Interlude - New Fic: The Ten Truths (part 2 of 3)

[amyross]

The Master glares through narrowed eyes. He doesn’t see why he should play the Doctor’s game. But then … there are so many questions. And even better … a chance to match wits with the only mind to equal his. They’ve played before but the Honesty patches have added new rules to the game.

The Master gives the Doctor a long look. “Why, exactly, didn’t

Comments

[aralias]

you're using a very odd tense here (not just present, but a partilar form of prenset), but it does work, and i really like the premise. honesty is fun :)

i particularly liked the comment about martha screwing up the master's life even after he left earth, and the doctor foolishly deciding to put on an honesty patch. good stuff.

[amyross]

It's a timeless tense ... being in the Vortex and all.

Just kidding. I was barely aware of it. I wish I could claim English is not my first language, but sadly, it is!

I know what you mean though. Rather than writing "The Doctor thinks ..." I write "The Doctor is thinking ..." and so on. It's just a particular "voice" I had when I wrote this. Narrative has never really been my bag, I've written far more in script form IRL.

I do think it works, though. In my head, it's not meant to "read" like anything else.

[aralias]

*grins* i laughed out loud at this: It's a timeless tense ... being in the Vortex and all.

just thought you ought to know ;)

[amyross]

Darn. Now you're making me wish I'd been smart enough to notice it right away. And put it in my summary. How smart would I have sounded?

You've probably not read my others, but if you have, do you notice it at all there?

You also made me notice another strangeness in the "voice". A lot of it is POV, albeit third person, but there are also a lot of narrative comments.

I could call this deliberate, too, saying that while we can glimpse their points of view, this is a private conversation and narrative comments are needed to truly understand it.

But we all know I'd be lying!

[aralias]

as a matter of fact, i did have a look at your other fics and it is there a bit (though the prologue for road to nowhere starts off in the past tense which is more comforting somehow.) i'm not sure what it is still. i wish english wasn't my first language so i would have been forced to study grammar rather than just being made vaguely aware of its existance ;-)

[amyross]

Oh, totally. Native English speakers have no scientific understanding of grammar, generally speaking. We just sort of feel our way, and some can do it, and others can't. I swear I was in my twenties before I could say what a determiner or a preposition was.

I'm sure there's a name for this tense I'm using, I just don't know.

Anyway, I choose to believe it's sort of cool to have "my own!"

Seriously, though, past tense never feels quite right for this sort of writing, and this is probably my best effort at present tense.