The 9th Circle of Hell – Capitalization and Punctuation

Finally, finally, finally, the edit is done. I have obsessed over it long enough. I have made enough changes. It's time to let it go. Evermore: Call of the Nocturne is ready for its final edit. All I need now is another editor. I'll give myself the rest of the week and weekend off and then start searching for a new editor. It's too bad that Erin won't get chance to edit it again. I think she would have loved some of the changes I made.Part of the reason that it took so long is that I was constantly struggling to establish consistent rules for myself on Capitalization and punctuation. My lifelong habit has been to capitalize for emphasis. For example, "oh my God!"; or "Protect the King!". However, based on Erin review, I have had to make many uncomfortable changes to the capitalization style because I was using them incorrectly and inconsistently.Let's take for example the word sovereign. In Evermore: Call of the Nocturne, the Sovereign of Evermore is an individual who leads the government in Evermore, known as the Consortium. Now in my earlier drafts, I had always capitalized sovereign, no matter how it was used in the sentence. So "Sovereign", "the Sovereign", "my Sovereign", "Sovereign Klein" and "Sovereign of Evermore" were all capitalized. But according to my editor Erin, and the Internet sites that I visited, only the last two should be capitalized. In everything else, the word sovereign, like king or prime minister, should be lower case. Only when the word is used as a proper noun should a title should be capitalized. Thus "Sovereign Klein" becomes "the sovereign" or "my sovereign".But then I ran into another problem. For one word in the English language, these rules are allowed to be broken. That word is God. But they can only be broken based on what you mean by the word god. If you are referring to a general omniscient being, then god should be lower-case when used in a sentence. The confusion comes from one of the unusual traits of Christianity. We quite literally call our god "God". When you refer to the Christian conception of god, then it is considered a proper noun, like Zeus or Ra, and thus must be capitalized.I had this capitalization problem with god, sovereign, strider and kernel. Going through the text and over again until I was using capitalization correctly (I think?) and consistently proved to be a major time sink.The second major problem that I had was with punctuation. More specifically, I had problems with periods and commas. When I was growing up, I was always taught to put two spaces after a period and so when I wrote the novel I put two spaces after every period. It was instinctual. I didn't even have to think about it. However, the current standard (due to the influence of the Internet) has been to put one space after a period. I suppose it looks much better on a typed page. So due to Erin's suggestions, I went back and removed all of the extra spaces. The result: a much more consistent-looking document.Commas proved to be far more challenging. Again, I had always been taught to use liberally, to add one whenever I want the ready to pause. However, Erin notified me that in some circumstances, such as when the comma would precede the word "and" in a list of items, the comma is not necessary. For example:"I went to the store to buy some eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns."can be rewritten without the last comma. Like so:"I went to the store to buy some eggs, bacon and hashbrowns."Having always grown up putting the comma before the word "and", I was fairly uncomfortable with this change. But for those of you who remembered my rule from a previous post, "The editor is (almost) always right", I decided to give it a try. I went through my document and removed all of the unnecessary commas. The only exception that I made was for commas that were in the song lyrics that Vanessa sings during the Goddess Pageant. I left those commas in because the reader to know that there was a slight pause in that place. Otherwise, the song lyrics would not flow correctly.The end result from removing all of these commas was a prose that was relaxed, uncluttered and far smoother to read. The text simply looks more attractive to the eye. I believe that it was a good change.Cormac McCarthy has gone even farther than this. In his novels, it eliminates as much punctuation as possible, including quotation marks. He believes that punctuation gets between the reader and the story. From my own experience, I can definitely understand what he means.Prose style is something that is incredibly personal for each author. While there are rules, there is room for each writer to experiment and find what works for them. In my case, my novel's long gestation period has forced me to confront my old ideas about prose and try out some new ideas. This process has led to a far better novel, but has been as excruciating as the 9th circle of hell.

