Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Shape Of My Heart 3/7 - Comments

Okay, small preamble this time around.

I'll confess that I'm using you gentle readers to experiment on with this segment (hey, makes a change from the rat being on the receiving end).

The use of ellipses and truncated sentences here to denote Lois and Clark's breathlessness bugs me a tad. If it were up to me, I'd lose that formatting and just have normal, uninterrupted dialogue and just denote the breathlessness in the narrative alone. But I felt that was kind of a cop out and if it was mentioned in the narrative it should be shown in the dialogue.

Which is where you guys come in. <g> Did those dialogue pauses bug you? Would you prefer they weren't there? Would you think it was cheating if they weren't? Or wouldn't you notice/care either way? Do let me know here, won't you? And I'll adjust the final file if necessary for the Archive. Thanks!

Oh, and since - amazingly enough and way beyond the call of duty - practically the first thing Wendy did when she got back online last night was send me her beta file for that final scene...plus that she didn't shoot it down in flames <g>...I should now be able to speed up my posting schedule. No major rewrites -

I'm still thinking about what that new schedule will be (sorry, but haven't had breakfast yet and the brain is sluggish right now...) But when I think of what it will be, I'll let you know.

LabRat

I hope those guys can't follow them!!


What's to think? EOD!!!!!

Oooh, great part, Labby! I was getting chilly just reading that. Of *course* Lois would over-estimate her coat, city girl that she is. *shakes her head sadly* The "Not Superman... you know" reminded me of Aunt May. *giggle* And whee, they finally found the cabin!

The ellipsis and pauses didn't bother me. In fact, I took them for the pauses in breath that they were. Lois and Clark are obviously short of breath and extremely cold, so they wouldn't be able to force out full sentences in one breath. They'd have to keep pausing. It helped me imagine them talking, trying to force out the words.

And I'm all for a speeded up posting schedule!

For me the formatting was just right. I got breathless just reading it. I don't find the ellipses to be annoying at all.

My 2 cents said..this was amazing.

Clark's invulnerability at the right moment..holy, I was on the edge of my SEAT!

Their struggle through the blizzard, my heart was aching with the pain and disorientation they were feeling that I swear I felt as I read this! Powerful stuff indeed!

And what, or who, is in that cabin??

Glad to hear that you will be posting more often..I'd be happy to give you one more opinion on how it flows as a whole, so you can just email me the completed story asap..(hey I can quote CC too..what if it works??)

~Liz

I think this might be my favorite segment of the story. Well, except there are a few parts later on that I'm also particularly fond of, so maybe this just ranks two or three...

Reading this I felt like I was struggling to get away - I felt breathless and panicked. I love the tension in the scene. For me, as a writer, to capture action and make it feel real is nearly impossible. So I am totally wowed by this because it is so well done.

Specifics - LOL over Lois's commentary. How she immediately thought it was Clark's fault that they were being shot at, and then getting angry at him for risking his life. Too, I loved her concern for him once she discovered he'd been injured.

And Clark...my dear, sweet, big beautiful Clark. Willing to put his now-vulnerable body between Lois and those bullets. <whimper>

Lab, you know my thoughts on the ellipses. They don't bother me at all. In fact, like Liz, they made me feel kind of breathless. But if they do bother you, I don't see any problem with taking them out. From what I've been taught (so take that with a grain of salt) apparently a writer can allude to specific speech pattern/accent in the begining to establish it and then drop off the little stylistic trappings if necessary. Like implying that someone has a heavy southern accent but not actually writing words the way they'd be pronounced phonetically.

I say - keep 'em in.

Great part. And that cabin...hmmm

Lynn

Okay, having just choked on my Pepsi, reading this I have to just come in at this point and go

LabRat

Yep, two thumbs up for the ellipses. It's like a constant reminder to me that this isn't a walk in the park for them right now.


No doubt!

JD

Ellipses there were Ellipses? Who noticed? I was to enthralled with the story of Lois and Clark freezing to death and running from danger. Ellipses? I didn't even see the words! Laura

Great section, Labbie. I could practically feel the cold (and then subsequently shut off my air conditioner). Excellent descriptions. I'm eagerly waiting to find out what the cabin holds for them.

Ellipses hmmm...so that's what those little dots are called...I always thought they were just multiple periods...meant to denote pauses in speech.

And to harp on an overdone theme *sigh* cause I got nothing original...your story is a rocking good read so far, I love it, keep going, can't wait until next section.

Bravo Lab!

Hi,

Great part.

Du-uh !!! You galactically stupid woman!! Of course they are!!!


MDL. (who has to apologize... she just couldn´t resist.)

I'm with Laura. Ellipses? Where were the ellipses? I was too busy dealing with frigid weather and fear to notice anything so mundane as ellipses. Don't give it a thought, Lab.

Now, if Clark can just share his secret with Lois and have a short spurt of superpowers, after they snuggle together to stay warm.
LaurieD

Yikes, rough night. I'm glad you didn't leave them finding shelter to the next part, because I'd've sent rat-traps after you for that. <eg>

I hope that shelter really is shelter, and not a cabin containing a seriel killer named Norman. Which I didn't really get, by the way, but maybe I'm not supposed to. <g>

You are killing me with suspense, Lab!

Julie

I'm away from the board for a week, and there's a NEW LABRAT STORY!!!!! Yay!

