Fic: Monsters, All of Us 3/4
Title: Monsters, All of Us
Part: 3/4 A Dead Watch
Warnings:The Drama Llama is running rampant through this fic. Levity might appear here and there. Graphic description of senseless violence without any empathy. Comments and Criticism are not just appreciated, they are loved and treasured.
Prompt Link: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/ ( Read more... )
Part: 3/4 A Dead Watch
Warnings:The Drama Llama is running rampant through this fic. Levity might appear here and there. Graphic description of senseless violence without any empathy. Comments and Criticism are not just appreciated, they are loved and treasured.
Prompt Link: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/ ( Read more... )
Thank you thank you thank you for all your feedback on both the things you liked and the things I shall be improving very shortly! :) I don't know anyone willing to grammar/wording/Britpick my writing in RL so I cannot express how much I appreciate you taking the time to do so. Also, the book you mentioned with grammatical nuances being a key plot point would probably break my brain, but it also makes me happy to hear it exists. Good grammar is something I am forever working towards, even if I am not always achieving it!
I’m especially appreciative of you identifying errors in my writing that are also errors in my speech, so I shall be ferreting those out in both areas (i.e., non-pulsed, nearly never, a hell whole of a lot). I also used to say "whatever floats your goat" and am SO glad I never used that in a fic. I'm now kicking myself for the A&E mistake; I mapped the A&E processes of a UK Trust once and you'd think I'd remember after the ten thousandth process map title page (the copy and paste function is making me dumber).
As for your observations on the fic, you are dead-on as always. There will be a bit more about John's and Harry's parents in the last part. In my little world, their mother took John and left Harry with their father when John was five, but both siblings ended up living with their father not long after.
Like you, I love hearing about Sherlock’s latest and most horrifying experiment. Sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t throw in one or two really disgusting ones purely for shits and giggles. Speaking (or writing) of Sherlock, I appreciate you catching the break in his voice. I agree, he would not swear while deducing information.
Thank you again so very very much!
Reply
I'm a native English speaker, but not British.
The book with the grammatical nuances - it was actually a short story that was part of one of the 'ten minute mysteries' collections that used to be in print when I was growing up. If you've ever read the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries for children, they were the same sort of thing.
In practice, a lot of people would use 'scanned' the way Sherlock did in your story, but since Sherlock makes a point of speaking correctly, I thought I'd mention it.
Reply
As for the book, I have heard of the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, but never read them as a child due to the language barrier at that age; That and I had strict "dragon on cover" requirements for all my reading.
Also, I appreciate you pointing out "scanned." Sherlock is a grammar nerd and your recommendations give him a more genuine voice.
Reply
I have assumed that Harry was drunk while sending some of her texts, which would be why the birthday text contained errors. That's a nice touch.
John was seeing a therapist because the government wanted him to stop seeing kill shots whenever he was grocery shopping.
I liked this line.
Sherlock continued skimming through the listing of all 180 to 195 centimetre tall Americans who had arrived in the country at least five months ago. With brown hair and who were handsome (Wilson's neighbour's charmingly precise description).
'With brown...' is currently a sentence fragment. Did you break that off because only those two points were supplied by the neighbour? If not, one way to eliminate the sentence fragment would be to combine it with the previous sentence, like this: Sherlock continued skimming through the listing of all 180 to 195 centimetre tall Americans who had arrived in the country at least five months ago, had brown hair and who were handsome (Wilson's neighbour's charmingly precise description).
"Don't touch that."
The previous sentence ought to end with a period. Very occasionally you have sentences that should end with periods but don't.
Sherlock was not sure what his next step was.
Replace 'was' with 'should be.' In the next sentence, 'cross checked' should take a hyphen and 'in the both' should be 'in both'.
How could one keep his private possessions private if he could not even trust his roommates anymore?
:) I'd replace 'roommates' with 'flatmate'.
keep out of contact and rarely leave
Change 'keep' to 'kept' and 'leave' to 'left' to get consistent past tense, and in the next sentence replace 'Where' with 'Were'.
Sherlock sunk further
For past tense here, use 'sank'.
eight of which
Since you're referring to people rather than objects, 'whom' would be better than 'which'.
as ardently if he was
I'm going to say that Sherlock is enough of a grammar nerd to use the subjunctive here, so he would say 'were' rather than 'was'. That is, he's speaking hypothetically, so the verb after the 'if' will be in the subjunctive mood rather than the ordinary past tense.
After all, Sherlock doubted he had taken off to give the individual a good thrashing for being such a bad actor. Although that -would- have been kind of heroic.
I like Sherlock's priorities here. :)
About metric measurements - the UK spelling would be 'metre' throughout, but you use 'meter' and 'kilometer' very occasionally. I'd suggest changing 'meter' to 'metre' in order to be consistent.
Minor Brit-pick: The mugger might be more likely to say 'bloke' than 'guy', and 'Covent Garden' is singular, not plural.
About John's gun - there was a post about this yesterday ( Fact database: John's pistol). According to the discussion there (which has photos to back it up), John actually has a Sig Sauer, not a Browning, despite what Moriarty said in "The Great Game".
Occasionally you capitalize words in mid-sentence that don't seem to need it: 'Combat boots', 'Miew', 'your sociopath Were'
You've still got an occurrence of 'non-pulsed' which should be 'non-plussed'.
While 'plaint' is a word, the place where it's used here should be 'pliant'.
'Gaging by the regular wear' - Rather than trying to rework this to use 'Gaged', I'd replace 'Gaging' with 'Judging'.
Reply
The only other comment I didn't implement was changing the Browning to a Sig Sauer. I have unending faith in Moriarty being able to identify John’s gun in BBC canon (especially since his cabbie minion was dispatched with it). Also, I think Sherlock has less self-preservation instinct than a lemur and would have corrected Moriarty if he had made a mistake. So I am hedging on it being a staging oversight of the show’s prop staff. Also, thank you for the link to that post, it has made my heart very happy. Especially the “NOT A REVOLVER” !! Indeed.
Thank you for your recommended edits to the tense inconsistencies as they are the most difficult for me to pick up. As for “subjunctive mood” I had to look it up!! You have an ear for grammar that even Sherlock would envy! :)
Thank you again for your comments and your recommendations!
Reply
About missing periods - I'm seeing it like this:
No period is visible after 'drawn to' but there should be one. I copied the text straight out of the LJ display to this comment, and it isn't showing a period.
Reply
Also, I now see the period problem!! Apparently I have been doing that all over the place without noticing. Thank you for pointing it out!
Reply
Leave a comment