A short introduction to you. Include why you want to be a writer and what you hope to accomplish in your writing.
Greeting, I am myself, the Sweven. I will be participating in a workshop by WhiskeyDreamer and JosephBlakeParker in their group GreenBat-Tutorials. The ignorant among you may now exit due to indifference, or go here:
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Concerning myself, I like writing, and so I'm here to do things that I like, 'cause I can. I can be either imbrutally honest or just politely silent, depending. I especially prefer people who know not to take themselves too seriously, unless the other people are just being annoying, then it's fine to be a bit serious. Moving onward, prepare to be amazed by my unmeasured skill, but not too much, you don't want to end up expecting things by mistake.
The genre of the novel you will be working on during this workshop.
The Blandly Fantastical, or Modern Contemporary Fantasy, huzzah.
What is the intensity of your novel?
Medium or less. I'm not prescient however, so I can't say for sure.
What is the nature of the conflict in your story?
The external conflict with the terms of a magically binding contract that the protagonist is going to make with an imp, and the internal conflict with their own stupidity in making magically binding contracts with an imp. The latter probably won't be very important to the story.
What are you trying to accomplish with your story?
Bragging rights, of course, but I also just want to make something interesting enough to be worth some merit and get myself to actually write things. Practice is also something that can make things perfect, or so I hear.
Are you writing a Comedy or a Tragedy?
Tragically, I will be creating a comedy. Horrifying, I know.
Include your chapter rewrite
I couldn't really think of a story I read that I specifically wanted to emulate in this exercise, though there are many I would like to replicate the style of or otherwise learn from, I instead decided to just take one of my favourite books from my shelf and improvise, since indecision begets inaction. Thus have we arrived at the following befuddlingly wonderful masterpiece for my example below.
The following is an excerpt of the first two pages from "The Far Below Bottom of Things", the first chapter in Patrick Rothfuss's "The Slow Regard of Silent Things". It is a text I typed out for educational and non-commercial purposes and is not intended as an improvement of the original but an exercise to study the literary style that Rothfuss uses in his works, and to learn from his writing. I used two pages in my example since the word count on each page of the example text is, in my opinion, very low on the specific pages(Big pictures take up space).
Credit to the author:
Rothfuss, Patrick. "The Far Below Bottom of Things". The Slow Regard of Silent Things. Gollancz, 2014. page 1 and 2
It should be noted that this story is also primarily published in the USA by DAW Books on 28 October 2014.
The Far Below Bottom of Things-Original
"When Auri woke, she knew that she had seven days.
Yes. She was quite sure of it. He would come for a visit on the seventh day.
A long time. Long for waiting. But not so long for everything that needed to be done. Not if she were careful. Not if she wanted to be ready.
Opening her eyes, Auri saw a whisper of dim light. A rare thing, as she was tucked tidily away in Mantle, her privatest of places. It was a white day, then. A deep day. A finding day. She smiled, excitement fizzing in her chest.
There was just enough light to see the pale shape of her arm as her fingers found the dropper bottle on her bedshelf. She unscrewed it and let a single drip fall into Foxen's dish. After a moment he slowly brightened into a faint gloaming blue.
Moving carefully, Auri pushed back her blanket so it wouldn't touch the floor. She slipped out of bed, the stone floor warm beneath her feet. Her basin rested on the table near the bed, next to a sliver of her sweetest soap. None of it had changed in the night. That was good.
Auri squeezed another drop directly onto Foxen. She hesitated, then grinned and let a third drop fall. No half measures on a finding day. She gathered up her blanket then, folding and folding it up, carefully tucking it under her chin to keep it from brushing against the floor.
Foxen's light continued to swell. First the merest flickering: a fleck, a distant star. Then more of him began to iridesce, a firefly's worth. Still more his brightness grew till he was all-over tremulant with shine. Then he sat proudly in his dish, looking like a blue-green ember slightly larger than a coin."
Note on Editing
In this excercise I mostly just changed the text from the third person perspective to the first person perspective and some minor alterations to the sentence structure and the words used. In the story there is a lot of anthropomorphizing of inanimate objects, specifically in cases such as Foxen, the glowing coin thing, and I wanted to make it more immediately obvious that Foxen wasn't a strange creature but merely an inanimate being given a name and gender by the protagonist Auri. In all practicality, the first person perspective wouldn't work at all on this story(Auri is the only actual character, so there's no one to tell you what her name is, there's also a continuous lack of any actual dialogue), and I am likely making it worse by trying to pretend otherwise.
Edited Text
When I awoke, I knew that I had seven days.Yes, I was quite sure of it. He would come for a visit on the seventh day.
A long time. Long for waiting, but not so long for everything that I needed to have done. Not if I were careful. Not if I wanted to have everything ready.
I opened my eyes, and saw a wisp of dim light. A rare thing here, as I was tidily tucked away in Mantle, my most private place. It was a white day, then. A deep day; a finding day. I smiled, my excitement fizzing in my chest.
There was just enough light to see the pale shape of my arm as my fingers snatched the dropper bottle on my bedshelf. I unscrewed it and let a single drip fall into Foxen's dish where he lay like a pebble. After a moment he slowly brightened into a faint gloaming blue.
Moving carefully, I pushed back my blanket so it wouldn't touch the floor. I slipped out of bed, the stone floor was warm beneath my feet. My basin rested on the table near the bed, next to a sliver of my sweetest soap. None of it had changed in the night. That was good.
I squeezed another drop directly onto Foxen. I hesitated, then grinned and let a third drop fall. No half measures on a finding day. I gathered up my blanket then, folding and folding it up, carefully tucking it under my chin to keep it from brushing against the floor.
Foxen's continued to glow brighten on his dish. First the merest flickering: a fleck, a distant star. Then more of him began to iridesce, a firefly's worth. Still more his brightness grew 'till he was all-over tremulent with shine. Then I could see him sit proudly in his dish, looking like a blue-green ember slightly larger than a coin.
