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Boarders Writing a Novel, Part 9


Gabriele

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Yeah, so anyway, I have another prose/grammar question.

In a sentence like this:

...should I capitalize the first letter after the colon? So instead it would be:

I'm assuming it's the first way, but I'm not positive.

ETA: Oh, and does this sentence make sense?:

...or should it be "devices"? Neither sound that great to me, but I'm leaning towards device. Originally I had "of his own making", but that seemed bland.

Suggestions?

My work has trained me to follow the Chicago Manual of Style in knee-jerk fashion. :-) I see absolutely no reason why that colon can't be a simple comma. (However, if it did require a colon, the rule according to Chicago Style is that you cap what follows a colon only if it is a complete sentence in and of itself. Otherwise, lowercase. And try to save colons for things like examples, rather than descriptions.) A semicolon would be wrong, since what follows is a phrase, not a complete clause.

(There are, however, other stylebooks.)

If I were copyediting you, I would tweak your second sentence to: "The cause of Ûgi's tardiness, of course, was entirely of his own devising." (Or "...entirely his own doing," if you wished to simplify)

But I would query you to be sure it was really what you meant before making the change.

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I still haven't written my last chapter. I'm getting ready to move and go on a big trip and...yeah. Don't know why I can't just power through this last stupid chapter and so I can at least have a finished draft. Bad Nora!

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Do you need us to form a cheerleading squad? :P

I read out part of Sailor's first chapter at a brief creative writing workshop yesterday. Do I ever need elocution lessons... but the content went down quite well.

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Do you need us to form a cheerleading squad?

SO, we don't have any cheerleading emotes, but maybe these will do.

:read: :bang: :grouphug: :idea: :commie: :commie: :cheers: :idea: :read:

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Huzzah! Congrats to all that deserve congrats - and to those who soon will! :cheers:

Good for you JW... congrats

How are you getting on, if you don't mind me asking? I really enjoyed your first chapter, keen to read more if you ever need me to. :)

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Not made much progress in recent weeks. Im a quarter through my last read-through, then I'll call the 3rd draft complete.

Im going to ibiza tomorow for a week, and hope to finish it and read through Sailor. Im staying at Ibiza Rocks hotel, which is peetty much constant party, so i'll see how it goes...

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Well, I've literally just finished my first complete edit and so far I'm happy with the results. What was 168,000 words is now 140,000 without any major deletions and generally leaner and clearer. I've got a few minor changes that I *want* to make, but I probably need to start trying to enlist some more peer readers. Although this may be as far as I ever get, I'm quite happy that I've managed to write something that can at least pretend to be finished.

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@Jaime's Wench, those are some handy links. Or well, for me only the first one is. I don't think my parents will be too pleased with their little darling boy following all the 25 Steps To A Sex Scene.

Looking at the first link, I'm on tep 7 right now.

I'm ignoring the second link - my character's aren't getting a sex scene until I do.

Why does everything I write turn creepy? I was writing a nice happy story about war and attempted genocide and then I stumbled across long distance calling in the form of highly invasive telepathy that has a 1/6 chance of driving one or both people in the conversation insane and requires bloodshed to establish the connection. By the time I'm finished with this scene phone calls won't seem so bad, or they wouldn't if they weren't always from work or the vampires (blood bank).

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Thanks, guys.

I've just read this: 25 steps to being traditionally published

Has some bad language but really made me chuckle. I think I'm on Step 8, which makes me feel like my mountain climb has only just begun.

I'm step 13. Am dreading step 14, but there are lots of agents (and small presses) out there.

As for sex scenes, I'd actually recommend trying to write them as an exercise. It's an interesting challenge if you've never written them before.

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I think sex is definitely an area where the maxim "write what you know" applies. ;)

Don't worry about writing it into your stories (and don't let anyone rush you into it, on the page or in real life). Not every story needs a sex scene.

Actually, I'm 40 and I've never written one. Never had a reason to have it "on screen", so to speak. When the time comes, I'll write one, but I'm not going to insert one just to do it. (no pun intended)

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I think sex is definitely an area where the maxim "write what you know" applies. ;)

I'm not sure about that. How many here writing fight scenes have actually been ín a fight and maybe even killed someone? ;)

Read some good sex scenes and learn from them.

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