Writing Meme: "G"

[loaded_march]

dorci_adelaida and keoki both asked for "G", which is, Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it. So two replies for this one -- one for fanfic, and the other for original fic.


I don't write prose often.  Or, more precisely, when I do, there's not a lot of it.  My writing tends toward the fast-paced, and I'm pretty sure that I sacrifice long descriptions and mood in favour of compact descriptions and quick mood-setters peppered through the text.  It's a sacrifice.  You can't have both -- Rather, I should say, I can't have both gorgeous descriptions and intense actions at the same time.  Maybe someone else, better skilled than I, can manage it.

Some fics just beg for it, though, like Gold and Glory, Heart and Home -- a Reverse BB I wrote for amphigoury's art.  You can't not write prose in that setting.

In my fanfic writing, I have a whole lot of snippets of prose that I love to pieces -- so much that they ended up on the cutting floor when I went into edits.  Sometimes, it just doesn't fit with the story or the frame of the writing, and it has to be removed.  That's what it means when someone gives you writing advice for editing and they tell you, kill your darlings.

So the first snippet is from a part of GG/HH that I had to cut, because it was an unnecessary prologue.  In a rewrite, parts of the snippet made it in the text, so I'll give you the before and after:

Before:
Some men went West for gold and glory.  Other men went West to run from their ghosts.

Other men... simply ran.  They ran West seeking new lives that were better than the ones they'd left behind, always afraid that someone or something would drag them back to their pasts.

Arthur looked over his shoulder every day, wondering who would come after him to force him to return to a home that wasn't home anymore, that probably had never been.


castmeaway, who was my beta for this RVBB, could tell you just how much I didn't want to cut this piece, but she was right, however grudgingly I admitted it -- it didn't work.  It was set as the prologue, and prologues, however brief, are kind of useless anyway.  It's wistful, and the tone of it is more a setup for a flashback into the past than a story moving forward.


After:
This was the West, a wide-open land of promises and new beginnings.  Most men came out this way in search of gold and glory.  Some men rode West with their hats pulled low over their heads and their collars up, running from their ghosts.

A rare few headed into the wild of the promised land seeking new lives better than the ones they'd left behind, always looking over their shoulder, afraid that someone or something would drag them back to their pasts.  Arthur knew that feeling all too well.


The prologue made a reappearance somewhere in the text, after the characters, the setting and the driving force had been established.  It's better, because it paints a better picture of what Arthur went through to get to the point in life where the story begins.  I like this snippet -- both of them, really -- because it's phrased in a way that Arthur denies that he's like anyone else (because this is Arthur, c'mon), even as he admits, yes, he's just like everyone else after all.


For original fic, there's several snippets from one work in particular that I love like mad, but won't share, because it's out on submission (again) in the hopes that it'll get picked up.  So for this part, I've dug up one of my short stories -- a very high fantasy piece that begs to be turned into a full novel (which is why I never submitted it) -- and I present to you the very beginning, and the beginning of the end.


One sidelong look was all it took, from traitorous servant to disguised assassin, and it was the end.  An untainted soul, a virgin blade, and the Lady Witch of Mendylar, Queen of Shandalyan, was dead.

It's two sentences.  And I could never bear to cut them or rewrite them, and I know they'll never reappear if I ever get a chance to rewrite it, because it needs more words.  But for a short story, it was all that it needed.  I love the rhythm of these two sentences, because it could easily be the first few lines of a minstrel song, even though it's curt and abrupt and not colourful at all.  Those two sentences detail what happened -- a deal between an assassin and a servant, the ingredients that were required to fell the most powerful person in the city, and together are the triggering weight for the full story.