When I was just starting out as the editor for a gaming news website, I discovered that the young writers were enthusiastic, knew the games inside out, and were great players themselves. I also discovered that they and the English language were minimally on speaking terms. Article after article became my personal penance as I corrected the same misconceptions over and over. I wracked my brains trying to come up with a “nice” way to tell them they needed to actually read my notes when they got my redraft, but they never did. Then it dawned on me – these were young guys, passionate about playing games, enamored of Middle Ages fantasies, and not interested in much of anything outside of that. So I invented “Raya’s Dungeon.” (Raya is my online name.) To my surprise, the guys loved it, and it even seemed to work to a certain extent. I thought you might get a laugh out of it. Following is the introductory page of the site. In the next few days, I will bring you the rooms of the dungeon 🙂
Welcome to Raya’s Dungeon
Don’t be fooled by outward appearances. This is not your usual glimpse into the convolutions of the English language. This is, as the name implies, a dungeon. And Raya is the cruel dungeon mistress. If you enter these depths, you will be stretched on the rack of nouns and adverbs, pierced by the darts of exclamation marks and *shudder* commas. You will be impaled upon the prongs of teasers and *gasp* voice. You will be tortured by allusions to redundancy and possession…yes, possession. I have warned you. Enter these halls at your own peril. If you survive, you may emerge, pale and shaken (by laughter), possessed by a new knowledge that might, just might, limber your tongue and jumpstart your pen.
The chambers of the dungeon
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Chamber 01 – Raya’s Pleasure Palace of Perfect Punctuation |
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Chamber 02 – Raya’s Terrible Cauldron of Traumatized Commas |
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Chamber 03 – Mutilating Modifers and Damaging Dirty Dangling Participles |
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Chamber 04 – Being Beheaded on the Writer’s Block |
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If you have any questions on any of the foregoing, please write me at raya@fantasyfic.com
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Fantasyfic 