posted
Been a while since I offered an opening for critique.
-First Draft-
quote:High above the market, when the awning’s shadow was its most modest, a crow laughed and stole what was left of Dejan’s luck.
Dejan lifted his cup to reveal the three dice underneath. Their single hash marks faced upwards, a curse from the goddess to which he had prayed with each toss. He filled his lungs with the street air—inhaling the scent of fresh baked lavash, lilies, and camel dung—before his mouth returned the favor. He winced as soon as he said it.
Saeed’s sand-etched face smiled through his flowing beard. “The eater is yours.” He extended his hands to Dejan as if to present the unwanted spoils in offering. Dejan couldn’t help but notice the absent third of Saeed’s left ring finger.
“At least I'll have milk.”
-Second Draft-
quote:High above the square, when the awning’s shadow was at its most precious, a crow laughed and stole what was left of Dejan’s luck.
Dejan lifted his cup and revealed the cubes underneath. Three single hash marks faced upwards. The goddess of the dice had answered his prayers, uttered with each toss, with a curse. Dejan filled his lungs with the market air—inhaling the scent of fresh baked lavash, lilies, and camel dung—and cursed her in turn. The frenetic notes of the street zurnas crescendoed, as if to speed his words on their journey to the heavens. He winced at his own impiety.
Saeed’s sand-etched face smiled through his beard. He extended his hands in a mock gesture of offering. Dejan couldn’t help but stare at the absent third of Saeed’s left ring finger.
-Third Draft-
quote:High above the market, a crow laughed and stole what was left of Dejan’s luck.
He sat, legs crossed, in the precious shade provided by a wind-worn canopy. Dejan had prayed to the goddess of the dice with each toss, and she had answered with a curse. Three single hash marks stared up at him from the rug. He filled his lungs with market air—inhaled the scent of fresh baked lavash, lilies, and camel dung—and cursed her in turn. Beyond the stall, zurnas played their wild, buzzing notes. The pitch climber higher and higher as if to speed his words to the heavens. He winced at his own impiety.
Saeed’s sand-etched face smiled through his beard. His hands extended in a mock gesture of offering,
posted
I like the idea of incorporating smell into the scene; I have no idea what camel dung smells like, despite the old urban myth that incense sticks (or "punks" as we called them) are supposedly made of it. But it puts me in mind of the Armenian neighborhood I used to work in, with the smell of fresh-baked lavash, rosewater candies, cumin-spiced lamejun and rotting vegetables. From the names I'm guessing that's about the right part of the world.
"the awning's shadow was its most modest" seems like a more oblique way to say "noon" than necessary; it's a bit of a trip-up right at the start in my opinion.
"his mouth returned the favor" -- also a somewhat unnecessarily oblique way to say that he swore.
I'd be interested in seeing what this opening would look like if it were a bit less oblique, while maintaining the humor, color and atmosphere. The "hook", if that's what you're doing here, is the nature of the white elephant Dejan has won, but you don't want that lost in a fog of general mystification.
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posted
Too much too fast and too condensed. It makes me feel like you were writing an opening to fit within the constraints of Hatrack's rule system.
An opening for a novel would probably be more gradual in introducing a reader to the world in question.
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posted
The figurative language of the fragment works for me in terms of creating a close aesthetic distance from personal, subjective, stream-of-consciousness expression, though doesn't work for me and defuses the close distance from its empty-of-meaning expression.
Broad strokes -- figurative language's function is to express intangible, abstract, immaterial circumstances through use of concrete, tangible, material circumstances, as is the function of symbolism and imagery -- sensory stimulus causal in each case and emotional feeling the effect, congruent to or sequential effect.
Also broad strokes -- figurative language resolves around repetition, addition, subtraction, substitution, transposition, and amplification figures: situational -- limited to individual words; or extended -- open for longer instances of parts and parcels and wholes. A metaphoric word is a situational instance; an allegory is an extended whole.
A phrase like "when the awning’s shadow was its most modest" is a transposition figure. On its own, the phrase is pretty language though empty of meaning. A transposition from a concrete to figurative and, hence, intangible though accessible symbolic meaning is warranted. Sensory stimuli used for figurative, symbolic meaning needs at least emotional expression to give expression solidity. The phrase abstractly signals the time of day is high noon. So what? Is the heat stifling? Is the marketplace still in midday because of the heat? Because the market's vendors and shoppers are away from the heat and relax over a midday meal time? What does midday sun mean emotionally to Dejan?
