Hell had no fury like a woman scorned. by Oluseyi Ogunbanwo Joseph

 

Hell had no fury like a woman scorned[GJ1] .

 

Beware son[GJ2] ,

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned[GJ3] 

 

I knew a  tale [GJ4] like an incident of yesterday

True life story relevant for the man of today

It's the story of a bruised and battered [GJ5] woman

Who's [GJ6] fury passed the rubicon of rectitude

 

Peerless was her beauty in her days of yore [GJ7] 

Men and suitors her comeliness adore

Her tree resplendent with attractive juicy fruits

Her green leaves adorned with inviting flowers [GJ8] 

 

Then came he and his desire

Attracted by love and with a name Josiah

Secured her hand and vowed to protect her attire

Then marital bliss began in a home decorated with sapphire[GJ9] 

 

Suddenly the sweet bell stopped ringing

The wine of love became sour[GJ10] 

Desirous affection took a violent tour

On the scene emerged a strange being

 

Nocturnal return replaced early arrival[GJ11] 

Frowned appearance displaced cheerful survival 

Demands snowballed to unavoidable altercations

Arguments resulted into physical confrontations

 

Violent clashes of pains and bruises

Left[GJ12]   her soul depressed on crutches

And since his leopard refused to change it's[GJ13]  skin

She sent into space her voice of anguish with keen

 

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

 

In her hot displeasure of his inflicted afflictions[GJ14] 

She stripped and voiced with vigorous vituperations  [GJ15] 

'You shall be humbled by misery and penury,

'For these protracted marks of inflicted [GJ16] injury!'

 

And soon her curse began to manifest

With loss of business and a successful enterprise

Josiah's lion became a lousy rat seeking assistance

His sustenance came crashing before his countenance[GJ17] .

 

'The eyes' problem is the nose's', says a maxim in my place

 Her chicken came home to roost

Then with a remorseful heart, she prayed for a change

But like a leech, the situation remained unchanged[GJ18] 

 

There was no alteration in their condition

Even when she pleaded unclad in complete restitution

Then like the first man and his wife, they started life[GJ19]   anew

The past was forgotten and their vow renewed[GJ20] 

 

So son, have you been bound to a wife? 

Break not her heart and her dignity do not sell

For the woman's heart is tender with life

But her fury is hotter than the fire of hell[GJ21] 

 

General comments 

On the whole this poem has an interesting meter and some pleasant sounds in the words. I worry that there is little punctuation and some overuse of clever words.

Take care about those extra spaces. They look unprofessional.  

We need more story here. What were the confrontations about? How did hey concretely affect the business? How did the reconciliation take place?  And most importantly: what did the ‘wrath’ look like?     

A brave attempt in any case.  

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 [GJ1]Good to twist to a well-known saying. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” originates from the William Congreve play, “The Mourning Bride,” published in 1697. A line in the play reads as follows. “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

 [GJ2]Short sharp line begs the reader’s attention.

 [GJ3]And here is the famous phrase itself.  Should it have correct punctuation?

 [GJ4]Extra space added here. Take care with this.

 [GJ5]Good use of alliteration.

 [GJ6]‘whose’ surely?

 [GJ7]Somewhat clichéd?

 [GJ8]Sexual references? Again, a little clichéd?

 [GJ9]The rhymes seem a little forced here.

 [GJ10]A dramatic turn here.

 [GJ11]We have to pause a moment to work out what this may mean but that may not be a bad thing.

 [GJ12]Extra space here again. Take care with this.

 [GJ13]its

 [GJ14]There is some repetition here.

 [GJ15]Alliteration again and this is effective but the meaning of the word is rather obscure. Many readers will not know this word.

 [GJ16]Repetition again

 [GJ17]So, her behaviour undermined his business?

 [GJ18]Not completely clear whose fault this all was.

 [GJ19]Double space again – take care

 [GJ20]Phew! Thank goodness.

 [GJ21]Good advice?

 

Feedback – giving and receiving it

 

The simplest form of feedback

Give someone your work to read and ask them what they’ve understood rather than inviting them to give an opinion.  Making this clear at the beginning avoids the situation where they may feel that they have to say they like your work even if they don’t.  Do you get any surprises? Do they think an old man was a young man, for instance? Do they find your story funny when you had meant it to be deadly serious? Is the picture you have in your head as you wrote the same as the one they get in their head after they have read your work?

Critique groups

These are really useful but it is important to find the right one. Do you just want to celebrate each other’s work?  Do you want some aggressive criticism? Or something in between? Do you need to be genre specific? You will find a list of UK based writers’ groups at  https://www.nawg.co.uk . There is an added bonus in using this site to find your writing group. Groups listed here will be member of the association and that offers even more opportunities.

It’s a good idea to find a genre specific group e.g., writing for children, poetry, science fiction, memoir etc. However, joining a mixed group is also useful as looking at different forms of writing can be enlightening. Is this an argument for belonging to more than one group?

A workable pattern

Critique groups work better if you all negotiate the rules first.  This is one I like: you send your work to each other in advance. Everyone reads everybody else’s work and points out:

·         What works well

·         What works less well

·         What the writer might do to improve

·         Sometimes a writer may have asked you to look at some specific aspect of the text, so you comment on that.

It’s best to only make a few points for each section. It becomes a little like peeling off layers. You might correct typos and spelling mistakes etc. but perhaps you won’t mention these when you give the feedback.

You go round the group. Each person gives a little background to their work, then going round the table three people give feedback but avoid repeating anything that has already been said. After three people have given feedback anyone who has more to add is invited to speak.

