Sahdowbox (dilemma!)

[shadowbox]

Now I know I said I was planning on taking a break, but I had this wonderful, gory, hideous idea and I wrote it down. I have just one problem, I just can't quite get the right mix of archaic dialog.


Help?

Grammar critiques too, of course.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ~

With two paces for his every one, he backed me against the wall, pinning me against it, and lifting me from the floor by my neck.[i hate the way this reads.]

From his belt he freed his knife, bringing it up to the soft stretch of skin beneath my chin. "There is no other way!" he bellowed, shaking me fiercely. I felt my toes brush against the floorboards and prayed in desperat, silent panic he's set me down. "There is no other way, Brenadine." He repeated, softer, but for his fierce grip on my neck.

My father had truly gone mad with fear.

Tears hung heavy on my lashes, as I stared into my father face. There was no mercy there, only manic desperation and a deep vein of fear.

I felt it too.

Separate from my own, I felt hiss fear course through my veins as if it were in my very blood. It made the world seem sharper, each fleeting breath more intense. I felt each heartbeat as if it were the only one.

It was as Calbien had said, fear fueled my fire. What irony, I thought, that in the moment of my death I should be so acutely aware of it.

The tip of the knife bit into the pallet of my flesh, my fathers hand trembling beneath it. I watched his face contort in a sick mixture of shame and abhorrence.

It was then that I began to struggle for air, my hands clasping tightly around his thick wrist. In vain it was, for he shook me loose, his massive fingers clamping harder still, on my throat, rendering me near limp.

It was sight that went first, fading into blue black waves, leaving me nothing but the blurry sight of my fathers stricken face.

Blood pounded against my ears and it took me a full moment to realize the hard thudding foot steps were unrelated. I gazed past my father, finding through the haze that we were not alone.

It must have been writ upon my face for too my father had realized, jerking me hard against the wall.
"She must die!" He choked, his hand twitching. The sharp little blade sank slowly deeper into my flesh.

In the moments span of a heart beat, with no cue save but the glinting flash of metal, blood rained down upon me in one harsh arterial spray. My father released my throat, stumbling back, till he fell to the floor, his neck gaping open, still oozing what blood was left in him.

Returning his sword to it's sheath, the assassin offered his hand to me.
"We must leave." He said abruptly, his face still masked in hoods.





Rough draft of course. I have been playing with ways of having an assassin kill her father, and still be able to have her fall in love with him. The assassin is my favorite character. Help me make sense of this crap please. I like where it is going, I just don't like where it is.

[dustinzgirl]

My father had truly gone mad with fear.

Tears hung heavy on my lashes, as I stared into my father face. There was no mercy there, only manic desperation and a deep vein of fear.

Redundant.

[Psyloke]

Okay, my 2 cents… take it with a pinch of salt etc: ( ) = my changes


With two paces for his every one, he backed me against the wall, pinning me against it, and lifting me from the floor by my neck.[i hate the way this reads.]

-perhaps to help the flow and sense it could read: With two of my small paces to each giant stride of his, he backed me against the wall, pinning me and lifting me by the neck with one large choking hand/fist/paw etc. (I think another ‘against it’ is redundant, and re-using ‘against’ too soon doesn’t help the structure.)

From his belt he freed his knife, (maybe a bit wordy and passive. Try: His knife flashed up/He drew his knife swiftly/He freed his knife from his belt) bringing it up to the soft stretch of skin beneath my chin. "There is no other way!" he bellowed, shaking me fiercely. I felt my toes brush against the floorboards and prayed in desperate(e), silent panic he'(d) set me down. "There is no other way, Brenadine(,)" (h)e repeated, softer, but for his fierce grip on my neck.

My father had truly gone mad with fear.

Tears hung heavy on my lashes, as I stared into my father(‘s) face. There was no mercy there, only manic desperation and a deep vein of fear. (nice)

I felt it too.

Separate from my own, I felt his() fear course through my veins as if it were in my very blood. It made the world seem sharper, each fleeting breath more intense. I felt each heartbeat as if it were the only one.

It was as Calbien had said, fear fueled my fire. What irony, I thought, that in the moment of my death I should be so acutely aware of it.

