I wanted to thank chunk301 for requesting this story to be reposted, and I wanted to thank under foot for reuploading the Original PDF for others to be able to read this Classic story yet again.
Soon after this topic was posted, I spent about two months reading through + doing minor copyediting to the entire Traffic Stop. I then put the project on hiatus for the rest of the year, but I have recently spent about another month rereading and finally finishing the project.
Once I add some finishing touches to the story, I will release:
- Two much higher quality PDFs.
- A .epub of the story.
- This will will make it much easier to read on modern devices (smartphones, ereaders, [...]).
To summarize a few of the Minor Editing Changes:
- Hundreds of typo corrections.
- Fixing inconsistencies.
- Example: "Peter" was accidentally written "Pete" + Mariya/Maria + Marci/Marcy + [...].
- Thousands of paragraph breaks added.
- Hundreds of punctuation fixes.
- Removal of, many, unnecessary, commas!
- Downgrading many exclamation points to periods!
- ALL CAPS to italics
- Smartened Quotation Marks
- Moved the positioning of many Dialogue Tags.
- Dialogue Tags (words which clarify which character is speaking: "he said" + "she said" + "he yelled" + [...]) can be placed in three positions: Beginning/Middle/End.
- In Fiction, these positions have to be varied, or they begin to stand out like a sore thumb. This problem becomes much more aparent when proper paragraphing is added.
- Swapped the order of Dialogue Tags
- Example: "said Peter" to "Peter said"
- The form "said he" was from a much older time. Modern writing nearly always goes with the "he said" form.
- Scene breaks were added to many side tangents + "dream" sequences.
- Swapped quite a few redundant nouns for pronouns.
- Unedited: She released Kevin’s bit and stood over Kevin’s back as Kevin’s eyes closed softly in gratitude for her weight leaving him. Then she reached down to the side of the saddle and lifted it from Kevin’s back.
- Edited: She released Kevin’s bit and stood over his back as his eyes closed softly in gratitude for her weight leaving him. Then she reached down to the side of the saddle and lifted it from his back.
When AJ Jones initially wrote the story, the original forum posts went up to "Part 99 (Epilogue)". Sadly, most of these forum posts were edited/deleted years ago (only a handful currently exist on the Mistress Destiny forums).
The Original PDF wasn't very clear with the original numbering, so I was only able to guess chapters while reading.
- In the Unedited version, there are 68 Chapters.
- This means the Chapter Numbers will not match the original Part Numbers of the forum posts.
- Help: If anyone has stored/archived the original forum posts, please contact me. It would be helpful to see exactly how AJ Jones split the Parts as he wrote them, and I would like my Unedited PDF to match those 99 Part Numbers.
- In the Edited version, there are ~34 Chapters.
- I merged the story into more meaningful Chapters/Subchapters instead.
- I may still merge/tweak the number slightly before release.
I also put the story through some more extensive editing, to tweak the writing to make it fit higher quality Fiction standards.
While the Edited version is not a "word for word" match—all of these edits were made with higher quality writing in mind.
I consider these Major Editing Changes a step above just simple copyediting:
- Removed many redundant Dialogue Tags ("he said" + "she said" [...]).
- Due to simple paragraph breaking, this allows you to easily know a different character is speaking.
- Example: When only two characters are speaking, it is much easier to spot who is talking just by alternating paragraphs.
- Unedited: “I want ride him!” said Paula brightly, bounding up to them. Elena looked up.
“You wanna what?!” Elena said.
“I haven’t had a shoulder ride in a long time and I want to ride him up to the food tent,” replied Paula.
“But, you never want to ride them! You never kick them, you never stomp them! What gives?!” asked Elena.
“Well, maybe I’m changing,” said Paula. “Might be fun to feel a man’s shoulders buckling beneath me.”
“Well, that’s more like it!” Get us all some burgers and pizza,” said Elena.
- Edited: “I want to ride him!” Paula said brightly, bounding up to them.
Elena looked up. “You wanna what?!”
“I haven’t had a shoulder ride in a long time and I want to ride him up to the food tent.”
“But you never want to ride them! You never kick them, you never stomp them! What gives?!”
“Well, maybe I’m changing, Might be fun to feel a man’s shoulders buckling beneath me.”
“Well, that’s more like it!” Elena said. “Get us all some burgers and pizza.”
- Removed "Creative" Dialogue Tags.
- Nearly all tags were reduced to "said" + "asked".
- This means changing "commented" + "yelled" + "screamed" + "shrieked" + "exclaimed" + "interjected" + [...]
- If you want a more extensive explanation as to why, let me know and I can point to Writing/Editing resources. Nearly all of these "tell" instead of "show", and can take a reader out of the story if what is written does not match how the reader imagines the scene—where said/asked is nearly invisible.
- Changed a few Dialogue Tags to Beats instead.
For those of you who do not agree with more extensive changes, I am still releasing the Unedited PDF without any of the changes. At least that will be easier to read than the Original PDF—you will be missing out on a much higher quality read though!
Hopefully AJ Jones doesn't mind these more thorough changes—wherever he is.