Detour to Otherwhen - Chapter 6

[daggerfang]

While I am greatly enjoying both stories you have on here, there has been something bothering my subconscious about these stories and in this latest chapter something you wrote made me realize what it was.

"Yeah, the Cypress Hills cover about 2500 square kilometres. Which is what, almost 1000 square miles, I guess?" Little Jo snapped back almost instantly.
"You've been studying."
"Well, of course," she giggled.

The realization I had was that your characters are, for lack of a better word, frequently "snappish" in ways that didn't make sense to me. The problem my subconscious had was that I am used to thinking of someone who "snaps" as being at least annoyed and perhaps mad. However, you use it so often and the characters weren't always annoyed or upset, as in the above quote, that it bothered me.

I would like to respectfully and mildly suggest that you find some other words to use other than "snapped" when people aren't biting off their words in anger. For example, in the above quote I would have felt more comfortable with something like "Little Jo rattled off almost instantly."

[GBLW]

Good point, which I'll take under advisement, but ...
(edit)
... I just had a long chat with my editor, who agrees that at times my choices of verbs and modifiers can be slightly confusing. I'll go back and have a reread -- there may be a few changes -- and perhaps not.

(edit 2)
... Just had a long talk with my second editor and he said -- (And I quote:) "AWW BULLSHIT - that's how you write, it's sort of your style. Tell the complainers to take a pill.)
So I hear you talking, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do -- for now though, I think I'll listen to editor #2

(edit 3)
After some thought I've come to the following conclusions:
(1) - I know I have fans who love my writing and other folk who hate my writing, but I've learned that you can't please everyone, so although you think I should, I don't think I'm going to bother trying very hard to change.
(2) - On top of that, after writing factual articles, descriptive blurbs and things of that sort, once a week, for 30 odd years, then branching into general fiction and science fiction to bring my writing time to a total of about 50 years of part time effort, I can't see my 'style' changing easily.
(3) - To be honest, writing is now my way to relax, and mostly I write to please myself (as well as those folk I call my 'fans.') Sorry if that doesn't please you, but then if you don't like my 'style' of writing there are other authors out there to read.
After all I don't charge one cent for my efforts so you can't say that you've wasted anything but time in reading this much of what I've written, right?

K Pelle

[samuelmichaels]

Good point, which I'll take under advisement, but ...
(edit)
... I just had a long chat with my editor, who agrees that at times my choices of verbs and modifiers can be slightly confusing. I'll go back and have a reread -- there may be a few changes -- and perhaps not.

I would second this. Not that I recommend going back and redoing previous books unless you are doing it for other purposes, but I have been bothered by your modifiers before. I hope this is something you can keep an eye on in the future.

Both in Thor's Child and Car 54 your characters' speech is always "snapped", "said shortly" or "said softly". They even laugh "shortly".
I had to fight the impression of peevish, whispered dialogue.

I would highly recommend sticking to plain "said", and letting the words convey emotional status.

[GBLW]

Well, guys, you got to me! I don't know what you did, but it screwed up my concentration, so thanks a whole bunch!

Over the last two days I've written a total of 682 words -- because I'm thinking of the wording, not the dang story! Normally that's about five or ten minutes work.

So I have a friend who is taking a few folk on a week long cruise and needs an engineer to tend the old engine in an old boat we restored a few years ago.

As a result there most likely won't be any updates for at least a week or two!

C.U. (maybe)

K Pelle

[GBLW]

This is NOT an apology -- it's an explanation for my words and actions of a few days ago.

I had been fighting extreme pain for 3 days and had about 4 hours of sleep during the previous 72 hours -- in other words I was touchy -- no, make that grouchy as a freshly woken grizzly, just out of hibernation. But in my opinion anyone criticizing any author at any time SHOULD NOT use the two complaints above as examples to emulate. In fact even rereading them now I still find the wording and tone to be EXTREMELY offensive.
When I was given an offer to go on a short cruise I took it. The cruise is now almost 1/3 done and we are in harbour for the night. After 3 days on the water, I have calmed down slightly, but I'm still not writing.

My hope is that no other author will received similar criticism and then simply QUIT writing altogether!

[daggerfang]

I quoted the post I am replying to so there won't be any confusion as to what I am referring to.

First and second edit - fair enough. It's up to you.

Third edit, point 1 - I like to think of myself as one of those who likes your writing. I felt I was simply making a constructive suggestion. If you didn't read it as such, I apologize. I am not expecting you to change, just making a suggestion. I just wanted to make sure that was clear because I have seen too many other commenters/critiquers make the type of suggestion I made but with overtones (sometimes blatantly) of "you must". I have no such expectation. However, having said that, when I read what I said above, I could see where I may not have made that clear.

Good point, which I'll take under advisement, but ...
(edit)
... I just had a long chat with my editor, who agrees that at times my choices of verbs and modifiers can be slightly confusing. I'll go back and have a reread -- there may be a few changes -- and perhaps not.

(edit 2)
... Just had a long talk with my second editor and he said -- (And I quote:) "AWW BULLSHIT - that's how you write, it's sort of your style. Tell the complainers to take a pill.)
So I hear you talking, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do -- for now though, I think I'll listen to editor #2

(edit 3)
After some thought I've come to the following conclusions:
(1) - I know I have fans who love my writing and other folk who hate my writing, but I've learned that you can't please everyone, so although you think I should, I don't think I'm going to bother trying very hard to change.
(2) - On top of that, after writing factual articles, descriptive blurbs and things of that sort, once a week, for 30 odd years, then branching into general fiction and science fiction to bring my writing time to a total of about 50 years of part time effort, I can't see my 'style' changing easily.
(3) - To be honest, writing is now my way to relax, and mostly I write to please myself (as well as those folk I call my 'fans.') Sorry if that doesn't please you, but then if you don't like my 'style' of writing there are other authors out there to read.
After all I don't charge one cent for my efforts so you can't say that you've wasted anything but time in reading this much of what I've written, right?

K Pelle

[GBLW]

there has been something bothering my subconscious about these stories

'subconscious' ????? - aww bullshit, you were nit-picking and you know it.

Now had you been upset with the errors I made in spelling, punctuation or something similar, you'd have just gotten a thank you note and an attaboy. Only in the prior chapters you didn't complain when I made major errors - even when I screwed up on character names so that 'Alva' became 'Alma' or 'Jax' became 'Jaz,' so that 'subconscious' BS simply doesn't fly with me.

By the way, since you seem to have an overactive 'subconscious' you might put it to work on parsing the 'emotional indices' of your phrases. Each word was fine on it's own, but every dang phrase of one paragraph was loaded with a negative emotional context, so what came across to me was that you were quite upset and quite insistent that I HAD TO change my wording for it to make sense to you. Then of course you tried to cover that over with a light covering of ego smoothing guff -- that's about as effective as 'Shadow' (Tor's dog) trying to cover his evening dump by scratching grass toward it with both hind feet.

As I said before though I write to please myself and I will continue to write in the future, when I get back from this pleasant little cruise up and down the inside passages and past the islands on the west coast. Oh yeah while I`m here I should mention that we extended our cruise a little bit -- we picked up some freight to deliver and our passengers were quite happy to extend the cruise for a few more days. In fact it will probably be another week before I get home and start writing again.

kp