Dermot was surprised at her voice, which was soft and melodious
Again, a new paragraph should probably be started here. As it appears in the story, the old woman’s dialogue gets completely lost when mixed in with equally long narrative. Keep this rule in mind with pairing narrative and dialogue: keep the character’s dialogue with the character’s narrative, and keep it all separate from another character’s dialogue and narrative. It makes things nice and organized for the reader, makes it so we can keep track of who is doing or saying what better.
His heart gave a lurch in its ordinary rhythm as the woman herself appeared to change appearance before his eyes
A running thing I’ve noticed throughout this entire piece is unneeded wording. It’s nothing major, just a bunch of little words that could be trimmed out to make this read more smoothly. For example, here I’d suggest cutting “in its ordinary rhythm” (it can be assumed by the use of lurch – a sudden, abrupt motion – that his heart rate has broken), “herself”, and “appearance” (again, it can be inferred by the way you’ve been describing things that it’s her appearance that’s changing).
Without him having noticed it appeared she was no longer a hag.
One minor thing and one not-so-minor thing. The minor thing: the use of “appeared” so closely together. I won’t mention it beyond this point, but REALLY watch out for word usage. The not-so-minor thing is the contradiction of information. In the sentence before this, he most DEFINITELY notices she’s changing. He has an actual physical reaction to that change. So… how can she have now changed without him noticing?
“… And I doubt the Older Folk would really argue with me about it. But I feel they have other plans for you. ”
There’s an extra space between the closing quote and the period.
He was Dermot Mac Dubhradh, born and raised along the smooth green plains of home along with 6 other brothers.
Alright, a quick word about numerals in prose. Unless it’s referring to a date or a location, they aren’t really used. Especially for numbers under ten. ALWAYS spell the numbers out.
He had drunk, fought and bed at least as well as any other man.
Should be “bedded” – it becomes a verb rather than a noun when being used as in “to screw around”.
She looked at him, through his as though she seemed to be reading his mind
Missing word here as well.
Actually, he reconsidered; she more than likely was reading his mind, or what little he had left of it to his own at the moment
The semicolon should probably be a comma.
She continues speaking in her soft whisper of a contralto, and probably more is the pity of that for all of it.
Everything after the comma is very unclear, to be honest. It reads like there are two common phrases being mashed together, and neither of them want to play nice with the other.
“…But done is done. You have many lessons to learn before you can begin being what you should yourself be. Starting with what the true and important victories in life are. “
There’s an extra space between the period and the closing quotation marks here.
He turned to the door trying to think.
I think there needs to be a comma after “door” since there are two distinct actions going on.
“Why you decided to wake? I hope you like everything bagels.”
The first part of this quote reads like she’s asking him why he woke up. To make this more of a “why, never” statement, you need to add a comma after “why” – kinda like I did in the example.
She sat the carrier with its bag of bagels and two paper cups of coffee with the universal cardboard sleeves.
She sat it on … what? This is an incomplete statement. Be careful of that.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
EDITOR: Part Three
Date: 2011-05-16 01:07 am (UTC)Again, a new paragraph should probably be started here. As it appears in the story, the old woman’s dialogue gets completely lost when mixed in with equally long narrative. Keep this rule in mind with pairing narrative and dialogue: keep the character’s dialogue with the character’s narrative, and keep it all separate from another character’s dialogue and narrative. It makes things nice and organized for the reader, makes it so we can keep track of who is doing or saying what better.
His heart gave a lurch in its ordinary rhythm as the woman herself appeared to change appearance before his eyes
A running thing I’ve noticed throughout this entire piece is unneeded wording. It’s nothing major, just a bunch of little words that could be trimmed out to make this read more smoothly. For example, here I’d suggest cutting “in its ordinary rhythm” (it can be assumed by the use of lurch – a sudden, abrupt motion – that his heart rate has broken), “herself”, and “appearance” (again, it can be inferred by the way you’ve been describing things that it’s her appearance that’s changing).
Without him having noticed it appeared she was no longer a hag.
One minor thing and one not-so-minor thing. The minor thing: the use of “appeared” so closely together. I won’t mention it beyond this point, but REALLY watch out for word usage. The not-so-minor thing is the contradiction of information. In the sentence before this, he most DEFINITELY notices she’s changing. He has an actual physical reaction to that change. So… how can she have now changed without him noticing?
“… And I doubt the Older Folk would really argue with me about it. But I feel they have other plans for you. ”
There’s an extra space between the closing quote and the period.
He was Dermot Mac Dubhradh, born and raised along the smooth green plains of home along with 6 other brothers.
Alright, a quick word about numerals in prose. Unless it’s referring to a date or a location, they aren’t really used. Especially for numbers under ten. ALWAYS spell the numbers out.
He had drunk, fought and bed at least as well as any other man.
Should be “bedded” – it becomes a verb rather than a noun when being used as in “to screw around”.
She looked at him, through his as though she seemed to be reading his mind
Missing word here as well.
Actually, he reconsidered; she more than likely was reading his mind, or what little he had left of it to his own at the moment
The semicolon should probably be a comma.
She continues speaking in her soft whisper of a contralto, and probably more is the pity of that for all of it.
Everything after the comma is very unclear, to be honest. It reads like there are two common phrases being mashed together, and neither of them want to play nice with the other.
“…But done is done. You have many lessons to learn before you can begin being what you should yourself be. Starting with what the true and important victories in life are. “
There’s an extra space between the period and the closing quotation marks here.
He turned to the door trying to think.
I think there needs to be a comma after “door” since there are two distinct actions going on.
“Why you decided to wake? I hope you like everything bagels.”
The first part of this quote reads like she’s asking him why he woke up. To make this more of a “why, never” statement, you need to add a comma after “why” – kinda like I did in the example.
She sat the carrier with its bag of bagels and two paper cups of coffee with the universal cardboard sleeves.
She sat it on … what? This is an incomplete statement. Be careful of that.