John S Alty

[TW for an F-Bomb 💣]

And Your Flesh Shall Be A Wild Night and A New Road

The wild scream of the guitar ripped down his spine, surging like power in his veins. Dominion, utter and absolute electricity, was what their music held over the night.

.  . . 1984.

That was the last time he saw her, and all he could recall were a few, sparse details of…[Read more]

Sorting out my formatting before I post would be another nice thing…

 I spotted my MC thinking about something I knew she was going to know, but she didn’t actually know yet

That’s the kind of thing I try to see in my own writing though often it’s only after leaving the piece as long as possible that I notice what I’ve done.

My main reason for leaving drafts a long time – apart from life getting in the way – is…

[Read more]

Oh yes, I remember that gent, and his habit of taking other people’s writing and, unasked for, eviscerating the piece, stripping it of every possible nuance and subtlety to leave a lifeless skeleton. You mean he once actually admitted he was wrong?

I’ve just edited out the opposite problem (sort of) to the one you mention in your first para. I…[Read more]

The trouble is, it’s easy to get used to odd phrasing or vocabulary when I’ve produced it myself.

There’s definitely something in that. It’s a similar issue to writing something which doesn’t make sense on its own because you know all the back story that your audience is missing. You know what a turn of phrase means and it’s something of a sur…[Read more]

I’m emotionally excited over this!! haha. We’ll see what I get up to 😊✨

No worries, Ath. I absolutely agree with you. For me, rules are interesting in a meta way for people’s reactions to them, either for or against. I like to think I’m relaxed but my bonnet bees show my uptightness 🙂 The truth is, I’m fascinated by ‘rules’ and the improvements or failures that can happen when they’re ‘broken’ – though most of the…[Read more]

Re the bee in your bonnet. My comments about commas were not directed at you. Commas are wonderfully useful and under-used.

No, I don’t worry too much about rules. Most of the rules are inventions of  over-educated elites designed to reinforce the idea that how the aristocracy spoke and wrote was the correct way*. That’s how we end up with such nonsense as split-infinitives and pointless debates about whether there should be a comma prior to and in a list. Seeing as…[Read more]

Confusingly, I have asked for two metaphors (mixed) while giving an example using a proverb 😂

So, let’s try this again:

Take two well-known sayings.
Mix well.
Write the story inspired by the result.

400 words or less.

I’ve learned a new word: ambitransitive. Thanks, Ath. It’s a helpful one.

Like you I think probably no rules are broken. I have a small bee in my bonnet about contemporary UK English abandoning commas and that may be why I thought a comma would help.

Your list, Ath –  avoidance of ambiguity; awareness of how things sound; comprehensibility; and…[Read more]

Hmm, crossed with everything after Libby’s post. Hence my repetition of the point about the transitivity (Is that a word? Sod it, it ought to be…) of those speech tags.

I think part of the problem here is that the author is concentrating very hard on the laudable aim of putting as much as possible – that he is comforting her, that he is speaking with his mouth close to her hair – into as few words as possible. Which can be very effective and satisfying when it works, but unfortunately this doesn’t.

It’s also a…[Read more]

Crossed with your reply Kate.

Yes! It is creepy. I have been discussing it offline with another member of the circle. We thought that ‘against her hair’ was perhaps one of the worst possible adjectival phrases.

I did think of a comma and I agree that it helps. What still interests me is whether the construction actually breaches any commonly agreed grammatical rules.

I take your point about common speech tags being transitive, although several are actually ambitransitive e.g.

It was necessary to answer. John answered.

I agree that ‘against’ is a poor…[Read more]

I can’t offer any grammatical analysis, but it does certainly sound wrong. Almost creepily so. I did have to have a giggle at Libby’s analysis of the hair as ‘a nasty piece of work’.

Here are my thoughts but I’m very willing to be told I’m wrong.

The sentence would read better with a more appropriate verb and a comma:

‘Don’t worry,’ Jacob soothed, against her hair.

I agree Ath with both your points — I’d prefer ‘said’ for the speech tag, but using a transitive verb isn’t a problem. Aren’t a lot of speech tags trans…[Read more]

Well done Sea. Yours put me in mind of the This might hurt book/TV series, very important pressure. And thanks Knicks for giving me the opportunity to play with plot possibilities.