The Gathering Darkness (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (Page 19 of 57)

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?

oops posted by accident. Editing.

re your italics question, I would like to side-step it and mention there are different kinds of 3rd person narrators, which affects your choice.

I often use "3rd person subjective" which is wildly unpopular on here and will get you told off. My [L 1] short is one such story. Your 3rd person subjective narrator can sit on the character's shoulder and narrate character thoughts seamlessly without needing to switch to italics. It's borderline having the character narrate the story.

Comparatively, [K i m]'s story is 3rd person omniscient so there's a bit more distant. I'f I was going to do inner thoughts, I would definitely switch to italics or risk what Charles called "an uninvited intrusion into the narration". I might also use "(italic)XYZ, she thought" [which Temple would correctly label filtering]. I also use "likely" and its class of words in my 3rd person omniscient to show the narrator is only guessing.

Applying to your example:
3rd, omniscient/normal:

3rd, omniscient/close:

3rd, subjective:

Note to your question, last example went past perfect instead of present. The narrator's assertion is part of the tale.

Here's an example of doing what will get you tagged for head-hopping on this site, but is really just a subjective narrator

Looking closely, we see the narrator is not in Carrik's head as several of these statements later prove to be false.

Hope this helps

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.

Hard to judge. Personally, I leave tons of things I think are zany in my early drafts and don't make a final decision until I can see the entire story

John Hamler made an interesting observation of my scene 1.2 (the one where Vitale is buried alive). Initially, I referred to the antagonist in that scene as "the man", albeit with demonic attributes. However, as I tweaked it, it evolved to the point where he identified himself as the Antichrist up front, which I figured is obvious from the book summary anyway. That means my book's antagonist appears and kills his first cardinal in the second scene of chapter one. There's little build up of tension leading to his first attack, except for him caught running out of the orphanage at the end of scene 1.1. Although it may be happening too soon, a lot depends on the murder, especially scene 1.4, which introduces the two detectives and the start of the murder investigation, something I want to include in chapter one. My other option is to kill scene 1.2 and move directly to scene 1.4, leaving the reader with some unanswered questions about the killer. As is, digging up the cardinal in scene 1.4 holds no surprises, since the reader saw him buried alive in 1.2.

EDIT: One benefit of scene 1.2, in my opinion, is that the reader can see that the burial is not as horrific as one might imagine if the body simply turns up in 1.4 and it's discovered Vitale was buried alive. I want to try to avoid gruesome deaths, and Vitale's is relatively benign, given how scary it would normally be for a person being buried.

Thoughts?
Dirk

Funny... the site doesn't let me continue a message once I've replied. There's no way to do a followup reply until you reply back

Given how slow my progress of late, I think I'll stick to group for now. Otherwise I'd need to do twice as many reviews for each chapter I want to post.

Where's that from?

Could have a lot of fun with a scene like this. Maybe have them bring up the shoes again. Have the agents note he missed a pair (that he hadn't thought of). Seabrass is famous for hampering the MC too... such as Father C has an ulcer or hasn't eaten or has a tic he worries will make him seem guilty. One of my own tricks is that he's guilty of something unrelated and trying to steer the agents away from it

Re: Involuntary reactions... as I've hinted before, they don't bother me as a reader, but I don't see them as useful. if a writer could kind of reach out of the book and ask me what I prefer, I'd say I didn't care what the reactions were as much as getting on with the story

involuntary:

Equivalent:

To me, the above are the same: They both force surprise onto me. It's like an exclamation mark used where there is insufficient context to infer it.

Preferred:

That said, Many mass market high selling authors have sentient body parts. Annette Marie in particular sets records with "My hand reached up to take the letter"and "My feet walked me to the altar" all over the place