Thread: I'm trying to write a fiction book in English. Just for fun :)

Okay, that's all from me for today!

But I had one other thought: Is there any special reason that you chose "Mitchell" as Peter's last name? If not, it might be interesting to give him a last name with the same etymological meaning as Piotr-the-headman's surname -- like Kuznetsov/Smith, for example. Although "Smith" sounds rather boring in English, so maybe we can think of a better pair. Let's see, there's Miller, Baker, Weaver, Brewer, Hunter, Archer, Fisher, Carpenter, Cooper ("barrel-maker"), Fletcher ("arrow-maker"), Sawyer ("wood-cutter"), Shepherd, Cook... do any of those have corresponding forms that are actually used as surnames in Russian? (Pekarev? Melnikov? I'm not sure how to say "weaver" or "brewer"...) Anyway, it could increase the sense of "entangled destinies brought together by God" -- after Peter and Ann eventually noticed the coincidence of the surnames' meanings.

Oh, wait, two other things I remembered: it should be "the girl lay unconscious" (or: "the girl was lying unconscious"); and a few times you use the construction "they all three" -- but "all three of them" sounds much, much better.

Anyway, I may not get back on the forum until the weekend, or even Monday... my nephew's birthday party (he'll be 7!) is on Sunday and I'm helping with the preparations for that.

they are glad Dasha hasn’t shared their destiny fate

Destiny is something foreordained - like 'your destiny is to kill Volandemort' (больше предназначение, нежели судьба).

to a gray-bearded aged man

Must he be a gray-bearded aged venerable Gandalf? Kolkhoz chiefs were usually men in mid-forties (fifties at the most) quite robust and vigorous. Nearly all of them were the members of the Party (important detail - not the leaders of the local Party cell - this position was usually occupied by someone else).

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

Robert may correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds a bit impolite. 'Who is he?' would be more preferrable.

administrative building

Here, you can leave it as it is, but I think Ann should use some Russian words now and then. Say 'pravlenye' instead and let Peter ask about it.

Savinoff

Russian names ending with -off came from French (they needed to stress the ending consonant. And in writing only. English speakers do not need it). You don't need to stress pronunciation here, because in English both written names and said end with -ov, not -off.

the closest English equivalent for his name is Peter

Come on, they're the same things. Even an American can see that ;D

Ann said while they were striding towards the building virtually sensing heads turned in their direction

I just need a clarification - was it Ann who sensed that? What I mean - if you narrate from Peter's standpoint it should be Peter who would feel this. And if Peter noticed that it was indeed Ann who sensed it you should tell the readers how exactly he knew this.
And the other thing - how can anybody 'virtually' sense anything?

They came entered the house (which Ann called 'pravleniye') into a large room with a big table in the center and a handful of chairs around it.

Red tablecloth! There must be a red tablecloth on the table! And a decanter!


Here - look at the man in the center. He definitely doesn't look like Gandalf.

‘What are you going to do now, Peter?’

An amazing lack of curiosity again! How on Earth did you get here, Peter?

‘But…what will people say?’

It really should be Ann's concern. And Ann's proposal is really very VERY unbecoming for a village girl in 1941. And 'Gandalf' should object violently. Well, again, this is your story.

They went out of the building when the darkness started to dawn fade

Oh, I'm too lazy to re-read. Are you sure it was dark when they came in?

she had worked as a consular assistant in Great Britain for a long time before she retired

It's a fiction, of course, but her mom simply couldn't work there 'for a long time'. Great Britain officially acknowledged USSR in 1924. (16 years before the current events). Ann is twenty-something so she must have been born not long before that (1915-1919). Even if her mom miraculously happenned to work in UK (which is very doubtful) Ann should have spent her childhood in London. And more - even if somehow Ann hasn't been raised by her mother (say, she was left on her grandma) it seems very doubtful that a daughter of a dilpomatic official ended up in a Belorussian village as a simple teacher. No, I mean, really.
Alternatively, her mom could have been working in UK BEFORE the revolution. But this automatically makes Ann the member of the old-regime nobility. Her ma simply would not have returned to bolshevik's Russia from Britain after 1917.

Oh, a question of British style. British English required saying 'I/we shall' instead of 'I/we will' back then.

‘And that’s why you speak so good English your English is so good, I assume?’

‘Yes exactly, she has it on her fingertips.’

??? Who has what on her fingertips? And generally what are you trying to say here?

The house resembled the Nikolai’s one
(I'm not very sure about that. Ask Robert).

Peter felt like experienced a deja vu

then I entered the University

'I entered' is a bit official. And Ann did not belong to the generation of SMS writers. She would say university (In fact she woudn't even say "Универ" in Russia.
Oh, the other thing - there was ONLY ONE University in Moscow.

