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Trimming a Slow Spot
In the FlashForum there's a section for registered users called "Critique My Flash". In it, an author provided a story about a Messenger of Death that contained the following passage: His job at the midpoint had been about as thankless as the administrative one he’d had on Earth. On Earth, he had to direct hordes of people to counters at the Health Card office; at the midpoint, he had to split up new souls into three lines: the Good, the Not So Good, and the Bad. The Good went to Heaven, the Bad to Hell, and the rest stayed at the midpoint, where they made his life hell with their incessant questions. (“When will I go to Heaven?” “Is it my time yet?” “I won’t go Down There will I?”) The problem with this section is that it's descriptive without really helping us get to the main plot. When I said that it could use some trimming, the author gave me permission to cut it and post the results here. This section is therefore written as if I'm speaking to him rather than to you, Dear Reader, because I'm too lazy to change the original text (and I'd mess it up if I tried). Anyway, off we go...
Original: His job at the midpoint had been about as thankless as the administrative one he’d had on Earth. We need to know we're talking about his job, and we need to know that you're comparing his Earth job with his midpoint job. But do we really need to know that his Earth job was administrative? I'll say "yes" because you're trying to associate what he's doing with tedium. But we definitely don't need to have the word "administrative" (telling) and the description of the job (showing) from the next sentence. I also think that the "had been about as thankless" is too passive. First, there's no action; second, you've passed up an opportunity to characterize him, by showing the job through his eyes. Maybe something like this (change the characterization to suit): He hated his midpoint job just slightly less then his Earth job. 12 words from 18, or a 33% cut.
Original: On Earth, he had to direct hordes of people to counters at the Health Card office; "had to direct" and the following prepositional phrase string triggered my cutting instinct. At times like this, I break up sentences into their data points to see if I can reassemble them more compactly and possibly delete some. It doesn't always work -- your aesthetic sense should be your guide, not word count -- but it's a good exercise regardless. In no particular order, you tell us: the job was on Earth, there were lots of people, he was directing them, he worked at a health card office. First, kill "had to". It's a job, so of course he has to. :) Next, find different, stronger words. Here, if they're "hordes of people", how about "herding" them? That leaves us with this: On Earth, he herded people to counters at the Health Card office. 12 words from 16, or 25%.
Original: at the midpoint, he had to split up new souls into three lines: the Good, the Not So Good, and the Bad. The Good went to Heaven, the Bad to Hell, and the rest stayed at the midpoint, where they made his life hell with their incessant questions. (“When will I go to Heaven?” “Is it my time yet?” “I won’t go Down There will I?”) This seemed to tell me something once, and then again: "First, let me define the divisions, to wit: good, not-so-good, and bad; now let me walk through these divisions, showing that the good go to heaven, the bad go to hell,..." But you don't really need to define the groups before showing where they go, because the names of the groups are already well-enough understood. Define the groups by where they go. Cut: at the midpoint, he guided souls into three lines: the Good went to Heaven, the Bad went to Hell, and the Not So Good stayed at the midpoint, making his life hell with their incessant questions. (“When will I go to Heaven?” “Is it my time yet?” “I won’t go Down There will I?”) 54 words from 66, 18%.
That gets us here: He hated his midpoint job just slightly less then his Earth job. On Earth, he herded people to counters at the Health Card office. At the midpoint, he guided souls into three lines: the Good went to Heaven, the Bad went to Hell, and the Not So Good stayed at the midpoint, making his life hell with their incessant questions. (“When will I go to Heaven?” “Is it my time yet?” “I won’t go Down There will I?”) This is an iterative process, so I'd take a last crack at the first two sentences, which sound a little clunky to me, to get this: He hated his midpoint job just slightly less then his old job on Earth, where he had herded people to counters at the Health Card office. At the midpoint, he guided souls into three lines: the Good went to Heaven, the Bad went to Hell, and the Not So Good stayed at the midpoint, making his life hell with their incessant questions. (“When will I go to Heaven?” “Is it my time yet?” “I won’t go Down There will I?”) This version is 80 words, a 20% cut from the conveniently sized original 100 words, and, more importantly, it streamlines the text while adding characterization and without changing the voice. What do you think? Labels: fiction, short fiction
 
Kate and David
This is from Meg. She tells me that it probably has too much flashback. I'm willing to agree -- I make the point with a few metrics later on -- but I've mostly stuck to cutting this piece. Here's the original. The air lay stagnant on Kate's exposed skin, viscous with sweat. Outside the heat was oppressive, and inside... and she could not bare her legs to take advantage of even the cool of evaporation. Only a few children even pretended to listen to her history of the Crusades. The rest slept, spittle pooling on their desks.
How could information be expected to infiltrate sleeping minds?
But David Leland still watched with avid interest. It didn't seem to matter what she taught, he seemed hungry for the knowledge of things and places beyond the small town that had always been his world.
She looked away, reminded again of Joseph, constant companion of her youth, David’s brother. Joseph, voracious for her company, jealous of any sign that she had interests that did not include him. When she had been accepted to the new Brigham Young Academy, he had suddenly discovered a zeal for higher education and began planning to follow her to Provo. She had presumed he stopped short of proposing merely because he was only seventeen to her sixteen. But she’d been patient. There would be plenty of time.
Kate's thoughts returned to the present as a pen fell to the floor with a clank.
"Ah hem." She slapped the ruler down on the desk, finally rousing even the drowsiest child from his afternoon slumber.
"Are there any questions about the Cathar Crusade or the Episcopalian Inquisition of the Waldensians?" She waited. No hands went up. "Good. There will be an exam on the subject tomorrow morning. And I will be visiting each of your homes this weekend to share the results of this semester's progress with your parents." The children looked at her as though she were the most nefarious witch in the entire world.
If I were evil, I would make you experience what I feel every day. The excruciating pain of her swollen legs was not the worst of it. The worst was the way children she'd known and loved their entire lives now taunted her and ridiculed her, trapped as she was in her disease-distorted body.
She held the schoolhouse door open, and the students exited like rocks released from a slingshot. She recalled the words of her physics professor as he'd released the ball he'd held high above his head, 'And thus we see potential energy converted to kinetic energy.' Did any of those bouncing, skipping children even know what 'kinetic' meant? Kate turned away from the bright heat of the outdoors to the oppressive dark heat of the small schoolhouse.
Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dark, so she almost walked right into David Leland.
"Pardon me, Miss DeLong." David looked down at his hands in rueful embarrassment. His voice came out slightly stilted as he continued. "I wanted to say that the bellicose behavior of the medieval church resulted in heinous acts of depravity."
Kate stood still for a moment, stunned. "Why David Leland Heywood, thank you. And may I say that you used each one of those vocabulary words perfectly correctly." A smile began to creep onto her face, reflecting her inner transformation from jaded spinster-schoolmarm to joyous teacher. David looked into her face at that moment. Her joy in the magnitude of his achievement mingled with her awareness of how much her approval meant to him. The smile slid from her face.
So Kate, will you foil David yet again?
She thought of that first day she had understood his intent. She had fled outside to the back of the chapel, unwilling to watch as Joseph and his young bride, Margaret Henrie, returned home to Panguitch. David had found her in tears. Silently he had gathered her in his strong arms and rocked her back and forth. It was the first time any man had touched her since the disease caused her ankles to swell like mutated gourds. Clothing concealed the details of how the deformity thickened her legs and arms.
By the time she discovered the disease affected her breasts and privates, she'd almost not cared. After all, what man would ever know?
But that day, with David's arms around her and the reality of him filling her senses, she'd realized that her body didn't know it was horrific, that no man could desire a woman trapped in such a prison. Her body felt the same heady delight that had coursed through her when Joseph had first held her and kissed her for the first time. But she was no teenager. She'd gently but firmly extracted herself from David's embrace, thankful for the serendipity of a prior appointment to make her excuse real.
Ever since she had been careful to never encourage David. But he had not waivered in his quiet kindness. He never joined the discussion of whether her scourge was due to her own sin or the sin of another. David simply accepted her.
The dark years at the Academy had scarred her soul. The darker reality of being pariah in her own hometown was worse. But her barriers were washed away in his steady, unflinching devotion. Melted in his regard as the ice on the mountains evaporated in the heat of early summer. His faithfulness had freed her.
She never knew what it was that he saw in that moment. But his face lit up like the sun at high noon. Perhaps her smile crossed the invisible line she'd maintained between them since that January afternoon. He closed the distance between them, gathering her in a kiss.
When they broke for breath, he gently stroked her hair away from her forehead.
"Marry me, Miss Delong." As the silence stretched, he added, "Please?"
She couldn't help it. She laughed. The first laugh she'd uttered in five years.
"I will. I will.” It's already pretty tightly written, but let's see what we can do with it.
Original:The air lay stagnant on Kate's exposed skin, viscous with sweat. Outside the heat was oppressive, and inside... and she could not bare her legs to take advantage of even the cool of evaporation. Only a few children even pretended to listen to her history of the Crusades. The rest slept, spittle pooling on their desks.
How could information be expected to infiltrate sleeping minds? I can't help but read viscous as a description of skin, when logically I think it must describe the air. Since we have two images of the thick air already, let's eliminate one. Outside / inside doesn't help describe the scene significantly -- if we know it's a school, and we know it's hot inside, then I think most readers will know it's hot outside. Based on the ellipses, Meg may be trying to say, "it's hot outside, and you know that when it's hot outside, man but it's hot inside." But I don't think this gets us very far. Always look for forms of to be, was in this case, as candidates for cutting. Not that you should always cut them -- some statements are really clunky or imprecise without to be -- but they're good to check. In this case, Meg has separated the fact that it's hot ( heat was oppressive) from her characterization of Kate ( could not bare her legs). So we could incorporate the heat into the rest of the description. That said, I think Meg has done that already. The fact that she want to cool her legs indicates that it's hot, so she's showing and telling us that it's hot. Let's just show it. to take advantage of tends to be a waste phrase. As Richard Lanham says in Revising Prose, you need to determine who's kicking who. (He and I both know that it's "Who's kicking whom," but he doesn't care and I'll follow his lead here.) In this case, the evaporation would be doing the cooling, so let's say it that way. I think the next two sentences are okay. I could cut the first one, but I don't like the results: Few children heard her history of the Crusades. It could also be Few of the children, but that saves no words, so I'll keep Meg's style. I could cut even, but I even pretended characterizes Kate differently than pretended would -- it makes her more impatient with the children, whereas pretended by itself is neutral. Finally, the last sentence in the block has a to be that I'll cut. I think it sounds more natural with "can" than "could" -- that's the author's call, but I'll make the edit here anyway. Cut:The air lay stagnant on Kate's exposed skin, and she couldn't even bare her legs to let evaporation cool them. Only a few children even pretended to listen to her history of the Crusades. The rest slept, spittle pooling on their desks.
