We discuss the 8 reference resources that we regularly dip into when we're writing and editing for business.
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‘And you will have no hesitation in doing what has to be done? You have no doubts?’ (At Risk, Stella Rimington, p. 187)
‘And where’s he getting the money from? You know the situation as well as I do. He isn’t on leave of absence from a university.’ (The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, p. 227) “But your way makes more sense. So you think Maura was working with Rex?” “I do.” “Doesn’t mean she didn’t set Rex up.” “Right.” “But if she wasn’t involved in the murder, where is she now?” (Don’t Let Go, Harlan Coben, p. 76) |
There's a part of him that wants to run down there, charge through, and shoot every fucking person he sees inside that hotel, ending with the man who put him in the chair. Meghan’s brain broke because of him. She is dead because of him. Hotel Memory needs to end.
But that would most likely only get him killed. No, he'll call Gwen instead, propose an off-the-books, under-the-radar op with a handful of SWAT colleagues. If she insists, he'll take an affidavit to a judge. |
Matlock walked to the small, rectangular window with the wire-enclosed glass. The police station was at the south end of the town of Carlyle, about a half a mile from the campus, the section of town considered industrialized. Still, there were trees along the streets. Carlyle was a very clean town, a neat town. The trees by the station house were pruned and shaped.
And Carlyle was also something else. |
Dolly Guntner certainly wasn't in a position to say anything bad about him.
Which left Carol Beakman. Carol had seen him. And while she didn't actually see him kill Dolly, if the police ever spoke with her, she'd be able to tell them it couldn't have been anyone else but him. As far as Cory could figure, the only living witness to his crimes was Carol Beakman. He was nearly back to the cabin. It seemed clear what he had to do. And he'd have to do it fast. |
I won't be able to place this in any kind of context until I go through everything Sam has brought, though he says he didn't see a reply to Jacoby's questions. Certainly the fact that a man who was soon to be a murder victim experimenting in any way with his own DNA is at least curious, and something for me to look into carefully if I stay on the case.
But a nurse comes in and asks me to quickly come to Laurie's room, so right now everything else is going to have to wait. |
He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more informative), to comprehend the city, a process which accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile [...]
Two thousand years before, London had been a little Celtic village on the north shore of the Thames which the Romans had encountered and settled in. London had grown, slowly, until, roughly a thousand years later, it met the tiny Royal City of Westminster [...] London grew into something huge and contradictory. It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price that all good places have to pay. After a while, Richard found himself taking London for granted. |
He woke in the morning and turned over in the blanket and looked down the road through the trees the way they’d come in time to see the marchers four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. He put his hand on the boy’s head. Shh, he said. (pp. 95–6)
He wallowed into the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. [...] The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasselled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. (p. 96) |
Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly, the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once. |
“Come on!” he screams.
‘It’s very … evocative,’ says Ruth. This is true. The brushwork may be crude, the planes out of perspective and the figures barely more than stick men, but there’s something about the work of the unknown airman that brings back the past more effectively than any documentary or reconstruction. |
‘But you think they’re coming back,’ Karen said.
‘Yes, indeed, and we gonna have a surprise party. I want you to take a radio, go down to the lobby and hang out with the folks. You see Foley and this guy Bragg, what do you do?’ ‘Call and tell you.’ ‘And you let them come up. You understand? You don’t try to make the bust yourself.’ Burdon slipping back into his official mode. Karen said, ‘What if they see me?’ ‘You don’t let that happen,’ Burdon said. ‘I want them upstairs.’ |
There is another faint crunching noise as the body spasms once and then goes limp. Blood spreads blackly from his mouth over the collar of his white shirt and starts to drip onto the pale marble of the steps. [...]
You go downstairs and walk through the kitchen, where the two women sit tied to their chairs; you leave via the same window you entered by, walking calmly through the small back garden into the mews where the motorbiked is parked. You hear the first faint, distant screams just as you take the bike’s key from your pocket. You feel suddenly elated. You’re glad you didn’t have to hurt the women. |
Cited sources and related reading
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What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head
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What’s visible and audible to the viewpoint character
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Pain
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They grimace; clutch a part of their body; wince; howl
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Shock
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They jump back; gasp; stumble; put a hand to their chest
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Nervousness
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They fidget with a zipper; pick at their nails; shred a beer mat; stutter
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Embarrassment
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They blush; avoid eye contact; their breathing is shallow; they speak faster than usual
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Nausea
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Their complexion is tinged a different colour; they gag or retch; their voice is flat
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‘We’ll bring him in,’ says Lady Tippins, sportively waving her green fan. ‘Veneering for ever!’
‘We’ll bring him in!’ says Twemlow. ‘We’ll bring him in!’ say Boots and Brewer. Strictly speaking, it would be hard to show cause why they should not bring him in, Pocket-Breaches having closed its little bargain, and there being no opposition. However, it is agreed that they must ‘work’ to the last, and that, if they did not work, something indefinite would happen. It is likewise agreed they are all so exhausted with the work behind them, and need to be so fortified for the work before them, as to require peculiar strengthening from Veneering’s cellar. |
‘Mr Little tells me that when he came to the big scene in Only a Factory Girl, his uncle gulped like a stricken bull-pup.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ ‘Where Lord Claude takes the girl in his arms, you know, and says—’ ‘I am familiar with the passage, sir. It is distinctly moving. It was a great favourite of my aunt’s.’ ‘I think we’re on the right track.’ ‘It would seem so, sir.’ ‘In fact, this looks like being another of your successes. I’ve always said, and I always shall say, that for sheer brains, Jeeves, you stand alone. All the other great thinkers of the age are simply in the crowd, watching you go by.’ ‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’ |
‘Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well, Mr Bumble,’ replied Mrs Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a bottle and glass. ‘I’ll not deceive you, Mr B. It’s gin.’
‘Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs Mann?’ inquired Bumble, following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing. ‘Ah, bless ’em, that I do, dear as it is,’ replied the nurse. ‘I couldn’t see ’em suffer before my very eyes, you know, sir.’ |
‘I believe it is important to provide the best possible care for the patients regardless of the manner in which they got themselves into their present predicament,’ Ziegler continued. ‘Desperate people are often driven to do desperate things. I have known young women to take their own lives because they could not face the consequences of being with child; and some because they could not face their families discovering it.’
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