Heading Home for the Holidays

Today I'll be flying from Ottawa back to my home town of Enderby for a few days. the trip in total will be about 11 hours, including 4 hours sitting in the Calgary airport. Fortunately, I have an iPad. I'll be taking along the Giller-winning novel "The Sentimentalists", some Zinio magazines, some movies and of course games. As for E:COTN, The edit is on hold while I take my Christmas break but I'm very close. I hope to finally finish it before the New Year. Merry Christmas everyone.

Looking for a New Editor

Hi everyone. Progress on the next draft of E:COTN is going well. I should have it ready by Christmas. I had originally planned to finish it by December 1st but I unfortunately I have learned that the editor that reviewed the previous draft, Erin Stropes, will be unable to take a second look at the manuscript due to her taking over the editing responsibilities for her university program's journal.I had hoped that since she had given me so much feedback, that she would have been perfect to evaluate the many changes that I've made to the manuscript. Unfortunately, that won't be possible. I would like to extend Erin my thanks for her work on the manuscript and to wish her the best of luck on her new responsibilities. I hope to work with again on future stories.So I am looking for a new editor. It may prove advantageous in that I will be able to get a different perspective on the text. I hope to find one by January so that I can have his/her notes by the Summer. This will give me the summer to finish the manuscript and prepare the text for publication on iBookstore and the Kindle Store. If you have any recommendations, please let me know. In the meantime, I will be finishing off the edit and reading through the Giller-prize winning "The Sentimentals". Until next time.