How can information infiltrate sleeping minds? 48 words from 65: 26%.
Original:But David Leland still watched with avid interest. It didn't seem to matter what she taught, he seemed hungry for the knowledge of things and places beyond the small town that had always been his world. There's an authorial choice here: does David seem hungry for knowledge, or hungry for anything she teaches? I'm assuming the latter, even though the former would condense the paragraph better. :) I keep stumbling over "with avid interest". It feels redundant, or like the author is trying to build up the hype by piling words on top. (I think I would have come across this potential cut anyway because I always scrutinize prepositions, but this particular phrase gives me pause.) Now, I know that some people don't like adverbs, but sometimes they're still better than the alternative. We can either (a) change the verb "watched" to something that implies avid interest, or (b) make David watch "avidly". I can't think of a better word at the moment; and I'm on the train, so I can't go to reference.com; so I'm going with the latter. Oh, and I don't think you need "still" in that sentence either. "But" implies that David's behavior is exceptional, and the sense ongoing-ness of his actions are implied in the next sentence. Result: "But David Leland watched avidly. It didn't seem to matter what she taught..." Then again, "It didn't seem to matter what she taught" is a long way of saying, essentially, "always". So even "No matter what she taught" can probably go away anyway, replaced by "He always..." "seem" [to matter] / "he seemed" are redundant qualifiers, even if they didn't have the same root word. Cut one. "for the knowledge..." seems long. Meg is packing in data: let's see what we can do with it. - hungry for knowledge
- what knowledge he's hungry for
- he lives in a small town
- he had always lived there
- he was mostly limited to it
What can we do with all of that? I don't want to change the voice too much, and changing, say, "hungry for knowledge" to "eager to learn" is a big deal. Notice a minor contradiction: no matter what she taught, he was hungry, it says; but he was hungry for things bigger than his small-town home. To be pedantic about it, if she taught him something about his home town's history, would he be hungry for it? Trimming might look like this: Make the change to "always"; "things and places" can probably be cut (it's just more than is necessary to get the point across). "He always seemed hungry for knowledge she could teach that went beyond the small town that had always been his world." (28 words to 21, 25%.) I don't love what I did here, though: "THAT went beyond the small town THAT had always been his world." It galumphs. So let's cut more deeply: "He always seemed to hunger for anything she taught that reached beyond his small-town world." This is a deeper cut (15 words from 28, a 53% cut) and also eliminates that minor contradiction. Note that "small-town" needs a hyphen; it's now a compound adjective that modifies "world", whereas before it was a noun phrase that was the object of the preposition "beyond". I was tempted to say "He always hungered for...", but I think that's a POV violation -- an easy-to-gloss-over one, but a POV violation nonetheless. If Meg thinks the paragraph can live without the "she taught" I'd pull that out, too. (17/28=61%.) Cut:But David Leland watched avidly. He always seemed to hunger for anything she taught that reached beyond his small-town world. Wow. That's a lot of effort to cut 44% of 36 original words. Next paragraph.
Original:She looked away, reminded again of Joseph, constant companion of her youth, David’s brother. Joseph, voracious for her company, jealous of any sign that she had interests that did not include him. When she had been accepted to the new Brigham Young Academy, he had suddenly discovered a zeal for higher education and began planning to follow her to Provo. She had presumed he stopped short of proposing merely because he was only seventeen to her sixteen. But she’d been patient. There would be plenty of time. We've just gone from direct observation of her frustration and surroundings to a daydream, so I don't want to lose the somewhat langourous (which is not to say "boring") quality of the writing here. I like the first sentence. Lots of data, given in pulses, like three waves in an incoming tide. "of any sign that she had interests that did not include him" seems long. How about "of any interests that did not include him"? Or "of her outside interests"? Or even "of anything that might distract her from him." As always, it depends on the author. "Jealous of any sign of outside interests" shows deeper jealousy than "jealous of any [implied actual] outside interests". We see in a moment that his jealousy is short-lived -- he marries someone else -- so I think the intensity level may not matter. On the other hand, if David loves her intensely, then showing that intensity in Joseph might be a form of foreshadowing. I think I'll leave it for Meg to pick something, if she thinks the alternatives work -- I'm not going to mess with something that could be that meaningful. Forms of to be are always worth looking at ("Always look at forms of to be": 7/9=22% :) ), like "had been accepted". Also, I don't think we need to know that BYA is "new". So how about "When Brigham Young Academy had accepted her"? And I don't think anyone needs "suddenly", because it's clear that her acceptance to BYA is the trigger of his interest in Higher Ed. I might cut "had" from "had discovered, and from "had presumed", if it's possible she still believed that. You could also cut one of the last two sentences -- "But there would be plenty of time." -- but I like the way they emphasize her mindset. These are all style choices I leave to Meg. I will make one little non-cutting edit, because there's a small temporal issue. The flashback is written in a form of past tense (what is it, grammar mavens? Past perfect?) that uses "had" to indicate actions already completed. So technically, there would have been plenty of time. But we're in her head, and "would" is a kind of conditional (again, not sure if I'm using the term right), and since we already know that he didn't actually propose to her, it sounds funny in this flashback. In other words, "would" only fits if the flashback were written in a tense that allowed conditionals, which the past perfect doesn't. I don't know if anyone else would notice, but I recommend saying "They had plenty of time." Cut:She looked away, reminded again of Joseph, constant companion of her youth, David’s brother. Joseph, voracious for her company, jealous of any sign that she had interests that did not include him. When Brigham Young Academy had accepted her, he had discovered a zeal for higher education and began planning to follow her to Provo. She had presumed he stopped short of proposing merely because he was only seventeen to her sixteen. But she’d been patient. They had plenty of time. 81 words from 87: 6%. I'm not unhappy about that. There's good character development here, and a nice rhythm. It's not all about word count.
Original:Kate's thoughts returned to the present as a pen fell to the floor with a clank. There is a string of phrases here that sound too pedestrian to my ear: " to the present as a pen fell to the floor with a clank." (The actual rhythm would be something more like, "to the PRESent as a PEN fell to the FLOOR with a CLANK.") Let's get the data together and try again. Data: * Kate's thoughts returned to the present. * A pen fell and made a noise. * The noise was the cause of Kate's return. Cut:A pen clanked onto the floor, bringing Kate back to the present. 12 words from 16, 25%. You could say "Kate's thoughts", but I don't think you need to.
Original:"Ah hem." She slapped the ruler down on the desk, finally rousing even the drowsiest child from his afternoon slumber. Minor cuts here. Cut:"Ah hem." She slapped the ruler on the desk, rousing the drowsiest children from their afternoon slumbers. 17 from 20 = 15%.
Original:"Are there any questions about the Cathar Crusade or the Episcopalian Inquisition of the Waldensians?" She waited. No hands went up. "Good. There will be an exam on the subject tomorrow morning. And I will be visiting each of your homes this weekend to share the results of this semester's progress with your parents." The children looked at her as though she were the most nefarious witch in the entire world. I think her initial question is good as is: a little pedantic, making sure the key words are there. I like the punch of 'She waited. No hands went up. "Good...." I even like "There will be an exam on the subject tomorrow morning" (though you could probably cut "on the subject"), even though it uses "to be" (the alternatives don't really help). The next sentence is structured around a form of "to be" and can be condensed. Also, the prepositional phrase "of this semester's progress" raised a flag for me; I think she wants to share this semester's progress, not the results of this semester's progress. I can collapse prepositional phrases "of your homes" and "with your parents" into one. And I don't think we need "this semester's". The next sentence has at least one prepositional phrase that can be condensed. I wanted to change "she were the world's" to active voice, but couldn't think of an elegant way to do it. Cut:"Are there any questions about the Cathar Crusade or the Episcopalian Inquisition of the Waldensians?" She waited. No hands went up. "Good. There will be an exam on the subject tomorrow morning. And I will visit each of your parents this weekend to share your progress." The children looked at her as though she were the world's most nefarious witch. 60 words from 71, or 15%. I should pause for a moment and talk about prepositional phrases. I've been struggling with how I should express this for the last few posts, because I always look at them and think, "Oh, good! Prepositional phrases! Something to cut!" and then I end up not even cutting them. So what gives? Well, first, note that I don't hate them. I don't think we can always eliminate them, or that we should try to eliminate all of them. But looking at them almost always bears fruit. Let's look at how looking at them informed the changes I just made. - Sometimes you can collapse them using a possessive ("the most nefarious witch IN the world" becomes "the world's most nefarious witch")
- Sometimes they show that the author misdirected the verb. Above, the author probably wrote "share the results" and then wanted to answer the question, "results of what?" That made her go on, "OF this semester's progress". But it's really the progress that she wants to share -- "results" was a red herring, which is why she needed the prepositional phrase to explain it.*
- Too many prepositional phrases often give the text a repetitive, galumphing feel. It feels like the mind starts a thought and just starts piling additional facts into it. You can often restructure the sentence to be clearer, which often results in more compact prose.
Enough of that for now.
Original:If I were evil, I would make you experience what I feel every day. The excruciating pain of her swollen legs was not the worst of it. The worst was the way children she'd known and loved their entire lives now taunted her and ridiculed her, trapped as she was in her disease-distorted body. Note that we use italics to set off internal monologue (i.e., thoughts) from the rest of the text. Otherwise, the tense gets confusing. The author uses "to be" forms a lot here, and "The worst was" follows "the worst of it". This is a candidate for restructuring. Look at the data: - Swollen legs
- Excruciating physical pain
- Diseased body
- Has known and loved (some of?) these children
- Children taunted and ridiculed her
- Emotional pain worse than physical
I question the use of "taunted and ridiculed" here, because none of the children are actually taunting or ridiculing her. Maybe "contempt" or "disdain"? And at any rate, I can probably use one word instead of two. The restructured sentence needs to be sensitive to the existing flow: hurtful looks from the children, then the If I were evil thought. Cut:If I were evil, I would make you experience what I feel every day. She had loved these children for their entire lives, and their taunts hurt her more than the excruciating pain from her disease-distorted legs. 37 words from 54, 31%.
