@the-inkspiller
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I like Discord, but I’m equally at home with email or collaborating over google docs
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
@emily-waldorf, Discord is a pretty useful platform. It’s much less like traditional social media and much more like a chatroom with options for everything from mass voice and video calls to screen sharing, even shared music bots (like a group jukebox), and the option to set up multiple channels in voice or text for specific kinds of discussions. It’s like a mini real-time forum. I think it could be handy for managing something like this writing sprint thing.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
@ethan-leonard, @calidris, my handle is Fully Automatic Waffle Press#5356.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
@rose-colored-fancy, @calidris, @ethan-leonard, @emily-waldorf
I wouldn’t mind being a part of this, although I’m writing this as I’m coming off an insane 12 hour shift at the hospital. I have a lot of free time when I am off though. And ye, I have Discord.
Honestly, what’s really worked for me in the past for spurring me to greater productivity in my writing has been just having someone or some ones who actually care if I write more or not and/or want to read it. So having a little writing circle would be
Would be very nice. 🙂
And my email if we do it that way is jdwong188@gmail.com
I have pigeon brain right now
I have been awake for over 21 hours.
I
MustS l e e p
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
As someone who writes almost exclusively morally gray characters, I feel obligated to comment. Not to defend the mainstream use of morally gray characters, who are mostly just buttholes who happen to be shooting at socially designated bad guys, but in defense of complex, flawed characters.
The truth is that most people, even Christians, are or would have once qualified as morally gray characters. Anyone who has struggled with sin knows what it’s like to believe one thing and do just the opposite. Like @Ragnarok said, a good morally gray character is one who grows from their flawed origins to overcome their weaknesses. Like @irishcelticredflowercrown said, it’s a hard sell to expect the audience to like a character who has done objectively terrible things. The challenge, the art in that, is conveying the sinner’s journey – showing what it’s like to be that person, to face your sins and learn to live with the awful things you’ve done as the new person you’re praying God will help you grow into.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
I know this reply is coming two years late, but… thank you for the hug.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
Apologies for necroing this thread, but since it’s here, I too have a depressing poem to share. Also @Anne-of-lothlorien, since you like me also tend to lurk around and comment on things every few months…
Heart of Glass
I was born with a heart of glass
Which glitters in the morning
And magnifies my mourning
Bared to wind and woe and weald
Transparently I loved her
I stored up for her my love’s treasure amass’d
I promised her, my love would never yield
And to me she promised in a murmur
She would always stayBut she was not born with a heart of glass
Hers was but a heart of flesh
And hearts of flesh can only love so long
My heart of glass was cracked
My love and joy going the way of winter grass
My hope and happiness like grain threshed
Beaten with guilt and every way wrongedMy heart of glass was never a perfect heart
It loved too much, and yielded too little
In its intimacy, it became brittle
And shattered to reveal beneath my fleshy, fallen heart.——
I am not a good poet. I have a poor grasp of meter, clumsy rhymes, and no real appreciation for the mechanics.
What I do have is a lot of sadness and pain, which I’ve heard makes for some good poetry. 😛
I’m unfortunately only half kidding around. I always seem to end up coming back to Story Embers whenever life goes flat and loses its flavor as other pursuits turn into dead ends and treasured relationships abruptly end.
Anyways.
There is a poem.
I guess I would appreciate critical feedback just as much as sympathy. Craft must always be improved.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
You’re very welcome! While this topic is normally about technical or clinical subjects you don’t want showing up in your search history, it’s absolutely expected that queries will branch off into tangents as knowledge is shared. If you have more questions about world-building, history, politics, psychology, whatever random questions you can think of – feel free to ask! I’m always glad to help, as are the precious wayward souls who haunt this thread.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
@miller sorry I forgot to tag you in my reply
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
If you want an example of how to brainwash children and young adults, look no further than the Army. Not to speak negatively on the brave soldiers who volunteer to serve and protect, but hear me out. Your average middle class American Joe Schmoe is not that violent of a person, nor that mentally tough. Part of the reason casualties in disaster or in mass shootings are so high is that most of us will freeze rather than fight or flee – we do not have effective responses to actual mortal danger.