When I was a kid child and my parents were out for job I used to teach my little Kate how to count and write.

So, her ambassadorial parents were out of job... All things considered - they WERE serving the old regime.

‘The talk This conversation reminded me of my little sister,’ she said.

What are you going to be doing here during in the middle of the war?’

'During the war' doesn't sound righ somehow. Of course Peter might know that the war will last for a long time, but that 'during' implies they simply wait it out like a rain or a snowstorm.

I really hope the Germans won’t treat us very bad the Red Army will soon drive them out!

In that previous life of his he had no one who would truly love him

the new life was trying to give him everything he hadn’t had did not have back then

A question of personal preferrence I think, but let's ask Robert about this.

if we are doomed to die we will die together

either 'if we are doomed we will die together' or 'if we have to die we will die together'.

I didn’t feel so true and so happy I’m feeling now

Man, you're in the middle of the World War 2, you've just killed a man with a knife, cold-bloodily sliced his throat for the first time in your life and yet you feel happy. You're a maniac, Peter!

‘I love you too,’ her faint smile seemed to him glimmering brighter than the sun, ‘and I feel like I’ve loved you since the first day we met.

Which happenned only the day before yesterday, as I recall
O tempora, o mores!

I'll continue later. Please, consider removing so vast inconsitencies from the plot. Pleasepleaseplease.

Here, I found some pics you may find useful (note the radios, and also the fact that all women have their heads covered).

they heard terrible growing howls roaring sound outside

A wolf can howl at the moon. A plane's engine roars.

and saw planes approaching from the east west

They looked exactly like the planes they’d seen all these days so they knew those weren’t Soviet planes.

From how you described the day before they saw some Heinkels like these:


And now you must be speaking of Stukas like these:

circling up and down towards the ground in a couple of miles from the village

You can't circle up and down. A plane usually takes a wide loop after the attack to take another pass.

The aim target of the bombers was hidden behind the thick woods bounding encircling the village

When the bombers left were finally gone, everyone saw columns of thick black smoke rising above the trees

They saw the smoke only now? Not during the attack?

the smell of burnt out explosives with thick notes tinges of oily smoke that was rising from a few trucks seized with engulfed with fire

‘Civilians!’ Peter whispered feeling a desperate furry fury rising up from deep inside. ‘They destroyed the kill civilians!’

Who were these people, where were they going? Did anyone of the villagers knew this? Did anyone tried to guess anything about it?

If they were the refugees they should be fleeing away from the front (to the East). Here a logic inconsistency: if they were fleeing East then their village was situated to the West of the place our protagonist was at the moment. This way they should have passed Shumovka on their way. If their village was located to the East of Shumovka then the attack couldn't have taken place so near.

Out of a corner of an eye In the corner of his vision he noticed other villagers do the same

still pale from the shock

with a bleeding limp instead stump in the place of her right leg

He tore off his belt

How can you tear off your belt? unbuckled, unfastened

on the limp slightly above

limp is a verb:
limp intransitive verb \ˈlimp\
: to walk in a slow and awkward way because of an injury to a leg or foot
: to go or continue slowly or with difficulty

limb maybe?

to stop the bleeding

When they came back to the village

Oh my, what did they do to the wounded? Did they bury the dead?

nothing could save them from being torn apart by the explosive explosions or buried alive under the rubble of the houses

The villagers could managed to save some of the victims of the aerial attack, including that woman he helped

This should be said earlier

some of the villagers volunteered to look after them nurse

Some of the victims looked really terrible; they were limping, bleeding and groaning

Peter was astonished at the words of Ann that these were not considered severely damaged. He imagined a picture of a really severe wound and shuddered in disgust horror.

dis·gust noun \di-ˈskəst, dis-ˈgəst also diz-\ (Отвращение)
: a strong feeling of dislike for something that has a very unpleasant appearance, taste, smell, etc.
: annoyance and anger that you feel toward something because it is not good, fair, appropriate, etc.

What I don't understand is - Peter saw them all. How could he miss the heavily wounded?

Later, when they were sitting in silence in Ann’s house, unable to even look at the food, let alone much less eating it Peter asked:

‘on the other hand, they could not overlook confuse the women and children with soldiers.

Actually they could. All the piliot sees is the truck and some people inside.

‘Do you think when the ground forces troops will behave differently from what we've seen today ?’

Originally Posted by Ramil

Russian names ending with -off came from French (they needed to stress the ending consonant. And in writing only. English speakers do not need it). You don't need to stress pronunciation here, because in English both written names and said end with -ov, not -off.

