The Devil and the Rose- 1

by | Feb 21, 2022 | Novella

‘You need to dump him. Especially when you have Peter chasing after you,’ advocated Linda who rather enjoyed giving these advisements to Rose. ‘I wish I had a suitor like Peter. My heart bleeds when I see him…’

Rose heaves a big sigh, ‘I know what you mean, Linda. I do like him a lot but… I need my space.’ Rose is sitting on the window sill, looking out towards the sky with a faraway look. Linda, as usual, is sitting by the fireplace.

‘I wonder why you don’t need your space when Jack is around,’ says Linda sarcastically.

Visibly upset, Rose gets up from the sill, ‘Please Linda, I am not in a mood to listen to all this.’

‘And you are always in a mood to not only listen to all this but take all that abuse from him,’ says Linda, again mockingly.

Linda was one of those sedentary sorts of people who always appear content with whatever little activity they have in their lives. Not that she was leading an extremely quiet life; she had a social circle bigger than that of Rose, and in that circle she had come to be regarded as a pillar of strength.

‘How did that happen anyway?’ continues Linda, ‘it’s curious I never asked you that. You and Jack? It’s like the unlikeliest match.’

‘I don’t know, Linda. I just felt so drawn towards him. I met him when he was still going out with Kate; at the New Year’s party at Mandy’s. I had heard stories about him being a user and stuff, but I wasn’t concerned with all that. So, I was standing with Kim and the rest of the girls…’

……………………………………………………

 At Mandy’s New Year bash Rose and her friends are chatting.

 ‘Hey, where’s Kate?’

 ‘With her latest catch, over there.’ 

 Everybody looks towards Kate and Jack. Still in his early thirties, Jack is clean-shaved, handsome man of more than average height. There is an aura of masculinity about Jack that is unmistakable. His well-toned athletic body is covered in black leather Jacket.

 ‘Oh him. He’s no catch, believe me. I reckon when he’s done with her, she won’t be able to recover for years. Serves her good; I never liked that bitch.’ The feeling of rivalry was obvious in Silvia’s voice. She was almost happy to see her with Jack. It was as if she knew Rose’s end was nearing.  

 ‘Hey Kate, over here!’ Mandy yells to Kate and she looks towards the girls, waves and comes over with Jack.   

 ‘Hey…I never knew everyone was gonna be here. Anyway, this is Jack…’

 Somebody calls Kate so she has to leave. ‘Excuse me girls,’ says Kate and turns to Jack, ‘be back with you in a flash, Jack.’     

 ‘Not a worry, kitty cat. Take your time.’ ‘So girls,’ Jack turns towards the girls, ‘Keeping the boys happy?’ He knew nearly the whole pack. He had bedded a couple of them.

 ‘I heard about your fight with those goons last week,’ Caroline comments. She was one of those girls Jack liked to keep as bait in order to get bigger fishes.

 ‘Yeah, this world is no place for a nice guy like me.’ Jack apparently sees Rose and instantly turns towards her, ‘Who’s this beauty?’

 ‘This is Rose,’ informs Caroline.

 ‘I don’t suspect. Looks like a Rose. Freshly blossomed,’ says Jack and then addresses Rose, ‘Jack Thorn… is my name. Anytime you like me…’ Jack takes Rose’s hand, with his eyes never leaving hers, doesn’t ask for it and kisses it, ‘…to show you a good time, consider me your servant.’

 

Next page

 

 

Missing Components in Writer’s Article

by | Apr 15, 2012 | Fussy Editor

Mr Agarwal,

In your TJ article, the following sentence was chopped, as it talked of telecommuting figures, a bit of a diversion from the focus (telecommuting is working from home, and our article is about full-time employees occasionally doing office work out of office premises):

According to Forrester research, more than 34 million Americans are occasional telecommuters, and the number is likely to increase to 63 million by 2016. 

We don’t require graphs to be indented. As a matter of house style, we capitalise Web, and write website as website. For the time being, any article you do for TJ does not require photo caption and box; Brisvaani articles do for sure.

Kindly provide blurbs in all the forthcoming articles. One of the tutorials sent earlier talks about writing blurb for CM articles and features. You can note how the blurb (text immediately after the title) has been provided in both your articles above. Also note both the titles and write similar titles for your future copies.

