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Being the father of 5 children and grandfather of 5 grandchildren, I love it! It just needs a little tightening is all. I might suggest giving the pediatrician's name in one of these sentences, too. So...----------
The pediatrician cast a wary glance at the toddler, who was humming nursery rhymes while dousing her clinic with water spewed from one of those blasted practice wands provided for the amusement of little patients during checkups. Dr. What-Her-Name knew the wand was just a beginner's instrument, practically a toy, incapable of summoning serious spells. Tiny Tina [or whatever her name is] couldn't conjure a real flood with it. But neither would medical dossiers and expensive electronics fare well in this drizzle. She would have to speak with the nurses--again-- about confining junior wizardry to the waiting room.
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Something like that, maybe.
I agree, I love it. Various editors a few years ago told me not to write long sentences. They never told me how many words to use! I think they were talking about comma splices. So if it was me, I'd use shorter sentences. But that is only my opinion.
Dale - Thank you for your affirmation! Since seeing some of your review posts and your Book Blurb Clinic, I've been hoping for a chance to speak with you and to get your advice on editing. Thank you so much for dropping by this thread! Your suggestions and edited snippet are much appreciated. I shall put them, along with the suggestions by Alex and Amy, to good use in my revision. It seems like "tightening" the sentences is a key element pointed out to me by all three of you. I shall take note of that. And well, last but not least...I didn't know you're this old! :D Hello, grandpa Dale.Alex - Thank you so much for coming by from the "Hello" thread! :) Thank you for the advice to tighten my syntax, and for the nice encouragement. I shall get to work on it now! Have fun with your own editing process too!
Amy - Thank you so much for the writing advice. I'd come across that "write succinct"-advice some times, but would so often slip and start blabbering, forgetting that readers would be trying to follow my story for their first time. Thank you for pointing that out to me again. :) And of course, thanks for saying you loved it! Shall keep that positive energy in mind now as I work on the seemingly never-ending editing!
Anya, I was hooked. Your first lines were intriguing enough to want to read more. Also agree with the others advice. Keep writing!
Amy wrote: "I agree, I love it. Various editors a few years ago told me not to write long sentences. They never told me how many words to use! I think they were talking about comma splices. So if it was me, I'..."I'm currently re-reading Ray Bradbury's short story collection A Sound of Thunder (originally published as The Golden Apples of the Sun but "rebranded" thanks to a recent motion picture). Bradbury can write some pretty long sentences sometimes. So who you gonna listen to, those editors or one of the great writers of recent times? ;-)
The issue is more clarity. Longer sentences can easily become confusing. But if you use an occasional long sentence it won't hurt, so long as it's a clear long sentence.
Anya wrote: "Dale - Thank you for your affirmation! Since seeing some of your review posts and your Book Blurb Clinic, I've been hoping for a chance to speak with you and to get your advice on editing. Thank yo..."You're quite welcome! Feel free to ask questions on editing and I'll offer my opinions and experience. And yeah, I'm that old. I turn 60 in about a year, so I guess I have to admit to being almost middle-aged now. ;-)
At the time I was trying to be picked up by trad publishing. I had no intention of being an Indie so I heeded their advice. The first page of Picture of Dorian Gray on Kindle is all one sentence. (Not that I’ve read it.) It made me realise that it doesn’t matter what someone writes, if their face doesn’t fit they don’t stand a chance. The world is full of double standards and bright sparks who like to undermine people regardless of how well they write. I’ve been lucky to receive decent reviews bar one. But I know other people have suffered at the hands of the pedantic critics who like to pick away at the tiniest detail. I try to tick as many boxes as I can to hopefully avoid nitpicking.
Urgh, shorter sentences, longer sentences, clearer sentences, dizzy sentences...@.@ Heehee, but thanks for provoking me to think about my own writing style!Helen - Thank you so much for dropping by! Gosh, I just realized I'm actually receiving advice and encouragements from actual, published authors! This is quite grand (sorry for my newbie moment)! :D Thank you, too, for your affirmation - I'm going through my first lines faster than a fisherman changes his hook! I hope my writing will get better in time!