Inception and the Rules of Writing about Virtual Worlds

Upon seeing Christopher Nolan's Inception, I was filled by both joy and sorrow. Joy because Inception is an outstanding film created by a craftsman at the top of his game. Sorrow because it made my own novel about imaginary worlds, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne, look amateurish in comparison.Upon closer inspection, however, Inception demonstrates why it is so difficult to write stories that take place in a broadly-defined "virtual world".  The problem with writing stories in such places is that it can difficult to come up with challenges for the protagonists than are not easily overcome. For example, if you can do anything in the dreamworld, then what's to stop your hero from magically solving every problem that comes his way? "Oh no. There's a tiger blocking my path." Shazam! "I've just created a laser cannon. Problem solved! Where's my cake?" Thus for a story that takes place in a virtual world, writers must adopt the following rule:Rule #1: The rules of the virtual world must be established early on in the story and must limit the power of the protagonists.Stories that take place in virtual worlds must come up with a series of rules that limit the options available to the protagonists. These rules must be clear, concise, and explained early on in the story.The first Matrix movie works well because it effectively defines the rules governing the world early on in the movie in a way that is easy to understand. Morpheus teaches Neo, and by the extension the audience, the rules of the Matrix by demonstrating them visually. These rules and the consequences that bind stick with audience as the action moves into its exciting third act. Without these rules, the action at the end of the movie would be rather meaningless and ultimately confusing.Christopher follows this rule to the letter. The first half of Inception is dedicated to introducing the dreamscapes of the not-so-distant-future and the rules that govern them.1) If you die in the dreamworld, then you wake up safe and sound.2) However, if you are too heavily sedated when you are killed in the dreamworld, you will not wake up. Instead, you will go to a special place called Limbo where you will trapped for eternity while your brain turns to mush.3) If option #1 is not available due to heavy sedation, then you can still use a 'kick' (sensation of falling) from the host of the dream in order to wake the everyone up.4) if you are in a dream, you can enter a dream within a dream using the same methods as before (sedation).5) If you are in a dream-within-a dream, then you can step out of the innermost dream through death in the innermost dream or by a kick in the surrounding dream.6) If you are in limbo then you can escape it by killing yourself. Even if you are heavily sedated.etc.In accordance with Rule #1, Nolan establishes these rules early and demonstrates them in a visual way that the audience can understand. However, right from the get-go, Nolan encounters a problem with his rules. At the beginning of the heist, death is not a likely threat. It is established early that when killed inside a dream, they simply return to the outlying world, free of harm.Thus the second lesson that we should draw when writing about virtual worlds is the following:Rule #2: The protagonists must be able to die or suffer a fate worse than death in the virtual world.The threat of death or a fate worse than death must remain a possibility. Sure, part of the fun of writing about a virutal world is the cool stuff that your characters are permitted to do.  Run up walls, stop bullets, learn kung-fu in second. But without the threat of death, our characters never seem to be in any real danger and thus the action falls flat. Thus we must maintain the threat of death in the virtual world. For the Matrix, the solution is easy "The mind makes it real." If you die in the virtual world, the mind believes that it is dead and thus kills the otherwise healthy body. In Neuromancer, you could have brain fried and end up a vegetable. In Inception, you could end up in Limbo.The Wachowski brothers encountered a problem with this rule when they tried to make a sequel to The Matrix. How do you make the action exciting when you've essentially turned your main character in to a god? If he's too powerful then it doesn't really matter what he does. The Wachowski brothers tried to get around the problem by creating more powerful enemies and simply removing him from the action. Think about it. The most enthralling action sequences are those in which Neo is not involved. This is because for him, death is a distant possibility. Instead, we find ourselves identifying with Morpheus and Trinity because their deaths remain a likely possibility.In Inception, death is not possible. However, under certain circumstances you and end up a place called Limbo. In Limbo, time is infinite. You can spend a lifetime doing whatever you while only seconds pass in the real world. Losing the ability to tell the difference between the real world and the dream world, your mind degrades into mush. The concept is an interesting one and would certainly satisfy the requirements of Rule #2.The problem for Nolan occurs when you examine the rules more closely. At first they can enter minds and be killed without consequence. Then it becomes that if you are heavily sedated, then death will put you into Limbo. However, if you already in Limbo then death will pull you out of it. If the ending is a dream, then Ariadne and the mark must have escaped from Limbo by the sensation of falling (a kick) inside Limbo at the same time as the kick is done in the next outer level of dreams. Once you start to examine it, Nolan's rules fall apart under the weight of their own logic. The rules are inconsistently applied and instead of reflecting the realities of the dreamworld instead seem to exist solely to serve the conveniences of the plot.Inceptions' problems result because it hadn't followed a third and final rule.Rule #3: The rules governing the virtual world cannot change.A rule is a rule is a rule. There can be no exceptions or changes to the rules. Otherwise, you will confuse the audience and weaken the cohesiveness of the virtual world you have created. This is what happens in Inception. Christopher Nolan spends the first half of the movie explain the rules of the dream world but then throws them out the window when the plot demands it. The abrupt changes in consequence immediately confuses the audience and the excuse of heavy sedation is not compelling. A better excuse would be the training that the mark has received makes it more dangerous for people invading his mind. Neuromancer used something similar. When hacking in virtual reality, the threat of having your mind fried from counterintrusion measures was a likely possibility. It is to Nolan's credit as a filmmaker that we don't notice these inconsistencies when we watch the movie the first time. It is only upon reflection that we realize that the logic of the movie doesn't work and the reason that it doesn't work is that the rules are inconsistent.So how does my own story, Evermore: Call of the Nocturne, stand up against these three rules? While not as innovative and original as Inception, Evermore: COTN (after many rewrites) thus conform to the roles listed above. When you enter Evermore, your mind is protected by a series of security protocols. These security protocols make sure that no matter what happens to you in the virtual world of Evermore, you will be able to wake up in your bed safe and sound. If the security protocols are disabled and you are killed in the game world, then your mind believes that you are dead and induces brain-death in the real world (just like the Matrix). This is important as Evermore is a commercial MMO like World or Warcraft or Second Life. If people could be killed inside the gameworld, then nobody in their right mind would enter it. The security protocols justify the virtual world's existence while leaving the door open later for possible danger. No matter what happens throughout the novel, this general rule doesn't change. If the safeties are on, you are safe. If the safeties are off, then you can die. Thus Rule #1 is satisfied.Evermore: COTN satisfies the second rule as well: there must be threat of death or a fate worse than death. The whole plot of the novel is pushed forward because someone figures out how to bypass the security protocols and kill people at will inside the game world. This threatens the lives of everyone inside as well as the fiscal viability of the online world itself. Thus the minute the plot begins, the protagonists are very aware that they can be killed when they find the killer. They are also racing against the clock as the more time passes and the more victims appear, then it becomes more likely that the public will discover that they can die inside the game world. If the public realizes they can die, then mass panic and eventual shutdown by the authorities would ensue. Thus it satisfies the second rule: you can suffer a fate as bad or worse than death.As for the third rule, the rules that are applied early on in the novel are in place for the entire story. They never change. The security protocols remain the guarantor of safety throughout the entire novel. The audience is not surprised by a new rule and the events that fall within these rules make sense to the audience. The third rule is satisfied.But does following these rules guarantee that the the story you have written will be a success. No. As Nolan has shown, Inception is a masterpiece despite the house of cards that it's founded on. Following these three rules won't make your virtual reality story great, but it will make it coherent. To tell a good story is a far more challenging task.

