Beating myself up

[desperance]

matociquala was posting about beats a few days back (and if you didn't read that, go do); so here's a whole nother kind, the line-by-line stuff that I do instinctively, barely see I'm doing it.

Coming to the end of a paragraph, where a woman and her family are trying to keep ahead of soldiers caught in a killing frenzy (think the siege of Jerusalem, the rape of Nanking), she's hoping they'll just exhaust themselves before they reach the river, and this was the last line:

"perhaps by then they would let be, walk past doorways they would have kicked through before, not search in darkened warehouses, not care."

And then I thought, whoa, this is the East, they have their word for warehouses, which is godowns. Which makes the line:

"perhaps by then they would let be, walk past doorways they would have kicked through before, not search in darkened godowns, not care"

- and that's wrong, because there's a beat missing from that final cadence, it jars and you lose the dying fall. So you remake it:

"perhaps by then they would let be, walk past doorways they would have kicked through before, not search in darkened godowns, just not care."

And that's all it needs, that unstressed syllable either side of the comma, doesn't matter which: just a verbal hesitation between the last two stresses. That flows, where the other stumbles.

And yup, I do this every sentence, every clause. Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much. (But, with reference to another subject that crops up here, what words you can or can't use in a fantasy: I'm reading a book I'm enjoying enormously, but it's a second-world fantasy and the author used the word 'sophist' and I tripped over that because it is so explicitly linked in my head with a school of Greek philosophy, never mind what other meanings it may have acquired since; and anything that makes a reader trip needs smoothing over, so no, I don't worry too much. It's impossible to worry too much.)

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I just heard today, 'Bridge of Dreams' made it to the shortlist (http://www.uksfbooknews.net/2007/08/07/2007-british-fantasy-society-awards-shortlist-announced/) ('til now it was just longlisted, and the BFS longlists are looooong...). Having seen the competition, I do not expect to win; but it is good to be up there among 'em.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The only thing on that shortlist I've yet read is Mike Carey's The Devil You Know, which is a very fine book but in a mode [ urban dark fantasy/horror ] I'd not thought likely to get recognised by the BFA, and I'd hate to have to try to compare how well it does what it does with books doing such different things.

[cinderberry.livejournal.com]

*squeak* The shortlist! Go you!

(Having not read any of the others yet, I can support you unreservedly and shamelessly.)