I really like this story so far, although I have to admit for now we've only seen the side of Lois I dislike (where often times I just want to tell her to shut up and listen already), but with the latest part it definitely seems like you're moving towards a stronger, more compassionate Lois. Plus, I infintely prefer pushy Lois to perfect Lois!

As far as ellipses go, I think the pauses do an excellent job of illustrating the breathlessness you're trying to convey. Sure, they break up the flow a little, but that's true to the story. I prefer it to "Clark said breathlessly" because this way you're following the old adage of "Show, don't tell." Just my $0.02.

Anyway, more soon, please!

Like Laurach, I didn't even notice the ellipses. I was too busy sitting on the edge of my seat, reading the story!

Masterfully written, this story has totally pulled me in. I was actually going to suggest, tongue in cheek, that since Mere has announced an EOD schedule for her story, in a show of solidarity you should do the same. What a pleasant surprise to see that you are actually thinking of doing just that! Yes. Definitely EOD...

- Vicki

Okay, I've felt sense slowly receding from me over the past couple hours, and have noticed a marked increase in the number of typos I've had to correct along the way. So, I think I'm going to have to keep this one brief. Unlike the story part, which was intimidatingly long, at least for me. Not that I wasn't happy to read it, but I was thinking, even before I saw you were considering a new schedule, that it would be nice to see smaller parts more frequently. Less time to wait between each part, less worrying about having to read so much in one go. Of course, I'll probably be lynched for saying that, and I'm probably only saying it because I'm so tired these days that I fade in and out of being clear enough to read, which means that larger parts are more difficult to deal with, except that that really wasn't a problem with the surrealist fic because I could just fade in and out with the story and nothing was making much sense anyway. <deep breath>

Speaking of breathing, the ellipses (is that the correct plural?) worked for me. I like them. Keep them.

Have to admit that I didn't get the bit about Norman, either, until Wendy explained on IRC. The movie is a classic, and they did a remake last year, but I've never seen either, and I know the name Bates a lot better than the name Norman. Not sure if that's a problem for anyone else.

Love Clark's thoughts about Lois's weirdness magnet status.

As for the situation itself... Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening... to get shot at, chased by mysterious people with machine guns, and run until frozen half to death. LOL, only Lois and Clark...

I do find it odd that Clark can't tell an AK-47 from a P-90 just by listening. On the one hand, he doesn't have his full hearing and he's got a lot of things on his mind. OTOH, there is (IIRC) a fairly large difference in rates of fire between those guns, not to mention the other differences in volume and tone caused by things like the P-90's considerably smaller muzzle length. Superman has probably dealt with both enough times. Of course, there's a chance he was just listing random machine guns in his head, not really caring what they were. That would make sense.

What made slightly less sense was that he was still bleeding. The whole powers fading in and out thing kind of confuses me, but generally, when he gets his invulnerability back, his wounds close up. We know he got it back for at least a little while. Why is he still bleeding?

Well, in any case, Lois isn't going to be putting CK=SM together anytime soon.

Glad that he managed to cover part of their trail. Not sure how much of it he managed to get, though. I have a feeling it won't take too long for those guys to find where it picks up again. Unless, of course, it continues to snow and that freezes over their tracks. Or something like that. One can hope.

So, uhm, anyway... I forget what else I was going to say. Cool part. Nice plot development. Good to know a little more. Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to make a pun with that "cool." Just realized it was more apt than originally intended. I'm going to leave it, though. Because I feel like it.

Where was I? Oh, right. Waiting impatiently to find out what's in that cabin, where the bad guys are, who the bad guys are, and what L&C will end up doing stranded, in the middle of nowhere, locked inside a small frozen cabin in the snowy woods, with maybe a cozy little fireplace, and... wait a sec. There's no nfic version of this fic. Oh well. So much for that theory.

Well, whatever. I want to see more! In smaller pieces. More smaller pieces. Preferably soon. Got it?

Paul

Okay- first I was clutching the mouse furiously thinking... Who the heck is shooting at them?!

Then this was awesome:
I loved the way you brought that dynamic in... such talent you have, Rat.

Cursed snow! Zut Alors! It only adds to the stress of the situation. It slowed the assassins down, but anyone willing to spray that much ammunition at trees will be back. Cursed powers! They came back long enough to stop bullets aimed at his back but didn't heal the hole in his arm?!

Personally, I think the ellipses helped to show the breathlessness. I think that if it were overdone, it could be annoying, but that was not the case. As was said by others, they helped me *feel* the struggle they were going through.

While I'm all for bonding and hugging and all... does anyone else feel the need to get out of the snow? And then, just when I was pondering a false advertisement suit because we had yet to see the cabin that was in the trailer--> they found it. Whew! Well, er, maybe whew... depends on who the neighbors actually are!

Are ants more inclined to do the congo or the jitterbug?

~sunkist

LabRat

I've just read the last two parts.
They're superb.
Great suspense! I can't wait to see what happens next.

Tricia

Labrat,

I was just now reading Paul's comments, and suddenly the light went on, "Oh, Norman Bates! Now I get it!" (Thank you, Paul!)

Norman didn't mean a thing to me, either. I'm sure I would have gotten it if you'd called him Bates. Just my 2 cents.

- Vicki