I'm not sure if I've ever talked to you before, so: hi! I'm silverflight, or silver, or other permutations; I write original fiction and fanfiction, though not so much as late; I'm the quintessential bookworm *shakes your imaginary hand*
With regards to your edit: your writing is italicized or enclosed in double quotation marks. My suggestions are in single quotes. This occasionally gets ambiguous around apostrophes, so feel free to comment or ask for clarification.
To the edit! General comments:
*I'm not sure what happened to your formatting - at one point there's an extra space before the closing of a parenthesis, and an odd triple dash closed by an en-dash (waited for the King who --- I’m sure you know – locks). Some of your quotation marks came out correctly, and others were attached to the wrong word. (Mostly just a typing issue, I think.)
*The way you indicate dialogue and speech around it: um. In most cases the dialogue and the accompanying action is linked ("This is a terrible editor," said the writer, sadly.) and the punctuation is a comma/exclamation mark/question mark, but not a period. At other times, they are two distinct sentences ("This is a terrible editor!" She set down the manuscript and proceeded to tear up all the Post-its that had accompanied the manuscript.) There you would have to capitalize the first word ('She') because it forms its own distinct sentence.
Detailed comments:
“So pay him, you’re the Queen, I’m sure you have enough money! Or, or or… ” the baby stirred, and I quickly patted his arm gently willing him to not wake up wailing as loud as his mother -The part with the baby is actually action that stands alone from the dialogue and should be capitalized. -Consider inserting a comma after "arm"; the sentence seems to run on a bit.
That’s when she started wailing REALLY LOUD -I'm not sure whether it's for effect (it does fit in narrative voice), but I thought I'd just point out that normally "loud" would be 'loudly' instead. That said, it fits with the narrator's voice and is completely fine.
Not too big a loss, if you ask me, anyone who goes saying things like that when it isn’t true deserves his head cut off. -Consider using a semicolon after "if you ask me"; you have a comma splice there.
she gives him her ring and disappears -Here it's a bit ambiguous as to whether you're talking about her disappearing or him. Consider adding a pronoun before "disappears".
Which kinda pisses me off too-- look, no down payment? -OK, this was really confusing for me until I figured out that you meant "he" as in the King. Since you conclude the paragraph before by talking about Rumplestiltskin, you might want to put in some indication in the next paragraph about who it is.
first born child -Should be 'first-born child'.
“But there were no witnesses!” she starts wailing again. -This again is two distinct sentences squished into one; the "she" should be capitalized.
I like this retelling. Very modern, with lots of interesting commentary from the more-or-less disinterested party (ahahaha on the diapers). Feel free to respond with feedback, or questions, or whatever. It's a great entry you've made for this competition.
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ninetydegrees
Editor!
on 2011-02-13 06:37 am (UTC)I'm not sure if I've ever talked to you before, so: hi! I'm silverflight, or silver, or other permutations; I write original fiction and fanfiction, though not so much as late; I'm the quintessential bookworm *shakes your imaginary hand*
With regards to your edit: your writing is italicized or enclosed in double quotation marks. My suggestions are in single quotes. This occasionally gets ambiguous around apostrophes, so feel free to comment or ask for clarification.
To the edit!
General comments:
*I'm not sure what happened to your formatting - at one point there's an extra space before the closing of a parenthesis, and an odd triple dash closed by an en-dash (waited for the King who --- I’m sure you know – locks). Some of your quotation marks came out correctly, and others were attached to the wrong word. (Mostly just a typing issue, I think.)
*The way you indicate dialogue and speech around it: um. In most cases the dialogue and the accompanying action is linked ("This is a terrible editor," said the writer, sadly.) and the punctuation is a comma/exclamation mark/question mark, but not a period. At other times, they are two distinct sentences ("This is a terrible editor!" She set down the manuscript and proceeded to tear up all the Post-its that had accompanied the manuscript.) There you would have to capitalize the first word ('She') because it forms its own distinct sentence.
Detailed comments:
“So pay him, you’re the Queen, I’m sure you have enough money! Or, or or… ” the baby stirred, and I quickly patted his arm gently willing him to not wake up wailing as loud as his mother
-The part with the baby is actually action that stands alone from the dialogue and should be capitalized.
-Consider inserting a comma after "arm"; the sentence seems to run on a bit.
That’s when she started wailing REALLY LOUD
-I'm not sure whether it's for effect (it does fit in narrative voice), but I thought I'd just point out that normally "loud" would be 'loudly' instead. That said, it fits with the narrator's voice and is completely fine.
Not too big a loss, if you ask me, anyone who goes saying things like that when it isn’t true deserves his head cut off.
-Consider using a semicolon after "if you ask me"; you have a comma splice there.
she gives him her ring and disappears
-Here it's a bit ambiguous as to whether you're talking about her disappearing or him. Consider adding a pronoun before "disappears".
Which kinda pisses me off too-- look, no down payment?
-OK, this was really confusing for me until I figured out that you meant "he" as in the King. Since you conclude the paragraph before by talking about Rumplestiltskin, you might want to put in some indication in the next paragraph about who it is.
first born child
-Should be 'first-born child'.
“But there were no witnesses!” she starts wailing again.
-This again is two distinct sentences squished into one; the "she" should be capitalized.
I like this retelling. Very modern, with lots of interesting commentary from the more-or-less disinterested party (ahahaha on the diapers). Feel free to respond with feedback, or questions, or whatever. It's a great entry you've made for this competition.