Can someone please tell me if my use of wearing is correct? One of my reviewers says it should be wear, and he's probably right, although I find it odd to write it that way.
Calabrese was the only priest at Orfanotrofio di San Nicola who never stooped to wearing the simple uniform of the other priests: black shirt, black pants, and a tabbed collar.
I assume you mean Charles. Yes, he's a wampa. No stormtroopers. Legionarii.
My thanks to everyone for their thoughtful feedback. The series is intentionally focused on Catholicism, even though I hope others will read it. As a result, my gut tells me to respect Catholic traditions throughout. I'm going to go with lowercase for now and make the final decision when I've finished the first draft of the book.
Thanks
Dirk
The tricky thing is, if you use your final title on the site, like I do, all forum posts here that reference your novel will be indexed by Google and point readers to those posts when they google your title, including any spoilers. Kdot can regale you with his efforts to scrub this site of all references to his earlier novel(s). It's doable, but it's a pain. I've tried not to use my title much outside of my own threads since I can delete those before I publish.
LOL. I just finished changing them to lowercase before you posted, Memphis. I'll have to sleep on it. As I mentioned above, I like capitalizing the pronouns, but I also want to respect Catholic practices and traditions. Admittedly, I'm hoping it gets read by more than just Catholics (e.g., curious Protestants, who might expect caps in their works of religious fiction).
Here we go. This was written by a Catholic priest. https://www.osv.com/Article/TabId/493/A … e-Him.aspx
Capitalizing pronouns (e.g. he, him, his, you, your, etc.) referring to the Blessed Trinity has not been a widespread practice in Christian tradition. In fact, these pronouns are never capitalized in the source documents. They are not capitalized in the Greek text of the Scriptures. Neither did St. Jerome capitalize them when he translated these texts into Latin Vulgate.
Even as the biblical texts were translated into English, the pronouns remained in the lower case. This is true of both Catholic and Protestant translation of the Bible. The Douay-Rheims Bible did not use them, neither did the King James. Neither do more than 30 current or old translations that I consulted online.
Outside the Scriptures, the English translation of the Catechism of the Council of Trent used lowercase pronouns, as does the current Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Thus we see the use of the lowercase for pronouns referring to the Divine Persons in biblical text.
Some years ago, at least in English-speaking countries, there was a pious practice of using the uppercase for pronouns referring to members of the Trinity. However, this practice was neither widespread nor ancient.
As for God’s name being holy, this is absolutely true. Thus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are capitalized, as is the name of Jesus.
But pronouns are not proper names — they are, by definition, words that stand for or point back to proper nouns.
One may well argue that such pronouns should be capitalized, but given the widespread and ancient practice to the contrary, one ought be careful not to impugn motives of impiety for those who do not do so.
Done!
Thanks, everyone. The technically correct choice for Catholics is to lowercase the pronouns, although some (many?) Catholics don't realize it. The most common Catholic Bibles in North America don't capitalize the pronouns, nor does the Catechism. I like capitalizing, but the primary target audience is Catholics and the most knowledgeable folks on the Catholic.com forums say not to do it. I'll think about it some more, but I'm probably going back to lowercase.
Thanks for your help, everyone.
My current WIP includes references to God in the form of pronouns (e.g., you, your, he, etc.) primarily when used in prayer. It turns out that well-informed Catholics do not capitalize these pronouns. Neither does the Catechism (the definitive book on Church teaching) and most if not all approved Catholic Bibles.
Here's the tricky part. Many Catholics are not familiar with these rules and expect them to be capitalized. Capitalizing of these pronouns comes largely from Protestants, so there is a great deal of confusion. My target audience is Catholics, then other Christians with a curiosity about the Church, then simple heathens who want to read a supernatural thriller.
I've generally decided that when it came to Catholic elements to the story that I would not stop for info dumps to explain things that Catholics should already know, such as the Catechism. But as for capitalization of pronouns, many of my readers so far expect capitalization. I expect that will be true of the majority of potential readers.
