Compromises we make as the author:

[tinkerdan]

In my second novel my character was in a dark room with a portal that opened a view to the darkness of space. In her musing thoughts she said::

The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is mostly more dark.

Fundamentally this is incorrect; yet in her thinking she was dividing the dark between two separate areas. The dark in the room and the dark outside. So she was really saying that the room is dark and if you look outside you will find more dark.

Editors kept changing this to:

The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is mostly darker.

Meaning this room is dark and its darker outside.

I finally gave up, thinking that it might throw the reader out of the story and that trumped what I was trying to have her say.
So that's the way it ended looking in the published work.
The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is mostly darker.

Upon reflection I later realized I should have written:
The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is more dark.

That way they would have changed it to:

The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is darker.

I am disappointed, in that these editors were the ones that were supposed to be professional editors and they should have immediately flagged the use of mostly here as being at least one of the problems.

What do some of you think?

Also: so we know, I own my mistakes and realize that drawing my attention to it should have been enough for me to notice the misplacement of the adverb.

Perhaps some could also weigh in as to whether:
The room is dark and what is beyond the glass is more dark.
:would have worked.
Or if it still might pull readers from the story; while they try to adjust it in their minds.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm not sure that mostly is a problem there. Not everything beyond the glass is dark, just most of it. I think the "what is" is causing the problem. It makes it sound like it's going to be a description of the stuff out there, rather than a quantifying of it, if that makes sense. No, it doesn't. Ok, what I mean is that you're saying "what is out there is (description of stuff)" rather than "this stuff is out there". It's making "what" the subject, where the subject is really "more dark".


Perhaps "The room is dark, and beyond the glass is more dark."

This way, subject-verb is "more dark is", even though it's reversed. The other way, subject-verb is "what is beyond the glass is", and what follows is naturally read as a descriptor.

So the problem is your editors.

 

[tinkerdan]

That's excellent.
And though I agree that the editors are slightly deficient;when it's after the fact, I take the blame because I was the last one to examine it.

Once more you have shown that less is more.

Too many subjects too many adverb...not enough clarity.

 

[The Judge]

I also don't think "mostly" is the problem in the original, since as TDZ says, it's making it clear that not everything outside is dark. However, it surely isn't needed there. I tend to use a lot of words like "mostly" since the lawyer in me hates to be less than 100% accurate, but in this instance it's only weakening the sentence, so regardless of accuracy I'd have binned it.

What I do have a problem with is the "more dark" itself, because I would have wondered whether the "more" meant "additional/extra" or was a mistake for "darker". So I'd have changed the "more" to something like "further" or I'd have inverted the second part of the sentence to "and more dark lay beyond the glass" though that's less powerful. Thinking about it, I'd have probably re-written the sentence entirely to avoid the problem!

The editor should have pulled you up on it, though, pointing out the ambiguity.


EDIT: just realised your original was present tense so of course the alternative would be "more dark lies beyond the glass" not "lay". Sorry about that.

 

[tinkerdan]

I like both solution so far.
I could ask where you were when all this took place; but I know the answer.
You were here and I was not.

I should probably point out that at the time I knew of the ambiguity; I was too close to it to understand what I was doing wrong.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I can't help with the grammar, cos it's not my forte. What I've become increasingly aware of is that my Northern Irish dialect gives me an interesting take on syntax. The key with me, then, is learning when my turn of phrase is important and should be kept even if it makes my editors weep, and when I should change it.

For something like Abendau it's easy - if it trips my editor up, it should change. It's not meant to sound Northern Irish. But for my NI stuff (which I increasingly write) then it's a balancing act. (Sam is very good at both editing and leaving the voice.) Then I have to decide what's important to me voice-wise and where editorial wins out, and that is my decision and I have to stand over it.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think that I get some of what you are sayting::

I can't help with the grammar, cos it's not my forte. What I've become increasingly aware of is that my Northern Irish dialect gives me an interesting take on syntax. The key with me, then, is learning when my turn of phrase is important and should be kept even if it makes my editors weep, and when I should change it.

For something like Abendau it's easy - if it trips my editor up, it should change. It's not meant to sound Northern Irish. But for my NI stuff (which I increasingly write) then it's a balancing act. (Sam is very good at both editing and leaving the voice.) Then I have to decide what's important to me voice-wise and where editorial wins out, and that is my decision and I have to stand over it.

::and I do try to work in a similar manner.

Usually if there are question marks around something or maybe WTF sort of response, I get that I wasn't making myself clear and I can usually clean it up. But there have been moments, when it's ambiguous or the editor tries to second guess and the edit creates a moment of question marks for me, that things often go awry.

In this instance there are some grammatical ticks that the character has and I often roll in that direction a bit hard and when I'm too close to it I have to rely on my editors to help with it.

But I have been learning the value of the less is more when trying for clarity.

And sometimes as in this case, when we knot up the sentence structure it takes a good eye to unravel the problem.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

that is my decision and I have to stand over it

And standing over things is one of those things that Sam trips over.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

And standing over things is one of those things that Sam trips over.

Ah, don't worry. My editor for Waters and the Wild and I have had a few NI queries. It's my hobby - tripping up editors

 

[tinkerdan]

I did not realize an editor's line of work was so hazardous.