More importantly, how does that sensory stimulus develop the complication of the scene? Dejan gambles for what? In other words, what are the stakes? What does he want and what is the problem? That is, what does Dejan have to lose or win?
The crow's laugh and theft of Dejan's luck is an exquisite expression, figurative in that the expression implies a folk belief of crows as harbingers of misfortune, does express a pendent routine interruption, and that foreshadows Dejan is a witting victim of a theft to come, re: the won though lost wager. That is artful figurative language use and clear and strong, fully realized on the page, from the expressed crow's laugh and theft of Dejan's luck.
However, the dice roll comes up three aces. Is that a winning roll? Or a losing roll? The prior crow segment implies the roll is a loss; Dejan cursing the dice roll, blaming the goddess for the misfortune, likewise; though later Saeed passes Dejan a won wager -- the eater. More clarity is warranted for the inversion of implications.
The sense of the scene I get is Dejan wins a wager and has to take an unwanted prize, that also implies an attached unwanted and burdensome obligation -- a loss. That is sublime to me, though not as clear or strong as might best practice serve.
Figurative language, symbolism, imagery, and emotional attitude, complication and antagonism -- these are on a neutral cusp here and want a clearer tip toward one way or another.
Overall, the fragment is a mixed ineffective-effective raw draft, artful somewhat, with strong promise. I am curious and empathetic toward Dejan's circumstances, though probably wouldn't turn the page due to confusions about the meanings intended and their underdeveloped realization on the page.
Edited to add: The fragment as I interpret it completes a dramatic arc; that is, from uncertainty though forlorn resignation about the outcome of the wager to the immediate outcome of the wager. Yet the fragment artfully leaves open for later further action and outcome development of the wager's fallout. Skilled writing craft there.
I feel, though, the wager's outcome rushes to its conclusion without artfully developing anticipation -- at the least, an emotional struggle suitable for an opening and unfolding action overall. A small piece of optimism inserted between the crow segment and the dice roll segment would increase doubt of outcome and build anticipation.
The high noon imagery expression could do for that development, the liminal moment between morning and afternoon as a foreshadowing of possible favorable and unfavorable outcomes of the wager. The crow probably perches higher than the awning stretches anyway -- a content organization consideration: higher to lower to nearby. The blazing sun itself probably highest.
posted
MattLeo: Thank you for the comment about the Armenian neighborhood. I'm at least invoking the right imagery as far as that is concerned.
Denevius: Hopefully the further development of the environment settles your issue, though if you have more precise thoughts about what you would like to see more focused, I would appreciate it.
extrinsic: I could kiss you for solving an issue in the chapter more eloquently than I could. While this version loses the inversion to the second page, the given explanation for it should be more clear.
I am surprised that "when the awning’s shadow was its most modest" was taken to be only a statement of time, not also a physical description of the scene (in the shade of an awning). We'll see if a single word change can fix that.
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posted
I'll pass on the kiss and accept paid-forward payment instead.
The second version is much clearer, though I feel some of the first version's participation mystique is diminished for the second, in part by perhaps now too sophisticated diction for the situation, as though Dejan's education is more advanced than the situation expresses or needs express at the time, as though more narrator mediation instead of Dejan's stream of consciousness received reflections.
The shade feature of the first version comes across secondary to the meager -- modest -- cover it provides, and the second version's shade now foreground to the time of day. The liminal aspect of midday to me is more mystical, appealing, and best primary, from the neither, nor both, morning and afternoon foreshadowing strength of the //canopy's// time of day and shade symbolisms to represent a teeter point from routine toward interruption.
Awning to me implies a rigid roof, where canopy implies a fabric roof. A fixed roof implies permanancy and may warrant consideration of its situational meaning in the context of a bazaar's transient setting situation.
"couldn't help but stare" to me tells too directly and emptily the meaning of the action and mangled finger motif. An option is to baldly describe the visual sensation of the amputated finger and with congruent emotional commentary, perhaps revulsion and surprised fear from Dejan's interpretation of the lost finger part, presumably due to careless handling of the eater.
