Faery Moon edits

Today, I donned my editorial hat to work on CJ’s Faery Moon. Thought you all might be interested in the kind of stuff we do for each other.

There’s the little stuff. The little typos and such. The brain or finger glitches. And then there are the new problems inherent in the processing of the file. In this case, it was figuring out how to “finesse” the html code. I want things like real em-dashes and smart/curly quotes. We’re taking an old Volkswriter file and transposing it into Word Perfect, and then into html. Those finesses get lost. So, I went online, found the html code and stressed my html editor to its max doing globals. I don’t think Namo was designed to work quite this large a file!

But I managed. Had to fix the indent one incident at a time, but that was just a lot of stutter finger on the “replace” button of  search and replace. Don’t really know why it wouldn’t global, but it froze every time I tried to do it.

As for the substance…The interesting part of editing Carolyn is surfacing out of the exquisite prose and great characters long enough to realize when something doesn’t make logical sense. It’s way too easy just to get lost in the words and the poetry, and not see a problem. With this one, I find actually reading it aloud (soto voche) helps. Somehow, the logic flaws are just harder to get your tongue around.

For instance, she wrote:

He averted his face from the rake of a branch, forged ahead with his arms and found his path ahead hindered by branches he had no time to go around. He tore desperately through thorny brush, his heart hammering in the clatter of that nameless thing that pursued. His breath rasped, but nothing so loud as that breathing at his back, whose rattle was the rattle of ill-joined bones, the clack and clatter of stones in the spate.

I changed it to:

He averted his face from the rake of a limb, forged ahead with his arms shielding his eyes, and found his path ahead hindered by branches he had no time to go around. He tore desperately through thorny brush, his heart hammering in the clatter of that nameless thing that pursued. His breath rasped, but nothing so loud as that creature breathing at his back, whose rattle was the rattle of ill-joined bones, the clack and clatter of stones in the spate.

Problem? You don’t forge ahead with your arms. It’s a whole-body experience. I asked Carolyn about it, she demonstrated what she meant, and I added the phrase. The other problem, while the breathing at his back c/b rattling, combined with previous description of the creature itself, which involved the rattle of stones, it was potentially confusing. 

Another interesting one involves…not so much inconsistency as the possibility for perceived inconsistency. One of the really cool parts of this story is how Carolyn develops the levels of…Sidhe-dom, so to speak. There’s the bright Sidhe, who have determined Caith’s fate and who are seriously allergic to iron; the dark Sidhe, like Dubhain, who are ruled by the bright Sidhe, but are … genetically more ancient and closer to the Earth, and a little less sensitive to iron. He can even handle it, briefly. Then, there’s the really old, really dark Sidhe, which are seriously testy and are the stone incarnate, of which iron is a part.

This is a very important part of the story and vital that the reader doesn’t build the wrong impression. Now, try to forget you read the previous paragraph.  

Before any of this new interpretation is established, when we’re still caught up in meeting the characters and the world, we had the following two statements:

He snatched the coarse, rain-soaked cloth close about him and set his other hand on his sword to keep it from banging about his side. He dared not draw it against the creature that moved behind him—iron having no power over the oldest things and over the darkest, the very things a man would most want to keep away from him, so that a man risked more with a weapon than without it.

Worse, it was gaining slightly, as best he could judge, and a Sidhe thing, once a man began to run, would run too, until human strength gave out—which his would quickly, hungry and weary as he was.

[a few pages later:]

Dubhain, to be sure, stood holding him to the fore like a shield, for the Sidhe had no love of iron at all.

Now, the problem is, she hasn’t established the levels of Sidhe, and if I hadn’t already explained the premise, these two statements would appear to be contradictory, as Dubhain has been described as a dark Sidhe. Not only that, having Sidhe that are not vulnerable to iron bucks the popular canon, so it’s important not to misinterpret the meaning of that first statement. Between the two of us, we changed it to:

He snatched the coarse, rain-soaked wool close about him and set his other hand on his sword to keep it from banging about his side. He dared not draw it against the creature that moved behind him—iron having no power over the very oldest things and the very darkest. Like Sidhe—but not.  Like Dubhain—but not.

Older than the bright Sidhe. Darker than Dubhain. And immune to iron, so that a man risked more with a weapon than without it.

Worse, it was gaining slightly, as best he could judge, and such a creature, once a man began to run, would run too, until human strength gave out—which his would quickly, hungry and weary as he was.

[and later]

Dubhain, to be sure, stood holding him to the fore like a shield, for Dubhain had no love of iron …at all.

Subtle differences, to be sure, but you’d be surprised how much difference it makes in context. Mostly, the reader needs to know the rules are different here, and to be on the lookout for clues.

Anyway, that’s the kind of thing we look for.

Ja ne!