Thank you Luke Jennings.❤️❤️ Happy to see them back. It seems there will be a big adventure for Villanelle and Eve. Hope they are both fine eventually.🙏🙏🙏
Someone in this thread mentioned that you (Luke) use words with LASER precision. I can only agree. But I'm even more impressed by the fluid beauty of your expressions. The subtle irony between the two, the depth of understanding they have developed about (although not yet for) each other. And let's not forget your eye for details. The surroundings, the scenarios, even their depressingly pathetic little apartment come very much to life. At the end of "Die for Me" I thought that was okay, given what they just had gone through. For a while, but not forever. Water dripping through the ceiling, a bed that looks like something from a porn set, the old couch smelling of old farts from other people? I'm not sensitive, but that is pretty Yuck, and I'm with Oxana here. At least to some extent. What I also liked here was Eve called Oxana an elitist bitch and Oxana wasn't offended. Seems they in principle can tell each other everything. The real stressor is not telling things. That strikes me as very realistic. It's mostly lies and secrets that destroy relationships. Or sheer disinterest, but that surely isn't their problem...
No restraint here is there... Oxana is still not fully human, the instincts are coming out. Four pancakes. I know we would all like to do that, but its like killing someone, we don’t...
Love the use of the Diana wide-eyedness. With you on the interpretation there. Links perfectly with the ‘don’t be useless. You know where everything is.’ Manipulation is being tried here by Oxana. This could almost be a normal relationship with a power imbalance, good on you Eve for not rolling over on this one. Eve knows she’s living with a tiger, but she just lets it roll off her and carries on cooking. She is really the smart one of the pair on emotional intelligence. She could so easily be a pushover. The little lady at home doing the cooking but she knows exactly what is going on in the relationship. Yes Oxana is ‘an elitist bitch’! and Eve knows exactly how she’s being played.
I know I’m telling you what you already know because you use your words with laser precision. But this is a good exercise for me to get my head around what techniques work and how you switch between techniques. So far, running from part 1 to 2 we’ve had:
Part 1
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Dialogue
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Part 2
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Now a question... Bear with me I may take a time to get to it as I am thinking as I am writing...
I love the fact that the dialogue is differentiated so well that the boring, she said, she exclaimed, are kept to a minimum. Works so well. You pop back into omniscient very briefly just to anchor it down. Now it’s the Omniscient which is really looking difficult to pull off. You never slip into giving us what Eve is thinking so we always get Eve in the omniscient stuff and her actions are seen by Oxana, but not filtered through her. If you split up Oxana and Eve later in the book do we then follow Eve in a separate line of narrative, or do we lose her presence completely for a while...
I’ve put some writing to one side temporarily as I discovered that to keep the narrative going I needed to bring to the fore a secondary character in the omniscient and mute the main character. First couple of drafts it slipped into head hopping.... So, question is do you split the narrative to follow both with an all-encompassing omniscient viewpoint. Do we just have to suck it up that we lose sight of a character?
Do you plan ahead for this or are you writing by the seat of your pants. Are you relaxed enough with writing to just see where it takes you and you are willing to bring in a new technique or is this whole thing already written and you have already revised out the inconsistencies. Sorry lots of questions!
Let me just say, first off, how privileged I feel to have such an engaged and passionate readership. The back-and-forth with you all is a joy.
Julie, what can I say? Yes, yes and yes! You see V&E and you get them. Thank you!
Re POV I'm not going to be changing horses in midstream, it's Oxana all the way.
Storywise I have a roadmap, and I know where I'm going, but it's loose enough that I can re-route if I want to. That's pretty much how I've always worked. Make the plot immutable, and you're not alive to the alternative possibilities which present themselves, often out of nowhere. And, as often as not, make all the difference
Hi Luke. What can I say. I only pick up on the relationship twitches between V&E because you delineate it really clearly but with subtilty!!! I await developments to see how Eve fares then since we are defo going to be seeing things through Vs eyes.
Thanks for sharing your working methods. Flexibility is key I guess. Sometimes scenes develop and things pop in out of nowhere! I will work through the rest of the subs, as long as it's not intimidating with me using the subs as a learning tool!!! Good luck on the teaching /technique sharing sessions online. May or may not get to them as time is pretty much filled by work and things at the mo. But we can hope.
I thank Mr. Luke Jennings for continuing to write new stories abaut Villanelle and Eve. I'm very happy.
Thank you Luke Jennings.❤️❤️ Happy to see them back. It seems there will be a big adventure for Villanelle and Eve. Hope they are both fine eventually.🙏🙏🙏
thank you!!
Galina, I thought that's what they were, but I checked and Muscovy ducks are American - nothing to do with Moscow at all! So now they're just ducks.
Shifting tense?
Thanks Karen!
Shifting tense? Where exactly?
This is already so captivating! My goodness, you're amazing!