Yeah, the "-off" spelling of Russian names is used in most of Northern Europe, Germany for example and Scandinavia for Russians who arrived in the 19th century or the revolution. It gives out chic and interesting vibes for sure.
I don't know when they stopped transcribing it like that, but it definitely says something about the person's history, - the same Russian name can sound very different to a European ear, depending on how it is transcribed.
It seems like nowadays they try to make the name sound as foreign and weird as possible!

And again on the women and scarves thing, it's in the bible actually + I can imagine it's helpful for keeping warm and keeping your hair out of your face when working outdoors. I think they would have felt a bit naked and very forward to walk around with their heads uncovered. Even my grandmother wore a hat or scarf a lot of the time.

Originally Posted by Hanna

And again on the women and scarves thing, it's in the bible actually + I can imagine it's helpful for keeping warm and keeping your hair out of your face when working outdoors. I think they would have felt a bit naked and very forward to walk around with their heads uncovered. Even my grandmother wore a hat or scarf a lot of the time.

Soviet women probably never read Bible or visited a church. Nevertheless, their mothers did. It was just a tradition. Besides, a scarf helps to protect your hair when you work outdoors.

limb maybe?

"Limb" would imply the whole, intact arm or leg -- stump is the correct word here. Also, by the way -- the words "destroy" and "damage" aren't used for LIVING people or animals, although it's possible to "destroy" or "damage" a corpse, or a tree, or a building. (Well, come to think of it, "destroy" can be used for the [mass] euthanasia of скотина -- "cattle; livestock" -- "they had to destroy more than 40,000 pigs to control the epidemic". But not for pet animals, and certainly not for humans!) Anyway, you should say "they killed/massacred/bombed the civilians" and "these were not considered severely injured."

Also:

circling swooping up and down

Here's a bunch of corrections I noted last night -- some of them correspond to Ramil's points:

Ann nodded and the last thing he saw leaving was the same thing he had done to her an hour ago: she was slapping the girl in on the cheeks (or: "in the face").

Peter came went over to the body and started to look through his the dead man's belongings, sorting them.

Okay, major word-usage point! In a "3rd-person omniscient narrative," the verb "to come" implies either (a) movement towards the central figure (Peter), or (b) the central figures's movement towards the narrator's "frame of reference" (which is also the reader's "frame of reference"), if the narrator has temporarily shifted focus from Peter to another character.

Anyway, you could only say "Peter came over to the body" if, for example, Ann had been examining the dead man and then beckoned Peter to approach and have a look. Or you could say "Dasha jumped in surprise as Peter came into the room" -- because we've shifted focus, just temporarily, to Dasha and her reaction.

All of this is reversed for "to go" -- it implies movement either away from Peter himself, or movement by Peter away from the narrator's frame of reference (when the narrator has switched the focus from Peter to another character, or from Peter to a location). So you could say "Peter went out of the room" (the "room" being the frame of reference), or "Ann went out of the room" (away from Peter, who stayed in the room), but it would be practically impossible to say "Ann went closer to Peter." (Because, by default, movement towards Peter is expressed with "to come".)

I hope this all makes sense... I know that the "come/go" usage is tricky, and doesn't really map well onto the прийти/уйти distinction in Russian.

He briefly examined the tommy-gun and suddenly realized that he had no idea on how to use it. Well, he could SHOOT it, he was sure of that -- unless there was some complicated 'safety' lock -- but opening the thing up to put more bullets in was an entirely different can of worms.

Everyone knows how to "use" a gun -- you just point it and pull the trigger. It's all the other details that can be tricky...

She is married to an officer and she has seen many times how to shoot and reload when they were living at the military camp. But she doesn’t know how to clean and disassemble it.’

No mistakes here at all. I just wanted to say молодец again to Medved's eye for detail -- the importance of "cleaning and disassembling" is something that Peter (who only knows guns from Hollywood movies) would never have thought about!

‘Not really, she was shocked and umm … I guess if I asked her to eat a spider she would’ve only asked me for some salt.’

Again, no mistakes -- just честь автору for this wonderful turn-of-phrase. (Did you invent it? Even if it's a familiar saying in Russian, it'll sound new and delightful to most English readers.)

Peter couldn't resist some fooling around being a smart-aleck:

"Fooling around" is not incorrect, but -- especially considering Peter's obvious attraction to Ann -- it could be taken by the reader as a double-entendre, suggesting sexual flirtation (or even foreplay!) that doesn't fit into the story at this particular moment. ("Some fooling around" is what Peter and Ann will be doing a little later...)))))

I need help to return to my home-sweet-home in the States’.

"Home-sweet-home" is the poetic cliche (and being a cliche, it sounds quite natural for Peter to use when he's being deliberately silly!)