The Line Edit is Done

Those of you who have been following my blog will remember that I had hired Erin Stropes from kallista.ca to do a line edit of my novel Evermore: Call of the Nocturne.  I am happy to announce that she has finished and returned my annotated manuscript to me.  Or, I was happy until I found all the (valid) criticisms levelled at my baby.  But not to worry, I did what any self-respecting writer would do.  I went into the corner and cried.After a couple of hours and a couple of hundred tissues, I pulled myself from my misery and began to focus on what I needed to change.  After some thought, I identified three major issues with the plot:

1. The ending was too difficult to understand.
2. The timelock used during the story fizzles out as it approaches the deadline.
3. One of the major characters disappears without reason for half the novel.

The first problem I was able to solve last night with some clever tinkering but the other two will take weeks of work as I read through the manuscript yet again.  This will be followed by a second swing through the novel as I address the thousands of small (and yet valid) points that Erin raised.  Following these two drafts, I will have to submit it again to Erin for a final line-edit review.So while Erin's editing has levelled a blow to my self-esteem and delayed the novel's release for months, I still find that it was worth the time and the money (about $1200) to have the line edit done.  Despite all the aggravation and extra work, the end result will be a manuscript that will be far more fun to read.  Thus for those of you that are considering publishing your novel digitally on your own, I would fully recommend hiring an editor.  They truly do pick up so many things that you missed.  In fact, I would recommend three rules:

1. Hire an editor.
2. Your editor is always right.
3. Your editor is ALWAYS right (it needs to be said twice)

Follow these rules (don't forget to pay her) and you will be able to produce a manuscript that you won't be ashamed of.

