So. Many. Adverbs!

This past Saturday I received an unexpected Facebook message from DarkAngel1326! Man, I miss talking to her. Stupid college courses keeping her busy...


*ahem*
My point - aside from the awesomeness of talking to her again - was that she sent me a link that seemed PERFECT for what I was trying to accomplish this week. Namely, improve on my over-elaboration when I write, as well as my surprising fondness of adverbs.

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly was always one of my favorites...

So, what was this awesome website DA1326 sent me? Well, she introduced me to Hemingway Editor.

Out of curiosity, I dumped last week's blog post in to Hemingway in order to see what my normal journaling is like.

• My blog post should be readable in less than six minutes.
• It is written at a ninth grade reading level; a bit more advanced than my usual aim of the journalism norm of 7th grade.
• Out of the 70 sentences that had made up my blog post, 16 were hard to read and another 19 were very hard.
• I could have used simpler phrases 16 times.
• I had three cases of passive voice; mostly when I was talking about critiques of my writing.
• Here's the big one. I had 21 adverbs. TWENTY. ONE.

Now to clarify a few things. This is what Hemingway means when it says "hard" or "very hard" to read sentences:

Hard-to-read sentences: "long, complex sentences and common errors; shorten or split it."
Very-Hard-to-Read: "your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic — try editing this sentence"

The funny thing is, most of my "long, complex" sentences are just ones with two or three phrases combined via commas or semi-colons. For instance, this was one of the "hard" sentences: "Normally I'd just shrug it off because this is a smaller computer; I shouldn't expect it to be able to do too much."

Even better are the "dense and complicated" sentences. For example: "Well, that's frustrating."

Seriously? That sentence was dense, complicated, or had meandering and splitting logic!? Go home, Hemingway, you're drunk.

I think I just realized why they named the website that!

Honestly, I ignore the sentence difficulty notifications on Hemingway, but it's still cool to see what boosts your readability grade-level. Same more-or-less goes with the phrases with simpler options. Things like "use" instead of "utilize".

So, the stats I really zero-in on are the adverbs and passive voice.

Let me tell you, when I focused on the adverbs and saw twenty-one, I freaked out. How could I have never noticed that I use them so frequently?! However, I have to admit that adverbs are a nice way to short-cut what I'm trying to say. It's faster to say "rarely" than it is to say "only once in a while." I guess it's just part of my writing voice. I know I should fix that, but I sincerely doubt I'm going to get rid of as many adverbs as I should. I mean, I used one in the previous sentence!

All of that aside, I do wish to improve my writing. Therefore, when I was done editing the next portion of Please, Let Me Explain I dumped it in to Hemingway as well. We had twenty-three adverbs! Just as bad as my blog post! Worse, even, because it's prose. It kept a little bit of work and finesse, but with some real effort I was able to whittle down to only six adverbs. I was "allotted" five by Hemingway, and all of those were in dialogue. I wasn't going to cut adverbs out of dialogue, it just doesn't sound natural then. The other one? Well... I just couldn't figure out how to replace it without being legitimately long-winded about it. Yet, I also couldn't figure out how to omit it completely.

I had to do a lot of rearranging and rewording in order to get the section where it needed to be. I'm waiting for Ronoxym to get back to me approving the changes. The section I edited is only about 1200 words anyway. I might hold off until I get more of the story edited for the chapter. However, if I go until the next natural story break the overall second chapter will end up being an additional 3000 words long. So, what do you guys think? Should I post what I have polished off once Ron approves? Or should I polish off what I was originally considering as "part two" when I first organized the story? I mean, 4200 words isn't THAT big of a chapter, is it?

I mean, the first chapter I have up is a little shy of 2900 words. So 4200 isn't that much worse, right?

I'm just sad that I couldn't get more accomplished before now. I've been feeling under the weather, and so I tend to just open up the file, edit a couple of sentences, and then pass out.

I'm also ashamed that I failed at one of my resolutions. I didn't read a novel last month. I guess that means I need to go through two of them this month to make up for it. I did attempt to re-read my book of Greek mythology in order to better get in to the mindset of how they are written. This way I could go back and edit The Divine Legends so they seemed old-world and true-to-life without having an overwhelming amount of passive voice and adverbs. Problem is, I forgot the book I own isn't a direct English translation of the myths. It's a simplified retelling so it's easier to comprehend. However, this also means it feels more like a friend of mine telling me the myths instead of me reading them myself. Not a good thing to study in order to get the voice I want in these tales.