Original:She held the schoolhouse door open, and the students exited like rocks released from a slingshot. She recalled the words of her physics professor as he'd released the ball he'd held high above his head, 'And thus we see potential energy converted to kinetic energy.' Did any of those bouncing, skipping children even know what 'kinetic' meant? Kate turned away from the bright heat of the outdoors to the oppressive dark heat of the small schoolhouse. Minor cuts here, triggered by seeing "of her physics professor", "of those bouncing...", and " from the bright heat of the outdoors to the oppressive dark heat of the small schoolhouse." I think I can eliminate "any of" from "any of those bouncing, skipping children" if I really want to, but I decided to leave it. It's the difference between making a general complaint (as a group, do they?) and a specific one (I don't think any child here does). I like the balance of outside-bright heat and oppressive-dark heat. I almost trimmed "of the small schoolhouse", but I think it characterizes the setting enough that I'd keep it. Cut:She held the schoolhouse door open, and the students exited like rocks released from a slingshot. She recalled her physics professor releasing a ball from high above his head and saying, 'And thus we see potential energy converted to kinetic energy.' Did any of those bouncing, skipping children know what 'kinetic' meant? Kate turned from the bright outdoor heat to the oppressive dark heat of the small schoolhouse. 68 words from 76, 11%.
Original:Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dark, so she almost walked right into David Leland.
"Pardon me, Miss DeLong." David looked down at his hands in rueful embarrassment. His voice came out slightly stilted as he continued. "I wanted to say that the bellicose behavior of the medieval church resulted in heinous acts of depravity." First, leaving the minor cuts aside, note that 425 original words have passed from the beginning until this event. 324 words, or 3/4 of the total so far, have passed since we've been introduced to David. In other words, 75% or the story so far is waiting for something to happen with David after he was introduced. (In the cut version, it's 343 words and 275 words, or 80%.) The author has given us a lot of data -- characterization, setting, emotion -- so I don't want to say that she should cut everything that has come between our introduction to David and now; but it's reasonable to ask, "Is some of this information extraneous? Can I get to this point faster without sacrficing emotional impact?" I don't know the answer. It might be "no". :) I'm just pointing out the question. That's a structural issue. This text itself seems fine, needing only minor cuts. We might trim "yet" from "not yet adjusted", "right" from "walked right into", either "down" or "at his hands", "rueful" from "rueful embarrassment" -- rather than cut every possible thing, I played with those ideas and came up with a version I like. "His voice came out slightly stilted" seems a touch long, and could be replaced with a more active verb. I like David's sentence: a little nerdy, a little shy, an apple for the teacher. Cut:Her eyes had not adjusted to the dark, so she almost walked into David Leland.
"Pardon me, Miss DeLong." David looked down at his hands in embarrassment. He stammered slightly as he continued. "I wanted to say that the bellicose behavior of the medieval church resulted in heinous acts of depravity." 51 words from 57, 11%.
Original:Kate stood still for a moment, stunned. "Why David Leland Heywood, thank you. And may I say that you used each one of those vocabulary words perfectly correctly." A smile began to creep onto her face, reflecting her inner transformation from jaded spinster-schoolmarm to joyous teacher. David looked into her face at that moment. Her joy in the magnitude of his achievement mingled with her awareness of how much her approval meant to him. The smile slid from her face.
So Kate, will you foil David yet again? "Began to creep" or "crept"? "At that moment" isn't needed because we've been proceeding chronologically. (Stood still, smile began to creep, David looked.) Do we really need "the magnitude of"? Is the use of vocabulary words really an achievement of an extremely high magnitude? If so, keep it; I cut it. For that matter, do we need "in his achievement"? We've already seen an Kate's "inner transformation...to joyous teacher", and "in his achievement" forces the reader to put her joy in that context. But there are probably a lot of things resonating around in Kate right now: David's achievement, the fact that he actually tries, a validation of her identity as a teacher, the justification of all of the hours spent in the dark heat. Maybe we should just show her joy, and let the reader feel all of those joyful resonances -- only implied but still present -- instead of just his achievement. "her awareness of how much her approval meant to him" -- "of / to" triggered me to look at this. We can handle it a few ways. - We can say, "her awareness of how much he loved her approval", which is stronger and gets the words "loved her" in it.
- We could also use something like, "her awareness that he longed for her approval."
- We could combine it with the next line, in which her joy is clouded and the smile slides from her face. (This might also eliminate the repetition of "joyous" and "joy", and of "David looked into her face" and "smile slid from her face"; although I didn't notice them at first, a very sensitive reader might have.) "Her joy faded as she thought of how much her approval meant to him."
Cut:Kate stood still for a moment, stunned. "Why David Leland Heywood, thank you. And may I say that you used each one of those vocabulary words perfectly." A smile crept onto her face, reflecting her inner transformation from jaded spinster-schoolmarm to joyous teacher. David looked into her face. Her joy faded as she thought of how much her approval meant to him.
So Kate, will you foil David yet again? 70 words from 88: 20%.
Original:She thought of that first day she had understood his intent. She had fled outside to the back of the chapel, unwilling to watch as Joseph and his young bride, Margaret Henrie, returned home to Panguitch. David had found her in tears. Silently he had gathered her in his strong arms and rocked her back and forth. It was the first time any man had touched her since the disease caused her ankles to swell like mutated gourds. Clothing concealed the details of how the deformity thickened her legs and arms.
By the time she discovered the disease affected her breasts and privates, she'd almost not cared. After all, what man would ever know? "she had understood his intent" confused me a little bit, so I'd like to cut and be more explicit at the same time. Because I introduced Joseph's name in the first sentence, I replaced it with a pronoun in the second. There are some other cuts I could make -- should make, really, and then let Meg decide if she wants to keep them -- but I dislike the results enough that I'm dismissing them out of hand. I'm leaving these paragraphs mostly alone. Cut:She thought of Joseph's wedding. She had fled outside to the back of the chapel, unwilling to watch him and his young bride, Margaret Henrie, return home to Panguitch. David, finding her in tears, had silently gathered her in his strong arms and rocked her back and forth. It was the first time any man had touched her since the disease caused her ankles to swell like mutated gourds. Clothing concealed the details of how the deformity thickened her legs and arms.
By the time she discovered the disease affected her breasts and privates, she'd almost not cared. After all, what man would ever know? 105 from 114, 8%.
Original:But that day, with David's arms around her and the reality of him filling her senses, she'd realized that her body didn't know it was horrific, that no man could desire a woman trapped in such a prison. Her body felt the same heady delight that had coursed through her when Joseph had first held her and kissed her for the first time. But she was no teenager. She'd gently but firmly extracted herself from David's embrace, thankful for the serendipity of a prior appointment to make her excuse real. We probably don't need both David's arms around her (we already know they are) and the reality of him filling her senses. Maybe we can combine them, or maybe just keep one. We probably don't need both "first held her" and "kissed her for the first time". At the least, the two "first"s are redundant. I feel like the doubled mental activity -- "she'd realized" and "body didn't know" -- should be collapsed into one thing. I can't think of a good way to do it, though. If anyone wants to plug one into the comments, I'd be interested in your solutions. "it was horrific" and "she was no teenager" are both appropriate uses of "to be". They're not passive, really, because there's no reasonable active counterpart. "FOR the serendipity OF a prior appointment" led me to cut the first prepositional phrase, which led me to make the infinitive "to make" into a past tense "made" form and other related changes. Cut:But that day, with the reality of David filling her senses, she'd realized that her body didn't know it was horrific, that no man could desire a woman trapped in such a prison. Her body felt the same heady delight that had coursed through her when Joseph had first kissed her. But she was no teenager. She'd gently but firmly extracted herself from David's embrace, thankful that a prior appointment made her excuse real. 74 from 90: 18%.
Original:Ever since she had been careful to never encourage David. But he had not waivered in his quiet kindness. He never joined the discussion of whether her scourge was due to her own sin or the sin of another. David simply accepted her. The prepositional phrase "in his quiet kindness" can be collapsed. "was due" can be turned around: "whether her own sin or the sin of another had caused". "joined the discussion" can be collapsed to "joined discussions", and "joined discussions of whether" can be further collapsed to "discussed whether". I think "discussed whether" loses the sense that there are discussions about it already going on, so I'm sticking with "joined discussions". Cut:She had never encouraged David, but his quiet kindness had not wavered. He never joined discussions of whether her own sin or that of another had caused her scourge. David simply accepted her. 33 from 43, 23%.
Original:The dark years at the Academy had scarred her soul. The darker reality of being pariah in her own hometown was worse. But her barriers were washed away in his steady, unflinching devotion. Melted in his regard as the ice on the mountains evaporated in the heat of early summer. His faithfulness had freed her. "was worse" might be cut. This is really something for Meg to decide, because it changes the sentence structure and the feel somewhat. I really wanted to do something with "OF being pariah IN her hometown" (should that be a pariah? I've never seen that usage before), but couldn't think of a good way to do it. "barriers were washed away in his...devotion" can be flipped around to remove the passivity, and I think you only need one of "steady" and "unflinching". I chose "steady" because it reminds me of raindrops, and there's a washing and melting theme going on. I also eliminated the fragment. Cut:The dark years at the Academy, and the darker reality of being pariah in her hometown, had scarred her soul. But his steady devotion had washed away her barriers. They had melted in his regard as the ice on the mountains evaporated in the heat of early summer. His faithfulness had freed her. 53 from 55: 4%. Original:She never knew what it was that he saw in that moment. But his face lit up like the sun at high noon. Perhaps her smile crossed the invisible line she'd maintained between them since that January afternoon. He closed the distance between them, gathering her in a kiss. "it was that" is a waste phrase. "at high noon" and "afternoon" repeat just a little bit, and I think we can cut "since that January afternoon" anyway. Cut:She never knew what he saw in that moment. But his face lit up like the sun at high noon. Perhaps her smile crossed the invisible line she'd maintained between them. He closed the distance between them, gathering her in a kiss. 42 from 49: 14%.
Original:When they broke for breath, he gently stroked her hair away from her forehead.
"Marry me, Miss Delong." As the silence stretched, he added, "Please?"
She couldn't help it. She laughed. The first laugh she'd uttered in five years.
"I will. I will.” I think this bit stays as is. So here's the new version:
The air lay stagnant on Kate's exposed skin, and she couldn't even bare her legs to let evaporation cool them. Only a few children even pretended to listen to her history of the Crusades. The rest slept, spittle pooling on their desks.
How can information infiltrate sleeping minds?