They’ll book me a ticket to on the nearest next flight to the United States

Except for that small correction, Peter's long block of sarcastic dialogue here was perfectly colloquial -- impressive work, Medved.

looking at Peter with this the kind of tenderness in her eyes that you have when you’re talking to a mentally challenged person your sweet younger cousin who was born with Down Syndrome (or: "your dearly loved aunt who happens to believe there's a CIA computer-chip implanted in her brain").

"Mentally challenged person" sounds excessively PC, and also very bland. I wasn't sure whether you intended the meaning "retarded" or "crazy," so I offered two suggestions that avoid using either of these un-PC words.

‘Sorry, but it looks like a fantastic story, sort of like those about the Martians by Herbert Wells! How will the plane share its fuel?... etc.

Peter looked at her with a faint sad smile -- in his former "timeline", plane-to-plane refuels were a common procedure for military pilots, and the Concorde could go from London to New York in just over three hours without refueling -- but all that was science-fiction in 1941, and he couldn't explain it to Ann. So he stole a corny old joke from the Marx Brothers, instead: 'Well, Ann, that's true -- we'd probably run out of fuel halfway across the Atlantic, and then we'd have to turn the plane around and fly right back to Minsk for more gas!'

'Now let's try to be serious...'

I have no idea whether Soviet audiences in 1941 would have been familiar with the Marx Brothers films -- so possibly Ann wouldn't know that Peter had stolen the joke. Also, English speakers invariably say "H.G. Wells," but I'm guessing that Ann might know him better as Херберт Вельс, or something like that? (Of course, Ann would "name-drop" H.G. Wells, whatever she calls him, to show off her knowledge of popular English literature...)

‘Tell her my thanks "thank you" and that I don’t need anything at the moment but if I do need anything later, I’ll recall her words,’

they are glad Dasha hasn’t shared their destiny fate.’

Ramil was exactly right! Keep in mind that "fateful" (роковой) has an etymological link with "fatal" (смертельный) -- so to our ears, the word "fate" often (but not always) sounds more negative, while "destiny" sounds more positive.

a gray-bearded aged man. ‘Who is it he (or: "that")?’ he asked.

As I said before, "agèd" when pronounced with two syllables implies that someone is, say, 75 or older. But Ramil mentioned that a typical "headman" would have been "middle-aged" (here "aged" has one syllable!), younger than Peter in his former life.

And "Who is it?" is the formula when you hear a knock at the door; here it should be "Who is he?" or "Who is that?" (Both are normal -- not much of a difference.)

who came close and stopped, looking at Peter

With the comma, it means something like "который подошёл и, остановився, смотрел на Питера", which I think is what you meant. Without the comma, this means something like "который подошёл и прекратил смотреть на Питера"!

they were striding towards the building virtually sensing -- without even looking, Peter could sense the heads turned in their direction

‘And that’s why you speak so such good English (or: "that's why you speak English so well"), I assume?’

‘Yes exactly, she has it on her fingertips.’

This is a very un-English-sounding phrase, yet Ann's usage is close enough to the proper expression that Peter (and the reader!) would probably know what she meant -- so I would leave this unchanged. (But if you want, you could have Peter respond with the correct idiom: "Ah, your mom knows English like the back of her hand, I get it.")

The house resembled Nikolai’s and when they came in Peter felt like a sense of deja vu.

Usually, one "has/gets a feeling of deja vu" or "feels/gets a sense of deja vu." (However, when you experience this feeling/sense, you can simply say "Deja vu!")

Famous quote from Full Metal Jacket:

Door Gunner: I done got me 157 dead Gooks killed and fifty water buffalo too! They were all certified.
Private Joker: Any women or children?
Door Gunner: Sometimes!
Private Joker: How do you shoot women and children?
Door Gunner: Easy! You just don't lead 'em so much! Ha ha! Ain't war hell?

I'm not sure how one would translate "don't lead them so much," but it means "you have to adjust your aim to compensate for the fact that they run more slowly than adult men."

And on that cheerful note, I must go -- I'm meeting my sister to shop for the things I'll need to make and decorate the birthday cake. (This year's cake theme: "Angry Birds"!)

Thanks guys, for all your suggestions. I'm terribly sorry that the story hasnt been updated for already a week, but I'm kinda buzy here so I can work only on weekends. A new piece is ready now but not added to the story yet. I'll inform you when I update it. Also I'll need to work through all your corrections and it will definitely take time.
Can't catch up with you guys

Throbert

Pekarev? Melnikov? I'm not sure how to say "weaver" or "brewer"...

Weaver is Ткачёв
Brewer is Пивоваров
These both are true Russian surnames.

I'll leave the "Mitchell" in gratitude to an Australlian girl, formerly Russian, who helped me a lot with the beginning of the story and the whole concept of writing.

Added an afterword, if you think its time hasn't come yet I'll remove it.

Updated.
The fresh piece is after the words "Latest update" in chapter 2.

Chapter three added