The purpose of boot camp is not just physical fitness, but mentally conditioning every recruit to follow orders under even the most stressful of circumstances, and prepare them for the ugly reality that they may be required to kill another human being in the course of their duties.
We don’t call it brainwashing because that’s a very negative term in our language, but that is essentially what basic training is. Taking your soft, squishy, nonviolent, easily frightened civilian brain and tempering it into a strong, fearless, well discipline soldier’s brained who can kill to survive and won’t freeze up under fire.Now how that works?
Stress. A lot of stress.
The sleep deprivation, the constant yelling of the drill sergeant, the absurd mind games and disproportionate punishments for seemingly small mistakes, obsessive cleaning standards, and relentless physical exertion all works together to make your mind very pliable and inclined to internalize and obey whatever they tell you to learn. Praise and rewards are doled out sparingly amongst the constant stress to reinforce desired learning outcomes.
The name brainwashing unfortunately stems from Chinese; it was a term coined by communist Chinese political commissars for their process of turning dissidents or American prisoners of war (during Korea) into loyal communists, traitors and informers. The “good cop / insane torturer sadist cop” routine was very effective. Under extreme stress and pain, your mind tends to lock on to any instance of kindness or decency. This is related to Stockholm Syndrome – after a while of being a prisoner, your basic human tribal instincts take over and despite being at the mercy of your captors you also grow to be dependent on them.
Now we unfortunately come to children. Children are exceedingly easy to brainwash; they will accept simple explanations for why they have to do terrible things and will give in readily to avoid pain and receive promised rewards. Children are generally mentally predisposed to listen to adults which feed them and exert authority over them, and lacking the moral inhibitions of fully developed adults, children are frighteningly efficient as soldiers; they won’t hesitate to pull the trigger, while the soldiers they face often will in the face of a child. Look up our occupation of Afghanistan, the Vietcong in Vietnam, and African Bush wars for plenty of depressing and disturbing stories of child soldiers in action.
Now, one caveat with your chosen time period: the people of the medieval period were much more familiar with death than we were. While many people could live to their 50s and 60s, even in the lower class, death in childbirth was common, and many children died before the age of 5 from sickness or accidents. Those who lived past 5 could typically enjoy a full life, barring war or plague. Banditry was common, especially during wars, and people of all classes generally traveled armed. That’s not to say witnessing a violent death wouldn’t psychologically affect a young protagonist; but the effect would be dependent on the culture and community around him or her. Context is everything, and to the medieval human, death is an inevitable part of life that leads to a better world; the object is to not to live as long as possible, but to die meaningfully.
NOW finally to your setting specifically. Dark Ages England is a broad period of time. What do you mean by Dark Ages? Early Middle Ages, 600s-1000s? Arthurian legend? Pre Norman England? Or post Norman-conquest, 1066 and onward? All very different time periods with different dominant cultures. I am happy to help here as well but I’d like to keep this post focused on your main question about brainwashing and trauma.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
It’s important to find your the right fit for your writing style! Not everything I say or give to you as advice is going to necessarily work with your vision, it’s simply my judgment based off the experience of what has worked for me for the stories I’ve tried to tell.
1. Semicolons
It’s true, I have been several times convicted for criminal abuse of the semicolon. I like using them as a more extended pause than an m dash, but more suspenseful than a period. It’s personal taste, but I use them to break up what would otherwise be a marathon of a sentence or two awkward dumplings sat in separate bathroom stalls.
2. Conjunctions
I did present it as a hard rule, but only because many beginners (without the unintentional presumption that you are one) make the mistake of abusing them. ‘But’ & ‘and’ can be competently used to start sentences with – in fact, I do so myself in my own works. Nonetheless I try to use them only as dramatic punctuation, rather than to regularly combine sentences across a period. For example, in the phrases you just posted:
Then the wave hit.
That was when the door swung open.