But David Leland watched avidly. He always seemed to hunger for anything she taught that reached beyond his small-town world.
She looked away, reminded again of Joseph, constant companion of her youth, David’s brother. Joseph, voracious for her company, jealous of any sign that she had interests that did not include him. When Brigham Young Academy had accepted her, he had discovered a zeal for higher education and began planning to follow her to Provo. She had presumed he stopped short of proposing merely because he was only seventeen to her sixteen. But she’d been patient. They had plenty of time.
A pen clanked onto the floor, bringing Kate back to the present.
"Ah hem." She slapped the ruler on the desk, rousing the drowsiest children from their afternoon slumbers.
"Are there any questions about the Cathar Crusade or the Episcopalian Inquisition of the Waldensians?" She waited. No hands went up. "Good. There will be an exam on the subject tomorrow morning. And I will visit each of your parents this weekend to share your progress." The children looked at her as though she were the world's most nefarious witch.
If I were evil, I would make you experience what I feel every day. She had loved these children for their entire lives, and their taunts hurt her more than the excruciating pain from her disease-distorted legs.
She held the schoolhouse door open, and the students exited like rocks released from a slingshot. She recalled her physics professor releasing a ball from high above his head and saying, 'And thus we see potential energy converted to kinetic energy.' Did any of those bouncing, skipping children know what 'kinetic' meant? Kate turned from the bright outdoor heat to the oppressive dark heat of the small schoolhouse.
Her eyes had not adjusted to the dark, so she almost walked into David Leland.
"Pardon me, Miss DeLong." David looked down at his hands in embarrassment. He stammered slightly as he continued. "I wanted to say that the bellicose behavior of the medieval church resulted in heinous acts of depravity."
Kate stood still for a moment, stunned. "Why David Leland Heywood, thank you. And may I say that you used each one of those vocabulary words perfectly." A smile crept onto her face, reflecting her inner transformation from jaded spinster-schoolmarm to joyous teacher. David looked into her face. Her joy faded as she thought of how much her approval meant to him.
So Kate, will you foil David yet again?
She thought of Joseph's wedding. She had fled outside to the back of the chapel, unwilling to watch him and his young bride, Margaret Henrie, return home to Panguitch. David, finding her in tears, had silently gathered her in his strong arms and rocked her back and forth. It was the first time any man had touched her since the disease caused her ankles to swell like mutated gourds. Clothing concealed the details of how the deformity thickened her legs and arms.
By the time she discovered the disease affected her breasts and privates, she'd almost not cared. After all, what man would ever know?
But that day, with the reality of David filling her senses, she'd realized that her body didn't know it was horrific, that no man could desire a woman trapped in such a prison. Her body felt the same heady delight that had coursed through her when Joseph had first kissed her. But she was no teenager. She'd gently but firmly extracted herself from David's embrace, thankful that a prior appointment made her excuse real.
She had never encouraged David, but his quiet kindness had not wavered. He never joined discussions of whether her own sin or that of another had caused her scourge. David simply accepted her.
The dark years at the Academy, and the darker reality of being pariah in her hometown, had scarred her soul. But his steady devotion had washed away her barriers. They had melted in his regard as the ice on the mountains evaporated in the heat of early summer. His faithfulness had freed her.
She never knew what he saw in that moment. But his face lit up like the sun at high noon. Perhaps her smile crossed the invisible line she'd maintained between them. He closed the distance between them, gathering her in a kiss.
When they broke for breath, he gently stroked her hair away from her forehead.
"Marry me, Miss Delong." As the silence stretched, he added, "Please?"
She couldn't help it. She laughed. The first laugh she'd uttered in five years.
"I will. I will.” 814 from 964: about 16%. What do you think? Labels: fiction, novels
Novel Opener
I reserve the right to modify this post a little bit. I'm in a hurry right now. :) This is the opening of a novel by Jeanne. The original, below, is 728 words. A scream echoed through the valley. Jessup stood in the copse of trees, barely breathing. Below the camp of the Faragund army teemed with movement. He pressed back against the tree behind him knowing that in the shadows of the dense trees he would be impossible to spot from below. The scene showed him what a bad idea being captured would be.
The wind brought the sound of the mages chanting. One of the scouts from Ilkasar hung bound by his hands from a tall stake, feet not dangling a handspan above the ground. The muscles of Jessup's jaw knotted, but saving the man wasn't even a possibility in the middle of an army that stretched nearly to the horizon. Jessup felt fairly sure it was the Faragund King who stood before the prisoner. Five mages stood, covered from head to foot in flowing black robes.
The king was of no great height, but massively muscled with a vast chest and arms. His biceps bulged from his gold brocade vest catching the bright sunlight. The man's blond hair flowed in a mass of braids to below his shoulders. On each of his cheeks, scars ran from mouth to hairline. Long strands of a blond mustache drooped from corners of his mouth.
He raised a long ceremonial dagger and plunged it into the scout's arm. The man gave a hoarse scream. Blood gushed and one of the mages rushed forward to catch the liquid in a bowl that glinted golden in the sunlight.
For the entire day Jessup had watched the scout being bled. The ground around him was black with it. At first they had simply let the blood drip into the dirt while the prisoner had refused to scream. Now his head drooped, and he hardly seemed alive. With each slash, they poured blood onto the stone altar standing nearby.
Jessup stared past the camp into the thick forest of oak to the east where giant trees reached toward the sky and a gentle dark settled between their columns of their trunks. He sucked in a deep breath to slow the pounding of his heart. He had seen horrors in his days, from the day his own people were slaughtered, but watching this was a twist to the guts.
Jessup forced his eyes back to the Faragund camp. The altar he recognized as one to the god Kanandra, but he wasn't sure what magic they were powering with this. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Khyle would want word of their movements though. Jessup doubted that any of Khyle's scouts had escaped.
He had told Jessup that he feared the Faragund had gained enough power to attack the Ilkasar Empire again. It had been twenty years since their last attack had failed, and the Faragund army was wiped out by the Ilkasar's Sharenta mages and the Ilkasar Imperial army. The hatred between the Faragund god Kanandra and his twin the goddess Urthus, whom the Ilkasar worshiped, mirrored the hatred between their followers. Stories still circulated about the fierceness of the fighting. Few families hadn't lost someone to the Faragund.
One of the mages near the king motioned to him and seemed to speak. The sound of the chanting changed, becoming softer but more insistent. Jessup shuddered. He had no magic but even he could feel the surge of power as the chants grew demanding. He sucked in his breath as the King plunged the dagger to the hilt into the scout's chest. Jessup gritted his teeth.
The mages' chanting again changed cadence, growing faster and faster. Smoke swirled around the altar.
The King ripped the dagger up the dead scout's chest. He jerked and sawed and then pulled out the dripping heart. Jessup thought he removed other parts, but with the king blocking his way to see exactly what was happening. He raised both arms over his head. Blood ran down his arms in rivulets as the mages chanted on and on, getting louder with every heartbeat. A roar from out of the smoke ripped the air.
The chanting stopped. Smoke from the altar drifted on the breeze. The king stood motionless watching. Then he turned and struck one of the mages a blow across the face, knocking the man to the ground. The conjuration, whatever it was supposed to do, hadn't made the King happy. My first thought is that we might be able to start slightly later, when the king stabs the scout; but I tried that, and it wasn't easy, so first I'll try a more straightforward cut of the introductory scene.
Original:A scream echoed through the valley. Jessup stood in the copse of trees, barely breathing. Below the camp of the Faragund army teemed with movement. He pressed back against the tree behind him knowing that in the shadows of the dense trees he would be impossible to spot from below. The scene showed him what a bad idea being captured would be.
The wind brought the sound of the mages chanting. One of the scouts from Ilkasar hung bound by his hands from a tall stake, feet not dangling a handspan above the ground. The muscles of Jessup's jaw knotted, but saving the man wasn't even a possibility in the middle of an army that stretched nearly to the horizon. Jessup felt fairly sure it was the Faragund King who stood before the prisoner. Five mages stood, covered from head to foot in flowing black robes.
The king was of no great height, but massively muscled with a vast chest and arms. His biceps bulged from his gold brocade vest catching the bright sunlight. The man's blond hair flowed in a mass of braids to below his shoulders. On each of his cheeks, scars ran from mouth to hairline. Long strands of a blond mustache drooped from corners of his mouth. Look at the critical data from the first several paragraphs: - The main character is Jessup
- The Faragund is the enemy
- They are cruel
- The Faragund king (Jessup thinks) is bleeding a captured scout to invoke a spell
- Jessup is hiding in the woods from the Faragund army
- The Faragund army is assembled below him, where the king is bleeding the scout
- The player list is fairly long: Faragund, the Faragund god Kanandra and his twin sister Urthus, Khyle, the Ilkasar Empire, the Ilkasar Empire's Sharenta mages
We may not need all of that detail; even if we need it, we might not need it just yet. I'd like to get to the action, the knife thrust, earlier. (I actually tried to rewrite the scene starting with the knife thrust, but found it hard to do.) The passage has one structural problem: every paragraph has some information about every person in the scene. That makes Jeanne have to identify everyone in every sentence. I've broken that up, so the paragraph structure now looks like this: - Scream
- Setting / POV establishment
- Scout description
- Jessup interlude
- King description
- Description of mages
Descriptions should be easier -- note below that I can abridge "The man's blond hair flowed in a mass of braids..." to "Thick blond braids flowed...". "A scream echoed through the valley" isn't a particularly strong way of opening this scene, for several reasons. It doesn't introduce the POV character; the POV character knows who is screaming and why, but the sentence doesn't give us any of this compelling detail; and the latest stabbing hasn't happened yet, as far as I can tell, so it feels funny -- as if I'm getting a preview of the stab that's about to come. Let's cut it, painting the setting first. Little things tip me off to what else can be cut. For instance, "stood in the copse of trees" and "pressed his back against the tree" and "the dense trees" indicated that we might be able to incorporate all of the tree description into a smaller space. The concepts I need are "shelter", "copse", and "individual tree". It seems to me that the writing shows too much of the thinking vs. what's being thought: "knowing that", "showed him", "the wind brought the sound", "felt fairly sure". Since I know that anything in the description is in Jessup's POV -- not always true in every story, but Jeanne has done a good job with third-person limited POV here -- I shouldn't have to think about how Jessup experiences or knows what he does. The only one that might be needed is "felt fairly sure", since saying "the Faramund King" wouldn't show Jessup's lack of certainty. If we just show the experience without the self-consciousness, we should get a more direct prose style (most important) and fewer words (a byproduct of the direct style). Lots of prepositional phrases: for example, " in the copse of trees", " against the tree behind him" " in the shadows of the dense trees". These aren't always a problem, but the indicate something about sentence structure to me. Even if I don't cut them directly, I generally look for things to cut or ways to restructure in the paragraphs that contain them. Lots of forms of "to be": for example, "The scene showed him what a bad idea being captured would be." (Although I think that sentence doesn't add a lot of value anyway -- if the scene shows what a bad idea being captured would be, and you're about to show the scene, why tell us ahead of time?) There are little things that I noticed, too, that aren't strictly related to cutting. - Alliteration is chief among them: "barely breathing" (which would be mundane enough to go unnoticed if it weren't for the rest of it), "felt fairly sure it was the Faragund King", "five mages...head to foot in flowing...", "massively muscled", "biceps bulged...brocade vest...bright sunlight", "blond hair...braids...below his shoulders". (In the next paragraph, "blood gushed...bowl that glinted golden".) A little alliteration isn't likely to get noticed, but sometimes we write as though we're creating Anglo-Saxon poetry. So we'll look for this, and even if we don't eliminate it all, we'll especially avoid having the alliterative letters fall on accented syllables close together, as in "BARE-ly BREATH-ing" and "BI-ceps BULGED".
