It's nice to see you making and correcting redundancy in your work; my own English professor caught me in that act all the time and it constantly irked me that I wrote it in the first place (writing is NOT my major, so I couldn't be bothered with proofreading, you see).

One thing I noticed in your writing, though, is arguably improper use of the semicolon. I don't know the etiquette behind taking creative license with grammar rules, but according to my wisdom, complete sentences must pre- and proceed the semicolon. In paragraph 4, this did not occur.

"...even at this late hour; crowded with hundreds of..."

I will say, though, that at least to my uncultured eyes, the changes you marked out on the draft seem to improve the flow of narrative and eliminate low brow language, but, like you said: how much is too much?

In any case, it looks like it'll be a good read if (when? Optimism counts for something, right?) it hits store shelves ;)

 

Oops, forgot to mention that I see incorrect grammar all the time (typos, too, but that's a different story) in popular literature. Most, if not all, of it reads fine, but is technically incorrect. I always wondered whether the editors simply missed these mistakes or didn't deem them edit-worthy.

*proofreads this post so as not to forget to mention something else*

 

i've always enjoyed your diablo short stories, but something about the writing style in this first page doesn't appeal to me. it seems excessively wordy in some places and ultimately not really fun to read.

 

As far as I'm concerned, creative writing does not have to be techincally correct. Many times the use of punctuation can be a stylistic choice. It all depends on what the writer is trying to get across. For instance, a sense of urgency may be created in short, basic sentences with action words. These sentences do not have to be complete.

Each writer may pick his or her own rules on punctuation, as long as they are consistent throughout the novel (for the reader's sake). So anyway, I think it could be argued semicolons are legit anytime you want something stronger than a comma.

 

I'd say at least 20% of the really big (700+ pages) books I read obviously haven't been proofread, or very quickly proofread. Obvious mistakes, but hey, a bankable author's sequel to a popular book? Why bother checking too closely?

 

The early Dune books, especially Dune Mesiah, have got lots and lots of mistakes in them. Given how old they are, and how many editions they've been through, it seems that these things never get fixed over time.

Amusingly, one of the characters in Dune is Pitre de Vried. However in all other Dune books (and movies), he is referred to as Pitre de Vries. Frank Herbert later claimed that the d was a typo and it was meant to be s all along, despite the 50+ mentions all with 'd' in the first book. Current editions of Dune still use the 'd' spelling.

 

I can easily see typos and other small errors getting through, especially in the old days before everything was computerized. Even now it's easy to screw up; I've changed the name of the main continent in this novel several times, and the female thief the book opens up with is now Valena, but was formerly Vena, and though I swear I've done find+replace every time, I keep seeing old versions of those names when I edit.

 

Valena does sound better then Vena, seems fine to me. (The first page) If you want to tell a long story don't make it complicated. 700+ page books are only readable if you can read them fast so to create a flow of story, and nice film-like pace in your head. my 2 cents.