The tip of the knife bit into the pallet of my flesh, my father(‘)s hand trembling beneath it. I watched his face contort in a sick mixture of shame and abhorrence.
- might be just me but I didn’t understand the phrase ‘pallet of my flesh’

It was then that I began to struggle for air, my hands clasping tightly around his thick wrist. In vain it was, for he shook me loose, his massive fingers clamping harder still, on my throat, rendering me near limp. (I’d loose the near)

It was sight that went first, fading into blue black waves, leaving me nothing but the blurry sight of my father(’)s stricken face. (the word sight is used twice, maybe another synonym? Also maybe start with ‘My sight went first’)

Blood pounded against my ears and it took me a full moment to realize the hard thudding foot steps were unrelated. I gazed past my father, finding through the haze that we were not alone.

It must have been writ upon my face(,) for too my father had realized (maybe ‘for my father, too, had realized’), jerking me hard against the wall.

"She must die!" He choked, his hand twitching. (if you want this to be part of the same sentence you can loose the capitol H. If not that’s cool it reads well both ways.) The sharp little blade sank slowly deeper into my flesh.

In the moment(’)s span of a heart beat, with no cue save (for) the glinting flash of metal, blood rained down upon me in one harsh arterial spray. My father released my throat, stumbling back, till he fell to the floor, his neck gaping open, still oozing what blood was left in him. (mmm yummy)

Returning his sword to it's (should be its.. since it’s is shortened form of it is. Its and it’s are entirely different) sheath, the assassin offered his hand to me.
"We must leave(,)" (h)e said abruptly, his face still masked in hoods. (he has more than one hood on? If not then ‘his face still masked by a hood’ or something.)

Like it. Keep it up, curious to see where this goes.

[Nik]

Sure would help if we knew what he was so deathly afraid of...

Does he wish to kill his daughter to spare her the shame and worse of capture ??

Aside from that, there's a couple of niggles which you'd surely spot next week and hastily tweak...

FWIW, I usually draft in a note-book, then re-arrange sentences, move punctuation and breaks to control pace, re-re-phrase to eliminate inappropriate duplication plus any surfeit of BUT, AND, THEN etc.

Rare that a 'primary' page remains legible, think 'palimpset'...

I'll untangle and tidy a page of scribbling when I type into Notepad. I'll probably tweak it thrice more when I add subsequent chunks. Of course, when I post to forum, I'll belatedly realise I've missed a crucial word...
---

Weird to be writing again: Been almost a year since words flowed...

[shadowbox]

Psyloke, I do not think this is the first time you have made nice of my jumbled messes!

[Psyloke]

Heh... dont put yourself down (there's enough of that in most critique forums to go around imo!)

We're all at varying degrees on that ladder towards writing perfection and no one has ever reached the top. I also imagine most published material started life in a sorry state, was regularly shredded on an editing table and handed around to proof readers like a joint of cannabis at Woodstock before actual publication, so don’t fret if people can pick holes in your work, people always will. As long as it’s constructive we can learn from it and take another step up that ladder. If it isn’t constructive ignore it. If every writer let negative feedback stop them there wouldn’t be any writers!

Like I said the idea’s good. Conflict makes stories, and what could cause more conflict than a relationship with someone who killed a family member?

[shadowbox]

I post too on another forum called The Young Writers Forum, aimed at ages 13-25 ( 21 here) and they are RUTHLESS!!!!

One girl, I have an impression she was a moderator, said I couldn't use the wording "Young was I" because it was bad English. Then she compared me to Yoda, mistook my character for a girl and just put me down. She said even though it sounded Archaic it really wasn't and that it was a bad idea. Rude.Here, it's just one big happy family helping people out.

What was I to learn being told what I can't do?
My story, I'll do what I want!

[Psyloke]

Absolutely. And sure you could speak like that… well maybe not nowadays but this is Fantasy, your characters can speak how they want (not how you want because after you’ve made them they often take on a life of their own and ruin all your plans for them!).

BUT if you have a character who you’ve imbued with a specific personality, exemplified in their dialogue, make sure you run with it and don’t later change them. So if he’s the kind of person who’d say “Young was I,” make sure he consistently speaks that way, and maybe even hint at why.

21? *sigh* I remember those days!

[shadowbox]

If I'm 21, most days I feel 47 ( my mums age!)


I wanted the "Young was I" only in the beginning for the archaic impact really. After that it's your typical fantasy minimal archaic language. Proper language really, with a few time-frame appropriate words and a few I just made up because I wanted too and I do what I want.

[Boneman]

Hi Shad, or is it Sahd now? I don't think you should feel sahd, I wish I'd had your storytelling ability and imagination at 21...... But on the other hand, you wish you had my life experience to look back on......not. The one thing we all have in common is imagination and an ability to put words down. Yeah it differs, and some writing here is gobsmackingly awesome in its beauty, and some of it is gobsmackingly awesome in its ugliness, and I wholeheartedly agree with Psyloke on this. We're here to improve, to learn to fashion and any other verb you can think of that aids us to progress....