- The narrator describes the scout, but doesn't mention the blood that must cover him if he has been bled all day.
Let's cut deeply, maybe more than we're comfortable with. We can always put stuff back. Cut:Jessup pressed his back against a tree, using the copse's shadows to hide from the teeming Faragund army encamped below.
An Ilkasar scout hung bound by his hands from a tall stake, feet dangling a handspan above the ground. Blond braids flowed down below his shoulders, and long strands of a blond mustache drooped from the corners of his mouth. On each cheek, scars ran from mouth to hairline.
Jessup's jaw muscles knotted, but the army stretched nearly to the horizon -- he couldn't save him.
A man -- Jessup thought it was the Faragund King -- stood before the prisoner. Though of no great height, he was massively muscled; gold brocade covered his vast chest and arms, glinting in the sunlight.
Five mages stood chanting nearby, covered from head to foot in flowing black robes. 211 words to 135, or about 36%. Not bad as far as it goes. The picture is still static -- we're setting up for the knife thrust rather than starting with it -- but the reader has 76 fewer words to get through to get there.
Original:The king raised a long ceremonial dagger and plunged it into the scout's arm. The man gave a hoarse scream. Blood gushed and one of the mages rushed forward to catch the liquid in a bowl that glinted golden in the sunlight. "raised...and plunged" is cinematic and draws out the tension, so though I could cut it to just "The king plunged a long..." I don't want to do that. I don't love "The man gave a hoarse scream", but I'm not sure what to do about it. - "Gave a scream" doesn't seem as strong (or as short) as "screamed", but I don't really want to say "screamed hoarsely", either.
- Cutting "hoarse" eliminates the sense that the man has been screaming a lot. Now, we're about to hear how the king has been bleeding the scout all day, so maybe we don't need "hoarse" -- but in original, that explanation occurred in the next paragraph, making it less immediate.
- Maybe we could attach it to the previous sentence: "into the scout's arm, evoking a hoarse scream."
- Maybe we use the stronger verb, which would normally also reduce the word count, but expound a little bit instead: "The man screamed, his voice hoarse..."
- Maybe we bring some of Jessup's attitude to the description, getting deeper into his POV and characterizing him a little bit more.
I think I'll do the latter. To do so, I need to steal some of the text (which I will also trim, of course) from the next few paragraphs: Original:For the entire day Jessup had watched the scout being bled. The ground around him was black with it. At first they had simply let the blood drip into the dirt while the prisoner had refused to scream. Now his head drooped, and he hardly seemed alive. With each slash, they poured blood onto the stone altar standing nearby.
Jessup stared past the camp into the thick forest of oak to the east where giant trees reached toward the sky and a gentle dark settled between their columns of their trunks. He sucked in a deep breath to slow the pounding of his heart. He had seen horrors in his days, from the day his own people were slaughtered, but watching this was a twist to the guts. Cut:The king raised a long ceremonial dagger and plunged it into the scout's arm.
Jessup winced at his hoarse scream and sucked in a deep breath, trying to slow the pounding of his heart. He had seen horrors in his days, even his own people slaughtered, but this twisted his guts.
They had bled the scout for the entire day. At first he had refused to scream, and they let his blood drip into the dirt. The ground was black with it. Finally, as now, a mage would rush forward to catch it in a golden bowl and pour it onto the stone altar nearby. 105 words from 170: 38%. I lost some data, though: "thick oak forest" (not just a copse of trees) "to the east" (orientation) "gentle dark" (characterization of Jessup and the forest). I can fit that in later, as he starts to leave. [In the event, I didn't -- Jeanne will have to decide whether she misses it.] I also lost "his head drooped, and he hardly seemed alive", but I don't know that that's necessary at this point. Notice that I had to slice the paragraphs up carefully to make sure the pronouns work. - The first paragraph is the king's action.
- The second is Jessup's reaction. This was needed to make sure the references to "he" and "his" were unambiguous. The only one that doesn't refer to Jessup is the first one, "his hoarse scream", and I don't think that will cause any problems.
- The third is about the scout. "He" and "his" refer only to him.
Maybe I didn't need to do that; the original had the same kind of problem. For the entire day Jessup had watched the scout being bled. The ground around him was black with it. At first they had simply let the blood drip into the dirt while the prisoner had refused to scream. Now his head drooped, and he hardly seemed alive. Technically, it's ambiguous whether the ground was black around the scout or around Jessup. Also, Jeanne couldn't easily replace "the prisoner" with "he" in the phrase "the prisoner had refused to scream" -- for just a fraction of an instant, the brain has to figure out whether "he" refers to Jessup or to the scout. To me, it just sounds wrong. If you found the original to be fine, then you might not care as much about the disambiguation I undertook here. As always, it's the author's call.
Original:Jessup forced his eyes back to the Faragund camp. The altar he recognized as one to the god Kanandra, but he wasn't sure what magic they were powering with this. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Khyle would want word of their movements though. Jessup doubted that any of Khyle's scouts had escaped.
He had told Jessup that he feared the Faragund had gained enough power to attack the Ilkasar Empire again. It had been twenty years since their last attack had failed, and the Faragund army was wiped out by the Ilkasar's Sharenta mages and the Ilkasar Imperial army. The hatred between the Faragund god Kanandra and his twin the goddess Urthus, whom the Ilkasar worshiped, mirrored the hatred between their followers. Stories still circulated about the fierceness of the fighting. Few families hadn't lost someone to the Faragund. I ended the last paragraph with a reference to the stone altar. Let's pick up there, and, since he was thinking (it's a flashback), we can continue the same paragraph with additional thoughts. I don't have to force his eyes back to the Faragund camp, because I never made them leave it. Since "the altar" is the last thing I mentioned, I can refer to it more simply. That also lets me avoid the object-subject-verb structure currently in place ("The altar he recognized'). Cut:[...and pour it onto the stone altar nearby.] He could see that it was for the Faragund god Kanandra, twin of the Ilkasar goddess Urthus -- their hatred for each other mirrored the hatred between their followers -- but he couldn't tell what magic they were attempting.
He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Khyle would, though. He had told Jessup that the Faragund might attack the Ilkasar Empire again, for the first time in twenty years. Back then, Ilkasar's Sharenta mages and Imperial army had wiped out the Faragund army. Stories still circulated about the fierceness of the fighting. Few families hadn't lost someone to the Faragund.
Jessup doubted that any of Khyle's scouts had escaped. 141 words becomes 109: 23%.
Original:One of the mages near the king motioned to him and seemed to speak. The sound of the chanting changed, becoming softer but more insistent. Jessup shuddered. He had no magic but even he could feel the surge of power as the chants grew demanding. He sucked in his breath as the King plunged the dagger to the hilt into the scout's chest. Jessup gritted his teeth. Little cuts: "One of the mages near the king motioned to him" seems a bit long. "near the king" and "to him" are prepositional phrases with the same object, but one uses a pronoun, so they can probably be condensed. Make it "One of the mages motioned to the king". (They're already near him; it doesn't matter exactly how near they are; we just need to show change related to the king, since the mages will explicitly change their chanting in a moment anyway.) "He sucked in his breath" serves the same function as "Jessup gritted his teeth" -- characterizing Jessup and keeping us in his POV. I'd cut one of them. "as the chants grew demanding" is redundant with "but more insistent", so we should cut one (and I think the former is the obvious choice here). Note that we have to change "the surge of power" to "a surge of power" to make that work. Cut:One of the mages motioned to the king and seemed to speak. The chanting became softer but more insistent. Jessup shuddered. He had no magic but even he could feel a surge of power. He sucked in his breath as the King plunged the dagger to the hilt into the scout's chest. 52 words from 67: 22%.
Original:The mages' chanting again changed cadence, growing faster and faster. Smoke swirled around the altar. "again changed cadence" and "and faster" both serve to draw out the sentence. Jeanne might like the way this adds tension. Personally, I don't, so I'm cutting them. This is just a matter of taste, and Jeanne will have to decide what she prefers. Cut:The mages' chanting grew faster. Smoke swirled around the altar.
Original:The King ripped the dagger up the dead scout's chest. He jerked and sawed and then pulled out the dripping heart. Jessup thought he removed other parts, but with the king blocking his way to see exactly what was happening. He raised both arms over his head. Blood ran down his arms in rivulets as the mages chanted on and on, getting louder with every heartbeat. A roar from out of the smoke ripped the air. The only individual sentence that feels problematic here is "Jessup thought he removed other parts, but with the king blocking his way to see exactly what was happening." It's a fragment, for one thing, and I think we can tighten it even so. The paragraph itself has one deviant among the pronouns. "He jerked" and "he removed" refers to the King; "his way" refers to Jessup; "He raised" and subsequent pronouns refer to the king again. I don't think it's really critical, but I'd like to use something like "He seemed to..." because that way all male pronouns in the paragraph refer to the king. "with the king blocking his way to see" is "the king blocked Jessup's view". "To see exactly what was happening" is redundant with "Jessup thought" showing the uncertainty and "blocked his view" to show its cause. Cut:The King ripped the dagger up the dead scout's chest. He jerked and sawed and then pulled out the dripping heart. He might have removed other parts, too, but his body blocked Jessup's view. He raised both arms over his head. Blood ran down his arms in rivulets as the mages chanted on and on, getting louder with every heartbeat. A roar from out of the smoke ripped the air. 76 becomes 70: 8%, with one fragment fixed.
