Prologue

I wonder if Will Shakespeare had the same issues writing plays that I’ve had writing The Wizard’s Apprentice?

Holisz’ tale, you see, is told by a bard.

The normal convention when writing his words would be to begin each short paragraph (another convention flouted, in an effort to write as a tale-teller would speak) with a quotation mark. Yet I soon found that cumbersome, even a bit silly; I ended up with double quotations when the bard was quoting the words of a character, and double quotations plus an apostrophe (“ “ ‘) when the sentence began with words such as “ ‘Twas”. Which might seem strange at first, and pretentious; but would such as “ ‘Twas the night before Christmas” sound better had it been composed “It was the night...”? Nah.

I tried several approaches, beginning the bard’s narration with an apostrophe for example, and separating breaks with a centered *** symbol. Yet even then, I found I needed something else. I finally settled on ~~~ to indicate when the bard stepped away from the story (to indicate that his ale-cup was empty, or to visit the jakes), with the *** as an indicator of action breaks in the tale. Such are the fussy concerns of a writer of tales who writes about a teller of tales who tells the story of a most unusual hero!

Know ye, that the writer was forced to relieve his stress by inserting witticisms, broad humor, and when it all became unbearable, even a pun or two! Ah, the shame of it!

But enough about my travails!

Fill your leathern jacks with good ale, for ‘tis time to begin the tale of the Wizard’s Apprentice!

Chapter 1 »