Reply to Re: The Dink Network - Writing Class
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In this day and age, after thousands of years worth of writing, names are almost impossible to be considered original. Sure, it can still be done but even then 50% of names considered original may have already been thought up and used in the distant past, and merely forgotten.
Toast; One of the things I noticed in your example of "and" replacing the comma is that you can still add the and and keep the comma. The sentence would look better with both of them present; In some cases keeping the comma but adding an And/But/However etc is better than just replacing it, but I understand what you're saying.
Edit (because I always add things to what I'm saying):
I liked your rewrite of the prologue, but there were still area's which need a comma in them as well. Not many, but even so you've done a good job so far.
As for re-structuring the prologue entirely, and this is just my opinion, I would prefer to have a description of the landscape before the character. You notice it in movies, though they're obviously not described verbally; An opening cinematic starts off fading up from black, looking at a blue sky perhaps.
Then the camera pans down to show a tranquil landscape with a glowing city in the distance. After a moment the movie camera would start showing action; Tanks appear at the bottom of the screen maybe, steamrolling their way across a parkbench and bushes before driving around a lake on their way to the city.
After the landscape has been "described" in this fashion, we would zoom in on a possible main character sitting atop one of the tank turrets, with the camera panning upwards to show him from feet and legs upwards until you see his face and torso, before resuming the action by the man lifting a radio to his face to issue an order.
Edit 2 & 3
A different way of re-structuring though could start with the action first instead. Because we're talking about writing, the "action" could simply start off mentioning what is doing this. I would think such structuring would only be done for a prologue if it were fast-paced action.
Picturing your own writing, or someone elses in this manner, especially helps if you run it through your head as though watching a movie yourself. I do this a lot when I read by imagining it as I go, though in some books there are extremely detailed locations which just add to the color and difficulty of seeing what you're reading.
Though I must say picturing what the author see's themselves can be difficult with just a loose description such as my "movie" example above. That lacks a lot of detail that I pictured as I thought of it;
The size of the lake compared to the tanks, simple ducks or swan wildlife in the area.
The kinds of trees scattered about, and how much elevation the hills have.
Dirt patches maybe and sandtraps and golfing flags and holes.
The occasional bush or flowerbed.
Or even what sort of city it is; Hulking masses of grey concrete and reflective windows, golden spires or arabic design, Clay chimneys and brickwork factories, Crystaline towers and crimson flag posts, or any number of other ways a city could appear in fiction/non fiction works.
Toast; One of the things I noticed in your example of "and" replacing the comma is that you can still add the and and keep the comma. The sentence would look better with both of them present; In some cases keeping the comma but adding an And/But/However etc is better than just replacing it, but I understand what you're saying.
Edit (because I always add things to what I'm saying):
I liked your rewrite of the prologue, but there were still area's which need a comma in them as well. Not many, but even so you've done a good job so far.
As for re-structuring the prologue entirely, and this is just my opinion, I would prefer to have a description of the landscape before the character. You notice it in movies, though they're obviously not described verbally; An opening cinematic starts off fading up from black, looking at a blue sky perhaps.
Then the camera pans down to show a tranquil landscape with a glowing city in the distance. After a moment the movie camera would start showing action; Tanks appear at the bottom of the screen maybe, steamrolling their way across a parkbench and bushes before driving around a lake on their way to the city.
After the landscape has been "described" in this fashion, we would zoom in on a possible main character sitting atop one of the tank turrets, with the camera panning upwards to show him from feet and legs upwards until you see his face and torso, before resuming the action by the man lifting a radio to his face to issue an order.
Edit 2 & 3
A different way of re-structuring though could start with the action first instead. Because we're talking about writing, the "action" could simply start off mentioning what is doing this. I would think such structuring would only be done for a prologue if it were fast-paced action.
Picturing your own writing, or someone elses in this manner, especially helps if you run it through your head as though watching a movie yourself. I do this a lot when I read by imagining it as I go, though in some books there are extremely detailed locations which just add to the color and difficulty of seeing what you're reading.
Though I must say picturing what the author see's themselves can be difficult with just a loose description such as my "movie" example above. That lacks a lot of detail that I pictured as I thought of it;
The size of the lake compared to the tanks, simple ducks or swan wildlife in the area.
The kinds of trees scattered about, and how much elevation the hills have.
Dirt patches maybe and sandtraps and golfing flags and holes.
The occasional bush or flowerbed.
Or even what sort of city it is; Hulking masses of grey concrete and reflective windows, golden spires or arabic design, Clay chimneys and brickwork factories, Crystaline towers and crimson flag posts, or any number of other ways a city could appear in fiction/non fiction works.