Revisions usually progress toward more clarity and less implication mystique, later, reincorporating artful implication and mystique. In the notorious words of a critical writer, It's a wooden leg, Ishmael: develop the literal meaning and the figurative will follow -- an allusion to Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Captain Ahab's peg leg is scrimshawed whale bone to imply Ahab is part whale -- nature -- and part human, as the great whale is part human from consuming Ahab's leg, and part nature. An individual and nature the thematic center of the novel.
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posted
in part by perhaps now too sophisticated diction for the situation
I'm going to guess "frenetic" and "crescendo" are the offenders here? Or is there something deeper to the tone I'm missing?
And looking at awning versus canopy, you are right, but for the wrong reason. Awnings can be made of any material, rigid or not. I chose it because they are generally attached to a permanent structure, which places this on the outskirts of the market (so the implication you saw as misplaced was intentional). However, if you support an awning with columns, it is now a canopy. Something that can handle a few people relaxing underneath it, sheltered from the sun, is likely supported by columns.
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posted
"frenetic" and "crescendoed" are the more extreme, maybe "precious" and "impiety" too, though not as extreme.
Maybe another term for awning or canopy could serve more succinctly, maybe with emotional and figurative detail, say, the material of the roof such that the material is the expression that prevails. Midday shade is the motif of substance; perhaps a shaky (sounds like shady, as is Saeed?) gallery or balcony, that then implies the building, its age, and its multistory height? and perhaps where the crow perches on the gallery rail, flat roof ridge, gutter, or eave line. Concrete setting situation details that figuratively imply, enhance, and connect meaning for fluent flow and develop the scene's reality imitation appeals.
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quote:Hopefully the further development of the environment settles your issue
I, of course, haven't read the further development, but I'd be willing to guess that it better serves the opening of the novel placed before what you currently have.
I also have issues with your first sentence, as it reads in a clunky fashion. I know nothing of this market, so to be high above it relays no scene information to me. Is this a modern market like Krogers? Is this modern day? Is this a market you might find in Asia, or the Middle East, or South America? Is this Earth? Alternate Earth?
When the awnings shadow was at its most precious/modest? I'm not even sure what that means. Like, I know what each individual word means. But we went to soaring high above an undescribed market to now being beneath an awning, all in the same sentence. General, specific, to exact: someone named Dejan lost his luck to a crow.
Again, I have no idea what this actually means, and I have absolutely no reason to care as I haven't been introduced to Dejan yet. Is he hero, anti-hero, child, man? Does he deserve to have his luck? Should I be rooting for him? Is he important to the novel? Is the novel about him? Is the novel about his luck?
By not taking the time to develop the narrative more gradually, especially for a novel where you have ample time to go with a nice, steady pace, you've managed to create a lot of questions that don't incite my curiosity. There's nothing special about this market, nothing special about the awning, something misplaced about the awning's shadow, and nothing I should care about with the two characters I am introduced to in the first sentence: Dejan and the crow.
To me, this happened as a result of Hatrack rule openings. Instead of setting up the scene, which you can probably do with some nice, descriptive writing, you've decided to go with as much as soon as possible. But it doesn't work.
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posted
I think the second version is a step in the right direction. Try to make the opening as clean and effortless for the reader as possible. So I'm not particularly enamored of "when the awning’s shadow was at its most precious" because it's just oblique way of saying the sun is high; I'm not altogether sure that the awning actually adds something to the sentence.
Perhaps another problem with that opening sentence is that it draws our attention in two directions simultaneously; "high above the market" and on the ground where the shadow is. Perhaps we should start high above the market in the first sentence then zoom in on our little group in the second?
It's one thing to be artfully indirect, but I think it works best when it's not a conscious process, e.g. "Hmm. 'Precious' must mean 'in short supply', therefore the shadow is short, therefore the Sun is high..." Again *my* personal preference is for an opening that pops in the mind's eye without the reader being conscious of effort.
As for "impiety" I have no problem with that word as long as that's what the narrator really means and it's a word he'd reasonably use in that situation. One danger of writing in a Middle Eastern fantasy scenario is falling into what I call "dog-of-an-infidel dialect" -- not that any of that is apparent in this segment. But I've seen many writers fall into cliches when they're writing about an "exotic" setting.
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posted
I know nothing of this market, so to be high above it relays no scene information to me. Is this a modern market like Krogers? Is this modern day? Is this a market you might find in Asia, or the Middle East, or South America? Is this Earth? Alternate Earth? All good questions answered by an appropriate book cover.
