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Author Topic: Chapter 9 - The One
Denevius
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[ January 21, 2014, 05:51 AM: Message edited by: Denevius ]

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extrinsic
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This chapter opening feels closer to fully realized than openings that have come before. It's flow is also more fluent and the prose more accessible.

If this introduction opens the chapter, I'm not clear about Nathaniel's protest. To whom? When? Where? I suppose chapter eight's ending contains the protest, but a bit of context and texture would make opening chapter nine less abrupt, more seamless, more physically authenticate the opening's setting reality as it delves into a deeply reflexive introspection.

I don't think the conjuction word "but" in "But he’d woken up" adds meaning. Actually, I think starting a new paragraph would be more artful--stronger and clearer--and serve the same function, intent, and meaning. A new paragraph would separate the disparate ideas of Nathaniel's protest, his worries about fainting, their recollection, and how those worries physically manifest in a nearer-to-now moment. Two different main ideas and times to me justify a new paragraph for the new circumstances.

This is a comma splice: "Something had to change after the second vision, the darkness that had swept him off his feet and left him unconscious behind the dojang." Perhaps instead of a comma, an em-dash would be stronger and clearer and an appropriate degree of emphasis, or a colon, or semicolon, though an em-dash is prescriptively appropriate.

"Wet with salvia"? I know salvia as the taxonomic name of diviner's sage. Saliva? Unless "salvia" is intended, in which case I expect other readers will be confused, too. Salvia divinorum is the full taxonomic name. Giving the full name or the common name of the drug would clear that up. But I infer "saliva" is intended.

[ October 17, 2013, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Denevius
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Ack! I don't know why, but I *always* spell saliva wrong, I'm always getting called out for it, I'm always saying to myself, "Ok, that's the last time I'm spelling that wrong", and I always do it again. It doesn't help that salvia is a word, also, so Word never picks it up as misspelled.

Ah, and what he's protesting? I guess that went beyond the 13 line count, as it was edited out. It's referencing the date his mother had set up for him. The lines in the second paragraph repeat the opening lines of the first and actually ends the thought, thereby creating a question in the reader's head, then answering it.

Thanks for the comments!

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