Developing Mister D / The Infernal Aether

The First Edit

As promised, I've spent some time in a darkened room with a cold towel over my head and then returned to the first section to do some editing. I've always found that a bit of distance helps me to stop being quite so in love with the words I've set down, allowing me to approach it a bit more dispassionately. It's also been invaluable having some objective comments from third parties, to help me realise what either works or just comes across as plain wrong - for this I've particularly used @dlmackenzie's comments in his "Editing Mister D" blog as a guide (http://www.wattpad.com/20890088-editing-mister-d-a-smattering-of-natterings-part#.Ugn-Pm3DLl0).

What follows are my thoughts and reasonings behind the key bits I've chopped and changed, as well as where I've decided to go against the advice and comments I've been given. What's on the site now is the edited version, although this is by no means the finished article - please do keep letting me know what you think, and if you disagree with any choices I've made. Of course, while I've drawn on the very valuable and sensible comments made, all errors which remain are my own.

1) The Introduction

One of the first comments was this needed a bit of work, and on reading I had to agree. In particular the opening paragraph felt a bit too clunky:

"My name is Augustus Merriwether Potts and I am a survivor of the terrible events which took place in 1865 and the years that followed. Events which took so many lives and changed the course of history, showing our Realm to be so much stranger, more deadly and more vulnerable than we ever conceived it could be."

My main issue was it came across a bit too wordy. The fact that he is a survivor leads into the second paragraph ("It is usually the case that one would refer to a survivor as one of the fortunate ones..."), but that impact is lost by the second sentence, meaning it didn't flow as much as I wanted. I wanted the reference to the year and the events which took place to be front and centre so they set the scene, but the wording was a bit too clunky, as was pointed out by @dlmackenzie. I've therefore pruned this quite a bit:

"My name is Augustus Merriwether Potts and I am a survivor of the terrible events which commenced in 1865 and culminated in the deaths of so many people."

The reference to the Realm being stranger, etc., etc., has been moved a bit further down, so that this first paragraph leads into the second and his sentiments on being a survivor.

It has been noted that it seems odd that Realm is capitalised. This is deliberate, and not just a nod to the Victorian / old English tendency to capitalise more than we do. As for why, I wanted to whet peoples' appetites and keep them hanging. There will be more on this as the story unfolds but as for now, my lips are sealed!

2) Setting the Scene

As was pointed out by @dlmackenzie, the construction of the first paragraph didn't work. While I liked the idea of moving the reference to "the horrors" to the end for greater emphasis, I have tinkered with the idea and brought a bit more scene setting into this opener, while hopefully starting to build up my non-idealistic vision of Victorian London.

Thus what was a fairly clunky couple of sentences has become (hopefully less clunky...):

"I had always considered Hyde Park to be one of London's more favourable surroundings, with its pleasant green landscape a perfect antidote to the smog-filled streets. Indeed, there was no better counterpoint to the noisome River Thames and its floating islands of rubbish and dead fish than the majestic sweep of the Serpentine. It is one of life's many cruel ironies that this haven should be the place where I first encountered the horrors which were to come."

You'll no doubt have realised that I'm not going along with the picture postcard vision of a cheery, polished London town...!

3) The Rest

I will not bore you with the details of every change, although the key ones can be broken down into:

- Colons/semicolons. I seem to have developed a bit of a blind spot with these, using them interchangeably and not always (often) correctly. I *think* I've corrected these now

- Superfluous words. In my desire to make Augustus' voice sound authentically Victorian, I noticed that I'd overdone it a few times, making sentences a lot longer than they needed to be. I've done some painful pruning in this regard, although I suspect this is one area I'm going to keep going back to...

4) The End

In my rush to finish the story, I'd left the ending feeling a bit too light. In particular, I made the final battle scene a bit too easy for N'yotsu - a common failing for me, I'm often too keen to be nice to my characters (something I am trying to beat out of myself). I have extended that scene so that it draws it out a bit more and hopefully adds a bit of suspense.

I also noted that I had completely forgotten about Milly's admission of murder, something which struck me as quite a glaring omission. I have inserted a bit of dialogue between Augustus and Mister Patterson to tie up this loose end as well.