Original:The chanting stopped. Smoke from the altar drifted on the breeze. The king stood motionless watching. Then he turned and struck one of the mages a blow across the face, knocking the man to the ground. The conjuration, whatever it was supposed to do, hadn't made the King happy. After the tension build-up, the short sentences here work very nicely to show an anticipation that goes unfulfilled. There's no need to show that the king was "watching". (You might even consider it a POV violation, though of the least problematic kind.) "a blow" is redundant with "struck". I think we can lose the whole last sentence. "whatever it was supposed to do" characterizes Jessup (because we're in his POV still), but in a way that has already been done; and Jeanne has already shown that the king is unhappy, so there's no need to tell it again. Cut:The chanting stopped. Smoke from the altar drifted on the breeze. The king stood motionless. Then he turned and struck one of the mages across the face, knocking the man to the ground. 49 becomes 33: 33%.
I'm running out of time. Someone has requested the novel from Jeanne, due this week -- Go Jeanne! I'm really excited for you! -- so let me just finish up and get out of her way. This version is 515 words, down from 728, for a 29% cut. Jessup pressed his back against a tree, using the copse's shadows to hide from the teeming Faragund army encamped below.
An Ilkasar scout hung bound by his hands from a tall stake, feet dangling a handspan above the ground. Blond braids flowed down below his shoulders, and long strands of a blond mustache drooped from the corners of his mouth. On each cheek, scars ran from mouth to hairline.
Jessup's jaw muscles knotted, but the army stretched nearly to the horizon -- he couldn't save him.
A man -- Jessup thought it was the Faragund King -- stood before the prisoner. Though of no great height, he was massively muscled; gold brocade covered his vast chest and arms, glinting in the sunlight.
Five mages stood chanting nearby, covered from head to foot in flowing black robes.
The king raised a long ceremonial dagger and plunged it into the scout's arm.
Jessup winced at his hoarse scream and sucked in a deep breath, trying to slow the pounding of his heart. He had seen horrors in his days, even his own people slaughtered, but this twisted his guts.
They had bled the scout for the entire day. At first he had refused to scream, and they let his blood drip into the dirt. The ground was black with it. Finally, as now, a mage would rush forward to catch it in a golden bowl and pour it onto the stone altar nearby. He could see that it was for the Faragund god Kanandra, twin of the Ilkasar goddess Urthus -- their hatred for each other mirrored the hatred between their followers -- but he couldn't tell what magic they were attempting.
He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Khyle would, though. He had told Jessup that the Faragund might attack the Ilkasar Empire again, for the first time in twenty years. Back then, Ilkasar's Sharenta mages and Imperial army had wiped out the Faragund army. Stories still circulated about the fierceness of the fighting. Few families hadn't lost someone to the Faragund.
Jessup doubted that any of Khyle's scouts had escaped.
One of the mages motioned to the king and seemed to speak. The chanting became softer but more insistent. Jessup shuddered. He had no magic but even he could feel a surge of power. He sucked in his breath as the King plunged the dagger to the hilt into the scout's chest.
The mages' chanting grew faster. Smoke swirled around the altar.
The King ripped the dagger up the dead scout's chest. He jerked and sawed and then pulled out the dripping heart. He might have removed other parts, too, but his body blocked Jessup's view. He raised both arms over his head. Blood ran down his arms in rivulets as the mages chanted on and on, getting louder with every heartbeat. A roar from out of the smoke ripped the air.
The chanting stopped. Smoke from the altar drifted on the breeze. The king stood motionless. Then he turned and struck one of the mages across the face, knocking the man to the ground. What do you think? Labels: fiction, novels
Tripendicular Cuts
This is from Deb Hoag, and unlike the other recent fiction cuts, it comes from the middle of a story. She tells me, "The section that my first reader thought was loooooonnnnnnnggg (that's a direct quote) I have set off in the text with a line of asterisks....[It] is, oddly enough, exactly 1,000 words." She also says that she's not sure everyone will get the in jokes -- and I'm not sure that I will, so I may end up cutting some of them. As always, Deb, as author, can decide what stays in. Since the section was loooooonnnnnnnggg, I'm assuming that the content needs to be abridged so that it doesn't slow down the story as much. I also think that a good portion of the story's appeal comes from the semi-psychotic voice of the narrator: a man who "believes in better living through chemistry", if you get Deb's drift. So I need to cut a lot, but the voice and the science, for me, were more important than just getting back to the plot. Let's shoot for 25% again, but with an eye toward going deeper if there are bits unessential to the plot so this part doesn't feel quite so loooooonnnnnnnggg. (Yes, I just like that word.) Here's the original: I hadn't just blindly picked a school, because it was my parents' alma mater, either. I had been following the list of staff publications with some interest for the last few years. Mom wasn't kidding when she said Dad was one of the best organic chemists of his time. It's just that his time peaked in about 1962. Anyways, one of the professors in the organic chemistry department had been working on developing a strain of ergot resistant rye for years. He finally thought he had got it right, and the university was funding a full scale trial of the new rye, to the tune of ten acres, along with a matching trial on ten non-resistant control acres. They were going through a pretty elaborate process to keep it all buttoned up and prevent the ergot from drifting away free into the atmosphere, but I thought I could liberate a reasonable quantity of it for my own use. With Mom's hidden heartland acres to work with. I could be knee deep in ergot by the end of the next growing season.
It's really a sad commentary on our society that most people don't even know what ergot is anymore. In case you are wondering why I was so hot to get my hands on a quantity, the ergot fungus is what LSD was first synthesized from. Crazy, huh? They think now that that's how the Salem Witch Hunts got started – some funky rye bread was making the rounds, and BAM! Everybody went off on the same bad trip.
I had some ideas on how to extract the lysergic acid from the ergot and combine it was a couple of other tasty little items complements of Tab's home cookin' – a recipe all my own, that would let it pack a wallop, make sure the trip was a good one, and fly under the FDA radar detectors for a while.
It almost killed me trying to stay calm, cool and collected when, the first week of class, the prof I was stalking asked for volunteers to help him with his pet project. I could quote him chapter and verse on the papers he'd published in the last ten years. And, hey, professors don't get a lot of groupies. Plus, no one else had volunteered, so it's not like he had a big choice. It was just too damn early in the semester for any of these short-sighted college kids to be worrying about extra credit. Their loss,my immensely profitable secret gain.
I spent so much time hanging around the labs and doing odd jobs for the professor, that after a few weeks, nobody even bothered to ask me what I was doing anymore. I swiped a small amount of the ergot fungus, and a heaping helping of the non-resistant control rye seed. I like plants, and rye is not illegal. Mom, of course, really wanted me to do well in school, so she gave me five acres of my own on her little backwoods farm, and I was able to get it turned just in time for the grow season. In Michigan, everything grows, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. A little organic fertilizer, some of Mom's special Bug-Be-Gone spray, and voila! Rye crop.
Once the rye was successfully impregnated by the ergot, it was a downhill slide. I had enough of the fungus to psychedelicize the entire city of Detroit for about 100 years. And I was just getting started.
I really admired the creators of ecstasy, in an abstract sort of way, and this was the kind of success story I was shooting for. See, ecstasy is a combination of LSD and a stimulant, usually meth or cocaine (these are the components that stimulate all-important dopamine production). You get the fantastical trippiness of the LSD, driven by the dopamine ding-dong of the coke or meth. It was a pretty sound idea, overall, and I wasn't too proud to build on the work of those who came before me. I just wanted a dopamine driver that wouldn't show up on your basic four-panel drug screen.
Once I had the LSD, Mom and Fuzzwad and I developed the worst cases of chronic major depression ever seen in the Midwest, thanks to the floridly verbose professor in the psych class I elected. Between the depression and the doctor shopping and the fact that nobody had ever heard of someone getting addicted to anti-depressants, we ended up with enough prescription medication to sedate turn J.R. Ewing into a nice guy for an entire season.
Most amazing of all, out of nearly a hundred doctors we visited, a whopping seventeen of them left their prescription pads alone in the room with one of us at some point during their examinations. You know, somebody should warn them about people like us. Cautioning my troops (all two of them) to take a reasonable, not noticeable, amount of scrip papers from each pad, I was really in business. The pills were even simpler to break down and extract the psychoactive components of than the lysergic acid in the ergot had been. Being able to do it all on the university dime, with university's lab equipment only made it easier. I even got Mom in the building a couple of times to assist with the separations. You know, she really is a whiz in the lab. No wonder Dad was so crazy about her.
So, there was my recipe: one part LSD, which had combined nicely with an experimental steroid into a completely new molecule that packed twice the punch of its parents, while being completely unknown to the DEA, twenty parts super concentrated dopamine production stimulator, twenty parts – super-concentrated dopamine re-uptake inhibitor. Plus one small part of essence of safrole, just because I liked it. The lab mice liked it, too. Once Fuzzwad survived a dose and pronounced it “primo”, I was all set. I don't think I'd cut the overall flow. Not everything advances the plot, but there's a lot of character packed into these lines. I also have to be careful with cutting too much -- part of the charm of the piece is the rattle-bang prattle of the main character. Let's start.
Original:I hadn't just blindly picked a school, because it was my parents' alma mater, either. "just", "blindly", and "either" redundant -- they all give the impression that he's justifying his choice of schools. It's a minor point, and not worth that level of effort. Pick one, save two words (13%). Cut:I hadn't picked the school just because it was my parents' alma mater.
Original:I had been following the list of staff publications with some interest for the last few years. I assume he'd been following "the list of staff publications" because he wanted to follow the staff publications, and later he shows that he had actually read them, not just the list, so we can cut "the list". Also, if he's been following them "for years", odds are he had followed them "with interest", which is therefore redundant. "Had been following" uses a form of "to be", which can often (though not always) be cut. Cut:I had followed the staff publications for years. Savings: 9 words, 53%.
Original:Mom wasn't kidding when she said Dad was one of the best organic chemists of his time. It's just that his time peaked in about 1962. I might cut this altogether. I'll have to see what I think when I put it all back together. If the author wanted to leave it in, I'd do something like this: And Dad really was one of the best organic chemists of his time -- though that peaked around 1962. Savings: 7 words, 27%.
