In the Style of the Classics (Serious)

[MintiLime]

Prompt: You are a modern day author sent back to the past. Please choose a time period and write in its style.

This is a serious prompt. I will report joke responses.

For example, you could choose to write a modern office romance snippet in the style of Jane Austen, or juxtapose magical girl descriptions with the writing style of The Scarlet Letter.

Speaking of that…

Excerpt from the Scarlet Letter

“The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. ”

My Magic Girl version:

The puffy dress, hung on a slender frame, belonging to a slender soul, not more than twenty years of age, was decorated with a pretty large number of sparkles, all illuminating the intensely aggressive monsters on the muddy dungeon floor. In any other place but the dungeon of Sewers, or at any other time than the dead of the night, the lovely outfit that so entranced the entities of animosity dwelling among the floating unmentionables of the dark and detestable place would have garnered such attention and praise as does the jewels of the Pharisee. It could have been eclipsed bynothing short of the red carpet debut of some wealthy heiress turned fashion designer, on whom the wages of the employees of all major press organizations relied upon, such would have been the lengths of control needed to divert public sentiment elsewhere. But, in that damp and smelly place, public favor could not be counted upon with confidence. Monsters have this undiluted power to hate all things lovely on this overwhelmingly dismal planet which renders all questions of preference regarding beauty void of meaning.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Prompt: You are a modern day author sent back to the past. Please choose a time period and write in its style.

This is a serious prompt. I will report joke responses.

For example, you could choose to write a modern office romance snippet in the style of Jane Austen, or juxtapose magical girl descriptions with the writing style of The Scarlet Letter.

Speaking of that…

Excerpt from the Scarlet Letter

“The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. ”

My Magic Girl version:

The puffy dress, hung on a slender frame, belonging to a slender soul, not more than twenty years of age, was decorated with a pretty large number of sparkles, all illuminating the intensely aggressive monsters on the muddy dungeon floor. In any other place but the dungeon of Sewers, or at any other time than the dead of the night, the lovely outfit that so entranced the entities of animosity dwelling among the floating unmentionables of the dark and detestable place would have garnered such attention and praise as does the jewels of the Pharisee. It could have been eclipsed bynothing short of the red carpet debut of some wealthy heiress turned fashion designer, on whom the wages of the employees of all major press organizations relied upon, such would have been the lengths of control needed to divert public sentiment elsewhere. But, in that damp and smelly place, public favor could not be counted upon with confidence. Monsters have this undiluted power to hate all things lovely on this overwhelmingly dismal planet which renders all questions of preference regarding beauty void of meaning.

Spoiler: The Excerpt of Monte Cristo that my piece is modeled after

A moment afterwards, Baptistin announced the Count of Morcerf to Monte Cristo, and the latter, leading Haidee aside, ordered that Morcerf be asked into the drawing–room. The general was pacing the room the third time when, in turning, he perceived Monte Cristo at the door. “Ah, it is M. de Morcerf,” said Monte Cristo quietly; “I thought I had not heard aright.”

“Yes, it is I,” said the count, whom a frightful contraction of the lips prevented from articulating freely.

“May I know the cause which procures me the pleasure of seeing M. de Morcerf so early?”

“Had you not a meeting with my son this morning?” asked the general.

“I had,” replied the count.

“And I know my son had good reasons to wish to fight with you, and to endeavor to kill you.”

“Yes, sir, he had very good ones; but you see that in spite of them he has not killed me, and did not even fight.”

“Yet he considered you the cause of his father’s dishonor, the cause of the fearful ruin which has fallen on my house.”

“It is true, sir,” said Monte Cristo with his dreadful calmness; “a secondary cause, but not the principal.”

“Doubtless you made, then, some apology or explanation?”

“I explained nothing, and it is he who apologized to me.”

“But to what do you attribute this conduct?”

“To the conviction, probably, that there was one more guilty than I.”

“And who was that?”

“His father.”

“That may be,” said the count, turning pale; “but you know the guilty do not like to find themselves convicted.”

“I know it, and I expected this result.”

“You expected my son would be a coward?” cried the count.

“M. Albert de Morcerf is no coward!” said Monte Cristo.

“A man who holds a sword in his hand, and sees a mortal enemy within reach of that sword, and does not fight, is a coward! Why is he not here that I may tell him so?”

“Sir.” replied Monte Cristo coldly, “I did not expect that you had come here to relate to me your little family affairs. Go and tell M. Albert that, and he may know what to answer you.”

“Oh, no, no,” said the general, smiling faintly, “I did not come for that purpose; you are right. I came to tell you that I also look upon you as my enemy. I came to tell you that I hate you instinctively; that it seems as if I had always known you, and always hated you; and, in short, since the young people of the present day will not fight, it remains for us to do so. Do you think so, sir?”

