Shannon Petruchio

For some reason I always had trouble with tenses. I don't know why, it's a simple thing that took me FOREVER to grasp completely. When, finally, I was sure I had it all sorted out (and had believed this to be so for years) I posted somethings online. One of the reviews I got, which was a great review (not knocking the person who gave it to me because she said some wonderful things about my work in progress) she said that I jumped tenses a lot. I was floored because I was so sure I had it right. There is one thing, however, that I was never completely certain about but I had seen in text before and use all the time. Here's an example:

Past Tense

She collapsed into her chair. "Please, just don't start with me right now." She said, shaking her head from side to side.

When I put 'shaking' in there, did I jump to present tense? I suppose I always thought that the 'while' would be implied, or that the past tense 'said' would apply to the visual that followed, but, when I tried to look it up I haven't been able to either credit or discredit this reasoning.

Anyway, help me out guys and girls, I'm a little lost on this one.

Thanks!

I started a book when I was 15 or 16 (ten years ago), stopped writing it as I got older (it was about vampires, I think I just out grew it). When I was in my early 20s I read Twilight, which I though was just okay, but it made me think about my vampire story (and that my story was better, because it actually had action, horror and violence). In between when I stopped writing it and when I picked it up again, I had begun to take writing very seriously and worked really hard at improving my skill. So when I did pick it up again all I could do was have a good laugh at how awful it was.

A few days ago I was bored so I fired up the old lap top, stumbled across that document, read it and realized that I was actually on to something. The writing is just god awful, my grammar is horrid, (it's not much better now, as I'm sure you can tell, but I'm a freaking english teacher compared to what I used to be) my MC was a Mary-Sue and most of my characters are nothing more than archetypes. However, the story is really good and there's a lot of action, a lot a surprising events and some really great scenes.

Right now my biggest problem is that I want to fix it but looking at it exhausts me. There's so much wrong that short of scrapping the whole thing and starting over (which may be my best option, yes?) I don't know what to do.

Has this ever happened to any of you? Does anyone have any tips or advice on how to fix this, or even where to start?

Before anyone suggests that I make it so it's not about vampires, I've thought about that, from every possible angle but with out that whole 'feeding on human blood' aspect I lose some of the best conflicts and scenes in my story. If I ever do pursue publishing with this particular novel it will be far in the future.

So you go into a book store, just looking for anything, if a book cover gets your attention, you then read the description on the back, if you like that you open he cover and read the exert. What would you put there?

Based on what I've seen I would say it should be between 250-400 words, it should occur in the first quarter of the book and it should give a taste of the overall mood of you're story in action, show your writing style and is probably meant to intrigue the reader.

After much reading over the early action scenes (because my book is pretty violent I would use one of those such scenes, if you're is, say, romance, you should look at your early romantic scenes) I settled on this peice for now.

“I’m not a spy.” She replied in a loud voice that she hoped didn’t sound too panicked.

Lynk stood, the first knife was searing red hot in his hand, he moved toward her. “Perhaps, but you’re not exactly who you say you are either.” She didn’t respond, just stared at the glowing weapon. He held the knife close enough to the underside of her right arm that she could feel the heat on her skin. He looked into her eyes, giving her a chance to talk, she just looked back daring him to do it. All the pain she’s been subjected to since they met, how could this possibly be that much worse?

It was worse. Much, much worse. He pressed the knife flat into her skin, the intense heat seemed to freeze straight through her, her whole body rocked and convulsed. It was the smell that most surprised her, the smell of her own flesh cooking under the poker hot knife, the scent reminded her of pork and she fought the urge to vomit. He held it there until the knife cooled. In her attention to this new pain she didn’t cover herself as well as she usually did and an involuntary groan escaped her lips. “Well, well, well,” he said with a sort of tune in his words. “You do feel pain, I’ve got to tell you that is a huge relief, I’d hate to think I was wasting my time.” He moved back to the fire in lazy casual strides. “So, let try this again.” He reached for the next knife then stopped himself and sat with his back to her, an acknowledgement of how helpless she was against him. “Actually, maybe I’ll start with the easier questions, sound good sweetheart?”

She didn't answer, just stared beyond him to the flames, fighting her own self pity now, hushing the voice that asked what she had ever done in her entire life to deserve this.

BQ- Would that intrigue you?

BQ2- Did you have a difficult time choosing you're exert? How long did it take you?

BQ3- What are your MC weaknesses? (There's always such focus on strength)

BQ4- If, for some crazy reason, it was decided that not another book would ever be published or sold, would you still write? What would your goals for your book be then?

Thanks in advance for answering and please read each others exerts and help me choose a best anwser by giving 'thumbs up' to your favorites!

