#14 The Vampire’s Path

Blog 14

Greetings all you geriatric gulags, today we have a fantasy piece titled The Vampire’s Path from DemiTheVampireKing on Deviantart.

Paragraph 1

The Dominican plane, realm of Vampire creation. A beautiful land of blood and gore. My home lands, and the reason I left it, we will get to.  Ah, there’s young me. My parents wanted a Daughter, so they named me Rose, because I was a thorn in their side. I despised the name, as my parents despised me. I was Rose Davince. Kids made fun of me. ‘ROSE IS A GIRLY BOY’ They would taunt. It furthered my hate of my Davince name. I used that hatred to further my self in my studies of magic. I was the top of my class. The kids kept trying to taunt me. It got to me one day. I used the first spell of the class. I muttered ‘Damn you…’ and cast Incinerate, a level 6 fire spell. I was a specimen of oddities. I used a spell most vampires couldn’t use in their life. Continuing my studies. People stopped taunting me.

This is a paragraph where the main flaw resides not in the prose itself, but in the narrative structure. On a superficial level, there is little to remove to improve rhythm or comprehension, the sentences are brief, concise and segregated. The opening line is strong, conveying both a concept that invites reflection and bountiful information. The problem with this paragraph is that it doesn’t read well. There is little to no flow between sentences on either a narrative or rhythm level (the aforementioned segregation) so it reads like a serious of statements rather than a story, which is unpleasant. The lack of verbs doesn’t help either, because verbs supply momentum, rhythm and energy, all of which are vital to compelling prose. Another element, though it’s more vague, is the occasionally awkward sentence structure, first displayed in ‘we will get to later’ (which forces the readers to do mental acrobatics for no reason) and ‘Ah, there’s me’ (which changes the narrative style without warning or context, going from distant-exposition to present-exposition without first locating the readers in the story. We don’t how he’s seeing this, where it’s displayed or where we are in relation to any of this.)

So how do we improve this paragraph? By combining sentences, adding verbs and connecting the progression of thoughts more explicitly. (By its very nature this blog will feature more preference-oriented changes.)

We’ll start with just —The Dominican Plane was a realm of Vampire creation, fashioned beautifully of blood and gore, and my home. Why I left doesn’t matter right now, only that I did.— We combine the elements of the first three sentence that deal with what the Dominican Plane is into one coherent thought. They make sense together, and not just logically but aesthetically as well. Then I separated the rest of sentence three into its own sentence, because it’s a different thought, but added a transition phrase because it’s related. Then I soft-closed the thought to tell the readers it will be important later but that we’re moving on with the story for now. This eases the transition into a new thought both via the closing (so the readers aren’t left hanging) and by the simple fact of being a transition. Then I deleted sentence four as its inclusion just needlessly complicates the structure and narrative without adding anything. Finally, I would consider starting a new paragraph because we are no longer discussing the Dominican Plane.

Section 2 : My parents wanted a Daughter, so they named me Rose, because I was a thorn in their side. I despised the name, as my parents despised me.

Here, I would delete ‘because I was a thorn in their side.’ This phrase serves two purposes, to validate the name (which is unnecessary since ‘wanted a daughter’ validates it sufficiently) and to express their hatred for him, which ‘as my parent’s despised me’ does sufficiently. Here’s where I would like to take creative liberties and write —My parents wanted a daughter, so they named me Rose, and I hated them for it as they hated me.— The biggest change is obviously ‘and I hated them’ from ‘I despised the name,’ I switched to ‘hated’ because it’s more personal, more emotional than ‘despised’ which sounds more academic. I switched from his hating the ‘name’ to him hating his parents for two reasons, the first because him hating the name toes the line of being self-evident, and because hating his parents is more emotionally charged as well as potentially being what the author was ultimately alluding to. But this is me taking creative liberties, a less creative take would render something more like — My parents wanted a daughter, so they named me Rose out of spite, something I hated as they hated me.— I added the ‘out of spite’ because it helps to emphasize the situation but also to smooth out the rhythm of this sentence as the start to a new paragraph. The original ‘because I was a thorn…’ served a similar purpose, but was too long and a little too cliché to achieve the desired impact. (I would probably add ‘out of spite’ to my creative rendition as well.)