Again, I have no idea what this actually means, and I have absolutely no reason to care as I haven't been introduced to Dejan yet. Is he hero, anti-hero, child, man? Does he deserve to have his luck? Should I be rooting for him? Is he important to the novel? Is the novel about him? Is the novel about his luck? You want to be introduced to him before the first sentence? I'm having difficulty taking your criticism that I should spend time to develop the scene seriously when you are very much giving me no time to establish anything. Look at how many questions you want answered right this instant, and then look at your criticism of the "Hatrack rule." There's a disconnect.
The reason I'm not rushing to give you all of this is because it's a novel and I don't feel the need to compress it into thirteen lines. Instead, I'm opening with a situation, with two people interacting over a game of dice, and from this, over the span of a couple pages, the answers will come.
So I'm not particularly enamored of "when the awning’s shadow was at its most precious" because it's just oblique way of saying the sun is high It actually says three things. But the issues regarding the first sentence are concerning. I will split off the mention of the //canopy// from the activities of the crow.
One danger of writing in a Middle Eastern fantasy scenario is falling into what I call "dog-of-an-infidel dialect" -- not that any of that is apparent in this segment. But I've seen many writers fall into cliches when they're writing about an "exotic" setting. A fair warning. Dejan is very religious (and superstitious), but I'm dealing with polytheistic societies, and much of the system of worship is non-standardized; local cults abound (best to think more along the lines of Ancient Egypt rather than the Middle East). Something like "dog-of-an-infidel dialect" wouldn't make much sense, fortunately.
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quote:You want to be introduced to him before the first sentence? I'm having difficulty taking your criticism that I should spend time to develop the scene seriously when you are very much giving me no time to establish anything. Look at how many questions you want answered right this instant, and then look at your criticism of the "Hatrack rule." There's a disconnect.
It's not so much what I want to see, but what I think would work better. And it's not that you have to answer all of the questions now, but I think you've written an opening that leaves a lot of questions open in an unsatisfying way.
So anywho, of course this is your story and you do with it as you please. But my suggestion is to begin with Dejan walking to the meeting place where he loses his luck. What is he seeing of this market? Where does he fit in it? What are his expectations before getting to this present moment. Sights, sounds, smells create a milieu, and inner monologue allows readers to become engaged with your character.
Or not. Either way, it's just my opinion. Take what you can of it, and discard the rest. As written now, the opening feels forced and rushed to me. But if you're getting the responses you want from it, then you're on the right track.
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Denevius: The main problem with opening earlier is the same questions need to be answered, and this scene is here specifically to provide those answers. It would be especially awkward to have him on the street before this, as it is necessary for him to go out into the market traffic for his next spell of bad luck. The scenes would then be street-stall-street, which strikes me as indecisive.
Anyway, I do wish to thank you. Your criticisms are useful, as has been arguing them with you.
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posted
I like the third version quite a bit. It's vivid and straightforward at the same time.
Small point with this bit: "The pitch climber higher and higher as if to speed his words to the heavens." A quick reader might not have absorbed the implications of the earlier "and cursed her in turn." This could lead to a possible "garden path" situation where the reader mistakes "speed his words" as referring to a proper prayer then has to revise this in the next sentence.
If I might suggest a small change, try "speed his impious words" and then adjust the following sentence accordingly.
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quote:If I might suggest a small change, try "speed his impious words" and then adjust the following sentence accordingly.
Good catch. I think something like "abyssal" or "infernal" instead of "impious" would work better. It gives it a contrast to "heavens."
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posted
The 3rd version is the most improved, however I still have concerns:
The first sentence, while modified in each version, still contains the image of a crow 'laughing' at the main character's bad luck. Why? Is this an important motif? If it is, in my opinion it's too obscure a reference and I don't get the connection. If it isn't, why persist with the distraction? I'd kill it.
In the third sentence I change the word Dejan to 'He'; we already know his name from the first sentence.
I would start the fourth sentence with 'This throw', to reinforce the idea that he keeps trying to push his luck.
In the fifth sentence, while including the smells of the market may add 'atmosphere', it breaks up the flow of the main characters actions--breathing in, possibly to sigh, while cursing the goddess. For me, I'd add it to the sixth sentence, along with the sounds.
