Forl ‘n’ Star

2021-02-14 #diceRollProse

Stats

Words: 85
Words-of-the-day: 14
Inclusion: 16%
Sentences with no words-of-the-day: 2
Most words-of-the-day in one sentence: 4

Nouns: 7
Adjectives: 3
Verbs: 4

Words of the week

Caveats (n): a warning or caution; admonition.
Paladin (n): any knightly or heroic champion.
Meritocracy (n): an elite group of people whose progress is based on ability and talent rather than on class, privilege or wealth.
Parlous (adj): perilous; dangerous..
Forsake (v): medicinal salve.
Galimatias (n): confused or unintelligible talk.
Limn (v): To portray in words; describe. To represent in drawing or painting.
Voracious (adj): craving or consuming large quantities of food.
Pulse (v): to beat, vibrate, or undulate.
Belie (v): to show to be false; contradict.
Febrile (adj): pertaining to or marked by fever; feverish.
Wretch (n): a deplorably unfortunate or unhappy person.
Camaraderie (n): comradeship; good-fellowship.
Courtship (n): the wooing of one person by another.

(There were more but I did use them)

Breakdown

Humble beginnings for #diceRollProse. There’s not a lot to say about the illustration I featured except wow. Conar Cross’ work is fantastic. See below for full size.

In terms of my prose I have a special fondness for Forl ‘n’ Star as it was my first #diceRollProse. I packed four words-of-the-day in the first sentence which is great: caveat, paladin, meritocracy and parlous. It’s an eloquently informative sentence as well, conveying: the journey was dangerous; Forl was a credible knight or soldier; and his mission was of the utmost importance.

The second sentence is my favourite. I get across some nice imagry I feel. There’s a bit of alliteration on the /f/ sound. I use airs instead of talking about the forest directly which adds to the creepy atmosphere. And on top of that Galimatias is put to good use, alluding that the forest has a widely undesirable reputation. Limn is nice word and I hadn’t come across before. But, unfortunately, I don’t think my use of it was quite kosher: If you look at the sentence structure and take out the middle you get: ‘The forsaken forest limned unnatural dangers.’ This is saying the forest itself actually limned something. Forests don’t have mouths to talk or brushes to paint so they can’t really limn anything. I still love it though.

I have mixed feeling about the third sentence. It’s very long and finishes awkwardly on ‘the bugbears’ hunting ground.’ I should have used a colon instead of the preceding comma. Moreover, it is a 22 word long sentence with only one word-of-the-day; I probably could have done better. It does feature voracious mushrooms though, so all is forgiven. I did a bit of research on mushrooms because of this and I had no idea how devastating they can be to trees.

‘Her pulsing pace belied her febrile nerves.’ Hmmm, it sounds punchy and has three words-of-the-day but that verb, belie; it just doesn’t make any sense. Putting in a synonym like ‘contradict’ you can understand better why it’s naughty: ‘Her pulsing pace contradicted her febrile nerves.’ The intention was to emphasise the horse’s nerves with her hard trotting and to say the opposite! It’s actually quite ironically terrible how unfitting belie is in that sentence and using an antonym would be much more appropriate, such as affirm or attest. Bad author, BAD!

Despite it’s flaws I’m still proud I wrapped up a neat fantasy scene in so fewer words