Original:Anyways, one of the professors in the organic chemistry department had been working on developing a strain of ergot resistant rye for years. If I cut the preceding sentence, I'll probably cut "Anyways," but I'll leave it in for now. "... of the professors in the organic chemistry department": prepositional phrases, especially strings of them, can often be cut. This can be laborious, and I don't always think the result sounds as natural as I'd like, but it's something to look for. And in this case, I think it works. And now that I think of it, we might be able to cut "organic chemistry", too -- does it really matter what he teaches? "working on" is redundant with "developing". Since the work is ongoing, "had been" can go to "was". And do we need to know that it had been going on "for years", or just that it is finally going to trial? No, I think, and the next sentence will change, too, as a result. Cut:Anyways, a professor was developing a strain of ergot resistant rye. Savings: 12 words, 52%. I should point out that the next paragraph, starting with "It's a really sad commentary", might be inserted here. If ergot needs explaining, it should probably be explained closer to where it's first mentioned.
Original:He finally thought he had got it right, and the university was funding a full scale trial of the new rye, to the tune of ten acres, along with a matching trial on ten non-resistant control acres. Since I didn't say "for years" in the preceding sentence, I don't have to say "He finally thought he had got it right" in this one. All that matters is the trial. Since the previous sentence's "ergot resistant rye" is now much closer to "full-scale trial", I think we can cut "trial of the new rye" to just "trial". As I cut the rest of the sentence, though -- where she talks about the "matching trial", which is just the control group for the same trial -- I thought "ten acres" now needed the "of the new rye", so that ended up being a reshuffle. Cut:The university was funding a full-scale trial, to the tune of ten acres of the new rye and ten non-resistant control acres. Savings: 15 words, 41%.
Original:They were going through a pretty elaborate process to keep it all buttoned up and prevent the ergot from drifting away free into the atmosphere, but I thought I could liberate a reasonable quantity of it for my own use. With Mom's hidden heartland acres to work with. I could be knee deep in ergot by the end of the next growing season. "They were going through a pretty elaborate process to" seems long. "keep it all buttoned up" is redundant with "prevent the ergot from drifting away free into the atmosphere". "prevent [etc.]" seems pretty long, too, now that I think of it... " in ergot by the end of the next growing season": prepositional phrase strings again. "in ergot" relates to something different (type of harvest) from "by the end of the next growing season" (time of harvest), so I won't collapse them completely, but how about "knee deep in ergot by the next harvest season"? (You might even be able to cut "season", but I don't know whether you harvest ergot at the same time you harvest the rye.) Cut:Elaborate processes kept the ergot from drifting away into the atmosphere, but I thought I could liberate a reasonable quantity of it for my own use. Mom's hidden heartland acres would be knee deep in ergot by the next harvest season. Savings: 39 words, 37%. Later, when I saw all of it together, I thought I could cut this even more. I don't really care about the ergot drifting away or the elaborate procedures.
Original:It's really a sad commentary on our society that most people don't even know what ergot is anymore. In case you are wondering why I was so hot to get my hands on a quantity, the ergot fungus is what LSD was first synthesized from. Crazy, huh? They think now that that's how the Salem Witch Hunts got started – some funky rye bread was making the rounds, and BAM! Everybody went off on the same bad trip. "on our society", "even", and "anymore" are all candidates to be cut, but I liked the flavor of this sentence with them more than I did without them. Heck, even I don't cut everything possible. That said, "In case you were wondering...quantity" is almost useless, hardly even contributing to the voice. Cut it. "the ergot fungus is what LSD was first synthesized from": two forms of "to be" should send a signal that this might be cuttable. I ended up leaving one of them, even though it's clearly passive voice: I think going to an active voice with this sentence is likely to detract from the character's voice. Cut:It's a sad commentary on our society that most people don't even know that LSD was first synthesized from the ergot fungus. Crazy, huh? People think that's how the Salem Witch Hunts got started – some funky rye bread was making the rounds, and BAM! Everybody went off on the same bad trip. Savings: 25 words, 32%.
Original:I had some ideas on how to extract the lysergic acid from the ergot and combine it was a couple of other tasty little items complements of Tab's home cookin' – a recipe all my own, that would let it pack a wallop, make sure the trip was a good one, and fly under the FDA radar detectors for a while. I want to be careful not to cut too much here, since this is so strongly the main character's voice. Note that the last sentence talked about "by the next harvest season." The narrator is thinking of the future. That lets me reduce "I had some ideas on how to" (looking to the past, "I had") to "I'd" (looking to the future). "combine it with a couple of other tasty little items complements of Tab's home cookin'" just seems long. "tasty little items", "complements of", and "home cookin'" all add a particular flavor (ouch! sorry about that...) to the sentence, but it's the same flavor. Let's cut two of the three, leaving the strongest in place. The author can put one or both back later if she likes. There are some other cuts in the second half that you can see, and I made one correction that also happens to be a cut: nobody flies under a radar detector, just under a radar. :) Cut:I'd extract lysergic acid from the ergot and add some of Tab's home cookin' – a recipe all my own that packs wallop, makes a good trip, and flies under the FDA radar for a while. Savings: 25 words, 42%.
Original:It almost killed me trying to stay calm, cool and collected when, the first week of class, the prof I was stalking asked for volunteers to help him with his pet project. I could quote him chapter and verse on the papers he'd published in the last ten years. And, hey, professors don't get a lot of groupies. Plus, no one else had volunteered, so it's not like he had a big choice. It was just too damn early in the semester for any of these short-sighted college kids to be worrying about extra credit. Their loss,my immensely profitable secret gain. Heh. I get a kick out of this, especially the last line. My goal is to cut the words without cutting the kick. "calm, cool and collected" is both cliche and long. Of the three, I think this guy would say "cool". "don't get a lot of groupies", "no one else had volunteered", "not like he had a big choice", and "too damn early [etc.]" all say roughly the same thing. Cut:It almost killed me trying to stay cool when, the first week of class, the prof I was stalking asked for volunteers for his pet project. He didn't have much choice: it's not like professors get a lot of groupies, and it was too damn early in the semester for college kids to worry about extra credit. Their loss, my immensely profitable secret gain. Savings: 37 words, 37%.
Original:I spent so much time hanging around the labs and doing odd jobs for the professor, that after a few weeks, nobody even bothered to ask me what I was doing anymore. Cut:After a few weeks of hanging around the labs and doing odd jobs for the professor, nobody bothered to ask what I was doing. Savings: 8 words, 25%.
Original:I swiped a small amount of the ergot fungus, and a heaping helping of the non-resistant control rye seed. I like plants, and rye is not illegal. I think the second sentence is unnecessary. Cut:I swiped a little ergot and a heaping helping of non-resistant rye seed. Savings: 14 words, 52%.
Original:Mom, of course, really wanted me to do well in school, so she gave me five acres of my own on her little backwoods farm, and I was able to get it turned just in time for the grow season. In Michigan, everything grows, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. A little organic fertilizer, some of Mom's special Bug-Be-Gone spray, and voila! Rye crop. "Mom". LOL... Can't lose that. In fact, I've got almost nothing to change. Cut:Mom, of course, really wanted me to do well in school, so she gave me five acres on her little backwoods farm. I got it turned just in time for the grow season. In Michigan, everything grows, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. A little organic fertilizer, some of Mom's special Bug-Be-Gone spray, and voila! Rye crop. Savings: 7 words, 11%.
Original:Once the rye was successfully impregnated by the ergot, it was a downhill slide. I had enough of the fungus to psychedelicize the entire city of Detroit for about 100 years. And I was just getting started. I don't think we need the details -- we know that the fungus grows on the rye. Cut:Soon I had enough fungus to psychedelicize the entire city of Detroit for about 100 years. And I was just getting started. Savings: 15 words, 41%.
Original:I really admired the creators of ecstasy, in an abstract sort of way, and this was the kind of success story I was shooting for. See, ecstasy is a combination of LSD and a stimulant, usually meth or cocaine (these are the components that stimulate all-important dopamine production). You get the fantastical trippiness of the LSD, driven by the dopamine ding-dong of the coke or meth. It was a pretty sound idea, overall, and I wasn't too proud to build on the work of those who came before me. I just wanted a dopamine driver that wouldn't show up on your basic four-panel drug screen. Okay, this has nothing to do with cutting, but I get totally caught up in the drug related-but-apparently-not-induced insanity of the main character in bits like this. Anyway (which is not "anyways" -- this narrator drives me a little crazy (in a good way) with that), I can't get rid of things like "fantastical trippiness". I didn't want to get rid of the "dopamine ding-dong of the coke or meth", even though we could say "dopamine ding-dong of the stimulant." What we'd save doesn't justify changing that crazy voice. Just minor cuts here. Cut:I really admired the creators of ecstasy, and I was shooting for their kind of success story. See, ecstasy combines LSD with a stimulant, usually meth or cocaine, to stimulate the all-important dopamine production. You get the fantastical trippiness of the LSD, driven by the dopamine ding-dong of the coke or meth. I wasn't too proud to build on the work of those who came before me. I just wanted a dopamine driver that wouldn't show up on your basic four-panel drug screen. Savings: 21 words, 20%.
Original:Once I had the LSD, Mom and Fuzzwad and I developed the worst cases of chronic major depression ever seen in the Midwest, thanks to the floridly verbose professor in the psych class I elected. Between the depression and the doctor shopping and the fact that nobody had ever heard of someone getting addicted to anti-depressants, we ended up with enough prescription medication to sedate turn J.R. Ewing into a nice guy for an entire season. This part seemed a little unclear to me, and I think that some bits (e.g., "the floridly verbose professor") aren't really needed. Cut:Once I had the LSD, Mom and Fuzzwad and I developed the worst cases of chronic major depression ever seen, and since nobody ever gets addicted to anti-depressants, we got enough prescription meds to turn J.R. Ewing into a nice guy for an entire season. Savings: 31 words, 41%.
Original:Most amazing of all, out of nearly a hundred doctors we visited, a whopping seventeen of them left their prescription pads alone in the room with one of us at some point during their examinations. You know, somebody should warn them about people like us. "alone in the room with one of us at some point" is a long string of prepositional phrases. In this case, we can cut most of them. I almost kept the "You know", but decided that cutting it doesn't significantly affect the voice. Cut:Most amazing of all, out of nearly a hundred doctors, a whopping seventeen left us alone with their prescription pads at some point. Somebody should warn them about people like us. Savings: 14 words, 31%.