I'll have to try a different tactic, and remember to get some novel reading in!

Well, this post is late enough as it is. I think I should get to work on both PLME and reading.

A Christmas Gift For You Guys!

First thing's first. I know that Hanukkah is over by now, but life got crazy, which means I missed wishing my Jewish readers a happy one when I skipped last week's post. So, if you celebrate the Festival of Lights, I wish you a belated happy holiday, and hope your Hanukkah was a blessed one.

Now, to explain why I missed last week. Yes, this will be my generic "life is mad crazy, especially working at a grocery store near the holidays." However, it's more than that. The true reason for missing last week's post was because I was too busy writing a short story!

Yeah!

As I mentioned in my last post, Hubby and I have finally gotten around to watching Game of Thrones. We watched the first two seasons thus far, and it has really inspired us. Hubby created his D&D campaign, and we actually had a few sessions last week.

If I remember correctly, our first session was a couple weekends back - either Saturday or Sunday; can't remember which. We had a tournament with all of our characters. As the princess, I only participated in the archery opening games and then watched the others, which consisted of an obstacle course, jousting, a boar hunt, and melee combat.

Well, my in-character little brother - the heir apparent - ended up killing a cousin of Quarthix's character - Brack - during the melee portion. Whoops.

So Brack's family hosted another tournament in honor of their family member dying nobly in the last one. We did that session the next day. Once again my character Airis only participated in the archery portion before sitting out another obstacle course and wrestling portion. No one died this time. YAY!

Then we did our first individual sessions with our characters. Quarthix's fiance's character traveled home with her younger brother and another companion, only to be attacked by a griffon. She and bro lived, but the other companion and two of their horses were griffon-food.

Hubby's character and two companions - cousin's I think - were attacked by an owlbear. I know Hubby's character got out alright, but I can't recall if either of his companions died.... I WANT to say they all escaped with their lives?

Brack and his younger brother were talked in to going to an illegal dog-fighting ring after all the tournament guests left to travel home. Brack, his younger brother, a friend of Brack's younger brother, and said friend's kid brother all went with this guy Malcolm - another friend of Brack's brother's friend - to the games. They bet a few times, but after a couple rounds the underdog managed to kill the favored "dog" - they were actually wolves. The crowd turned ugly and started a riot, killing the victor in the fight. Malcolm and the man in charge of the fights lead Brack and his group in to the back room, where the wolves were kept when they weren't fighting. While they waited out the rioting crowd, the group played some dice, but Brack's younger brother ended up getting caught cheating. Malcolm - who was the wolves' trainer - released them on to Brack's group, and the man in charge of the fights turned out to be a werewolf. Whoopsie.

Brack and his younger brother were the only survivors. RIP little, possibly 8-yr-old Billy. You at least poked a wolf's eye out... or something.

Then we had my character Airis and her younger brother. The road back to their castle has a toll-road. Obviously the royalty can afford the toll, but the guards told their driver that the road was closed down because of a rockslide or fallen tree or something to that effect. Unfortunately, this meant my group was forced down the unsafe, bandit-ridden road. The carriage was attacked by a group of about eight bandits. All six of our guards, our driver, and both of our horses were killed. My younger brother nearly died after getting his eye shot out by an arrow.

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the Cyclops King.

Injured herself, my character was too flustered to know what to do with her unconscious brother that was too heavy for such a dainty woman to carry. If at least ONE horse were available... *sigh*

So she left him bandaged and with water and food as she walked to the guard station on the other side of the toll-road. The guards there told her that the road hadn't been closed down for over a month; obviously the "guards" on the other side were bandits meant to lead her in to the trap. Fantastic.

We haven't played through it yet, but I'm informed that by the time the guards brought Airis back to the arrow-filled carriage to retrieve her brother he is missing. While she was hoofing it to the guard station another group of bandits kidnapped the future king. Boy, am I batting a thousand.

Can't wait to see what else these characters are going to get in trouble with....

Well, the point of bringing all THAT up is the fact that it again sparked my interest to world-build Gyateara. If nothing else, so that I can run my own D&D campaigns there eventually.