“Certainly. And when I told you I had foreseen the result, it is the honor of your visit I alluded to.”

“So much the better. Are you prepared?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that we shall fight till one of us is dead,” said the general, whose teeth were clinched with rage. “Until one of us dies,” repeated Monte Cristo, moving his head slightly up and down.

“Let us start, then; we need no witnesses.”

“Very true,” said Monte Cristo; “it is unnecessary, we know each other so well!”

“On the contrary,” said the count, “we know so little of each other.”

“Indeed?” said Monte Cristo, with the same indomitable coolness; “let us see. Are you not the soldier Fernand who deserted on the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Are you not the Lieutenant Fernand who served as guide and spy to the French army in Spain? Are you not the Captain Fernand who betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor, Ali? And have not all these Fernands, united, made Lieutenant–General, the Count of Morcerf, peer of France?”

“Oh,” cried the general, as it branded with a hot iron, “wretch,—to reproach me with my shame when about, perhaps, to kill me! No, I did not say I was a stranger to you. I know well, demon, that you have penetrated into the darkness of the past, and that you have read, by the light of what torch I know not, every page of my life; but perhaps I may be more honorable in my shame than you under your pompous coverings. No—no, I am aware you know me; but I know you only as an adventurer sewn up in gold and jewellery. You call yourself in Paris the Count of Monte Cristo; in Italy, Sinbad the Sailor; in Malta, I forget what. But it is your real name I want to know, in the midst of your hundred names, that I may pronounce it when we meet to fight, at the moment when I plunge my sword through your heart.”

The Count of Monte Cristo turned dreadfully pale; his eye seemed to burn with a devouring fire. He leaped towards a dressing–room near his bedroom, and in less than a moment, tearing off his cravat, his coat and waistcoat, he put on a sailor’s jacket and hat, from beneath which rolled his long black hair. He returned thus, formidable and implacable, advancing with his arms crossed on his breast, towards the general, who could not understand why he had disappeared, but who on seeing him again, and feeling his teeth chatter and his legs sink under him, drew back, and only stopped when he found a table to support his clinched hand. “Fernand,” cried he, “of my hundred names I need only tell you one, to overwhelm you! But you guess it now, do you not?—or, rather, you remember it? For, notwithstanding all my sorrows and my tortures, I show you to–day a face which the happiness of revenge makes young again—a face you must often have seen in your dreams since your marriage with Mercedes, my betrothed!”

The general, with his head thrown back, hands extended, gaze fixed, looked silently at this dreadful apparition; then seeking the wall to support him, he glided along close to it until he reached the door, through which he went out backwards, uttering this single mournful, lamentable, distressing cry,—”Edmond Dantes!” Then, with sighs which were unlike any human sound, he dragged himself to the door, reeled across the court–yard, and falling into the arms of his valet, he said in a voice scarcely intelligible,—”Home, home.” The fresh air and the shame he felt at having exposed himself before his servants, partly recalled his senses, but the ride was short, and as he drew near his house all his wretchedness revived. He stopped at a short distance from the house and alighted.

The door was wide open, a hackney–coach was standing in the middle of the yard—a strange sight before so noble a mansion; the count looked at it with terror, but without daring to inquire its meaning, he rushed towards his apartment. Two persons were coming down the stairs; he had only time to creep into an alcove to avoid them. It was Mercedes leaning on her son’s arm and leaving the house. They passed close by the unhappy being, who, concealed behind the damask curtain, almost felt Mercedes dress brush past him, and his son’s warm breath, pronouncing these words,—”Courage, mother! Come, this is no longer our home!” The words died away, the steps were lost in the distance. The general drew himself up, clinging to the curtain; he uttered the most dreadful sob which ever escaped from the bosom of a father abandoned at the same time by his wife and son. He soon heard the clatter of the iron step of the hackney–coach, then the coachman’s voice, and then the rolling of the heavy vehicle shook the windows. He darted to his bedroom to see once more all he had loved in the world; but the hackney–coach drove on and the head of neither Mercedes nor her son appeared at the window to take a last look at the house or the deserted father and husband. And at the very moment when the wheels of that coach crossed the gateway a report was heard, and a thick smoke escaped through one of the panes of the window, which was broken by the explosion.

"I thought I had not seen correctly, but it seems as if I must trust my senses more than I had used to," whispered Sol quietly, a truly frightful menace gripping the pupils to a small size within the ideal perfection of her flawless face.