Why I picked Storyist

Over the past few weeks, my writing output has been slowed as I've made to transition from Windows to Mac. When I was on Windows, I would fight my way through MS Word. Word is probably the best word processor on the market, but I found that it got in the way of the writing experience when working on fiction. Far too often I would have to worry about formatting rather than what was happening next in my story. I wrote all of Evermore: Call of the Nocturne on Word and it was a long laborious process.So when my PC died and I made the switch to Mac, I wanted to choose my writing software carefully. Checking the Internet, it seemed that there was only two programs to consider: StoryMill and Scrivener. Far and away the most popular writing programs, StoryMill and Scrivener deserved to be taken head-to-head. So I downloaded their generous demos and got to work.StoryMillThis was my early favourite. Easy to set up, easy to use, StoryMill did a great job of getting out of my way and letting me write. It didn't look the best, especially on Mac, but it got the job done.However, it did have a few annoyances. It's full screen writing mode was an ugly, eye-sore that stretched across my widescreen monitor, making it look like my paragraphs were lonely sentences. Its character section was nice but didn't let me add groups. As my wiki file for the Evermore Trilogy contains characters, groups, things, and locations, this wasn't enough for my purposes. Finally, StoryMill was good but it didn't feel incredible. It didn't make me excited to write. Instead, it felt like a chore.ScrivenerWhile I took StoryMill through its paces, I didn't spend too much time with Scrivener. It looked nice but I could never really get into it. It simply took too long to set up and coordinate in order to facilitate the writing process. It made the whole thing harder rather than easier.Thus, I was all set to buy StoryMill. I was ok with it but I wasn't overjoyed by the product. I felt that it would simply get the job down.Then I heard about Storyist. Storyist caught my attention when I heard that it was the first writing program tha would allow you to directly export to the .epub file format. Curious, I read some reviews. They were enthusiastic about the new version, even more so then StoryMill or Scrivener. So I downloaded the 15-day demo and put it through it's paces.StoryistFirst I tried out the character documentation feature. To my surprise, it allowed me to create groups. Secondly, it put them into an attractive and concise format. After playing with it fo a couple days, I was convinced that it's Story creation features were better than StoryMill and more focused than Scrivener.Next, I transferred over a Novella that I was working on in StoryMill to see how it handled the actual writing. It took some getting used to but soon enough I was writing with far more efficiency than I was used to.  Chapters are organized on the left hand side but it also allows you to subdivide the chapters down into sections.  I really like this feature as you can create your story as a group of sections and simply move these sections from chapter to chapter as you edit.The full-screen option is another feature that I love.  Rather than the ugly wide blue screen of StoryMill or slight translucency of Scrivener, Storyist uses a straight-up manuscript look with black letter boxes.  The look is appealing in that when you write the pages go by quickly because of its low word-count per page.  This is great because it makes you feel like you're really flying and getting a lot of work done.  It's a subtle form of positive reinforcement that really makes the writing experience fun.The only thing that I don't like about the writing with Storyist is the Progress Goal.  StoryMill has this great progress meter that allows you to set a daily session goal (say 1000 words) and updates a progress bar as you write.  Storyist on the other hand uses an Inspector that you must click to pop up.  The Inspector contains other features but its session goal feature leaves a lot to be desired.  Unlike StoryMill, the session goal does not reset on every writing session.  That means that if you set a goal of 1000 words and finish that goal, when you come back the next day the session goal will not reset automatically.  In other words, you have to reset the session goal automatically each and every time you write.  This is highly annoying especially when you're used to the ease of StoryMill's progress bar.  Hopefully in an update they'll fix this issue.The feature that I love most however is Storyist's ability to export your story to an .epub file.  As everyone knows by now, .epub is the format used by Apple's iPad and it also works with the popular Stanza app for iPhone.  Storyist allows you to organize your pages and include a cover page from the images section of the navigator pane on the left.  The end result looks great in Stanza (I haven't tried it in iPad yet).  It's nice and clean and it makes sure there  are page breaks for each new chapter.  This is something that Smashwords' Meat-Grinder process does not do all, leaving chapter breaks in the middle of the page.  The result is a far more attractive file.  After you've exported the story to .epub you can still edit it, allowing you to optimize the file for the platform.  All in all, it works exactly as it should.  It's easy and simple and allows you to do what you need.  It makes it a breeze to publish books on the iPhone and iPad.For all the reasons above, I found that Storyist was the best program for my needs on the Mac.  I purchased it a couple weeks ago and have made a lot of progress finishing the first draft of my next novella.  I would recommend it to anyone.  It just makes writing fun.

Cormac McCarthy, Run-On Sentences, and Quotation Marks

With the introduction of the Kindle for iPhone, I've finally taken the opportunity to read Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.  I have loved the movie, even though I missed it an theatres and wanted to how close the movie stuck to the novel.  Needless to say, I was not disappointed.  No Country for Old Men is a terrific read, the most fun I've had since the Harry Potter series finished up.One of the more interesting things with reading a Cormac McCarthy novel for the first time is his unique prose style identifiable by two consistent habits: run-on sentences and no quotation marks.  Now for the most part English teachers will balk at both habits as bad grammar but I'm always interested when a writer does something different.  I always want to understand why an author makes that choices that he or she does and how does it affect the manuscript.Run-on SentencesMcCarthy has been compared to William Faulkner for his consistent use of the run-on sentence.  An example from No Country for Old Men:

The deputy left Chigurh standing in the corner of the office with his hands cuffed behind while he sat in the swivelchair and took off his hat and put his feet up and called Lamar on the mobile.

