#The dynamics of the medium in which we interact; I do so hate the phrase interacting should say communicating or something*

[divinekangaroo]

The strange thing of being online only partially is, now I feel even more awkward “””interacting””” because I don’t have the contextual ebb and flow

[thebeautyofdisorder]

Blog of John H. Watson, Hidden Post #57 (Adlock Drabble, Post S4)

This is what happens when I’m bored at work and speculate on the possible dynamic that could spawn out of Irene’s continued presence in Sherlock’s life being revealed in The Lying Detective, as well as the thought that John totally keeps an up to date documentation of Sherlock’s bullshit, even when he doesn’t share it. Short head canon in a blog post. A happy medium ending shall we say. Compatible with canon.

Rated T, for language and innuendos.

---

Sherlock Holmes is not a romantic, by any meager stretch of the imagination. In fact, if there were a term in the English language adequate enough to be defined as the polar opposite of a romantic, I wouldn't hesitate to employ it in regards to the world's only consulting detective. But, as with everything else in the complex world surrounding him, it's never quite so simple as that, either. For every area of disinterest in his over-wrought brain, there never ceases to be an exception to the rule. He hates the television, except for when he needs to pass the time.; he's seemingly ignorant of any charms the fairer sex may possess, until he decides to point out which one's they're lacking; he doesn't eat while on a case, unless you buy a very particular brand of biscuits and force them into his line of sight; and he doesn't have a single romantic bone in his body until The Woman is brought into the equation.

