Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A Maze of Twisty Passages, All Alike

"There is your world," said the talking frog, "which is the real world. It is reality, and it is stable and solid."

"So we're not in the real world anymore?" asked Brighton. He clutched his amulet.

"Patience," the frog said chidingly. It puffed at its pipe before continuing. "Then there are other worlds, worlds of fancy and imagination. They are the real worlds."

"I thought you said ours was the real world?" Ganymede interrupted.

"Therein lies the rub," sighed the frog. "Either everything is real, or none of it is. Figure that one out, and you'll have your way home."

3 comments:

Jim Murdoch said...

Love the story but "...said chidingly"? Seriously? What's wrong with 'chided'?

Scattercat said...

I had too many alternates to said in there already, but "said with a chiding tone" or some other more elaborate construction was too many words, and just "chided" left me with one spare word that would have had to be wasted on some other pointless frippery. Were I free-writing, I'd have gone with a longer descriptive tag. As it was, I decided that having the chiding-ness clear was better than just skipping the whole thing.

Besides, this way there's an even mix of "said," "said adverb-ly," and "said-isms." Isn't a balance more pleasing? (Like what Anakin did for the force in the Old Republic?)

dolorah said...

This was thought provking. And I like the Frog as a driver.

LOL at your reasoning Nathan. Makes total sense.

......dhole