I heard an author on the radio (you know, that thing that older folk listen to sometimes) who advocated just writing, getting it all down on paper until it's finished and then re-writing later, never to go back and edit as you write, and you know? I just can't do that.... I always look at what I wrote the previous day
a) because I see errors
b) it reminds me where I was (very important at my age)
c) the muse that sings to me whilst I sleep has come up with a better idea

and then there's this: Quote (not how you want because after you’ve made them they often take on a life of their own and ruin all your plans for them!). (From Psyloke) The first time I heard an author say this I thought 'what a load of twaddle! You're writing the damn thing, don't be so pathetic!!' And then it happens to you...... I had a character who was just supposed to faint in horror at a particular scene, and that was the last we'd see of her. However, she had different ideas and she took over, and turned into an incredibly feisty heroine who gobsmacks me with her style, who is going to return in book two and have loads devoted to her.

So really, we don't write books at all, it's our characters..... no matter how we try to force them down a particular path, if they don't want to go, they won't go. I think there's a parallel universe that they live in, and they latch onto us, so we can tell their stories.

Oh, critique: her father has known what she was all along, and hoped it would never show itself, and it's the toughest love there is, killing someone you love, and maybe it's that last vestige of love that stays his hand and allows the assassin to get in and save her. Blimey that's a long sentence. I've read of parents who've shopped their kids because they've done drugs, crime, any bad thing, and I would not want to face that challenge. So perhaps we could see some of his love for her that's pulling him apart? He don't wanna do it, but he's gotta. (He's speaking to me from a parallel world saying ' I deserve a better death than this, I raised her as my own, I loved her!')

[Psyloke]

Originally Posted by Boneman

Yeah it differs, and some writing here is gobsmackingly awesome in its beauty, and some of it is gobsmackingly awesome in its ugliness,

LOL

Originally Posted by Boneman

I heard an author on the radio (you know, that thing that older folk listen to sometimes) who advocated just writing, getting it all down on paper until it's finished and then re-writing later, never to go back and edit as you write,

Heh... I just posted on another thread the exact same thing! I had so many false starts because of not doing this when I first started writing. The first novel I actually completed was because I changed to this method, though it was very difficult to do at first. And it doesn't mean not ever looking back or reading the last few paragraphs... it means forcing yourself not to read too deeply and start editing, or re-reading stuff that you dont need to. Of course there are times when you need to go back to check something for consistency.

[HareBrain]

Can we perhaps start an Obsessive Rewriters Anonymous group?

Me: "My name is Harebrain, and I haven't tweaked my prologue in five days."
Group (as one): "Yeah, right, you rabid fibber!!"
Me: "Oh, you've seen through me! I can't stop fiddling with it!" (falls to floor sobbing)
Psyloke: "Now that he has been broken, let the reconstruction commence!"

... or something

[shadowbox]

...i love it here.

Note: Brenadines father tries to kill her so she cannot be sacrificed for Calbien's 'higher cause" which would ultimately end in the demise of their nation. Calbien planned to use her to damn 1000 souls ( more really ). He want's to kill her to save her from something much worse.


As for characters running away on their own, I know all about that. The assassin was suppose to be just that, but then he became a blind assassin ( oh yes ) and then a blind, half breed angel assassin. Then he became the love interest. He is actually my favorite character and I have almost enough ideas to write another whole story on him alone.


AND I did spell my name wrong. WTF?!

As for life experience, you would be surprised. Don't judge because I am young. You can learn a lot when you have too. I've been on my own for 5 years now. In that time I have done a lot. I lived in a tent at one time, once in a yucky basement. I've walked 2 miles to work in the ghetto at a car wash in january for 5.25 an hour just to make rent. I've been a tree service removal person, I worked in a hospital as a phlebotomist, and with eldery patients with alhzimers and dementia I was a live-in-nannie (scream!) Did my share of partying, and been pretty low. I was committed once, for a short stint. I've moved, and this is no exageration sadly, 64 times in my short life, we lived like Gypsies.

I've done a lot. Now I am a wife, a mom, and a writer.

It's a much better life I will admit!

[Psyloke]

Sounds cool.. you could do a prequel story on how he became who he was (is) in this one.

[shadowbox]

I want to, I want to do a big thing on the druid clan that finds him after he slays his father ( the Angel.) Thats why he is blind. It's his punishment for slaying an angel, immortality spent bereft of sight.