"It is a theater man under a mask of the one I hated," Sol muttered to himself. A delicate finger, like a foil wire of mirror-like copper expected to crumple under its weight at any moment, raised to her lips in deep thought. He painted a better spectacle than any of the Grecian's great works in that very moment. All the while, his skin burned with hate at the air's touch, the detestable aura of the beast in front of him anathema to him.

"I am deeply pleased that my One Above touched you so thoroughly. That you can see through my disguise is proof, though you likely do not accept such evidence," said Alexa, her brow knit in zealous faith and her cheeks pull back, revealing a grin like the curtains pulled back on a window let in the Sun that melted Icarus' wings so. With a demure appearance; seemingly a shy child as she turned her head to the side. It waas as if she was averting her eyes from the palpable dread loomed behind Sol, the most painful love for family a specter that forces the most cruel utterance from the perfect star kept from her crippled brother. Though that was merely a deviant affectation to make her seem more human, which, contrastingly, had the opposite effect.

The teasing nymph in the dress of a doctor pulled back at her skin with a easing-in touch, pulling back flesh like the most expensive of satin fabrics.

"Are you not the Torment Princess? Are you not the Broken Mirror? Are you not the Forsaken Jester?" the dreadful play-actor said coolly, all the more worse for her previous mania. "And are you not the Happy Bard? Are you not blessed by the one we are not sinful enough to speak the name of? Are you not a bringer of the Successful Torments into our world? You have been given so many names. Why must you begrudge a name I took for myself?" she asked rhetorically.
Peace, child. Peace. There is nothing wrong with adopting a name to mask myself," she said now, affecting a teacher's tone. Smoothly as a con artist; she cast away the skin like the waste of a leatherworker. The face was removed, a hollow space as empty as a man with no philosophy or morals to fill the space of his heart, and mandibles and facets plucked from somewhere in the air to place upon themselves. The chest was pulled open with all of the delicacy of an opening robe, a demon of bastardized avarice pouring out of the open vase of a body, its stone body chattering together with nervousness and mania alike as it filled the space without actual size.

"A Torment?! What have you done with Alexa? Oh, how could you remove a human and put yourself in the savior's place, you corrupt priest." Sol's hands fell to the side, painfully strained in a wrath to shake the heavens. Their neck cracked, and they gave a look of disgust capable of shaming a King, much less their servant.

"Oh! You wretched thing," cried out Sol, "I will put you to rest, and though you may hate me like a boy wishing to escape the curfew his mother set, this will be the last time we meet," they sibilantly stated. Behind the perfect star of themselves, the very moon, though set in the image of a cat's eye, rose up.

The Zealot choked on her accursed lecture, gasping with all of the panic of a soldier in hysterics after the war.

Her final words before slain, painstakingly uttered through the rapier embedded in her head, are written here for the rest of history to know.

"Oh, I shall see you sooner than I thought, my one to whom all faith is given."

 

[MintiLime]

Spoiler: The Excerpt of Monte Cristo that my piece is modeled after

A moment afterwards, Baptistin announced the Count of Morcerf to Monte Cristo, and the latter, leading Haidee aside, ordered that Morcerf be asked into the drawing–room. The general was pacing the room the third time when, in turning, he perceived Monte Cristo at the door. “Ah, it is M. de Morcerf,” said Monte Cristo quietly; “I thought I had not heard aright.”

“Yes, it is I,” said the count, whom a frightful contraction of the lips prevented from articulating freely.

“May I know the cause which procures me the pleasure of seeing M. de Morcerf so early?”

“Had you not a meeting with my son this morning?” asked the general.

“I had,” replied the count.

“And I know my son had good reasons to wish to fight with you, and to endeavor to kill you.”

“Yes, sir, he had very good ones; but you see that in spite of them he has not killed me, and did not even fight.”

“Yet he considered you the cause of his father’s dishonor, the cause of the fearful ruin which has fallen on my house.”

“It is true, sir,” said Monte Cristo with his dreadful calmness; “a secondary cause, but not the principal.”

“Doubtless you made, then, some apology or explanation?”

“I explained nothing, and it is he who apologized to me.”

“But to what do you attribute this conduct?”

“To the conviction, probably, that there was one more guilty than I.”

“And who was that?”

“His father.”

“That may be,” said the count, turning pale; “but you know the guilty do not like to find themselves convicted.”

“I know it, and I expected this result.”

“You expected my son would be a coward?” cried the count.

“M. Albert de Morcerf is no coward!” said Monte Cristo.

“A man who holds a sword in his hand, and sees a mortal enemy within reach of that sword, and does not fight, is a coward! Why is he not here that I may tell him so?”

“Sir.” replied Monte Cristo coldly, “I did not expect that you had come here to relate to me your little family affairs. Go and tell M. Albert that, and he may know what to answer you.”