If you’ve annotated the text, and I recommend that you do this, give it back to the writer at the end of the session. 

The group doesn’t need to be large. In fact, an hour and half for a group of about eight working as described above is just right.

How to react to feedback

Try to resist defending your work. Just listen carefully to what each person tells you. You may find that you can’t agree with the suggestions. This is fine; it is your work and it is yours to do with as you please. But if several people are saying the same thing, it’s probably wise to listen.

You may find that people are saying different things.  For example, one person may ask you to make a small character more significant and someone else may tell you to get rid of that character altogether. This can be confusing.  In this case they may be saying the same thing: the character doesn’t seem to have a role. Give them one or get rid of them.

You will often find that your critic is right that there’s something out of kilter with the text but their suggestion about how to fix it may not be right. This is where you need to take your work back home, study all that has been said about it and then make your own mind up about what to do.  This is also good practice for working with a publishing house’s editor later.

Beta readers

You use these to test out a whole manuscript. They should be the type of people who would read your published book. So, you may be looking for someone who likes romance, someone who is interested in antiques or someone who likes fell-walking.  It all depends on your type of book. They read as if they had bought the book and let you know what they think.

Again with these you might ask them specific questions about certain aspects of the text.

Professional edit

These aren’t cheap. They are essential if you are going to self-publish.  Getting a professional edit will give your manuscript a much better chance of being accepted by a publisher and some of them actually have a relationship with agents and publishers and may recommend your book.

Cornerstones https://www.cornerstones.co.uk/ is one of the leaders in the field. Check out also my Dream Team: http://www.gilljameswriter.com/p/my-dream-team.html Two other sites that may be helpful are:  https://reedsy.com/ and https://www.fiverr.com   My business partner Debz Brown also runs her own editorial service: https://debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk/       

 

Find more tips like these  

 

Novels and epics

 

 

More from our friend Bakhtin. He defines for us a difference between an epic and a novel.

 An epic tells a story. There is only one Tristan. A novel shows in a particular way and there can be several versions of Tristan. There will be a narrative balance that includes only the tiniest bit of exposition, but plenty of dialogue, inner monologue and action and just the right amount of description.

What Bakhtin says here of the novel is also true of the short story.  

Take a well-known myth or legend and retell it for the 21^st century reader. You may like to do this as a piece of flash fiction or start a larger project.

Make the characters seem human.        

FIND YOUR COPY HERE  

Note, this is an affiliate link and a small portion of what you pay, at no extra cost to you,  may go to Bridge House Publishing. 

 

Dialogue[GJ1] : setting it out

  Dialogue[GJ1] : setting it out  

“Do you know what? I get really stuck on setting out dialogue[GJ2] ,” said the Creative Writing student.

“It’s not really all that difficult,” replied[GJ3]  the teacher. “Do remember to start a new paragraph when a new person speaks[GJ4] .”

“Oh, is that when you start a new paragraph in the middle of a conversation?” The[GJ5]  student looked as if a light bulb had gone off in her head. “And what are the rules about where the speech marks go?”

“They always go around the speech[GJ6] , with the normal punctuation marks inside it[GJ7] ,” said the teacher[GJ8] , “although you use a comma instead of a full stop at the end, if you are assigning the speech. And if you put the assignation in the middle of the sentence, you don’t start the second bit with a capital letter and you put another comma in front of it.”

“Pardon[GJ9] ?”

“Look. Like this.” The[GJ10]  teacher showed the student this document. 

“It’s actually a good idea to have this in front of you when you’re working on a dialogue in a piece of fiction.”  Now it was the teacher’s turn to grow a light bulb[GJ11] . “Or, even, have a well written book open as you work. You can see the pattern. It’s easier than trying to remember[GJ12] .”

“How often should you put “said”?”

“As little as possible. But actually you must use it if otherwise the reader wouldn’t know who was saying what.”

“Okay. But doesn’t it get a bit boring for the reader?”

“Actually they tend not to notice[GJ13] .”

“What about other words – like expostulated, screamed and so on?”

The teacher shook her head. “Best not to. They draw attention to themselves. “Whisper”, “shout”, “asked” and “replied” and sometimes “reply” are all right[GJ14] .

“And you can always use a bit of body language to let us know who’s speaking.” The teacher winked.  

“You can’t do that all the time, can you?”

“No, but a lot of the time you don’t need to put anything – you can tell who is talking by the way they talk and what they’re saying. Especially if there’s only two of them. You only need more tags or body language if they go on for more than a page, if they’re very similar to each other or if you’re writing for younger people.”       

“Okay. Thank you for your help.”

“My pleasure. That’s what we’re here for.”              

 

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 [GJ1]Note: the first paragraph is “full out”.

 [GJ2]Note: normal punctuation within the speech marks EXCEPT comma instead of full stop. 

 [GJ3]“replied” is just about all right for assigning speech.

 [GJ4]And of course, there is no new paragraph here because the teacher is still talking.

 [GJ5]We have used no word to assign.  We have reconfirmed that this is the student speaking by telling you something else about her.

 [GJ6]See, a normal punctuation mark.

 [GJ7]But a comma here and note that it is inside the speech marks.

 [GJ8]The teacher has not finished her sentence so we have a comma here and no capital letter at the beginning of the remaining speech.  

 [GJ9]We don’t need “said” here because it’s clear it is the student speaking.  

 [GJ10]We know it is the teacher speaking because we see her do something else.

 [GJ11]And here we know that it is the teacher.

 [GJ12]This really works.  Try it.

 [GJ13]Indeed.

 [GJ14]Note, we haven’t closed the speech marks because the teacher continues to speak. But has started a new paragraph.