Now when I say 'romantic', don't think I mean that in the normal sense of the word - marriage and babies aren't something I can see him ever willingly seeking out, even for the likes of her.  That man's idea of a valentine is probably the still-beating heart of one of her enemies, but thankfully (dreadfully?) that woman would happily accept it, and even prefer it over the largest diamond at Tiffany's. Domesticity, suffice to say, has never been a prominent part of their 'relationship'. They do so enjoy flirting with it though. The way anyone else would take a holiday from their mundane desk job to somewhere more exciting, every once in a great while, The Woman formerly known as Irene Adler takes a brief respite from whatever chaos she's getting up to on the other side of the pond and finds her way to Baker Street. Sherlock never seems surprised, though whether that's because she warns him ahead of time of her eminent arrival or if he can sense her presence like some sort of lovesick bloodhound, I don't know (I mostly suspect the latter). But one moment everything is perfectly normal, and the next she's there - and the world has turned upside down. It's never really that dramatic a shift, though, truly. Sherlock is still very...Sherlock. Not even Cupid could fix that. It's his resolute single-mindedness that suddenly seems to take its leave. Whatever has been at the forefront of his thought process is, if not completely usurped, carefully shifted over as if to make room for her. Normally anyone or anything having such an impact on his needle-point focus would annoy him - and sometimes it still does, 'defiance' added to the cluster of other emotions that seem to radiate from him in her presence. More often than not, however, he accepts this adjustment without complaint. If he's particularly deep in the depths of boredom, dare I say with relief. One moment he'll be in a rush to go over some experiment or contact a client, and then there she is - sometimes sitting in his chair looking over a file he'd left lying on the floor or lounging in the bathtub as though she had always been there, and hadn't just broken in. If the timing is really inconvenient, he might shoot her a look not unlike one you or I would give a beloved but stubbornly misbehaved house cat - but it still happens, the immediate recalculation of his priorities. He probably just pulls up a day planner in his mind and starts crossing things off and pushing them around. Brooding can wait ‘til next week, there'll be time to annoy Mycroft tomorrow afternoon, etc. The case - if there is one - still gets solved, of course. No force, however unstoppable, would ever halt the investigative side of his brain. If anything we just gain an amused spectator or even another educated opinion. However as soon as the thinking is done and the only thing left of it is the 'boring' part - contacting the client, handing over evidence, explaining all of his elaborate deductions to a mostly confused and unappreciative audience - I tend to finish it out. Hell, I volunteer to do so, or else it simply doesn't get done. Found that out the hard way once when he stopped answering Mycroft's phone calls halfway through halting a smuggling operation and - well, suffice to say he always knocks now, even if he did have a spare key made just to be intrusive. Not that it seemed to phase either of them. Hardly anything does, during these short visits. As affronted or even offended Sherlock will no doubt be at the turn of phrase, the world by and large ceases to exist to him when The Woman is in town. Once the mostly-metaphorical detective hat is off, there's nothing that can begin to compete with her hold over his attention. I've certainly never had any interest in trying. It took me less than five minutes, the first time she showed up, to see how obviously under-stated he had been when he told me that it was 'just texting' between them that first night I discovered their continued interaction. There had been a tension between them since the moment they'd met, obviously, but it had evolved somehow. It wasn't the unresolved curiosity it once was, but it wasn't a comfortable fondness like most couples have after a reasonable period of time either. It was trapped somewhere in the middle: a constant thrum of kinetic energy almost. It was the power of uncertainty and yet the knowing acknowledgement of potential. I've never seen it’s like anywhere else, probably because no other two people in the world have the patience and tenacity to make such an unreasonable constant work. Coupled with the fact they seemed to be in a continuous competition with each other, for what stakes I still don't know, it was a tangible thing. I'd call it a 'battle for dominance' but that seems far too on the nose for my taste. No, the only thing out of the ordinary about her physical proximity to the detective was that I was now privy to it. I'd say I'm now 'in on the joke', but that doesn't sound right, as funny as the idea of Sherlock shagging a (former?) dominatrix sounds. More like being an unwilling member of an obscure and elitist secret society whose meetings I don't attend and yet end up bearing witness to anyway. Then again, with Sherlock Holmes, when don't I feel like that? Neither of them have ever asked me to make myself scarce during these periods (the shortest being all of 12 hours or what I would deem An International Booty Call - the longest was a full week: Christmas to New Year, leading into a suspicious spike in our usual caseload), but I often do it anyway. No matter the innocence of the conversation they're having - or not having, it seems voyeuristic somehow. And not just in the sexual way. There's a certain foreign intimacy to their seemingly benign interactions that makes it almost more intrusive to walk in on them having tea than any of the more explicit scenarios that end up occurring at 221B Baker Street behind closed doors. There are exceptions of course - the three of us have managed a few pleasant evenings (as pleasant as Sherlock is capable of), but all in all, I leave them to themselves. For as suddenly as she arrives, she's just as quickly gone - leaving no obvious sign of her presence save the lingering of her perfume and usually some spontaneous possession that finds its way to the mantelpiece, and remains there until the next time she inevitably appears in another few months. Hell, maybe the next year. A bottle of red nail lacquer, a hair pin. Last time it was a dagger. I think it's probably deliberate - an excuse, outside of sheer interest, to return. Or maybe some sort of weird code, fuck if I know. Regardless, as soon as her presence dissipates, the Consulting Detective is back to his obnoxious and hyper vigilant self, as though nothing and no one could ever distract him from his single-minded search for problems to solve and humans to outsmart. If Sherlock's unhappy with this unstable 'arrangement' - hell, even if he's perfectly happy with it - he's never really said. In fact, he makes almost no comment about her at all when she's not here. This alone, apparently unbeknownst to him, makes her unique in the whole of the human race. The only exception seems to be under the specific pretense of making his older brother look both nauseous and disapproving at the same time. As for Mycroft Holmes, if 'The Ice Man' ever had any specific ill intentions towards The Woman who nearly brought the nation to its knees, he's apparently given up on them for now. He's even stopped making lewd comments about beheadings just to make Sherlock angry. Every once in an even greater while - only thrice in my memory - some mysterious 'case' will arise from overseas and Sherlock himself will vanish from the streets of London for a number of days. He always asks me if I'd like to come along, and I always give some sort of excuse to remain: can't find a sitter for that long, my passport expired, etc. I know what he's really doing, just as he knows that my passport is perfectly legal, and yet neither of us say a word. I don't know if it's some twisted way to extend the 'mystique' of a secret tryst, or he's just helping her out with something very illegal, but I'm not sure I want to. It's not up to me to say if this sort of dynamic will last - if either of them will eventually require something more steady or resolute, or simply grow bored with one another. But for now, as I write this, Sherlock is restocking the kitchen for the first time in months without being harassed and has ceased whining about Lestrade not calling him back all weekend - so I doubt it's going to be a concern for a long while. By morning I'm sure I will walk in to witness my boorish and manner-less best mate who will rarely even boil his own water trip over himself to have her coffee made by the time she wakes, so he can regale her with the gory details of how he solved the grisliest murder we've had since her last visit. And they say romance is dead.

