Day off? Really

[valarltd]

It's almost noon.

I have been grocery shopping and done three loads of laundry (sue me, I slept until 8:30)
I'm back to editing Hard Reboot, starting from the first, and seeing what more can be whittled out to clean up the story.

A few notes from Editing Hell

1) If everything is happening suddenly, nothing is sudden. We're just moving at a faster pace.

2) "Just" is almost never needed as a modifier. Use it too often and you sound like someone trying to improvise a prayer and using it as a placeholder word.

3) There is no such thing as "a last, penultimate act." I hurt my head beating it against the wall over that. Go look up penultimate before using it again. Or, go watch the Monty Python sketch The Penultimate Supper which is where *I* learned the definition.

4) No interrobangs. Hermes, Seshat,Thoth and Nabu, are we 12?

5) Ellipses have their place. It is not EVERY place.

6) Exclamation points are shy and solitary creatures. They do not travel in herds. Nor are they often seen.

7) If you need a semi-colon, you've got two sentences. We're not writing Victorian fiction or a dissertation here.

Back to the salt mines of the dark future. Also working on the "sex content by word count" statistic. (For those who wonder, Alive on the inside is 17% sex)

Comments

[twinkelbelpeach.livejournal.com]

Love your list. I tend to be overly fond of exclamation points in my e-mails, so I'll try to remember to hold back.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Exclamation points convey excitement. If you're excited over everything, you come off like a hyper Pomeranian in the e-mail. I did an "over-exclamation point" phase.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

7) If you need a semi-colon, you've got two sentences. We're not writing Victorian fiction or a dissertation here.

You could have a very complex list. I need you to bring me the following things: the red, white and purple socks; the orange, green and yellow hat; the white and green pants and a pair of sunglasses, because that's one hideous outfit. ;)

But you're probably not talking about that. :p

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

True enough. My editors broke me of writing in colons and lists.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough.

I've been writing Sherlock lately, and with the way that boy talks you sometimes need semi-colons to make the sentences make sense. Because he never actually stops long enough in some of his diatribes to actually imply that he's reached the end of a given sentence. :) :) :)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I can totally see that. I kinda love the series.

The D-Man Checks In

[(Anonymous)]

Penultimate: "The next to last act in a series of actions."

That would be the definition I had when I ran across (and subsequently -appropriately- used this word). If I am engaged in a series of actions--such as say, a hard-fought, bullets & blades flying, take it down in the end to tooth & nail, "To my last breath, I spit at thee..." combat engagement against a hated foe... Or maybe a long and tenuous computer hack against a hated foe/network wherein I am encountering and met with major resistance--just before I die (which would be the final act in my series of actions, however unintended and unwanted), if die I must, my last -penultimate- act, if I am able, will be to flip off my enemy (should I be unable to gouge his/her eyes out and/or manage to somehow take him/her down into Death's chill embrace with me). Maybe it's my pairing of the word "last" with "penultimate" that is making your choke on this?

In other literary works, I have seen a defeated and soon-to-be-killed warrior make a penultimate act of standing and saluting his victorious foe.

Alternatively... The last man standing, left to defend a military outpost or base that has finally been overrun by enemy forces, takes his last penultimate act as hitting the button that triggers the self-destruct mechanism--killing himself, but also killing and blowing to Hell almost every enemy in the place right along with him.

Penultimate: (For me) The last thing you do or action you take--maybe or hopefully in a grandiose, purposeful fashion--to show somebody who you are and/or what you think of them, before you die; life being a series of actions. Death being out of my control, this is the last thing I can do--within my control--before I leave this mortal coil... or this computer realm I am about to get my butt kicked out of with a steel-toe, spiked boot.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

For the love of Hermes, you did NOT just stand there and defend your use of an oxymoron. You can have a last act. You can have a next to the last act. No action can be both of those at once. You cannot have a series of penultimate acts (unless you're Peter Jackson)

I run on the rule that anything which makes me go Buzuhhhh? Does not get left in the text.

Also, lose the "I'm always right" attitude. It'll make the professional edits much much easier.

The D-Man Replies...

[(Anonymous)]

"Also, lose the "I'm always right" attitude. It'll make the professional edits much much easier."

Might I suggest the pot not be so quick to call the kettle black, my dear. I do not assert that I am always right, else I would make far more intrusions upon your LJ when something I've done that annoyed you crops up. When I am wrong, I remain quiet and absorb the critique (I know when to bow to experience, or at least a likely better opinion). When I feel I was right and/or justified in a point or position... Then I say something.

~Your story (for the most part).
~Your final say as to what gets cut.
~You are not, however, immune to never misunderstanding or being wrong... and when you are, in so much as I can see, I shall call you on it, as you do me (and Goddess knows I am not perfect, I have much to learn, and I occasionally need correction).

For the record: Yes, you -can- make a last penultimate act. I see nothing in any definition that says we are limited to just one in a lifetime, ergo it reasons that people--engaged in many, many different series of actions on a daily basis--are making penultimate acts all the time. Just before you die (truly or virtually), that last one you consciously make, would therefore, logically, indeed be your last penultimate act. As I recall, in the story where I -appropriately- used this word, Irishgirl indeed expected to die on that net-run as her enemies surrounded her on all sides and simultaneously launched what was to be their killing blows--only one of which she had any chance at blocking. Her last act, second to her death, would/could therefore be (correctly) termed as... WHAT?

=-=-=-=-=

The penultimate act I make before I flush the toilet is to lower the seat & lid as one piece.

The penultimate act I make before I go to sleep is to turn off the light.

The penultimate act I make before squeezing the trigger of a gun that will shoot a round at a target (and probably kill it if that target is a person 200 yards or less away from me) is to take a breath and hold it briefly to better steady my aim.

The penultimate act I make before I finally breathe my last will be... Dare I say: My last penultimate act?

Re: The D-Man Replies...

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

No, it's her last act. Death is not an action.

And you're using far too grandiose a word. I still maintain that the concept of a last next-to-last act is contradictory.

Simply put, the reader is jarred out of the moment of tension by a statement that appears self-contradictory. You want them worried about the kids' escape not asking "What? a last, next-to-the-last act? huh? How'd that get past the editor?"

They aren't going to be thinking "Oh, the last one she'll make over the course of her lifetime."

It's like when a friend of mine deliberately used "coal" instead of "kohl" in a steampunk story and every one of her first readers asked "You do know the difference, right? Or was that bad spell checking?" Nobody got that it was deliberate.