Dale - Thank you for your generosity. I'll be sure to bombard you, flood you, catapult you with questions on editing, get ready. >:) And just to say, my dad is 60! He has 4 children and 3 grandsons, and will sometimes hint for more of the latter, but will earn criticisms from my yet unmarried siblings, heh. Anyway, I've taken your suggestions to give the doctor a name, and also how it would not be her first time to ask the nurses to restrict the toy usage policy in the clinic. Thanks again!
I read something with very short sentences years ago that read like a synopsis, or worse, shopping list. It had no guts to it. Currently on the two books I’m writing simultaneously ProWritingAid is telling me my sentences are too short at an average of 9.7 words (should be 11-18). I’ll be sure to make an issue of that when I come back as a robot! All these things are guidelines.
Without context, but here is one of the sentences I had encountered just before this talk of length started:"The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky to these two men who stand listening and apart." (from "The Meadow" by Ray Bradbury)
Anya wrote: "Thank you for your generosity. I'll be sure to bombard you, flood you, catapult you with questions on editing, get ready. >:) And just to say, my dad is 60!"You're quite welcome. I seem to be working with more and more people who are my children's age. At first it was a bit weird, but not it's just standard operating procedure. ;-)
That was around 1947. I wonder how many editors in big publishing houses would entertain an author writing like that now. I don’t know of course. Most of what I read these days is on audiobook for the convenience of it. I wonder how quickly “rules” if you like change.
Write the sentences as long or as short as you need them to. Just make them clear to understand. That's all you need.
Alex wrote: "Dale wrote: "I was out of breath before I got half way through it. That' a long old sentence."It is, but it's a beautiful sentence, too, and in context it does a beautiful thing: it takes in a whole "world" that the producer (mentioned at the outset) is truly seeing for the first time. I don't think a sentence that long can just go anywhere. It can only go where it is doing a job that can't be done by a shorter sequence of sentences--or at least can't be done as effectively.
Amy wrote: "That was around 1947. I wonder how many editors in big publishing houses would entertain an author writing like that now. I don’t know of course. Most of what I read these days is on audiobook for ..."It depends on what your name is. If it's Ray Bradbury (or more likely, since Bradbury's dead now) Stephen King, they wouldn't think twice about it.
Otherwise, you probably have to, at a minimum, submit a story that takes their breath away. Then they'd probably allow it, too. ;-)
I’m not sure there’s much chance of me doing that. Years ago I looked at a few websites. They have perplexing rules on even the simplest words you’re not allowed to use. I found them very intimidating.
Amy wrote: "I’m not sure there’s much chance of me doing that. Years ago I looked at a few websites. They have perplexing rules on even the simplest words you’re not allowed to use. I found them very intimidat..."What sorts of websites were those? And what sorts of words? It may be more that the words they listed are overused, but there shouldn't be any words that can never be used. If I were to suggest one that probably shouldn't be used, it would be "suddenly," but even that may have an occasional valid use. ;-)
I can't remember now, it could have been eight years ago or more. A lot has happened to me since then. I was looking at several things at the same time including Black Lace publishing house. Someone somewhere had issues with connectives and conjunctives. There was a whole list of don't use if, but and all the rest. I seem to recall it being a publishing house's rules for submission-don't use these words. And yet I remember the web page with their submissions info looking less than professional.
Amy wrote: "I can't remember now, it could have been eight years ago or more. A lot has happened to me since then. I was looking at several things at the same time including Black Lace publishing house. Someon..."Ah, so something like, "If you want to get published here, don't use 'if' or 'but', but maybe somewhere else it's okay." ;-)
Something like that. I found their whole approach intimidating but I wasn’t in a good enough place at the time to raise the mental middle finger and I took it very seriously. Carole would say “their loss” lol
Mod
I think you can do something with "nursery rhymes." What specific rhyme is the young'un humming, and how can you make it evoke the atmosphere of your world? Since your novel seems fantasy-based, their nursery rhymes will have a different flavor than "real" ones.You can also integrate the rhyme into dialogue with the doctor, if you deem it viable.
