the above description. I thought the version that Ann flagged was simpler, but it's "technically" not a way someone would think of their hair, so I made it more explicit with this version. Some people want me to be explicit while others, like Temple, call me pedantic. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't like this version. She already told me to lose the one I had written in v1.
What do you think, am I better off having Romano look in a mirror to clean himself up?
And the winner is:
As he passed under an air vent, the heating system spewed dust on him. He glared at the ceiling as he did his best to shake the gray particles out of what had been coal-black hair only moments earlier.
Thanks, JP. I dropped cackle in favor of "demonic" chuckle. Lynn suggested using demonic as a way to avoid having to explicitly state that the intruder was a demon. It follows naturally from his description and the demonic chuckle.
Would that we could. I've made similar suggestions in the past and they got shot down each time. I would love to be able to reward specific reviewers who take a huge amount of time doing detailed reviews of my work, even though they could just drop five comments in an inline review and leave. The best way to deal with the points economy on the site is to give detailed/helpful reviews to those individuals you want to acquire/keep as reciprocal reviewers.
I'm more familiar with the Emperor in Star Wars. There were times, especially in the 3rd prequel, where he had a deep voice, but his cackle became iconic. I wonder if they used special effects to deepen his voice in certain scenes.
It's a minor issue in one scene , so I'll stick with a deep voice. That also works better than a higher pitch given who the mysterious demon actual is.
Thanks, Bill
It's not something I had planned to do, but one of my reviewers suggested a demonic cackle for the dark figure in scene 1.2 (show, don't tell), which I thought was good at the time, but when I read it with the edits included, I realized the disconnect.
Thank you, Temple.
Dirk
