An interesting thing happened when my writer's group got hold of the newly finished tale of Othren Four-Scars. They pointed out a few places where the language in the story was too modern. This is interesting because that's something I can usually pick up on very quickly when I'm reviewing someone else's work. So I looked back through it and sure enough, I've got a few lines in there that display a certain modern sensibility that would be absent an iron age warrior who routinely clubs his enemies to death.
So now the story is molding itself into second draft form and I can hopefully get it sent out. Of course, before I do that I have to come up with a better title. The working title is currently "The Valley of Eternal Shadow" but, as a friend pointed out, that sounds like every other heroic fantasy piece. I may have to resort to some random Wiki and Google searches to come up with something cool and ancient sounding. It won't be the first time and it won't be the last.
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2 comments:
About the modern language, he didn't happen to club said enemies to death and then develop feeeeeelings, did he? (laugh)
As for the title, this may be too utterly obvious, but I think a story called simply "Othren Four-Scars" would get my attention. But are you going for a similar structure with the titles?
One of the examples is a line from the bad guy saying he has to dispatch someone. Really, I should have just written 'kill.' It would sound cool the first way in a modern tale or maybe a high fantasy with Renaissance technology and chivalry and stuff, but not in the context of this story.
I didn't really think about just using his name for the title. I've posted now on my decision but I might use your idea if I ever go back further and explain how he got the name.
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