[leaf-fuguri-blog]

Hey Gina, since I've long admired your writing, gimme your thoughts on some writing pet peeves, some do's and don'ts and all that jazz.

*soft gasp*

Aw, thank you!

‘kay, let’s go. 

I’ll talk you through my process and what I’m thinking about when editing. 

So first of all I do not edit during the writing phase. Do not reread, do not look back, do not think, you are only worried about the current words you are writing. As you improve ‘cleaner’ writing will come. After you finish writing then you go back and edit. 

Also remember that everything I say here is taken with a grain of salt, it’s always your judgement call. It depends on what you want to communicate to your audience. 

1. Cut passive voice

Passive voice is when the object of the phrase is before the verb. If you’re like me and slept through most of your seventh grade english class you don’t know what that means.So here’s an example:

I was hit by a ball.

versus

The ball hit me. 

 In these sentences, I am the object, an action is being done to me. The ball is the subject, it is doing the action. ‘Hit’ is the verb. The first example is passive voice. The first example is generally considered a weaker phrase. A good rule of thumb is if you can add ‘eaten by Zombies’ to the end of the phrase.

Which includes examples like:

To be eaten by zombies.

We were eaten by Zombies.

I will be eaten by zombies. 

versus

Zombies ate me. 

Zombies ate us.

Zombies will eat me. 

Remember that there are cases where you want to or need to use passive voice. If you don’t know or are hiding the acting agent then you can use passive voice. Active voice reads quicker, requires fewer words, and is easier to understand than passive. It’s also more dynamic and engaging than passive. 

2. Cut Adverbs

Adverbs are words that qualify phrases and verbs. They tell you degree, time, condition etc. They also, in general weaken your writing and 95% of the time you do not need to use them. In English they end in -y, such as quickly, easily, usually, but also include words like ‘very.’ They’re a shortcut in writing, they’re descriptive but you have options that are even more descriptive. 

So, when I’m writing I might jot down a phrase like this:

I was very hungry. 

When I’m going back to edit I may change this to:

My stomach growled and ached. 

You may say, hey, Gina, that’s a totally different phrase and I’d agree. The first phrase is me telling you that I’m hungry. The second phrase is me describing what hunger is like. If you have a stomach, you know what it means when it growls. Think about what you are describing and think about how that makes you feel, then describe that. This is about using body language, analogy, or metaphor to show the reader what is happening. 

3. Cutting and revising phrases

Just in general, look for ways to cut words. You can split sentences or remove extra words, such as those aforementioned adverbs or passive voice. Each sentence is translating an idea and the more extra stuff you have around that idea the harder your reader has to work to understand it. 

Here’s a sentence from my own writing:

He was young, just aboy, his jaw wide but still smooth with youth and although his yelloweyes narrowed with scrutiny, they were still clear.

This is a bit of a mess so let’s play with it. First I change it to active which forces me to add context. 

A young boy stood on the wall. 

Next I want to describe that boy. 

A young boy stood on the wall. His wide jaw was still smooth with youth. He gold eyes narrowed in scrutiny of the horizon. They were still clear. 

As you can see I broke all of my sentences into their ideas. I want to communicate that this boy is young and focused but still innocent. 

A boy stood on the wall, his stance wide and his hands tucked into the small of his back. His youth showed in his smooth, wide jaw and narrowed gold eyes. He scrutinized the horizon. 

Okay, so I added some details and changed the structure of phrases. I used active voice and avoided adverbs. There’s still a little more I want to do, another detail I want to add about this boy and some more edits I can do:

A boy stood on the wall with a wide stance and his hands tucked behind his back. His youth showed in his wide, smooth jaw and his clear gold eyes. He scrutinized the setting sun as it’s final judge. 

