I am reeling. No I am not a fisherman. My dad says angling is a rod, a line, and a worm at both ends. A tad unfair? Maybe not to the fish.
My reels relate to a friend who has sent me the first chapter of my Left Luggage sci fi trilogy back to me. There was so much red I reached for the plasters. In spite of his very hectic job as a commissioning editor and agent for a noir crime publsher he offered to look over and line edit the intro to my sci fi story. I’d already had it worked over by two published science fiction writers, and others but was concerned because I’ve still not heard from HarperCollins or a big agency since I posted it to them in October. My friend treated it as if it was a submission to his concern and gave me strong pointers. I thought I was good at grammar but he found those ambiguous pronouns, unnecessary expositions I thought were essential, and tell – that I thought were minimised already!
He had a go at the word shrug – actually he’s having a go at sighing, but maybe shrugging too. I’ll quote it cos it’s funny though serious too:
“Looks like a single chevron.” Jill gave up trying to move it with the remote arm and fought off heaving a deep sigh of frustration.[I’m not a big fan of ‘sighing’. It’s usually a warning that there’s a shrug or a smile coming up] The crew looked at Dan for the EVA go-ahead. He shrugged his compliance.[and there we are]“Abdul, take no chances.”Abdul shrugged back. [two shrugs! It’s Christmas]See what I mean? So maybe he’s not against shrugging and I like it cos it is so expressive yet wordless! Few body actions are so meaningful! So why would he be against sighing? Maybe it is overdone, but it is done in real life so…
The more I know the more I realise how little I know – and that’s as true for contemporary writing as it is in life. He also urges me to rethink the prologue, which isn’t labelled as such but was the hook, but not so much as I thought.
Apparently Richard Morgan took 14 years to complete his first published sci fi novel, Altered Carbon. It’s only been 3 for me – but watch this space…