Doctor: "I see you're humming 'The Freedmen's Fifty Fireballs,' little one."
Toddler: (nods enthusiastically) "Fireballs are wicked cool! I mean, wicked hot - I guess. WHOOSH! That's what they sound like! I'm gonna fry a manticore with one when I'm big!" (looks at the doctor with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion) "You said you can SEE me humming? Can you see sounds? I had a friend once who could do that, but he...he moved away." (incoming sniffles)
Doctor: "No, uh, that was just a figure of speech. I can't see sounds."
Toddler: (now even more disappointed, sniffles intensify) "Oh."
EDIT: Then again, if the toddler is sprinkling water, it doesn't mesh well to have him/her humming about fireballs. I'd think continuing with the water theme would solidify it - pun! water isn't solid! - in the reader's mind. Or - yet another thought - maybe a juxtaposition between fire and water (good and evil, yin and yang, blah blah blah) would fit what you're doing.
Of course, I have no idea what your novel is about, so all this may be useless. Just giving you stuff to ponder.
Finally, I liked Dale's trimmed version.
Anya wrote: "flood with it. But neither would medical dossiers and..."Normally, it would be better to avoid starting a sentence with a conjunction. It's okay to do it perhaps once in a book, at the moment of highest tension, to generate emphasis when you know it's wrong but want to give the reader a punch between the eyes. Don't use that technique too often though because, as with over-using swear words, the impact lessens.
Matt - I was surprised to see someone picking this thread up again, but oh, thank you for your very helpful suggestions! Gosh, seems like I'm going to re-work my opening lines again. I adore your effortless tendency to notice puns and figure of speech, and I appreciate your idea to use the nursery rhyme as part of setting up the world. I didn't give much thought to that detail like that before! So, really, thank you so much for presenting me a plausible scene (I enjoyed reading it!) between the doctor and her little patient, and letting me see my story with a fresh pair of eyes. It's quite amusing how relevant your snippet is to my story! :)Faith - Hello, and thank you for the valuable writing advice! Trust me, I didn't start out doing that. I picked up that way of writing from various writing blogs, courses and published books, believing that should be the way to do it. I'd chuckled madly to myself after typing "But" at the start of a sentence for the first time in my writing life. But (:D), you're challenging that opinion now! Urgh, this is complicated. I shall take more careful note of it as I write, thank you for kindly pointing it out for me! :)
Faith wrote: "Anya wrote: "flood with it. But neither would medical dossiers and..."Normally, it would be better to avoid starting a sentence with a conjunction. It's okay to do it perhaps once in a book, at t..."
Eh. It depends. I do it with some frequency (more than once per novel), but generally I agree, with the exception of in dialogue. You can get away with having a character talk that way regularly (but maybe no more than one).
Anya wrote: "Matt - I was surprised to see someone picking this thread up again, but oh, thank you for your very helpful suggestions! Gosh, seems like I'm going to re-work my opening lines again. I adore your e..."As someone once put it, "Detail is the lifeblood of fiction." It can be laborious to come up with interesting minutiae and trivia - and nursery rhymes! - but it pays off.
Of course, don't overdo it. I'm reading something at the moment that's more textbook than novel - "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. Supposedly a classic, but damn, if I wanted to know that much about astrophysics I'd find a documentary on Netflix to absorb.
"It's quite amusing how relevant your snippet is to my story! :)"
Oh, so the kid does love fireballs, he does want to roast a manticore, and he did have a friend with synesthesia-like powers who moved away? I knew it! :)
Alex wrote: "Matt you get a big thumbs up from me for knowing synesthesia and how to use it in a story, that's some smart stuff there. I'm not surprised though after reading The Clerk.And who doesn't love fire..."
I learned about synesthesia from Alan Moore's "Top 10." I certainly haven't been combing medical literature to inform myself about rare conditions. What, me do actual research? Outlandish!
That's the thing about writing: you can sound smart, even when you only have the slightest inkling of what you're talking about. :)
I'm thinking of doing "The Clerk 2: Zombie Apocalypse Uprising." Dropping the characters from a quiet literary novel into a mainstream action-packed genre makes perfect sense, right?