There’s more I could do to this fragment but let’s call it there. 

4. Showing emotion- a note

Go through your writing and find all phrases along the lines of: I hope, she believes, he wants, they need, etc. Then edit them all out and replace with. 

1. Body language

He wants it. 

Can become 

His gaze set on the object as he strained for it. 

2. An analogy/ Metaphor 

She needs it. 

Can become

Need for it burned in her like the thirst of a desert. 

There are cases where you can and will need to use these phrases but in general, avoid them. If you do use them try to use stronger words like hate becomes despise, love becomes adore, or want becomes desire.

5. Character Voice and Dialogue

All these rules go out the window in dialogue. Your character’s will not follow the rules of grammar or good writing in their dialogue, unless that is a part of their character.  People use passive voice when talking and they use adverbs, consider their mood to, how they’ll talk when angry, sad, or tired.  You can show the cadence of accent, or emotion in conversation. Mark Twain has good examples of using accent and cadence to give local and personal flavor to people.

Hell, if you have a character narrating, such as in first person or in limited third, you can avoid do anything you want. I have a book on my shelf called Dust Lands by Moira Young which reads like this:

I let fly with a arrow. It sticks in the mast jest above his head. He lets out a frightened squawk. Then he hollers, Miz Pinch! Miz Pinch!

This book is ‘written’ by a girl who lives in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s suggested that she barely even knows how to read at all. The book uses short, active sentences and misspells words. There are no markings for dialogue. It’s a very enjoyable and action packed read, not to mention unique and fun. Once you get used to the style of writing it actually becomes quite natural.  

The point is that your muse may have a particular way they narrate. Leaf is very observational, she notes the scene, the people, what they’re doing, and attribute observations. I consider her narration almost professional and clinical. My other muse, Pidge, on the other hand tends to think and analyze what’s happening, she cares less for the small details. She tends to tangent or add ‘fun’ commentary. Her narration includes her odd thoughts and observations. 

You can develop voice by just listening to people. Notice how their voices change through a sentence, what words hey emphasis, what they say, how they respond. Watch people, there’s so much that goes on during a conversation, how they move their hands, the micro-expressions on their face, where they look, how their weight shifts, positions of the legs or arms, how they sit. 

6. Action-Reaction Cycle 

When you are formatting your writing you should start with a paragraph of action. 

Ana hit Emma.

And then the reaction. This can include thoughts, ideas, emotional reflection, analysis, observation, movements etc. 

Emma rubbed at her head. 

This is a very, very, very basic example but you can get the idea. This will cycle through all your writing. Action, reaction, action, reaction. It’s very simple but it adds real cadence to your writing and can help keep you from paragraphs of useless prose. 

Read more about it here:

https://www.novel-software.com/blog?article=the-action-reaction-cycle

7. Character and communication

Writing, art, and music, are all means by which we communicate. They are forms of language, unique mediums using verbal, visual, linguistic, and audio to create meaning. That is, at the end of the day, what you are doing. Creating meaning. Your character, your blog, your art, your book etc. is making a statement, you are saying something. Do you know what you are saying?

Your muse and your character will change, how they interact will change. What stays consistent on the blog is the core of that muse, what is essential to them. I remember in one of the Narnia books, the character Edmund stole a piece of jewlery from a dragon. This cursed piece of jewlery then turned him to a dragon and was only by Aslan’s intervention that he was turned back. To do this he had to bath in a spring and then peel away the layers of scales, and skin. This process of literally cutting and clawing away at himself till he was left as just Edmund, bratty and now humbled British boy. Writing a character is like that. 

Some people like to come up with lists of flaws and strengths for their characters; And then they find out that the person they’re writing is not that. I prefer to ask, what is this person’s story and how can I tell it? Our lives have falls and rises, we succeed and then fail, we’re happy then we’re sad. We make mistakes, we learn, we grow. Your character has been through things, things that have changed them and made them who they are. That informs what they are now and it defines who they will be.