‘Then’ is a conjunction as well, if a sequential one, and ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘then’ can be successfully used for dramatic effect, echoing how you might narrate the scene in speech, like an oral storyteller.
3. Critique
Hit me with a doc link and I’ll try to take a look at it within the next couple weeks. I have more time than usual thanks to focusing on just my degree over the summer instead of trying to work and study full time at once, so I can take a gander! Do you want me to purely focus on line edits or approach your chapter with a mind to storytelling as well?
Glad to be of service!
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
Part two! Here we go!
The young woman’s mouth worked for a moment, and then she nodded.
So I have to amend my previous statement on ‘and’ & ‘then’; the main case for using them together would be to add the sensation of a tangible pause in between the two conjoined actions. However, that can be achieved by other means, such as by a semi-colon or by additional description.
(A) The young woman’s mouth worked wordlessly for a moment; her words lost to silence, she nodded at last.
(B) The young woman’s mouth worked for a moment in seeming thought; apparently satisfied by her conclusion, she nodded.
Drastan rubbed his head as she began gathering the knives and sword.
Would you replace ‘began gathering’ with ‘gathered?’ I.e, are words like ‘began’ and ‘start’ ever okay to use?
#1: Yes, I would, either ‘gathered’ or ‘gathered up’. ‘Began’, ‘start’, and gerunds/present participles (e.g., ‘gathering’) aren’t completely forbidden, but should only be used when its important to indicate that the action is in progress – often so that it can be interrupted by another action. In this case, if nothing stops her from gathering the knives and sword, then it is better to just use the past tense.
“Yes. I’m having a hard time piecing together who in the world is after us. The fact that all three of us were attacked–” Drastan swallowed as an image of Kelren’s pierced chest flashed through his mind. “–it clearly shows that whoever wants us dead has something to do with last night’s murder.”
For some reason, I’m having a hard time finding how to properly punctuate a break in dialouge with m dashes. How should the above be written?
Well, without even knowing who is speaking, I felt able to understand what you were saying. I hesitate to advise any particular change here.
Then the wave hit.
That was when the door swung open.
Above are two examples of almost speaking as if the character is telling you what happened, not as if it is happening to the character. Would you ever write a sentence like that for third person limited?
Absolutely, I do it all the time, that’s one of the greatest strengths of third person limited – you get to see the world through their eyes and get their thoughts and feelings on the situation, not just a dry after action report. An example from my own work:
Then someone began to snore.
It wasn’t Alois, or Erhard would have pelted him with a shoe. No, it was coming from the room below, through a pair of floorboards that hadn’t been properly tarred. At first Erhard tried to adapt, searching for a pattern in the snore to roll with its noisy tides, but this mouth breather would sometimes croak like a bullfrog for a full minute; then he would fall silent as death for what seemed like an hour before reviving with a hoarse sonata like the aria of an asthmatic goose.
With third-person limited, you can potentially expand the scope of the character’s POV to even affect your narration and description, allowing each POV to present their own take on a situation. Your shining white knight might cause your narrative voice to take everything more seriously and dramatically with flowery prose, while writing from the perspective of a cunning gutter rat might present a grittier tone and less than charitable descriptions.
She felt no panic, no anxiety, nothing. But that didn’t mean she had surrendered self-preservation.
Two questions here. In the first sentence, is that too much telling for emotion? In the second sentence, would you ever use the phrase ‘but that didn’t mean?’
#1: No, that’s okay, though the first sentence could stand to include more physical description alongside the telling. I’ll put an example below.
She felt no panic nor anxiety, not even so much as a quavering heartbeat to signal terror.
#2: No ‘but’s at the beginning of sentences. You could join the two sentences with a semi-colon if you really want a ‘but’ there, but then you don’t really need the ‘but’ thanks to the semi-colon. I would still change the second sentence, it just sounds vaguely… rhythmically unsatisfying, if that makes any sense.
She felt no panic nor anxiety, not even so much as a quavering heartbeat to signal terror. Even so, she had not yet surrendered self-preservation; her body might be ready to lay down and die, but she wasn’t.