*crickets chirp*
*tumbleweed rolls*
Hmm...maybe not.
I can think of several people/things that wouldn't love fireballs:
1.) Ice dragons
2.) People who take the under in the over/under for how many fireballs the spellcasters will sling in the Wizard Olympics
3.) Wives who are tired of their impatient husbands blasting the dinner steaks with fireballs instead of cooking them slowly over a wood fire, because it invariably leads to the meat ending up well done.
Other than these malcontents and gamblers, yeah, people like fireballs. :)
But now I'm curious. Anya, are there really fireballs in your tale? If so, do they pack a meteor-like wallop, or are they more like a slow burn kind of thing? Or can a wizard tailor their blast to their needs?
#fireballdiscussion
Reading the latest conversation here is like being transported back to a high school corridor again. :) I like it!Don't worry, guys, I'm not here to disrupt this lovely discussion on zombies and hard sci-fi and, probably soon, catching pokemon. Just popping in to answer Matt's direct question for me. #fireballdiscussion
Ahh, fireballs really won't be a major element in my story, although regarding spellcasting, I'm intending it to be a skill level thing, as well as the wizard being able to decide which of his learnt levels he's going to cast each spell in. Why, would you like there to be a character called Matt who would jump out during the climax and throw a meteor of a fireball and save the day? :)
Also, just saying, besides touching on the topic of fireballs, your snippet has relevance to my story in that it suggests synaesthesia. My protagonist is a mild synaesthete...to reflect one of my minor traits. For example, I could 'cheat' in spelling tests last time because I'd remember the colours present in the new vocabulary word, and thus guess/know the letters, without having to spend more time to memorize for the tests. :D I have more trouble with Stroop tests though - they look so rainbow to me at first glance. But since my condition is mild, I could largely 'mute' it off and not scare the teachers/doctors checking us.
These days, I've been paying more conscious attention to noticing if accents may affect the colour of a phoneme that flash by in my brains. Right now, I think it does, although it may also be due to the speaker not pronouncing the phoneme 'properly' and instead roll it off to sound like another phoneme.
Anyway, this is all more fun than serious researching. I feel lucky to have this condition, and even more lucky to have it not bother my daily life. Some extent of synaesthesia can send its bearers into crazed states. For me, I just have a navy blue-bright red-dark brown-dark brown "Matt", and a bright red-pale milky orange-moor green-cinnamon brown "Alex"! :)
Okay, back to you guys.
"Ahh, fireballs really won't be a major element in my story, although regarding spellcasting, I'm intending it to be a skill level thing, as well as the wizard being able to decide which of his learnt levels he's going to cast each spell in."Very RPG-like. Are you aiming for a LitRPG type genre? I haven't read a true LitRPG novel - it's on my to-do list - but I'm aware of some of the conventions.
"Why, would you like there to be a character called Matt who would jump out during the climax and throw a meteor of a fireball and save the day? :)"
Sure, since you asked. Matt is such a dull name, though. How about Matthias, the Flamewielder? A ruggedly handsome rogue of a fellow, with a love of ale, comely lasses, and incendiary magic.
Actually, the climactic battle in my novel "Double Lives" has an epic (read: totally unrealistic) fireball being blasted. It also "solves" a longstanding psychological issue with the protagonist(s). So I've dabbled in fireballs, and will dabble more in the future.
You're a synaesthete? Well....that's interesting! Kind of blows my mind. Here I was talking about it in an abstract sense, not knowing you had the "condition," or whatever you want to call it.
As for my colors: can you add ten parts black to the mix? Black is the color of badassery. :)
Matt - You seem a really nice, interesting and easy-going fellow! I appreciate sharing a similar level of writing interests with you, as well as constantly getting inspired by ideas you'd freely toss around your discussion. Regarding the RPG-like magic system, you'd guessed it again - I'm not planning for magic to have an elaborate backstory or system or laws etc. in this story series, but it is indeed influenced by some RPG I'd played before. I'd teased with the idea of writing LitRPG-genre stories, but I dismissed it in fear of breaching copyrights issues of those games. I once saw a novel-type book in a bookstore that advertised itself to be a Minecraft novel or something, but I didn't check its author or publisher. Might you, Matthias the magical James Bond-style cowboy, have any tips on how to go about writing and publishing those LitRPG books?