But where are the sights? Is it a bustling market, or, in the heat of the noonday sun, are people cowering in every piece of shade they can find, sipping at glasses of cool liqueurs or hot, strong, and over-sweetened coffee?
quote:Originally posted by JSchuler: Good catch. I think something like "abyssal" or "infernal" instead of "impious" would work better. It gives it a contrast to "heavens."
Style is important, but meaning trumps it. He is saying something offensive to the gods, so given a choice between a word that carries that meaning clearly and which makes a clever rhetorical contrast, go for the clearest meaning.
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posted
Oops! It says I edited your first post, but I actually didn't. I hit the wrong button.
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quote:Denevius: The main problem with opening earlier is the same questions need to be answered, and this scene is here specifically to provide those answers.
Anyway, there's no point in beating a dead horse, and you've gotten a lot of good comments here to work with. But I did want to respond to this.
I'm unsure how the first 13 lines of a story opening on Dejan making his way through a market will give rise to a series of questions. A scene opening on Dejan walking across a dusty lane snaking between wooden stalls. He overhears a trio of old women, their wares set before them on mats, arguing amongst each other over who has the freshest stock. He sees camels tied to poles, and young kids clinging to their mothers' legs in the hustle and bustle of the market. And then, from the corner of his eye, a shadow rises from an awning ahead of him, a crow on black wings marring the hot blue sky.
Scene descriptions don't tend to give rise to a host of questions, but they also don't tend to have a 'hook', and they go on longer than 13 lines, which this website demands. For a novel, I personally would prefer to have a world created for me that I'm stepping into. But when you throw Dejan immediately at me, I'm left wondering who this guy is, why I should care, and what he's doing. Would I read on? l'm unsure, because the writing itself feels contrived, and at the same time nothing that's happening is drawing me into the narrative.
I'm supposed to care about Dejan's luck, but I don't because I haven't been properly introduced to Dejan. I'm supposed to be intrigued by this crow, but I'm not because I don't understand what the first sentence even means.
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quote:Oops! It says I edited your first post, but I actually didn't. I hit the wrong button.
Outrage! I demand commentary in damages! ;D
Thank you, Grumpy. Now that there are two people that seem to have an issue with what the crow is doing, I will take a look at it and see if I can massage it without losing what extrinsic found worthy.
quote:I'm unsure how the first 13 lines of a story opening on Dejan making his way through a market will give rise to a series of questions. A scene opening on Dejan walking across a dusty lane snaking between wooden stalls.
To paraphrase: Is he hero, anti-hero, child, man? Should I be rooting for him? Is he important to the novel? Is the novel about him? Is the novel about the crow? Is the novel about the three old women? (Shades of Macbeth?) Why's Dejan in the market? Is he here to buy? Here to sell? I'm supposed to care, but I don't because I haven't been properly introduced to Dejan. I'm supposed to be intrigued by this crow, but I'm not because I don't understand why he's even here.
It solves none of your problems.
And there's this:
quote:Scene descriptions don't tend to give rise to a host of questions, but they also don't tend to have a 'hook', and they go on longer than 13 lines, which this website demands.
Indeed, they do go on longer than 13 lines. So does this. You are criticizing from a standpoint that you admit cannot be satisfied due to the rules of the board. Your theoretical scene doesn't have any questions and properly introduces the character, but doesn't do that in 13 lines. Meanwhile, you're critiquing a scene fragment for not living up to the standards of something you admit it physically cannot be.
If I started where you suggest, after going through the effort of setting the scene, I would have to handwave a lot of time and speed through events that would only delay the story. That's a tell that I have started too early.
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posted
The third draft is clearer yet and also less yet mystical, to me. The stream-of-consciousness features of the first version evoke a closer aesthetic distance, closer to Dejan's personal perspective. The second and more so third draft move away from Dejan and into narrator territory -- from the scene's outside looking in. The close distance magic of "non-narrated," inside-looking-out narratives appeals to me.
The voice of such puts a narrator into a received reflector role; that is, a pass-through for a viewpoint agonist's immediate perceptions as they unfold -- a direct discourse of verabtim events, setting features, and characters' immediate sensations: visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and emotional. Narrator narration summarizes and explains, shows hands on the keyboard, through a lecture as if from a lectern upon a stage or from a cozy fireside desk, through a paraphrased, non-verbatim, indirect discourse. I believe the received reflection-reality imitation method is contrarily challenging to compose such that the prose is near invisible and scenes' reality evocative, and a most appealing method.