Ignoring the sensation of vulnerability that lying on the ground while talking gave to her, she said,
How would you write the above?
Laying out on the ground, she felt like a side of meat left out on the butcher’s counter before a line of hungry dogs. Nevertheless, she swallowed the bile of fear and spoke.
“[Insert dialogue]” (she said is optional here)
Aren’t metaphors and similes great?
With a skipping step that matched the flute notes filling the air, Wren entered the inn’s main hall.
Would you use the bolded ‘that’ above?
It’s not terrible; the sentence functions. Without knowing the context of this line, this is how I’d rewrite it:
Flute notes drifted out from the main hall of the inn like temple incense. Wren’s feet followed the piper’s melody, carrying her skipping into the main hall.
I hope that these answers have been more a help than a hindrance. Let me know if you have other questions or editorial needs, or if I can clarify anything I didn’t answer clearly or helpfully!
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
I may not be the foremost expert on prose, but I’ll take a gander at answering your questions and lending my own verbose expertise, whatever its meager worth might amount to. I by no means wish to hijack your style, but invariably my suggestions for rewrite / revision are probably going to very much reflect how I personally would write the sentence, without necessarily knowing the background of your story or the context of the given excerpt.
Given the number of quotes to work with, this will be a long reply. Hopefully the forums don’t eat it.
Alfonso and his chancery paid the mercenary captains, and the captains paid the mercenaries, but Drastan often got the feeling that their captains took even more than their greater share already demanded.
Perhaps something like:
Alfonso’s chancery paid the mercenary captains, and the captains paid the mercenaries; for all their shows of humbly sympathy, Drastan suspected their captains were lining their own pockets.
I’m not sure how much we could really shorten this one sentence without breaking it up into separate sentences, or potentially altering the meaning of this excerpt.
Alfonso’s chancery paid the mercenary captains, and the captains paid themselves; whatever was left over went to the mercenaries. Naturally the captains reassured the men they were getting their fair share, but Drastan knew better than to trust a man who could afford more than two pairs of clothes.
Darkness cloaked the world in shadows by the time Drastan had entered the streets of Toledo.
As for this, there are a couple potential rewrites depending on whether you want to enhance description or reduce word count. For more scene immersion, perhaps something like:
Drastan stepped out onto the shadow-cloaked streets of Toledo, his eyes instinctually sweeping the alleys as they adjusted to the night.
To adjust flow and word count with style, more like:
By the time Drastan stepped outside, night had cast her languorous, scheming shadows over Toledo’s winding streets.
Wren’s eyes widened.
My question for this one is whether or not I can write it for the current PoV character. So if Wren is the PoV character in limited third person, does it make sense to write that sentence?
In limited third person, you can describe everything your chosen POV character can see or assume, including their own actions, behavior, thoughts and feelings. So yes, if Wren is the POV character, his/her own actions can be described as long as they can sense or make an assumption. For example, Wren can reasonably interpret that a man narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth might be doing so in anger, and maybe even infer what they’re angry at based on the context of the situation.
Drastan glared at them, and then turned and strode away. My question for this one is the word ‘then.’ Should it be used in instances like this, or should it be eschewed always or at least whenever possible?
In this case, it’s up to you whether to use ‘and’ or ‘then’, or both. The use of ‘And’ implies that the two sets of actions, ‘glaring’, and ‘turning and striding away’, are occurring simultaneously. The use of ‘then’ implies that there is a chronological sequence to these actions – Drastan glares, then turns and strides away. You don’t need both ‘and’ & ‘then’, use one or the other.
“What do you see?” Drastan hissed, growing impatient.
This is a question of telling vs showing for me. Is the phrase ‘growing impatient’ feel like pure telling, or is it something that you would write while still trying to feel close to the character’s head?
