David MacNamera's Blog: David MacNamera Blog - Posts Tagged "needs-editing-meme"

Hi everyone, thanks again for your interest in '7 Spirits, 4 Friends' and for your comments and opinions about the story.

I love to read how the story development impacts the readers and what conclusions readers draw from a novel.

I like to address points that reviewers raise by commenting on them in the blog posts, so in no particular order of appearance here are some answers to various points made by reviewers:

1. The reason most dangers are near-misses is that if the characters get killed it will ruin the story! I have been a little disappointed by a society that now seems to insist on seeing groups of friends engaged in in-fighting with each other, plus deaths happening on a regular basis. Neither of those two things is necessary in life or in literature, and I like to make a place in the literary world where discipline and mutual respect still exist.

2. The names of all characters were drawn from period databases of names, to make sure they are all authentic to the time and culture where each character supposedly originates. So if any of the names seem strange, it's only because that's how they really named people hundreds of years ago!

3. Ice cream jacket means the type they wore in an old-time ice cream parlor, with a fancy straw hat. Oswyn was from the 1880's so that's the kind of striped-vest and white-shirt look I was going for with Oswyn's appearance. I suppose I should qualify historical references more thoroughly since some readers may be of very young ages and may not get some of the references made.

4. Languages that appear in the book are Spanish, French, Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese (and of course English), we were just trying to sound out the words phonetically, not trying to represent the writing traditions of all of those different languages, which I think most readers couldn't attest to one way or the other given the breadth of languages involved and this being just a simple ghost story.

5. Grammarly and the "Needs Editing" meme, I guess with cues for writing constantly popping up from the software (just like now!), most modern computer users are going to cede their own thinking on language to programs like Grammarly. I suppose I'll have to integrate Grammarly from the start of new projects from now on to avoid the "Needs Editing" trolls since we'll all be using the same software program by that point. Still, I was considering having our store sell some "Needs Editing" T-shirts in honor of the meme, lol, just let me know what your favorite colors of shirts are!

6. One comment states that points were raised and they were not brought up again. The novel is streamlined to present the readers with just what they need to watch the story unfold. If any reviewer can email me some examples of critical plot points being left out then I will certainly address them, otherwise, I believe that the quicker pacing which the story has now is what modern readers are more interested in, rather than the exhaustive elucidation of a long list of story elements.

7. One comment asserted that there was more telling than showing going on. It's funny when people read what you wrote because sometimes you wonder what they actually saw! I specifically designed this story to only show actions as characters were doing them, and almost exclusively that is how all scenes in the book are written. In my opinion, the reader doing and seeing all actions along with the participating characters is the very definition of showing the action to the reader! Lol, but I'll look into the concept more and see if I can utilize even less narrative than the already tiny amount I included in this novel.

Thanks again for your interest, and please keep the great feedback coming! All comments are welcome!

Regards,

David MacNamera