Naming contest. Father Gregory Fernando was Spanish in my short story. In the trilogy, him being Spanish serves no purpose, so I intend to make him Italian, with a first name of Gregorio. I've looked at common Italian surnames and have whittled it down to these:
Romano
Rivera
Gallo
Costa
I like Romano best, but a substantial part of the story is set in Rome, so it's not very creative. Rivera is Italian, but its origin is Spanish.
Suggestions?
This week's episode of Gilligan's Island involved the crash of a huge meteorite on the island. The professor builds a geiger counter to test it for harmful rays. They discover it is putting out huge quantities of cosmic rays. The professor concludes that by putting up a lead-coated fence around it, they can focus the rays to be spotted by a plane overhead. To install the fence, they coat their clothes and skin with lead, then proceed. There is a small sapling next to the crash site. As they walk away, they hear a strange sound, which happens to be the lead fence disintegrating from - get this - old age. In the meantime, the sapling has grown into a tall tree. The professor concludes the cosmic rays are causing everything on the island to age at an enormously accelerated rate and that they have only a week left to live. They hear on the radio that an electrical storm is coming, so they create a lightning rod and stick it into the meteorite. Lightning strikes the meteor and it disintegrates, leaving no measurable cosmic rays behind.
Isn't lead smeared on skin dangerous for one's health? It drove plenty of Roman emperor's insane from drinking out of lead vessels.
I think I need to increase the nonsensical science in my book to keep up with the show. In hindsight, it amazes me that so many kids went into science because of the professor.
I found it surprising how hard it is to write fiction, even after years of technical writing, including a thesis.
Horton hears a Who.
You can also check out Fiverr for freelance editors. I decided to submit my first two chapters ($100 for 10,000 words) as a trial. Turnaround is approximately 10 days. I'll let you know how it turns out. There are multiple editors on the site with different levels of experience, although not all edit fiction.
In surfing around for editor prices, I found that a comprehensive line edit will cost about $0.02 per word, or $2K for a 100K book. The price is higher or lower depending on the type of editing you need (developmental editing, line editing, or copy editing). Be careful about the definitions of these terms. Line editing is sometimes referred to as copy editing on some sites I visited.
How then do we explain The Lord of the Rings, with its meandering plot and nauseating attention to every blade of grass?
A potentially useful site: https://kindlepreneur.com/book-editors/
Also, sign up for Grammarly for a month and run your manuscript through it. It catches many errors. Others prefer ProWritingAid, although I couldn't get it to run on my computer, and the support was lousy (one email reply per day).
Below is a link to another book editor that landed in my lap recently. He charges 2 cents per word for a thorough edit, which equals $2,000 for a 100K book. Her charges more depending on how deep you want the edit to be. If you have a prologue, you may want to steer clear of him. He has a number of rules spelled out on his site, including the fact that "prologues suck". He offers a trial edit for $250 for 5K words. I would definitely recommend a trial edit before going with him.
Haven't tried them, but yes, they are expensive. Google for book editors for cost comparisons. Also, google 'bookbaby complaints' to see what problems others have had with them. On their own website, they advertise themselves as rating four out of five stars.
Tags aren't only to identify a speaker...they prevent reader confusion, create rhythms, elevate, maintain or break tension (beats), and provide avenues to insert action. But in most cases, if a writer finds themselves explaining too much in the tag, or relying too heavily on a tag to convey the desired sentiment, they should probably consider taking a second look at the quality of the dialogue itself.
Hear! Hear!
There will also be a cab driver named Leonardo. :-)
Character names:
Those keeping up with this thread know that my main character in the new trilogy will be Connor, which I decided is short for Constantino, a common Italian name.
Connor has an uncle who works in the Vatican police, the Gendarmerie. His name is Michelangelo, but he goes by Angelo, which is also a common Italian first name.
The names are tributes to the two characters in the vampire TV series, who inspired the trilogy. I bet most people won't even make the connection.
Thoughts?
Mistake #5 - Dialogue Tags: I get it. Using “he said” and “she said” is boring. However, dialogue tags are meant to be functional and not descriptive.
Gee, how about trying tags that are functional and descriptive? If your going to put a word on the page, making it serve more than one purpose seems like common sense.
Or how about the way those tags distract the user? When one of my admirals snapped at one of her subordinates, I didn't hear any feedback from distracted reviewers.
Sure, they can be overused, but having to read a fancy dialogue tag doesn't distract me in the least. Why should I write a sentence showing how my admiral is pissed off when I'm in the middle of a fast-moving battle and short choppy sentences are best suited for the scene?