‘Growing impatient’ is very much telling. ‘Hissed’ already does adequate service for conveying Drastan’s impatience and agitation, and ‘growing impatient’ doesn’t add much descriptively. If you feel that ‘Drastan hissed’ leaves the line too bare / short, you have a couple options. You can either (A) append some other action or body language of his that indicates his agitation and impatience, or (B) delve directly into Drastan’s thoughts with a bit of narrator reading from his brain. Examples follow:
(A) “What do you see?” Drastan hissed, gritting his teeth while his companion hemmed and hawed.
(B) “What do you see?” Drastan hissed. Why couldn’t he just spit it out? Delay got people killed – most importantly, himself.
Drastan placed a hand on the cool stone of the elegant building, and glared at Fadrique’s back.
The comma is unnecessary as the sentence is currently structured; ‘and glared’ fulfils the same function of the comma in joining two separate clauses. Otherwise, you could write the sentence as:
Drastan placed a hand on the cool stone of the elegant building, glaring at Fadrique’s back.
Drastan was by his side in a flash, a long knife gripped in his hand.
No, I try to keep my use of ‘with’ under control. It’s not a bad word, but less is generally better, especially when you abuse commas and semi-colons as much as I do. In fact you could shorten this sentence even more:
Drastan was at his side in a flash, long knife ready in hand.
Drastan was about to tell Fadrique that he was wasting their time
Not strictly, no. ‘That’ makes the sentence somewhat more formally correct, but no reasonable reader is going to be confused if you omit it and it will add a little urgency to the sentence.
Crackling torches that rose a full head above Drastan lined the stone paths, illuminating its lavish contents.
Yes, as the sentence is currently constructed. It does sound a bit clumsy around the ‘that’, so here’s a potential rewrite:
Torches lined the stone paths, standing a full head over his own; crackling flames cast an orange glaze over the [compound’s] lavish contents.
(I don’t know what the ‘its’ refers to, as ‘paths’ is plural, and thus the appropriate possessive to use would be ‘their’ if it is referring to the paths’ contents.)
I will continue my answering in a part two, as this post is already crazy long.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
A random aside, horses love the taste of beer, as it essentially resembles pre-digested barley / wheat / hops, their preferred feedstock. Horses also have an extremely high alcohol tolerance, even accounting for their comparative size (3-8x the weight of an adult male human), as their gastrointestinal tract is specialized in digesting grains and plant matter and breaking it down through fermentation, while their livers are similarly specialized to rapidly metabolize the resultant alcohol products into usable energy before it can actually enter the bloodstream and affect them neurologically like it does to humans or animals less specialized in digesting grains – like dogs or bears.
It’s uncertain if horses can even get drunk: for reference, the average horse has about 12-15 gallons of blood in their body, compared to 1-1.5 gallons for humans. By doing some questionable calculations, to get a horse legally impaired at a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% – without accounting for the increased efficiency of their liver and intestinal tract – a horse would need to consume more than 12 beers an hour – versus more than 1-2 beers an hour for an adult human. A ballpark estimate for how much they would actually need to get drunk based on their improved digestive tract – probably more like 20-30 beers an hour.
TL;DR: for horses, alcohol is to grain what table sugar is to fruit for humans. To them it’s basically the concentrated essence of Y U M.
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
@Erynne, No worries! If anything, writing about the negative effects alcohol had on my life is a healthy reminder of why I stopped drinking and why I don’t want to drink alone again or ever walk back into that position of dependency. I’ll still drink with friends, who can watch me and keep me from having too much, but I will never keep alcohol in my house again.
And @allertingthbs provides an excellent, succinct description of the stages of inebriation. One thing I will add is that by Stage 3, your sense of balance becomes extremely sight dependent (in my personal experience). Being drunk in the dark is a recipe for vertigo and extreme nausea, and laying down flat would also make my head spin. At that point, I had to sit up in bed with the lights on, chugging water for an hour with my back against the wall until my head stopped spinning enough for me to turn the light off and go to sleep. Throwing up in your sleep is a quick and easy recipe for choking to death. :))))
Non nobis Domine, sed nomini, Tuo da gloriam.
