I've removed this section since it has been heavily revised and there was no current discussion of it.

mdChambs wrote:

I stood again in the dark place, now with no light; and while I sought for the Book I pondered what had happened. The voices and the terror which I had encountered I guessed to be the creations of my own unmastered will, and I purposed to return to face them.

He seems to come to this conclusion too quickly, and without any foundation. As a reader, it felt a bit too easy that he suddenly had this insight.

mdChambs wrote:

I turned the pages until I found a more pleasant place than the one to which I had first been and entered it, a small glen overhung by willow.

Having read your outline, I knew that the book includes only writing, but an ignorant reader might get the wrong impression that he's looking at an illustration of a small glen ... or am I wrong and it's supposed to be an illustration?

mdChambs wrote:

The question now in my mind was if, while I was in the Book, my presence were recorded in written words.

This is not phrased as a question ... plus there's some improper grammar in the last section of the sentence. Is the question in his mind: "While I was in the book, was my presence there recorded in written words"?

mdChambs wrote:

Yet this I wondered: what form would be taken by those words that described me, who was as a thing superior the Book – and might I find any other thing in the Book of similar nature?

Why can't he just read the section of the book he intered to see what form the words took?

mdChambs wrote:

In the Book I had seen it sometimes written in the margins to describe the Laws of the world but never attached to any object, and this is what I now found, though I understood the meaning of the words little. Into this page I now entered.

I was a little confused by this passage ... did he find another instance of the 10th tense, I'll call it, written in the margins, or did he find a page where it is used in the body of the text?

mdChambs wrote:

behind me was a fixed iron gate and ahead the tunnel opened to bright daylight and a sandy yard surrounded by green trees.

I've been reading

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by William Zinsser as part of the "Breaking into Print" course, and he advocates a minimalist style of writing - omitting all unecessary words. I think there is merit to his approach and am trying to overcome my lawyerly education to implement it. "Fixed iron gate" seems an example of unecessary words. The question I had was -- "a fixed iron gate as opposed to what?" I don't think there's such a thing as an unfixed iron gate. Another opportunity for brevity.

“Surely,” I said to myself, “this is no pen meant merely for marking paper; this is the tool by which worlds are built.”

Intricate possibilities spread out before my mind’s eye, endless and tantalizing: whole new places to shape and work, the chance for the artistry of both creation and expression – here at last was the perfect medium in which thought could take shape as reality even in the moment of its genesis; here the dreaming and the authorship were one.

mdChambs wrote:

Yet I needed to acquire the pen first, and on the gate there were no locks or even hinges, and it was firmly fixed in place.

Seems more like a wall or fence than a gate.

mdChambs wrote:

“Put it back, mortal.” This time there was no guessing: the gargoyle’s beak had moved, and it had spoken.

I think that should be a semi-colon.

mdChambs wrote:

The bitter point smote the gargoyle in the breast and there was a hard crack; the gargoyle grasped the spear in its hands and crushed the diamond blade with its hideous strength, but there as chip in the gargoyle’s body where my blow had smote it.

In the midst of this combat, I was wondering why he can't just remove the ring and return to the book? Is it because he fears the pen will not go with him? If so, this should be enunciated otherwise this passage seems gratuitous.

mdChambs wrote:

The world vanished and I was alone again in the black, but a moment’s investigation showed that I had brought two things back with me: my prize, the pen, which was still in my pocket ?,

I think that question mark is a typo. I am now wondering why he didn't just pull the ring off when the gargoyle first threatened him? I think there needs to be some explanation of this.

Formatting question: why did you post this entire section in italics?

My overall impression of this section is that it continues to hold my interest and is certainly well-written. I found the internal monologue over what to do with the book was getting dangerously close to being too long. I think this section could be tightened up a little.

This section is about 2,000 words long. Part 2 was also over 2,000 words. I haven't counted the others, but I would estimate you are over 5,000 words and we are only just getting to the meat of the story. For a novella or novel, this is not a problem, but for a short story it is ... most magazines do not even accept anything longer than 5,000 words.

Thank you for your excellent criticisms Nicholas; you have found quite a few weaknesses that I shall remedy in the next revision. Regarding your comment:

Quote:

Why can't he just read the section of the book he intered to see what form the words took?

the answer is that he is interested in the verbage of his presence while he is in the Book; he expects the verbage of past and completed actions (rather than his on-going presence) to be normal. I'll try to think of a way to handle this.

My reason for using italics is that unvoiced thoughts are often written in italics. This whole story might be taken as a collection of the narrator's thoughts, or maybe a journal of some kind (though I do not intend this to be a 'found' narrative as Colleen put it).

As for length, I suppose 'novella' would be appropriate. I estimate 14,000 words at the end; and regarding your proposed compendium, is this too long?

I see you intend to rewrite this one and will look at 3b presently. You see how slowly I am working through the material here. Now it is plain to me that the narrator is working his own (moral) way through things as well. And here I see the second reference to his will -- the first was when he considered that his helpless nightmare adventure was the result of his lack of "mastery" of his will. Here in this second instance, he tries to use his will in a forbidden manner, rather as a child who will have it's desire whether the thing is good or not. But the series of events has a very fine, mythic sort of rhythm -- going from iron to diamond and then to wolfram etc. If you can cut down on any extra words, that is fine, but do keep this part. There are patterns in the best and most venerable tales -- and numbers. Don't forget the threes and sevens and nines and twelves. They are everywhere -- it is a part of how the human mind is composed. Threes especially -- we were meant even in pagan times to conform ourselves to the Trinity, and so you see this. Only those who worked against the naturaly order (some of the Greeks for instance) used the four pattern, taking the poppy as their emblem and setting up a female god.