Okay so I'm working on a story and I am not the romantic sort, I like a little love in all my stories but this entire story fails if the reader doesn't believe this. Basically Angel is an immortal who finds her true love reincarnated again and again, always under horrible circumstances, this is the first time he has come back to her and this scene is from his prospective. He's a horribly disfigured cold hearted soldier in this life time and I think I've got it to a point where his emotions are believable. What do you think? (This scene is right after he told her off for being kind to him and accused her of being a spy.)

He did not realize he had opened the door again even until he was back inside of the room, kneeling in front of where she cried on the bed. He reached out for her and she slid on to the floor and into his arms. “Why am I so affected by you Angel?” He asked her after a few moments.

“Perhaps for the same reason I am affected by you.” She whispered into his shoulder.

He did not ask her what she meant, perhaps she was telling him something that he simply did not understand, perhaps it was just another part of her ploy. He did not care. This was new. This was different. Yet it felt old and familiar. The folds of her body leaning against his, her sweet and musky scent, the feel of her hair. He knew all of these things very well, it was as if they were not new but somehow being rediscovered. May be he was a fool after all, maybe all of this was in his head and she was the master of manipulation, but when she turned her face up to him, he turned his down and kissed her.

I don't know, any other feedback would also be apprecaited (grammar and so on). Thanks!

Okay, of course I know it's pretty important, if I were writing something set in london 1600s none of my characters will have Ipods. But sometimes when I write, the exact time setting isn't so important as the fact that it happened a long time ago from the present action. How do you feel about writer's being vague? I know there has been some sort of lamp, whether it was run on oil, kerosene or just a candle with a sort of shade, is it important that I say which type of lamp my character is using, can I just say 'he lit the lamp' is that acceptable? Also, I once write something about an immortal, she was not a vampire, she didn't know why she was immortal, she didn't need blood and had no special powers, in one flash back she was in Greece, I know Greece was partially occupied by Rome many for many years before and after my chapter but I don't know the politics of it, and even if I did I wouldn't write about them because they weren't relevant to my story, so I just gave my character an internal monologue saying that she had enough problems of her own and the issues of society seemed so petty and fleeting to her that she could be bothered to keep up. Is that acceptable or would you read that and think that if I weren't going to put the work into researching to my story than your not going to put the work into reading it?

Okay, so I'm not bad on computers but I just can crack this one. I'm using the newest version of MS office, I forget the exact name of it, I think it might be MS Office 7, or something like that. When I type a question mark in MS word, I get a crazy upper case E with and accent over it, when I type I comma, I get a lower case e with an accent, my square brackets are giving me little arrow looking things, it's so frustrating! I know its just the MS word program because my note pad and open office programs are working fine, I opened the file, chose 'other options' and selected 'language options' there are two fields for it and both fields are showing "English (Canada)", I even changed it to "French (Canada)" and then changed it back to "English (Canada)" just to try and reset it, but it does nothing, there must be some function key that I hit or some box that I accidentally checked that's doing this but I am so lost and so frustrated, any suggestions or other information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

I have an audition coming up and I've been scouring the web looking for a good contemporary monologue for a female, any suggestions of specific monologues or good sites with monologues would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to do a comedic one but a great monologue is a great monologue no matter what genre. Thanks

I'm working on a book (surprise, surprise) and once I'm finished I intend to pursue getting it published aggressively. I use websites like writing.com and worthyofpublishing.com but I usually just post like short stories, or novellas or just anything I'm writing simply for my own amusement. I would really like feedback on my book but I'm weary of putting it on to one of those websites because from a publishers perspective I can see them not wanting to sink money into printing something when it's already been read, could have been copied, pasted and saved to someone else's computer and could be leaked before or after it's released.

(just on a side note, I am not conceded enough to think that my story is so great that everyone will want to save themselves a copy for future pirating, I'm just saying that to a publisher this may be a concern). Any advice or opinions on this topic would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

Does it matter how matched my chapters are? My book flashes back to the past every other chapter, by the time something happens in the present I need things that have happened in the past to be written already, the problem with this is that as a result the length of my chapters are all over the board, my shortest one is 9 pages and my longest and 40 some. Is this a problem for readers?

I could do it in parts, part one being the present and the given circumstances, part two being everything that happened in the past and then part three going back to the present for the conclusion, is that a better structure? Does it matter either way?

I am planning a trip, it's me, my boyfriend and another couple, we're all in the 23-25 range. I've been looking at the Temptation Resort in Cancun, mostly because it's inexpensive and a lot of places I've seen that are adults only are for older crowds then us, I've been reading mixed reviews and I was wondering if anyone who's been there or heard anything about it could let me know if it's a good spot to go or suggest something else all inclusive in the $1000 range, perferrably adults only, that may be better suited for this crew. We're all really easy going and not at all up tight, we just want to go somewhere hot and party for a week or two! Thanks so much for your help!!

I think that's what they're called (RV4 and MSds) they're like DS game cartriages with a slot for a micro SD chip that you can download games on to. do they work with the new DSi??