Fragmentation

By J.D. Ray · Feb 9, 2020 · 537 · 6

Most of a year ago, I wrapped Part One of Lives in Time, my WIP. My friend Steve, an author of some renown, offered to read it and give feedback, which I readily accepted. His review is posted in my blog below, titled Feedback if you're interested. It's good material.

Today, after letting the work languish for quite a while, I started the long, arduous process of editing. I'm relying on Steve's feedback, as well as that of another author friend, to guide me. It's difficult, though.

One thing I did notice, after letting the work settle, is that I had (probably still have) a habit of making lengthy paragraphs that were really several paragraphs chained together. I broke them into two (sometimes three) pieces, and now the work reads better. The simple addition of a few carriage returns helped the flow of the work dramatically.

Now just to go back and fix the "show versus tell" business, which will be harder. :|
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Steve Rivers, Cave Troll and jannert like this.

Comments

I agree that breaking paragraphs down can make a lot of difference. But what are these "carriage returns" of which you speak?

GrahamLewis, Feb 9, 2020
"A carriage return, sometimes known as a cartridge return and often shortened to CR, <CR> or return, is a control character or mechanism used to reset a device's position to the beginning of a line of text."

Steve Rivers, Feb 10, 2020
I figured he was being sarcastic, and was about to throw down with a "kids these days..." soliloquy when I got distracted with something else (Squirrel!). I learned to type on a manual, and know well what a carriage return bar is.

J.D. Ray, Feb 10, 2020
Yep, JD, I wasn't serious. Like you, probably more than you, I cut my teeth on a manual typewriter, then moved through various electric iterations. Shoving the carriage return always gave a sense of accomplishment.

GrahamLewis, Feb 11, 2020
You guys make me feel better. I only have a vague, distant memory of my mum's old typewriter from when I was about four. It didn't make that satisfying "Ching!" sound tho that all the stereotyped versions have.
That always made me feel sad.

Steve Rivers, Feb 11, 2020
In 1989 I was appointed law clerk to a senior (semi-retired) federal judge who had been practicing law since the 1930s, and had kept the same secretary all that time. She used a manual typewriter. When I showed up, she told me "I don't do typing for clerks, and your typewriter is broken." So I wrote my first few documents by hand, until I got a "new" typewriter, for which I was grateful. A few months later the courts began getting word processors, and I've never looked back.

GrahamLewis, Feb 11, 2020

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Fragmentation

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