Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26423665-20150604190112/@comment-26423665-20150724142351

Don't worry about taking a while getting back. I understand that some people, like yourself, experience something called "a life" which eludes me to this day.

Thanks for the help, it's much appreciated. Many of the suggestions I've taken on or used to spur rewrites of certain sentences.

Firstly I did break the paragraphs down much more than they were so it should read a lot more easily now.

Several of the semicolons you corrected to commas could actually be replaced with words to eliminate any chance of a run-on sentence so I went with that in many cases.

I removed the redundant repetition of the word “eyes” now in P4 so that whole part reads a little more smoothly.

Rather than “it could lick you through the covers” in P7 I went with “you'd be able to feel it licking” which sounds a little better to me, to make it feel more real and less like something incorporeal that isn't really there.

I liked your suggestion of “you change your mind” rather than the mess of attempted shock I had there but I took it a step further still and went with “your mind changes” to further reiterate a lack of control over the imagination.

As for the comma after “slumber” in the quandary; I'm a Brit so I was generally not brought up with the serial comma, it's more of US English thing. While neither is technically incorrect I'm happy to include it as the greater proportion of readers will be from outside the UK.

There's a few suggestions, however, that my (demonstrably lacking) writing knowledge is trying to query (or at least trying to justify not changing) so if you could just clarify a few things for me so I can put it to bed?

The semicolon is connecting two closely related ideas now in paragraph 3; the notion of the quandary and the list of options relevant to quandary itself so I wouldn't the semicolon keep the flow running without triggering a run-on sentence. If this isn't the case then would a colon be more appropriate as it does lead on directly?

When isolating with commas it is to keep in something non-essential to the sentence, such as this example, and would therefore need the rest of the sentence to still make sense. In the final suggestion you gave the; “Outside of the above I can’t really claim to understand much about how the human mind works so I really need to ask one thing” would be isolated to; “Outside of the above, I can’t really claim to understand much about how the human mind works, so I really need to ask one thing” A couple of points here is that the “I can't really claim to understand how the human mind works” is essential to the general idea and the remaining sentence would be; “Outside of the above so I really need to ask you one thing.” Even if you remove the superfluous “so” it would still read; “Outside of the above I really need to ask you one thing.” which, while technically a sentence, still doesn't read quite right. So in this case wouldn't it be best not to isolate and leave it as is (or for me to think of a better way of wording it because I could still be happier with it)?

As for the Title, I was never really happy with it. It's pretty much a working title at the moment and I just need to try to get my brain into gear and pick out a better one for it.