Rain check (again)

[shivver]

Sorry! I totally forgot! My husband and I are deep in the MMO we play, as they just released their new expansion. And then when I got into bed last night, I told myself I'd work on it at at lunch... and I've been in meetings since 8 until now (a little past 1), swallowing my sandwich before jumping into the next meeting. :/ I'll get on this tonight.

Challenge #23

[shivver]

Style exercise: Active voice! This is a learning/practice challenge, rather than a writing challenge. Make your writing as active as possible, because it draws your reader in. It’s the difference between watching the action and being a part of it. Passive voice is easy to spot: the use of the words “was” and “were” (or in present tense fics, “is” and “are”). Not every use of that verb is passive, but most are.

Here’s a good (yet short and quick) article about passive voice: how to spot it, and how to fix it. https://jerryjenkins.com/fix-passive-voice/

So here’s the challenge:

Go find someone else’s fic and search for a paragraph (Just one! Okay, maybe two.) that uses “was” or “were” in a passive way. (There’s one at the bottom if you don’t want to go search for yourself.) Rewrite the paragraph to make it active. If you can, rewrite the “telling” to make it “showing”. (Another good article from the same site about show vs tell: https://jerryjenkins.com/show-dont-tell/) In your post, include both the original and your rewrite.

Here’s an example, of passive, active, and show instead of tell:

Passive: While their parents were chatting, the kids were being entertained by the magician.

Active: The magician entertained the kids while their parents chatted.

Showing: While their parents relaxed at the picnic table, chatting over their beers, the kids laughed and clapped at every coin pulled from their ears and every disappearing rabbit.


Sample paragraph you can rewrite. In case it helps, the context is that the Doctor and Martha are running up to a woman, who is the point-of-view character.

He stopped running when he was only a few paces away, breathing as though running had taken no toll on him at all. It wasn’t the same case for the woman. He was holding a weird old fashioned tape recorder, like the one her dad had once owned. There was something oddly familiar about this bloke, as if she had seen him before.

Fill -Challenge 22 (DW)

[romanajo123]

 "Donna Noble has been saved" - Takes place after the Library and before Midnight (or Death and the Queen, I'm not sure)

Donna Noble was having one of those nights. Those nights where it was near impossible to get to sleep no matter what you did. She snuggled deep into her bed as the automatic lights dimmed.  Right as she was approaching that deep part of sleep (what the Doctor would've called "REM sleep" ,  but what did he know? She'd never seen him sleep),  her mind found a place she'd tried to block out.

She's in a rather posh hospital, sitting up in bed, being cared for by a balding doctor.

BOOM! Like lightning the scene changes.

She's in a wedding dress, being carried bride style into her new home by her husband. Oh he's still got that stammer, bless him. But they're ready for a life together

BOOM!

It's been a few years now, she's a mother. Though it feels like it's been forever sine she became Mrs. McAvoy.
Her little daughter Ella holds up a clay figure. But it doesn't have a face

BOOM!

They're at the playground.  A fairly normal day but there's a woman whose face is completely veiled. Something is wrong here. Her husband , her beautiful little family is gone...

BOOM!

Donna awoke with a start. She'd been having a lot of dreams like this lately-about what could've been, the life she had in the virtual world. She had half a mind to ask the Doctor to- Nah, he wouldn't. 
She raced to the console room to find him curled up with a lengthy book.

"Donna!" he called upon noticing her, "Was just getting caught up. The Time Machine, HG Wells. Been meaning to finish it for-"
"Not here for a book club, sunshine." Donna cut him off. "Can the TARDIS track down somebody for me?"

Fill: Challenge #22 (DW)

[shivver]

Still thinking about "Snakedance", and I couldn't resist.



Anger. Hatred. Greed.

The face of a friend - though he couldn’t place her name - floated before him, her sneering smile mocking him, mocking his impotence, daring him to stop her. She raised an arm to point at him, and her hand transformed into a snake, its fangs glistening with venom as it stared him down. It reared back and, with a hiss, struck…

John jerked awake, eyes wide in the utter blackness of the rural night, sweat plastering his fringe to his forehead. Taking a few laboured breaths, he fought the sleep overtaking him to no avail. He couldn’t go back and face that…

She laughed, throwing her head back and chortling with abandon. Nothing could harm her here, nothing could stop her regaining her power, least of all him.

“Doctor?”

At the touch on his arm, he looked down at another face, another friend he couldn’t remember.

“It’s just a dream, Doctor.”

“Dreams are important, Nyssa,” he heard himself say, though the name he spoke meant nothing to him. “Never underestimate them.”

John found himself staring again, marvelling at how his dream self managed to advise him. The importance of his dreams sat as dead weight on his chest, threatened to choke him in the darkness, but they always evaporated with the first light of day, try as he might to hold on to them. Never underestimate them, he repeated to himself. Easier said than done, but I can keep them if I try, pry out their secrets. I simply must engrave them in my memory. I must remember it all, the woman, the snake, the…

John’s breath rattled softly as his eyelids drooped shut.