Here After by Doug Donnan

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Lester Curtis
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Here After by Doug Donnan

Post by Lester Curtis »

I don't know if it was intended as such, but this story came across to me as being very much tongue-in-cheek with its characterization and dialog -- and I enjoyed it as such.

As to the matter of fact regarding enormous, carnivorous birds -- on the island of Borneo (IIRC), there were discovered the remains of some truly hellish monstrosities: a species of terror-bird that could grow up to over ten feet tall. Their extinction was fairly recent, and coincided roughly with the time that humans took up residence there. I'm sure they tasted like chicken.

Madagascar -- ? Who's to say?

Various technical errors, mostly with missing quotation marks. A fun read, though.
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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Lester Curtis
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Re: Here After by Doug Donnan

Post by Lester Curtis »

Not too long ago, I reviewed a manuscript that a friend is working on, and because he does it so much, I had to go to extremes in my suggestions: I told him to do a search through his manuscript for "*ly" and get rid of as many of those as he possibly could. My comment to him was: 'These words should be used like garlic in spaghetti sauce, and you're using them like tomatoes.'

Then I got to thinking about my own novel project and wondering just how many I had in there, so I did the search myself (leadership is by example). I did find more than I thought I would, but they weren't too bad. I did get rid of quite a few.

It's hard to deal away with every adverb; harder yet to get rid of every adjective, and a few here and there don't hurt much. Just keep them out of attribute tags.

I might paraphrase the advice Jamie gave and linked to in this way: If you find you've written something like, "he said sadly," take out the adverb and substitute its dictionary definition (or something close). Even that is not the best way to do this; a better way is to think of what the character LOOKS like or IS DOING and put that in instead.

An excerpt from the R. A. Nunes article says it best:
"I don't think you really mean what you're saying," he growled.

Doesn't have a fifth the bite as say:

"Have you lost your mind?" David snatched the pen from her hand and pushed the manuscript off the desk. "You can't write something like that."
That said, I'm now about to forward those links to my friend.
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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Lester Curtis
Long Fiction Editor
Posts: 2736
Joined: January 11, 2010, 12:03:56 AM
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Re: Here After by Doug Donnan

Post by Lester Curtis »

I think the link to the story is broken. I only get the first page.
That happens to me sometimes. Try again, or try refreshing the page.
I was raised by humans. What's your excuse?
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