Harpreet Bhagrath

Check Wordiness in Your Articles

by | Apr 12, 2012 | Harpreet Bhagrath's Blog, Tutorials for Our Writers, Writing Tutorials

We prefer to use fewer words, and any superfluous words are mercilessly discarded. So try to use as fewer words as possible in your articles and features.

As an example, I take this sentence from one of our write-ups: The basic idea behind this is to ship all samples from…

This could be reduced to ‘The idea is to ship all samples from….

Or this sentence: Ministry of Health stated that if a situation arises where there is a large scale spreading of the virus…

This could just be: Ministry of Health stated that in case of large scale spreading of the virus…

Notice how the graph below has been cut to size.

Draft: If you are among those, who believe that smoking just one cigarette would not hurt your health in any way, and then it’s high time you change your perception. Because as per the researchers of a new study, 15-30 minutes is all it takes before that one cigarette you had puffed starts causing genetic damage in your body, leaving you one step closer to cancer. (65 words)

Edited: Smoking just one cigarette would not hurt your health, you believe? It’s time you changed your belief. According to a new study, 15-30 minutes of smoking is all it takes to cause genetic damage in your body, leaving you one step closer to cancer. (44 words)

Any questions on the above? Just get in touch with the core team — shoot us a mail, message us on Yahoo Messenger, or just give us a tinkle.

Happy writing,

Harpreet Bhagrath

Elementary Mistakes Abound in Writer’s Copy

by | Apr 10, 2012 | Fussy Editor

Hi Mr Motwani,

Your multitasking article has been published, but there were a few issues we need to discuss, so that they don’t recur.

Headline has been changed from “Multitasking Messes Up Your Life” to “Why Multitasking is a Bad Idea”. Kindly see why.
Also see how the mistakes below are elementary; you could just as easily have spotted — and fixed — them yourself, if only you had edited your work before submitting.

<strong>2. Multitasking Is Not a Time-Saver</strong>

It is common belief that multitasking saves time, or at least we can at least pack a load of work into a period of time. However, experts say it is an illusion. The NYT quotes a study: “In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment websites. I was surprised by how easily people were distracted and how long it took them to get back to the task,” said Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft research scientist and co-author, with Shamsi Iqbal of the University of Illinois. If it’s this bad at Microsoft,” Mr. Horvitz added, “it has to be bad at other companies, too.”

Kindly be sure when you tell the readers where the quotes start and where they end. In the graph above, the quote cannot be starting at “In a recent study…”. It, instead, should have started at “I was surprised…”, where it is not starting, according to you.

Mr Motwani, the point is we should not be discussing these elementary things. All our writers double up as sub-editors when they submit their copies; the copy should be in publishable condition.

There were other issues in the rest of the piece. We have fixed the mistakes this time, but it will not be possible for us to put in so many efforts into your articles in future, I’m afraid.

Otherwise, it was a good read. So I would say keep up the good work, but cut down on the elementary mistakes.

Harpreet Bhagrath

Time-consuming Copy Missing Vital Components of CM Articles

by | Apr 2, 2012 | Fussy Editor

Hi Mr Agarwal,

Your harassment policy article has been published.

A lot has been changed again, and it took me at least half an hour on this article again. Kindly see what has been changed and why.

Tag words were missing in the Create Content page. The photo was missing too. Serial comma is still missing in series of items.

The other article on preventing sexual harassment is still pending for the following reasons.

You need to create content again; this time through “Feature Article” and not “News”, which you seem to have done.

These two sub-heads need more work again: <strong>4.Workplace Supervision</strong> and <strong>3.Channels for Filing Complaints</strong> Just see if you can add some more information or quotes or expert views in these sub-heads.

You’d need to work on the blurb as well.

Don’t lull yourself that sexual harassment doesn’t happen at your place. Be prepared with a policy…

“Don’t lull yourself into believing that…” will be more like it. Plus, kindly don’t mention policy, as the article, unlike the one before, is not about framing a policy but about taking measures for ‘preventing’ sexual harassment.

Also, kindly writer better image captions for your articles. I know you can write way better captions than this: Sexual harassment happens all the time.

The article needs a photo and tag words.

It needs a box too; the links you gave have already been used in the previous article. We can still provide the links again in the box as they will be useful to the readers, but kindly see if you can put in the efforts required to ideate on and write another box.

There were formatting issues too in this article.

Harpreet Bhagrath