Original:Cautioning my troops (all two of them) to take a reasonable, not noticeable, amount of scrip papers from each pad, I was really in business. "reasonable, not noticeable, amount" is almost redundant. I decided to say "reasonably small number" instead. Even though it doesn't cut the number of words by much, it eliminates an... um... I think it's "appositional phrase" -- a phrase set off in commas -- that was slowing down the sentence. I've been cutting "really" a lot because it seems overused. I might keep it in this case, but I don't need it, so I'd rather cut it, come back to it in a few weeks, and see if it really makes a difference. Cut:Cautioning my troops (all two of them) to take a reasonably small number of scrips from each pad, I was in business. Savings: 3 words, 12%.
Original:The pills were even simpler to break down and extract the psychoactive components of than the lysergic acid in the ergot had been. Being able to do it all on the university dime, with university's lab equipment only made it easier. I even got Mom in the building a couple of times to assist with the separations. You know, she really is a whiz in the lab. No wonder Dad was so crazy about her. The first sentence felt a little clunky, mostly because of the opening section that ends in "components of". It also had two "to be" forms ("were even simpler" and "ergot had been"). I liked the voice in the last three sentences, and found nothing worth changing. Cut:I could extract the psychoactive components even more easily from the pills than from ergot -- on the university's dime, with the university's lab equipment. I even got Mom in the building a couple of times to assist with the separations. You know, she really is a whiz in the lab. No wonder Dad was so crazy about her. Savings: 16 words, 21%.
Original:So, there was my recipe: one part LSD, which had combined nicely with an experimental steroid into a completely new molecule that packed twice the punch of its parents, while being completely unknown to the DEA, twenty parts super concentrated dopamine production stimulator, twenty parts – super-concentrated dopamine re-uptake inhibitor. Plus one small part of essence of safrole, just because I liked it. The lab mice liked it, too. Once Fuzzwad survived a dose and pronounced it “primo”, I was all set. Cut:So, there was my recipe: one part LSD, blended with an experimental steroid into a completely new double-strength DEA-evading molecule, twenty parts super-concentrated dopamine stimulator, twenty parts super-concentrated dopamine re-uptake inhibitor -- plus one part essence of safrole, just because I liked it. The lab mice liked it, too. Once Fuzzwad survived a dose and pronounced it “primo”, I was all set. Savings: 19 words, 23%.
Okay. That brings us to the complete final copy -- and, when I saw this all together, I edited another hundred words out. Far from cheating, I think it's really necessary to read the whole thing in context to make sure that you haven't messed things up. I hadn't picked the school just because it was my parents' alma mater. I had followed the staff publications for years, and a professor was developing a strain of ergot resistant rye. It's a sad commentary on our society that most people don't even know that LSD was first synthesized from the ergot fungus. Crazy, huh? People think that's how the Salem Witch Hunts got started – some funky rye bread was making the rounds, and BAM! Everybody went off on the same bad trip.
Anyways, the university was funding a full-scale trial, to the tune of ten acres of the new rye and ten non-resistant control acres. I thought I could liberate enough ergot to get Mom's hidden heartland acres knee deep in it by the next harvest season. I'd extract lysergic acid from the ergot and add some of Tab's home cookin' – a recipe all my own that would pack a wallop, make a good trip, and fly under the FDA radar.
It almost killed me trying to stay cool when, the first week of class, the prof I was stalking asked for volunteers for his pet project. He didn't have much choice: it's not like professors get a lot of groupies, and it was too damn early in the semester for college kids to worry about extra credit. Their loss, my immensely profitable secret gain.
After a few weeks of doing odd jobs for the professor, nobody bothered to ask what I was doing. I swiped a little ergot and a heaping helping of non-resistant rye seed. Mom, of course, really wanted me to do well in school, so she gave me five acres on her little backwoods farm. I got it turned just in time for the grow season. In Michigan, everything grows, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. A little organic fertilizer, some of Mom's special Bug-Be-Gone spray, and voila! Rye crop.
Soon I had enough fungus to psychedelicize the entire city of Detroit for about 100 years. And I was just getting started.
I really admired the creators of ecstasy, and I was shooting for their kind of success story. See, ecstasy combines LSD with a stimulant, usually meth or cocaine, to stimulate the all-important dopamine production. You get the fantastical trippiness of the LSD, driven by the dopamine ding-dong of the coke or meth. I wasn't too proud to build on the work of those who came before me. I just wanted a dopamine driver that wouldn't show up on your basic four-panel drug screen.
Once I had the LSD, Mom and Fuzzwad and I developed the worst cases of chronic major depression ever seen, and since nobody ever gets addicted to anti-depressants, we got enough prescription meds to turn J.R. Ewing into a nice guy. Most amazing of all, out of nearly a hundred doctors, a whopping seventeen left us alone with their prescription pads at some point. Somebody should warn them about people like us. Cautioning my troops (all two of them) to take a reasonably small number of scrips from each pad, I was in business.
I could extract the psychoactive components even more easily from the pills than from ergot -- on the university's dime, with the university's lab equipment. I even got Mom in the building a couple of times to assist with the separations. You know, she really is a whiz in the lab. No wonder Dad was so crazy about her.
So, there was my recipe: one part LSD, blended with an experimental steroid into a completely new double-strength DEA-evading molecule; twenty parts super-concentrated dopamine stimulator; twenty parts super-concentrated dopamine re-uptake inhibitor -- plus one part essence of safrole, just because I liked it. The lab mice liked it, too. Once Fuzzwad survived a dose and pronounced it “primo”, I was all set. 638 words from 987: a 35% cut. As always, I don't recommend taking my suggestions blindly. Deb should put this part of the story down, come back in a few weeks, and see what she misses from the original. What do you think? Regards, Jake UPDATE: One word changed based on Mark's comments below. Labels: fiction, short fiction
First Scene of a Novel
This 983-word novel excerpt is a solid piece of prose from J over at Hatrack River. (Did I mention that I solicited blog entries from Hatrack? :) ) It's relatively transparent: there's nothing standing between the reader and the story, no poetic language, no high diction. There's maybe a touch of country flavor to it, which, as you'll see, fits his setting and characters. My goal, as usual, is about 25%. As you'll see, I only got down to 19%, but I'm still reasonably happy with the results. Here's the original: Micah slammed the bailing hooks into the last bale of hay in the cart. The bales were dusty and heavy and Micah's back ached from wrestling them over the cart's high sidewall. Ballard's sons huffed and sweated, stacking the bales Micah had unloaded against the back wall of their father's barn. The last bale thumped onto the barn floor, and Micah dropped the hooks and started slapping straw dust from his tunic.
"Can you handle those?" Micah nodded to the tumbled pile of unloaded bales in the middle of the barn floor. One of the brothers grunted, the other nodded. Micah climbed onto the driver's bench, and picked up the loose-lying reigns. Before he could twitch them, the carthorse ambled forward past the barn door and turned to the left, down the well-worn track to Ballard's house. Micah gave the reigns a tug just before the cart drew even with the front door. The horse looked back at him reproachfully. Father and Ballard stood in the doorway. Ballard was a big man, broad and sturdy, like most of the men that lived outside of the city. Father was larger still, a good four inches taller and broader across the chest. Both men were sun-dark and leathery, forearms corded from a lifetime of labor. Micah resembled his father, and took a secret pride in his inherited physical strength. He was careful never to boast of it, though. Strength was a gift of Thoth, and to boast of it without giving Him credit was to risk losing it.
As the cart drew up, the two men shook hands. Father climbed onto the bench beside Micah, and lowered the sack he was carrying into the cart bed. The horse started forward and turned left again, down Ballard's lane, heading for the cobbled stone road. Micah felt a thrill of pride at the road. The road ran parallel to the Great River though the center whole country, broad and straight from Great River's mouth at the edge of the desert in the south to the mountains in the north. Its whole length was cobbled stone, nearly three hundred miles all told. It had taken more than a generation to build, even with Thoth's aid, and Micah gloried in belonging to a people who could build such a thing. That, Father said, was the difference between their people and the outlanders. Their people were growers and builders who labored for Thoth, and were rewarded by Thoth in His generous mercy. Outlanders were thieves, selfish and godless. Pungent fresh cheese smells leaked from the sack. Micah's mouth fell open in unabashed desire.
"Close your jaw, boy; we'll be home for supper soon enough." Father said. Micah's teeth snapped shut, but his stomach growled.
"Any news from Ballard?" Micah asked, mostly to cover his embarrassment. Travelers on the River Road carried news, and they often stopped to buy feed or a bed in one of the spare rooms at Ballard's. Father leaned out of the cart and spit, careful to make sure his saliva did not land on the sacred road itself.
"More of the same, but worse. Outlanders raiding the southern herds. Big group of them rebuilt that bridge on the Little River near Alhay. They got a flock or two back across the bridge, and scattered what they didn't take. If the rumors are true, Thoth might be displeased with the number of cattle at the fall sacrifice."
"The Judges will recover the flocks," Micah said, believing it. Judges were invincible. "Especially if it is necessary to please Thoth at the sacrifice. They'll chase the outlanders across their own bridge into their own lands if they need to." Micah had every confidence that this was so. "Thoth is with them."
"Surely He is, as He's with all of us. Maybe even more so." Father nodded, then sucked on his teeth, like he did when he was thinking. There was more news. Micah waited. Father would tell him when he was ready.
"A Judge was killed during the raid."
Micah jerked back on the reigns involuntarily. The horse tossed its head and kept walking. "Not Jacob?"
"No, not Jacob, praise be to Thoth. Judge Asher of Alkut. He attacked the raiders alone on their way back to the bridge."
Micah's stomach unclenched. Anger replaced worry.
"There must have been a thousand outlanders to do such a thing! How many did he kill?"
"Ballard says he killed twenty, but rest of the brutes climbed over their own dead and got him."
"Dead?" Micah asked. Excitement and dread rose in his chest. Shame at the reaction followed. Judge Asher was one of Thoth's chosen, to whom the safety of Thoth's people was owed, and his passing demanded sincere mourning. Micah tried to conjure sadness, but the nervous excitement in his gut would not be ignored.
"Dead," Father said. "They'll have to hold trials three months from now, at the fall sacrifice, so they can anoint someone to replace him."
Micah released his breath slowly. There was going to be an anointing, and he was of age. It didn't happen for everyone. Judges were nearly invincible. Thoth protected them Even though they fought constantly against outlanders, they rarely died. They suffered losses so infrequently that many men went right through the age of eligibility without a chance to try. As Father had. Micah w |
