They're just a first draft. Leofric (from whose point of view this is) is currently in denial about Maiwyn. But I promised you snippets, and here they are.
"O Maiwyn, most beautiful among women, will you come out and show me the constellations?" Had he said that? That was almost as bad as what he hadn't said that afternoon. He had read way too much Wulfred the Rhymer. Too late to get out of it. The offer hung in the air between them.
"Did I tell you about what Bear and I did to Mell with the giant spider?"
"I don't think so." Her voice was perfectly normal. Good. It came out low and smooth, like honey over cornbread. Her hair was the color of honey, too. Enough honey. He was talking about spiders.
"Well, it was back before they got married. She hated spiders, and I came across a really big furry one out by the mines. I caught it in an empty coffee cup, and we flattened it on a piece of parchment exactly the color of her pillowcase and got her roommate Nadder to put it there for her to find."
"How did you know what color her pillowcase was?" Maiwyn demanded.
"She brought it out for a reading-aloud once. It's all right, I promise. So Nadder left the spider there and we hung out in the building after Mell said goodnight, and she screamed so loud she woke up her entire hallway and came running out and yelled at Bear and told him he'd have to wash the pillowcase for her before she slept on it again. It was really funny."
"I don't think it sounds funny."
"Well...then we told her it was on parchment and not actually on her pillow, and she stopped boiling and brought it out and let us ritually incinerate it. I think spiders on Swostor must eat sulfur or something, because it burned bright yellow. But the ashes still looked kind of like a spider, so we burned it again."
Maiwyn laughed. Good. "That was a very male thing to do. Did she forgive you guys?"
"Oh, definitely. I think she took it as a sign of affection."
"I noticed your garden yesterday. It looked great, really green. You must spend a lot of time working in it."
"Well, it's worth it. I grow thyme," she said, with her inimitable I-just-made-an-awful-pun tone.
He hadn't heard her pun for three years. He laughed. "That was very sage of you."
"Thank you. And I commend you on that herbal pun," she reposted.
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6 comments:
Too much talking about talking. If you snip out every one of the bits of commentary on the tones, thoughts about the speeches, etc... it would be much better. You don't need them. Let the people speak for themselves.
What is happening besides romance?
Delightful, dear! Truly--I mean that. I love the comparing the girl's voice to honey over cornbread. Your dialogue is very natural and humorous. This is good writing :).
Sarah may have a point. It's always difficult to find the balance between not saying enough and being ambiguous, and saying too much. It may be best to hold back on the commentary a little bit, and let the reader figure out tone and thought based on what is said. I tend to provide too much commentary, and Patricia Wrede was counseling me to minimize it and to never state the obvious, etc.
But marvelously done ... show us more :).
(Sorry; whenever I see people's writing I slip over into "business" mode. I was a little curt, esp. as I don't really know if you want constructive criticism or not. There is quite a lot of good writing in there, but it would probably need to be trimmed and simplified a bit before it became printable. As my mom tells me sometimes, your work is "editable," which is a good thing.)
Eh. I know it's not printable. As I work on my story, I become more and more convinced I'm not cut out to be a novelist. But constructive criticism is nearly always appropriate. I need all the help I can get. :-)
But I get tired of always using "said," and if I don't add any tags, the reader gets lost as to who's saying what. That's no good either. Besides, half the fun (at least when writing it!) is in the irony between what poor Leofric is thinking and saying. I'm all about enjoying the writing process if possible.
Not much is happening beside romance. There's a little character development, and a civil war is brewing, but Leofric and Maiwyn ignore it valiantly in this scene. They've got much more interesting things going on.
Ooh. I just got a good idea for one of Leofric's songs. :-D
Are you doing any poetry for credit? Because your poetry is really good!
Thank you. :-) I did do some poetry for credit. I wrote 270 lines of Beowulf-style verse for medieval lit DRW, and another credit's worth in imitation of the Faerie Queene.
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