So, while at work between the 10th and 17th I was thinking of a specific group of people that live on Gyateara, and their faith. The inspiration was basically the Dothraki tribe from Game of Thrones. They are nomadic, barbarian, war-like people. They don't value money at all, but they have no qualms with ransacking a village in order to get food, water, and even slaves and women if they need any of the above. The main thing they value is their horses; believed to be part of their very souls once they pick a horse. I'm obviously not a fan of the raping and pillaging they do when they conquer someone, but that aside, I'm fascinated with the Dothraki. I really wanted Gyateara to have people like them. So I came up with the Sandikir people.

I really, REALLY wanted to introduce you guys to them after mentally working so hard on them all week. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to writing their story prior to last Wednesday due to playing the D&D sessions; plus Christmas preparations.

When last Wednesday rolled around I decided I still wanted to give you folks SOMETHING to show for all of my brainstorming. Especially since I haven't produced anything of note for over a month. I didn't want to tell you all yet again that I had a story building in my mind, but I didn't have anything for you fine folks to read.

I was determined to have the story written out first, and then write out the blog with the link to the story included. Issue was that the story took on a life of it's own - plus I was paused for about an hour or two - off and on - because of researching I was doing. See, one of the key components of the story is a race of Dire Wolves. I didn't want them quite as large as the Dire Wolves you find in D&D, but I did want them to be larger than an average gray wolf.

Originally, I was just going to randomly throw in a size that seemed about the height I wanted them to be. However, I realized how key these creatures are in the story, the culture of the people I'm writing about, and the world of Gyateara as a whole. So I wanted to get them right. I researched wolf sizes and broke down the proportions of the wolf's body so I could better build the right anatomy for Gyateara's Dire Wolves.

I also kept coming up with parts of the Sandikir culture that desperately needed their own terms - Sandikir terms. There was no way that I was going to be able to come up with a full new language, but I HAD to come up with these new words. I used one of the generators I gushed about last time. Thankfully, Fantasy Name Generators did have a language generator. Unfortunately, it still kept me a WHILE to figure out all the terms. I ended up with a list of about 13 new words!

Although, I am proud to state that I came up with Sandikir, Rikmahja, Rikvu, Mahmurja, Konsirph, Likjun, Plinva, and Miknar all on my own! That's over half of my Sandikir terms! I also came up with the names of the three pups by myself, too. YAY!

Now, the story started out as yet another chapter in my The Divine Legends anthology. I was going to simply write the divine "origin story" the people believed in. I had so much of their culture figured out, though. It felt weird to know it and not have it documented somewhere. Granted, I won't be so heavy-handed with "this is how they live and what they believe" in an actual story or D&D campaign. Still, I wanted to make sure to get the culture down on paper - figuratively speaking - while it was fresh. This resulted in me creating a new anthology that talks more about the cultures of Gyateara: The People of Gyateara

Well, the story kept growing and growing until it ended up just shy of 2600 words. I really should expect this by now, I mean... seriously... when have I ever written anything that was short!? I also tried something new. I wrote the story with the narrator talking directly to you as if the narrator were a sort of "tour guide" for the people you - the reader - stumbled upon. Not entirely sure if it works, but you can let me know what you think of it.

"The Land of the Sandikir"

On DeviantArt          On FictionPress

Anyway, with the story FINALLY done, I went to publish it and then work on the blog. Problem being that it was now about 3pm, and I needed to pick up my husband. I had to wait until I brought Hubby home from work before I could publish the tale up on DeviantArt and FictionPress. Once that was done I STILL couldn't get to the blog post.

I had laundry and dishes and other such chores to get done. I was exhausted when everything was complete. I finally gave up and figured I'd post a day late. Then the true chaos of The Last Week Before Christmas kicked in. I had gifts that needed to be finished. My home wasn't completely clean yet - still isn't. I never got around to putting up any decorations aside from our advent calendar and the Christmas tree with no ornaments on it. To this day, I still have most of our presents that I need to wrap.

Totally failing this Christmas thing this year....

But at least I have this one gift for you guys. The story that stopped me from posting last week. Hopefully that and this long post is a good enough gift to thank you all for being such faithful readers.

Love you all, and have a merry Christmas!