Reached 497 just now, with the word count for the whole coming down slowly.<\/p>\n
Here’s an example for discussion:\u00a0 A courier arrives with an urgent message.\u00a0 While the courier catches his breath, the recipient opens the message case.<\/p>\n
The next sentence, originally, was this:\u00a0 “He was already scanning the terse report.”<\/p>\n
That form makes it clear that even as the courier pours and drinks the sib he was offered, the recipient is reading–it expresses the impatience of the recipient, his sense of urgency.<\/p>\n
On this round of revision, I looked again at the whole scene.\u00a0\u00a0 The message is terse–short–quickly read.\u00a0\u00a0 Did I really need “was already scanning” for such a brief message?\u00a0\u00a0 How long would it take, literally, to open the message case (leather, tied with a thong), pull out the message, unroll or unfold it, and read it?\u00a0 Which would take longer?\u00a0\u00a0 How long would it take the courier to pour and take a sip of the drink?\u00a0\u00a0 The courier has a mouthful when he’s asked what he knows about the message’s contents–he has to swallow before he can answer.\u00a0\u00a0 This time, read aloud, “was already scanning” just felt wrong…it felt to me that it loosened, rather than heightening, the tension.<\/p>\n
So I tried out:\u00a0 “He scanned the terse message.”<\/p>\n
Read that silently and aloud, the whole passage.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now it felt right.\u00a0 The “pouring and sipping” actions were covered by opening the message container and unrolling it…and the recipient’s\u00a0\u00a0 “He scanned…” rather than “He was already scanning…” reinforced the “terse” in both length and rhythm.<\/p>\n
It might feel better the other way to some readers.\u00a0 That I can’t tell.\u00a0\u00a0 In some moods I might prefer the other…or at least would not find it an off-flavor.<\/p>\n
In a few pages, I’ll cross the 500 page boundary and try to make it another 20-30 pages.\u00a0 Or more, if things go well.\u00a0\u00a0 Word count now is 167,964.\u00a0\u00a0 It could go up or down by a thousand by the end, though it’s been dropping slowly for the past week.<\/p>\n
(For those interested in the research angle…I do try out actions sometimes.\u00a0 I have, because I like leather pouches and little boxes, of which I have an abundant clutter, lots of props to practice with.\u00a0\u00a0 This time I used a leather card-case.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Though people differ in the speed with which they manipulate objects, I like to have some realism at the root of the actions depicted. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reached 497 just now, with the word count for the whole coming down slowly. Here’s an example for discussion:\u00a0 A courier arrives with an urgent message.\u00a0 While the courier catches his breath, the recipient opens the message case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,5],"tags":[20,12,51,107],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revisions","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-research","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}