How to develop the method and apply it on the page? Fluent flow of causality experienced from a viewpoint agonist's sensations and reactions, compelled by proportionate antagonal, causal, and tensional emotional effect, re: reader effect, evocation of curiosity and empathy or sympathy.
Mythology development stands large for all three. The crow, for example, that steals luck. Aesthetic distance is a number of features, proximity in time and space, for one. The crow is high in the sky in all three versions, remote distance. The crow laughs away Dejan's meager luck.
A crow's "laugh" implies more than one vocalization, at least three, maybe two -- heh-heh-heh, or hah-hah: caw-caw-caw, caw-caw. The sound, the aural experience as Dejan receives it is also closer aesthetic distance than the summary expression of the crow's laughter stole his luck, the effect of the antagonal cause. Scene segment motif -- sensory event -- then summary effect, emotional reaction, is the organization principle for logical and best dramatic, causal and antagonal and tensional effect. Unless stimuli and response are congruent, more so best dramatic effect.
A crow on the wing also rarely vocalizes more than once, uncommonly twice in short, sharp sequence. Corvus researchers believe a one or two crow vocalization is a query or call-and-response communication between foraging crows on the wing, Anyone else here? Any dangers? Any food or shiny baubles? No. Yes. Maybe. Three or rarely four vocalizations are from perches, likewise communications, and more common when an individual or murder takes flight from perches.
In short, for stronger dramatic effect, maybe the crow is near to Dejan and nearness implies the crow addresses, interacts with Dejan directly -- direct discourse -- for closer aesthetic distance.
If a motif matters, is influential, the motif best needs mythology development, and for best reader effect given as a personal, intimate, subjective emotionally stimulating circumstance -- the detail amount and emotional response proportionate to the degree of influence at the moment and later. And later, if a motif needs be memorable, remembered, emphasis signaled from expansion is warranted.
Likewise the shade canopy, once and done given in narrator summary fashion -- indirect discourse -- rarely adequately serves mythology development. "Wind-worn canopy" of the third draft, for example, is an emotionally neutral narrator summary. Is wind-worn an affectionate circumstance or a bother? A word like frayed, say wind-frayed, entails emotional texture from its parallel to frayed nerves or frayed luck in this case.
The first version's mystique and congruent close aesthetic distance succeeded from limited mythology development, strong implication of meaning, and an appearance of received reflections from Dejan's consciousness, disjointed and hectic-like, though also may be taken as composition rough rawness. Rawness has its appeals on its own, only needs signal the rawness is Dejan's, not narrator or writer, through a fluent flow of antagonal, causal, and tensional features.
Antagonal, that's a guiding principle overall; that is, which stimuli draw Dejan's, in this case, attention and cause his emotional response that wants the telling detail mythology development. The crow's laughter, for example, it is antagonal; it steals Dejan's luck, and later draws a curse when he feels the goddess has also left him luckless. Artful and skilled craft and rhetoric, by the way: motif repetition (luck stealers), transposition, and amplification. The third motif repetition of substance then is the dice roll that Dejan wins though loses. Exquisite skill. The immediate outcome, as it were, of a bridge complication and the effect of stolen luck, though not as fully developed anticipation of outcome as might be ideal.
For a scene segment, those features of a luckless wager and inverted outcome appeal most to me. They arose my curiosity foremost though subtly evoke my empathy, mostly due to a wager with inverted expectations. Though a personal and therefore subjective rapport with features I like, they are objectively quantifiable and qualifiable appeal features. Only needs be artfully and skillfully developed on the page to serve a start fragment's function: introductions.
Whether the motifs fit into a neat thirteen lines container is neither here nor there, again, only that they start the roller coaster barreling along its dramatic track. The dramatic arc of the three drafts does that to a degree, for me, with careful analysis, too careful perhaps for best reader effect, though, wanting only stronger, more fluent organization and full content realization on the page.
FYI: I believe Ms. Dalton Woodbury's edited notice, signal to me she checked and approved each version's length, that she's on the job and taking notice of the discussion here, can be commented away by a modest re-edit or just select edit and post without an adjustment, if wanted and to . . .
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