The Ocean Leech Exploring Weird Tales Vol 5, No. 1

THE OCEAN LEECH: EXPLORING WEIRD TALES Vol. 5, No. 1â€"PART sixteen Back to my ongoing sequence of posts the place I’ve been reading a single concern of Weird Tales from 1925. You can read alongside so as by going again to the start and beginning here. This week’s brief story is “The Ocean Leech” by Frank Belknap Long, Jr., one of many pulp era’s most prolific and highly regarded authors. With a fast scan of the period you’ll see his name come up time and time again throughout a number of genres. As an editor, I are inclined to run throughout the identical points time and again. It’s the identical, I suppose, for every careerâ€"the same errors, the same points, the same procedures… Though any art type tends to resist that type of set of onerous and quick guidelines, there are a few which might be onerous and quick enough that they’re price no less than noting if not fixing in an edit. With all due respect to Frank Belknap Long, and with full understanding that both guidelines and reader expectations of the language can and have and can continue to vary over time, I’d like to take a look at this story within the mode of a replica editor. A copy editor is looking for issues of grammar, utilization, spelling… all of the technical aspects of writing. And it’s the copy modifying or technical writing issues that tend to come back up over and over again, enough that I’ve truly created a Word file I call COMMON COMMENTS. From that file and I can copy and paste sure bits of recommendation, explanations of editorial changes, and so on.â€"in many circumstances then tweaking them a bit for the specific story at hand. Let’s see how “The Ocean Leech” stands as much as my COMMON COMMENTS file, beginning immediately with the very first line: COMMENT: Since that is all in CHARACTER’s POV, we get that that is what CHARACTER thinks (or sees or hears or smells, and so on.)â€"an easy trim just to get to the heart of it. More at: /2015/03/24/lively-search-he-may-see/ EDIT: Bourke beat together with his naked fists u pon the cabin door and the wind whistled under the cracks. This one is about lively: He did this, vs. passive: I heard him doing this. COMMENT: Toward tends to come back off as passiveâ€"it’s almost (however not always!) better to direct your characters to or for something. You can see my extended rant right here: /2016/03/08/toward-a-extra-balanced-use-of-toward/ EDIT: He pointed at the door and ran his fingers savagely via his reddish hair, and I knew that one thing had practically finished himâ€"I mean completed him spiritually, damaged his soul, his outlook. And towardsis okay in England however not in America. Here’s one sentence that calls up twoCOMMON COMMENTS: COMMENT: That construct: “something/someone was verbing” is usually a sign of passive voice. It’s virtually all the time better to let the action be more direct: “something/someone verbed” so that factor is happening in the past tense “now” and doesn’t come throughout as feeling as though there’s an additional layer of delay between your readers and the action. /2016/09/06/lively-search-something-was-verbing/ COMMENT: Be cautious of phrases like immediately, all of a sudden, abruptly… a full rant right here: /2014/11/04/instantly-abruptly-and-abruptly-stop-using-the-words-immediately-suddenly-and-abruptly/ EDIT: Oscar stood by my elbow. I turned and gripped his arm. COMMENT: Watch out for what I name “used car salesman dialog”â€"too many traces of dialog that finish with or embody the name of the individual being spoken to. Real folks almost never do that, so reserve it for those characters who do it on purposeâ€"like used car salesmen or other villains. Full rant: /2014/03/25/some-dialog-ideas-we-know-who-hes-speaking-to/ Frank Belknap Long lays this one on thick, too. I’d give him the primary one… EDIT: “Oscar,” I said, “I need you to be fairly frank, and if essential, even brutal. Do you assume you can explain that factor? I don’t want any wretched theor ies. I need you to trend a prop for me, one thing for me to lean upon. I’m so very tired, and I haven’t a lot authority here. Oh, sure, I’m imagined to be in command, however when there’s nothing to go on, what can I say to them?” And a bonus COMMON COMMENT changing there isto there’s: Don’t be afraid of contractions! I whine about that at size right here: /2014/04/29/contractions-arent-bad/ COMMENT: Be cautious of relying too closely (if in any respect) on adverbs in dialog attribution: she mentioned sympathetically, and so on. Though I’m not sure I totally agree with Stephen King’s more strident: “The highway to Hell is paved with adverbs,” he does have some extent. The adverb tells, however an outline of the sound of that character’s voice, the look on his or her face, body language, or just the context by which the line is spoken, shows. EDIT: “The factor is clearly a cephalopod,” stated Oscar, a glance of shame and horror in his eyes that I didn’t like. Notice that I’m also simplifying sentences from time to time, once more due to the change within the language and reader expectations between 1925 and 2019. COMMENT: The Oxford or serial comma is non-optionally available in lengthy type proseâ€"doing without it is a relic of print journalism where any opportunity to avoid wasting column width is taken. EASY EDIT: He screamed, made surprising grimaces, fell down upon the deck, and tried to attract himself along by his hands. Though this one isn’t in my COMMON COMMENTS file, I assume it deserves to be called out here. I received’t copy the whole very lengthy paragraph within the first column of page 114, just this final half: Except beneath a small set of circumstances, which we do not see here, keep dialog from two totally different characters in their own paragraphs. EDIT: I didn’t bother calling out every little mistake the way I would if I were actually copy enhancing this story, just like the misspelling of gurgling (guggling) on web page 112 and115, but there’s not an excessive amount of there. And last, he used the word aboutin a method that’s old fashioned (it was 1925, in spite of everything) and in almost ever instance the copy editor in me would change it to around, as an example: All that saidâ€"I loved this story. A weirdtale indeed! â€"Philip Athans In my 4-week on-line Pulp Fiction Workshop we’ll study storytelling techniques that transcend the pulp genres and make writing fun again. 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