Thank you, Luke Jennings!
Someone in this thread mentioned that you (Luke) use words with LASER precision. I can only agree. But I'm even more impressed by the fluid beauty of your expressions. The subtle irony between the two, the depth of understanding they have developed about (although not yet for) each other. And let's not forget your eye for details. The surroundings, the scenarios, even their depressingly pathetic little apartment come very much to life. At the end of "Die for Me" I thought that was okay, given what they just had gone through. For a while, but not forever. Water dripping through the ceiling, a bed that looks like something from a porn set, the old couch smelling of old farts from other people? I'm not sensitive, but that is pretty Yuck, and I'm with Oxana here. At least to some extent. What I also liked here was Eve called Oxana an elitist bitch and Oxana wasn't offended. Seems they in principle can tell each other everything. The real stressor is not telling things. That strikes me as very realistic. It's mostly lies and secrets that destroy relationships. Or sheer disinterest, but that surely isn't their problem...
Hi Luke,
No restraint here is there... Oxana is still not fully human, the instincts are coming out. Four pancakes. I know we would all like to do that, but its like killing someone, we don’t...
Love the use of the Diana wide-eyedness. With you on the interpretation there. Links perfectly with the ‘don’t be useless. You know where everything is.’ Manipulation is being tried here by Oxana. This could almost be a normal relationship with a power imbalance, good on you Eve for not rolling over on this one. Eve knows she’s living with a tiger, but she just lets it roll off her and carries on cooking. She is really the smart one of the pair on emotional intelligence. She could so easily be a pushover. The little lady at home doing the cooking but she knows exactly what is going on in the relationship. Yes Oxana is ‘an elitist bitch’! and Eve knows exactly how she’s being played.
I know I’m telling you what you already know because you use your words with laser precision. But this is a good exercise for me to get my head around what techniques work and how you switch between techniques. So far, running from part 1 to 2 we’ve had:
Part 1
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Dialogue
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Part 2
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
Dialogue
Omniscient
First person Oxana
Now a question... Bear with me I may take a time to get to it as I am thinking as I am writing...
I love the fact that the dialogue is differentiated so well that the boring, she said, she exclaimed, are kept to a minimum. Works so well. You pop back into omniscient very briefly just to anchor it down. Now it’s the Omniscient which is really looking difficult to pull off. You never slip into giving us what Eve is thinking so we always get Eve in the omniscient stuff and her actions are seen by Oxana, but not filtered through her. If you split up Oxana and Eve later in the book do we then follow Eve in a separate line of narrative, or do we lose her presence completely for a while...
I’ve put some writing to one side temporarily as I discovered that to keep the narrative going I needed to bring to the fore a secondary character in the omniscient and mute the main character. First couple of drafts it slipped into head hopping.... So, question is do you split the narrative to follow both with an all-encompassing omniscient viewpoint. Do we just have to suck it up that we lose sight of a character?
Do you plan ahead for this or are you writing by the seat of your pants. Are you relaxed enough with writing to just see where it takes you and you are willing to bring in a new technique or is this whole thing already written and you have already revised out the inconsistencies. Sorry lots of questions!
Wow! A lot!
Let me just say, first off, how privileged I feel to have such an engaged and passionate readership. The back-and-forth with you all is a joy.
Julie, what can I say? Yes, yes and yes! You see V&E and you get them. Thank you!
Re POV I'm not going to be changing horses in midstream, it's Oxana all the way.
Storywise I have a roadmap, and I know where I'm going, but it's loose enough that I can re-route if I want to. That's pretty much how I've always worked. Make the plot immutable, and you're not alive to the alternative possibilities which present themselves, often out of nowhere. And, as often as not, make all the difference
Hi Luke. What can I say. I only pick up on the relationship twitches between V&E because you delineate it really clearly but with subtilty!!! I await developments to see how Eve fares then since we are defo going to be seeing things through Vs eyes.
Thanks for sharing your working methods. Flexibility is key I guess. Sometimes scenes develop and things pop in out of nowhere! I will work through the rest of the subs, as long as it's not intimidating with me using the subs as a learning tool!!! Good luck on the teaching /technique sharing sessions online. May or may not get to them as time is pretty much filled by work and things at the mo. But we can hope.
8-)
Heaven -- that was a thorough analysis.
Happy to pay if can hear full book
Can.i listen to these please ? Not only read
Luke, what's "Muscovy ducks" - a special breed of ducks from Moscow region?
I thought that too! But after your comment I checked and found out they're American, and not native to Russia at all. So now they're just 'ducks'.
Thank you for checking that - I was bemused & a little confused about the duck type 😂
Good draft. Good tension. I can see the characters, however, lookout for the way you are shifting tense.
Hopefully one day someone will make TV remote controls as resilient as sextoys
That's a good one. Mine lately keep being snapped up by our Beauceron puppies who see them as chewing bones.