I'm curious what this group recommends about how to proceed. I've now gone both ways and am considering gong back to lowercase. It may be necessary to include a note in the front of the book explaining this. I had one in my content summary, but few bothered to read it.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Dirk
I should really see if anyone has ever written a simple wiki article explaining God Emperor of Dune. There were quite a few conversations in that book that went right over my head. Although I have a decent grounding in religion and politics, I never studied psychology, which seems to be a must for that book. It's my second favorite in the series after the original.
Congratulations to all three.
Kdot, in case your stories turn into a franchise, be sure to release a trilogy of movies with no overarching plot and three different directors. Could be worth $5 billion. Don't forget to kill off favorite characters on a whim just for the hell of it (technically, you've got that covered). Add a Smurf named Kajo who says meesa a lot, and they'll worship you.
vern wrote:Dirk B. wrote:Or simply rename the buttons (e.g., Save For Now and I'm Finished).
The bigger problem is regardless of how you save it (button size, color, whatever) you can't get back to it from the red (Draft) icon on the home page nor the work you are reviewing. You must remember possibly a year from now that the red draft icon does nothing and you have to go to all your reviews posted to find the dang thing, which is totally illogical imho. Take care. Vern
I agree. I muddied the waters by introducing a second problem. My bad. Apologies.
Some things in life just cry out for an Are Your Damn Sure? dialogue. I decided to delete an older version of one of my chapters, thinking the new shinier one was all I really needed. As soon as I confirmed that I wanted to delete it, I remembered all the reviews would be deleted too. Fortunately, I had already applied all the changes, and my Reviews page shows me what reviews existed, so I know whose work I still need to review.
Vern, Sol noted above the problems would be addressed.
As long as you don't end a terrific series with Star Trek: Nemesis (38% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Or simply rename the buttons (e.g., Save For Now and I'm Finished).
To be fair, the "chapters" were more like "booklets" (e.g., a short book on characterization). But, yeah, it got to the point that it was obvious the author was churning out booklets for sales rather than being truly useful.
I paid for serial books about writing craft and eventually found that it wasn't worth four bucks for each Kindle "chapter", so I stopped buying them. However, if your story is interesting, has a compelling climax per book, and a hook for the next book in the series, you could do very well.
Sol, Vern has a point. When we go to a chapter to leave a review and there is already a draft in progress, it shows us there's a draft, but doesn't allow us to click from there to get to the saved draft. This should be an easy fix.
Vern, have you tried looking for the draft under Reviews - Inline Posted? The only place you can open a draft and resume from where you left off is from there.
Will, don't forget to subscribe to other authors' threads that interest you in this forum, if you haven't already. Seabrass's Maiden thread and Kdot's Tia thread are both sci-fi. Ignore my Galaxy Tales thread. I've shelved that project until after I get The Lord of the Earth series done.
Will, see if you can find a free image for your front cover for use on this site. It'll draw more readers than the plain red cover.
Will, if you're interested, a bunch of us have gravitated to the Medieval Fantasy/Magic forum for brainstorming. It's a diverse group, including various fantasy, science fiction, and thriller stories. Create a thread with your book title and username as the subject line (e.g. 2000 Years Later - Will H.). Then whenever you want to brainstorm, ask questions, or have a discussion, just add a post to your thread, and everyone who is subscribed to it will be notified via email and usually respond in a day or so. Leads to interesting and very helpful suggestions that go beyond chapter reviews. I use mine all the time. There is a Science Fiction forum as well on the site, but almost no one posts there. If you need broader expertise, you can also post to Premium to reach the widest possible audience, although some of those have been known to go off the rails.
Change of plans re naming chapters. I can't possibly think of appropriate chapter names when there are two threads running through every chapter. My new scheme is similar to Seabrass's, only simpler:
Chapter 1 - Scene 1.1
Chapter 2 - Scene 1.2
Chapter 3 - Scene 2.1
Chapter 4 - Scene 2.2
Chapter 5 - Scene 3.1
etc.
'Chapter' above refers to TNBW chapter numbers. My numbering includes my chapter number and the scene number within that chapter. I probably won't have more than two scenes per chapter until I get near the end of the first book.
I'm feeling dense. I don't understand your comments. Whose pain & suffering do you think I'm hiding? Father Coppola? He's not particularly important beyond what I wrote. I doubt we'll see him again.
What am I missing?
Thank you, all. Meditate on this, me will.