Well, and if you wouldn't call synaesthesia as a condition, what would you call it? Mental illness? :) Also, if you want blackness in your name, get a "W". Or, find another synaesthete who would see/hear/smell black in your current existing name alphabets!
"Matt - You seem a really nice, interesting and easy-going fellow! I appreciate sharing a similar level of writing interests with you, as well as constantly getting inspired by ideas you'd freely toss around your discussion."Aw, shucks. :) You're not so bad yourself, for a tiny black cat.
"I'd teased with the idea of writing LitRPG-genre stories, but I dismissed it in fear of breaching copyrights issues of those games. I once saw a novel-type book in a bookstore that advertised itself to be a Minecraft novel or something, but I didn't check its author or publisher. Might you, Matthias the magical James Bond-style cowboy, have any tips on how to go about writing and publishing those LitRPG books?"
Again, I've never read a LitRPG, only heard about them, so I have no tips to give. Ask me in six months and I may have a better answer.
However, I'm confused about your copyright concerns. If you create your own world, there shouldn't be any issues.
"Well, and if you wouldn't call synaesthesia as a condition, what would you call it? Mental illness? :)"
I don't know, some people may call it a "great blessing," and be angry at me for using the astonishingly offensive word "condition." We live in sensitive times.
"Also, if you want blackness in your name, get a "W". Or, find another synaesthete who would see/hear/smell black in your current existing name alphabets!"
My last name is Cowper, so I've got my W. Let the blackness descend!
Matt, please, keep it down. I'm an animagus. I'm just letting people assume that's a pic of my pet or something.Regarding LitRPGs, I went to read up some about it after you raised it up, and only then realized more completely what LitRPGs refer to. I didn't know those Korean/Japanese movies -where a group of schoolchildren gets transported into a virtual game arena and has to fight it out to leave a winner to escape the game etc.- fall under the LitRPG genre. I'd thought it was simply sci-fi/horror, and that LitRPGs had to be fanfictions of clearly acknowledged existing games. Thus, my concerns on copyright issues.
With the expansion of possibilities, LitRPGs sound fun to write! Why the "six months" though - are you planning to work on a LitRPG idea for a book? That's exciting! :)
Anya wrote: "Matt, please, keep it down. I'm an animagus. I'm just letting people assume that's a pic of my pet or something.Regarding LitRPGs, I went to read up some about it after you raised it up, and only..."
Yes, that's my conception of the genre. You can do what you want, basically, as long as your story uses recognizable RPG (mainly MMORPG, and/or D&D) rules and themes.
Supposedly you also have to write sentences like this:
"Kobold attacks you for 8 damage! HP down to 92 out of 100."
Not certain if that's an absolute requirement, or if that style is a sub-genre of an already niche genre.
Writing a LitRPG novel does intrigue me, but I'd like to read a fair amount of novels in that genre before I committed - thus the six months. Maybe I'll just do a "trapped in a virtual game" novel and just call it sci-fi and fantasy or a more mainstream genre.
I'd appreciate if you could take some time to help me review the first line in my working manuscript. I don't mind having to make a major change - it's still very much a novel-in-progress. To give a wider story context, I've also included the next few lines. But the main issue I wish to know here is: Does the first line hook enough for you to read on?
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The pediatrician cast a wary glance at the toddler, who was humming away on some nursery rhymes and sprinkling water all over her clinic - via one of those blasted practice wands given to amuse young patients during their checkups.
She knew the wand was subpar, almost just a toy, and couldn’t be used to summon more drastic spells that might flood the room. But it didn’t mean her important dossiers and valuable equipments appreciated getting sprinkled on. She would have to speak with the nurses about this later.
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I welcome all honest and constructive suggestions. Thank you in advance!