For the most part, this is a mild example of McCarthy's run-on sentences but does illustrate the reasons why he uses them.  For the most part, McCarthy uses the run-on sentence to string together a bunch of action statements that by themselves are not that interesting.  It almost seems if McCarthy is following Elmore Leonard's old axiom to eliminate the parts that the reader skips over.  However in McCarthy's case, instead of deleting the boring description of action, he shortens them and puts them all together in the same sentence. In a sense, he is skipping over the text alongside the reader. Now, if I was writing it, it probably would have gone like this:

As the deputy walked in to the station, the door creaked in protest. I would have to oil that, thought the deputy. But he couldn't do it right now because he was not alone. Upon his right hand rested the manacled hands of one Anton Chigurh. His arms behind him, Chigurh was led to the corner by the deputy. The deputy left him in the corner and walked over to his desk. Papers lay strewn everywhere and a pen could not be found. The deputy sat back into his swivel chair with a relaxing oomph. He dropped his hat upon the desk and put his feet up, taking the opportunity to scratch an itch that had been bothering him for the last ten miles. Leaning back, he picked up the mobile and dialed the number for Lamar.

As you can see, my version spends a lot of time describing things that aren't really that important. McCarthy's text zooms past this unnecessary description and cuts right to the chase.While run-on sentences are generally seen as the result of poor grammar, I believe that in the manner that McCarthy uses them it works well. It skips over the boring text without completely removing it. It also makes the story appear to be going by faster.  For this reason, I would recommend it but don't overuse less someone accusing you of simply copying McCarthy.  They'd be right but there is nothing wrong with copying good technique.Quotation MarksThe other unusual grammatical quirk that is a trademark of McCarthy's writing's is his use of the quotation mark or more accurately, the fact that he never uses a quotation mark.  For an example, here is the second paragraph from No Country for Old Men:

Just walked in the door.  Sheriff he had some sort of thing on him like one of them oxygen tanks for emphysema or whatever.  Then he had a hose that run down the inside of his sleeve and went to one of them stun guns like they use at the slaughterhouse.  Yessir.  Well that's what it looks like.  You can see it when you get in.  Yessir.  I got it covered.  Yessir.

Not one quotation mark.  McCarthy states that it's because the quotation mark halts the reader.  That it is an intrusive obstruction into the reading experience or to paraphrase him, he hates seeing all of this marks all over his page.  At first it is a little jarring but you soon become used to it.  On this McCarthy has a point, the reading experience is far more fluid when you don't have to deal with quotation marks.  The punctuation disappears and the dialogue and not the punctuation becomes the focus.  However, there are problems with this strategy when you mix dialogue and description.  For example:

Wendell leaned and spat.  Yessir, he said.  I'm ready.  He looked at Torbert.  You get stopped with that old boy in the turtle just tell em you dont know nothin about it.  Tell em somebody must of put him in there while you was havin coffee.

In this case, the reader must switch back and forth between description and dialogue several times.  Each time the reader has to shift focus, there is an opportunity for the reader to lose his place and become confused over whether or not he is reading dialogue.  I found that this happened several times while I was reading to book.  Confusion resulted, forcing me to go back and read it again.  Every time that I did so, it broke the momentum of the story, thus nullifying the advantage that Cormac McCarthy was trying to gain.  Thus, I would recommend that you stick with quotation marks.  They may mark up your page something awful, but they will ensure that your text is clear and easily understand, thus helping to maintain the flow of the story.  Now if you decide to forego quotation marks, just be aware of how the reader can become confused and try to avoid mixing description and dialogue in the same paragraph.Cormac McCarthy is one of the best writers in the English language.  There is a lot that you can learn from reading his books.  But keep in mind that every writer has their own style and this style must have a purpose.  Take from your favourite writers what works for you and leave the rest.  Only you can write like you.