Section 3: I was Rose Davince. Kids made fun of me. ‘ROSE IS A GIRLY BOY’ They would taunt. It furthered my hate of my Davince name. I used that hatred to further my self in my studies of magic. I was the top of my class.

Here, we have a little inefficiency and a little repetition to resolve first. ‘Made fun of’ can become ‘mocked,’ and I would like to resolve the ‘made fun of’ and ‘they would taunt’ iteration. So, the easiest solution is to delete ‘Rose is a Girly Boy’ as this is what necessitates the repetition and is honestly neither that relevant nor that interesting of an insult. Readers will easily imagine what mockery Rose endures, so an excerpt is unnecessary. Now, we just recombine the various sentences into one unified thought— So, I was Rose Davince, mocked incessantly by my peers until I hated even my Davince name, but I used that hatred to fuel my studies, eclipsing my classmates.—

I added the ‘so’ at the start and the ‘but’ after ‘Davince name’ as transition words (with the ‘but’ also serving to link the thoughts more explicitly.) I switched to ‘peers’ because I thought it read better as ‘kids’ just sounded a little too childish. I switched to ‘until I hated even my Davince name’ because there was no previous indication that he hated that portion of his name, only the Rose and his parents (The last of these isn’t really implied in anyway, just a natural assumption.) Changed from ‘I was the top of my class’ to ‘eclipsing my classmates’ for the active rather than passive, the word reduction and to combine the sentences. I also feel ‘eclipsing’ is a stronger word than ‘top of.’

Section 4: The kids kept trying to taunt me. It got to me one day. I used the first spell of the class. I muttered ‘Damn you…’ and cast Incinerate, a level 6 fire spell. I was a specimen of oddities. I used a spell most vampires couldn’t use in their life. Continuing my studies. People stopped taunting me.

Here is another reason I added/switch to ‘unceasingly’ above, it removes the need for this first sentence entirely. I would also delete ‘continuing my studies’ since that’s irrelevant to the next point; they would have stopped taunting him regardless. There is also a little bit of repetition in ‘I used the first spell’ and ‘I cast Incinerate’ since both refer to the same act. So, with that in mind—It got to me one day and I used the classes’ first spell, muttering ‘Damn you…’ as fire erupted into life before me, a level six spell most vampires couldn’t achieve in their lifetime. I was a specimen of oddities, but people stopped taunting me.—

Most of the changes here are just to combine the sentences so they form smooth narrative progression, but the big change is obviously ‘as fire erupted…’ which is just an ad-lib to replace ‘cast Incinerate.’ By mentioning fire there, however, you remove the need to name the spell ‘Incinerate’ and to label it a ‘fire spell.’ (Naming it ‘Incinerate’ is just flavor.)

All edits applied

The Dominican Plane was a realm of Vampire creation, fashioned beautifully of blood and gore, and my home. Why I left doesn’t matter right now, only that I did.

My parents wanted a daughter, so they named me Rose out of spite, something I hated as they hated me. So, I was Rose Davince, mocked incessantly by my peers until I hated even my Davince name, but I used that hatred to fuel my studies, eclipsing my classmates.

It got to me one day and I used the classes’ first spell, muttering ‘Damn you…’ as fire erupted into life before me, a level six spell most vampires couldn’t achieve in their lifetime. I was a specimen of oddities, but people stopped taunting me

It’s still not perfect, the transition to the third paragraph is a little awkward because the second paragraph feels like it closes the matter, and him using the classes’ first spell feels abrupt. I don’t like any of the easy solutions to the first of these problems, and I think the second is somewhat inevitable without aggressively expanding the narrative or altering the style to in-person as opposed to gloss over.

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https://www.deviantart.com/demithevampireking/journal/The-Vampire-s-Path-Pt-1-The-Prologue-803652029