Technically, I could have written "As you were, Ensign!" the admiral said, and let the exclamation mark serve in lieu of a snapping dialogue tag, but I find that I scan over punctuation marks since they're so small. I use said for regular conversation and other tags to give them added weight.
Language question. The Lord of the Earth is partially set in Rome and includes numerous Italians. Even Constantino ("Connor") De Luca is Italian. I'm debating how best to handle the language spoken throughout the story. Technically most of it should be in Italian, although I'm naturally writing the whole thing in English (except for the names of Italian people, places, and things). However, I want to avoid having to constantly repeat that people are speaking in Italian. The best option I can think of is to slip in the name of the spoken language only when it changes. New characters entering a scene would be expected to speak whatever language I last referenced. Some people in the Holy Land may speak English, so there may be a little back and forth there.
Edit: Basically what this means is that I say once, in the first scene, that they're speaking Italian, and then I don't name the language again until they start speaking English in act two in the Holy Land. There will be a few phone conversations between Father Romano, who accompanies Connor to the Middle East, and a cardinal in Rome. Those will be in Italian, but I doubt I'll mention it.
Thoughts?
Alan, I found examples online from a grammar blogger that say your examples are the opposite of what they should be. If you have one wife named Diana, then her name is nonessential to understanding the sentence and requires commas. If you have one son named Scott, that also requires commas. If you have multiple sons, then his name is essential to understanding the sentence, so no commas.
That means, in my case, that the name of the epithet is essential to understanding the sentence as there are many epithets, so no comma.
I'll probably forget these rules in a week and start doing it wrong again.
Thanks
Dirk
Now I get it. Thanks.
Time to see if there's a consensus on this one:
Is the second comma below (after the word epithet) required? I think it doesn't belong because the name of the epithet, Bastardus Minusculus, is mandatory for understanding which epithet is being referred to. Or am I applying the wrong comma rule? (This is about a future society where the Roman Empire has been resurrected, hence the name Caligula.)
Although it took years for Caligula to be recognized for his brilliance, among the many side effects is that the epithet, Bastardus Minusculus, which had tormented Caligula throughout his youth, became an honorific awarded for extraordinary accomplishments in any field, similar to the coveted Noble Prize of the late second and early third millennia.
Thanks
Dirk
I can't delete the first comma in the sentence since that would cause a misread.
Although it took years for Caligula to be recognized for his brilliance among the many side effects...
Comma question. Is the second comma (after epithet) required? I think it doesn't belong because the name of the epithet, Bastardus Minusculus, is mandatory for understanding which epithet is being referred to. Or am I applying the wrong comma rule?
Although it took years for Caligula to be recognized for his brilliance, among the many side effects is that the epithet, Bastardus Minusculus, which had tormented Caligula throughout his youth, became an honorific awarded for extraordinary accomplishments in any field, similar to the coveted Noble Prize of the late second and early third millennia.
Thanks
Dirk
Chapter 37 of v3, entitled Caligula!, is up. It's all minor changes from v2. However, I previously borrowed from this chapter to write v3 of the act I chapter Attack on New Bethlehem, primarily regarding the how the starlanes work. It needs rethinking. I like star-hopping as a concept and the natural interconnectedness of stars, but not the way the starlanes are described for the reader. I'm leaving it to v4 to properly define the starlanes and remove the redundancy that currently exists between this chapter and the aforementioned battle in act I.
Only four chapters to go in v3!
Quick, go read!
Dirk
I decided to take a break from investigative/CSI research and watch an action film recommended by Netflix. I've already forgotten the title, but it starred Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and James McAvoy. You'd think with that cast, I would be entertained, but no dice. I turned it off after an hour. I don't remember the last time I saw an action movie that I enjoyed. Maybe the early Terminator films. I binge watched 13 Reasons about bullying and teen suicide. They're out with a second season. Boy that is hard to watch. I had to watch episodes of Friends in between episodes of 13 Reasons because it's so dark. I would not recommend it for young teens, even though they would benefit from a lot of it. There are other ways to talk to kids about bullying and sex than that show.
NJC, is photobucket free to use, or do you have to pay for storage?
That is really good, njc!
Here's my opening line:
“Battle stations!” Vice Admiral Alexis St. James cried from the bridge of the Realm of Stars destroyer, the RSS Almighty.
I'm almost certainly going to self-publish, so I take the editor's comments with a huge grain of salt. He says prologues suck, but it's okay to have flashbacks. Same damn thing in my opinion, just organized differently. The advantage of the prologue is that it comes at the beginning, before the main story starts, and then you're done with the past. Flashbacks require forcing your reader into the past one or more times in the midst of the main story. Both have their uses, but I prefer the former.
