Writing Wrongs

September 28, 2005

I swear, Word Painting has stolen all my brain cells. I didn�t write the 250 for the past two days. I was wrestling with figurative language (But not literally, of course. It�s a figure of speech.) Uh, see what I mean? And is it a bad sign when the instructor mentions that the other students will be particularly busy with your assignment? Egad.

I think the other reason I�m lacking in the 250 department is I need to make a rather radical transition in the way Kit sees Mark. Up until this point, he�s been all Captain Riley, all the time. Even I think of him that way now, so this is hard on both of us.

I�m not worried about reader confusion. I think it�s pretty clear that Captain Riley has a first name--other than Captain--and that name happens to be Mark. What I�m looking for is the right moment for Kit to go through this change and how to describe it. I suppose I could do it bluntly with something like: At that moment, he went from being Captain Riley to Mark. Except. That sounds cheesy. At best.

So I�m pondering this. If anyone has seen this done in a novel, I�d appreciate a heads up on the title. Did Elizabeth Bennet think of Mr. Darcy as anything other than Mr. Darcy? I mean, I can only think of him that way. And considering Fitzwilliam is his given name, it�s probably just as well. (Oh, that broke my eighth-grade heart when I first read that. Fitzwilliam? Ugh.)

What�s odd is I�ve grown accustomed to typing Captain Riley. It�s reached Mr. Darcy proportions, or nearly so, even though he started life as Mark. So Kit and I need to adjust our thinking. And soon.

Charity Tahmaseb wrote at 12:46 p.m.

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