Meme time!

Jun 07, 2012 16:29

via la_marquise_de_

The rules:

1. Go to page 77 (or 7th) of your current ms
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines - sentences or paragraphs - and post them as they’re written. No cheating.

The chunk from page 77 was awful, so I went with page 7:
“How is he?”

Josan jumped at the sound of his lord’s voice. “His body will heal, shaheev,” he said, using ( Read more... )

memeage

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Comments 8

la_marquise_de_ June 7 2012, 20:40:59 UTC
That's very alluring: I want to know what's going on!

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barbarienne June 7 2012, 21:09:12 UTC
Hee! Lord Cono very much hopes the Targ will develop a fever...

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dorianegray June 7 2012, 21:05:00 UTC
I read that today! (Yes, have started my beta-read. :-) )

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barbarienne June 7 2012, 21:09:29 UTC
Yay! Thank you!

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dulcimeoww June 8 2012, 04:15:05 UTC
That is very specific and easy to picture, but it kinda made me want to bite things. The sentences are long and ponderously expository, so the sense of story and mood of the scene are lost in the formality and concern for world-building. The dialogue, however, is pretty lively and true to the stations of the characters (so far as I can tell), so I'd say you can drop the exposition and still convey the important parts with what you've already written. It's a good kernel, it just needs to be a bit lighter on its feet. It at least tells me there's a story there, and I look forward to reading the final version with the husk pulled away to get at the sweet delicious insides.

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barbarienne June 8 2012, 19:10:29 UTC
I can see where you're reading it that way.

Does it change your perception if you already know (from earlier context) that:

• The scene is in Lord Cono's POV
• Lord Cono is not a Southron
• His people have been kicking Southron ass in wars for several years
• They're not speaking Southron, but rather the language of Cono's country
• Josan is his (Southron) slave captured years ago
• The Targ is of a third group of people entirely
• No Targ has ever been successfully captured and enslaved

I know, authors shouldn't argue with critics. But the only line I recognize as potentially reading like exposition is ...using the Southron word of a devoted retainer speaking to his superior. In context, it's not intended as a discussion of the language, but rather an indicator of Josan's Stockholm syndrome.

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dulcimeoww June 9 2012, 12:57:00 UTC
I got most of that from just the dialogue, which is actually a compliment, I think. Nuanced dialogue is hard, and it's something I'm particularly sensitive to, since most of my reading doesn't have any narration, just sequential art, and people fail to make up the difference with dialogue all the time. They'll do dreadful things like conveying an insignificant action without context in every panel instead of facial expressions or anything else to tell the reader what's going on, keeping the dialogue too stale to make up for it, and it's absolutely maddening because what I want more than pretty art and correct grammar in every bubble is for them to capture the damn story! This was just a little heavy in terms of description, but your dialogue was alive and the story was there... so you're much more in the range of a TV show that still works as audio only, which is not a bad thing at all ( ... )

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renakuzar June 8 2012, 17:14:12 UTC
You do a great job of showing character and worldbuilding in such a short snippit!

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