“Oh, no, no,” said the general, smiling faintly, “I did not come for that purpose; you are right. I came to tell you that I also look upon you as my enemy. I came to tell you that I hate you instinctively; that it seems as if I had always known you, and always hated you; and, in short, since the young people of the present day will not fight, it remains for us to do so. Do you think so, sir?”

“Certainly. And when I told you I had foreseen the result, it is the honor of your visit I alluded to.”

“So much the better. Are you prepared?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that we shall fight till one of us is dead,” said the general, whose teeth were clinched with rage. “Until one of us dies,” repeated Monte Cristo, moving his head slightly up and down.

“Let us start, then; we need no witnesses.”

“Very true,” said Monte Cristo; “it is unnecessary, we know each other so well!”

“On the contrary,” said the count, “we know so little of each other.”

“Indeed?” said Monte Cristo, with the same indomitable coolness; “let us see. Are you not the soldier Fernand who deserted on the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Are you not the Lieutenant Fernand who served as guide and spy to the French army in Spain? Are you not the Captain Fernand who betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor, Ali? And have not all these Fernands, united, made Lieutenant–General, the Count of Morcerf, peer of France?”

“Oh,” cried the general, as it branded with a hot iron, “wretch,—to reproach me with my shame when about, perhaps, to kill me! No, I did not say I was a stranger to you. I know well, demon, that you have penetrated into the darkness of the past, and that you have read, by the light of what torch I know not, every page of my life; but perhaps I may be more honorable in my shame than you under your pompous coverings. No—no, I am aware you know me; but I know you only as an adventurer sewn up in gold and jewellery. You call yourself in Paris the Count of Monte Cristo; in Italy, Sinbad the Sailor; in Malta, I forget what. But it is your real name I want to know, in the midst of your hundred names, that I may pronounce it when we meet to fight, at the moment when I plunge my sword through your heart.”

The Count of Monte Cristo turned dreadfully pale; his eye seemed to burn with a devouring fire. He leaped towards a dressing–room near his bedroom, and in less than a moment, tearing off his cravat, his coat and waistcoat, he put on a sailor’s jacket and hat, from beneath which rolled his long black hair. He returned thus, formidable and implacable, advancing with his arms crossed on his breast, towards the general, who could not understand why he had disappeared, but who on seeing him again, and feeling his teeth chatter and his legs sink under him, drew back, and only stopped when he found a table to support his clinched hand. “Fernand,” cried he, “of my hundred names I need only tell you one, to overwhelm you! But you guess it now, do you not?—or, rather, you remember it? For, notwithstanding all my sorrows and my tortures, I show you to–day a face which the happiness of revenge makes young again—a face you must often have seen in your dreams since your marriage with Mercedes, my betrothed!”

The general, with his head thrown back, hands extended, gaze fixed, looked silently at this dreadful apparition; then seeking the wall to support him, he glided along close to it until he reached the door, through which he went out backwards, uttering this single mournful, lamentable, distressing cry,—”Edmond Dantes!” Then, with sighs which were unlike any human sound, he dragged himself to the door, reeled across the court–yard, and falling into the arms of his valet, he said in a voice scarcely intelligible,—”Home, home.” The fresh air and the shame he felt at having exposed himself before his servants, partly recalled his senses, but the ride was short, and as he drew near his house all his wretchedness revived. He stopped at a short distance from the house and alighted.

The door was wide open, a hackney–coach was standing in the middle of the yard—a strange sight before so noble a mansion; the count looked at it with terror, but without daring to inquire its meaning, he rushed towards his apartment. Two persons were coming down the stairs; he had only time to creep into an alcove to avoid them. It was Mercedes leaning on her son’s arm and leaving the house. They passed close by the unhappy being, who, concealed behind the damask curtain, almost felt Mercedes dress brush past him, and his son’s warm breath, pronouncing these words,—”Courage, mother! Come, this is no longer our home!” The words died away, the steps were lost in the distance. The general drew himself up, clinging to the curtain; he uttered the most dreadful sob which ever escaped from the bosom of a father abandoned at the same time by his wife and son. He soon heard the clatter of the iron step of the hackney–coach, then the coachman’s voice, and then the rolling of the heavy vehicle shook the windows. He darted to his bedroom to see once more all he had loved in the world; but the hackney–coach drove on and the head of neither Mercedes nor her son appeared at the window to take a last look at the house or the deserted father and husband. And at the very moment when the wheels of that coach crossed the gateway a report was heard, and a thick smoke escaped through one of the panes of the window, which was broken by the explosion.

"I thought I had not seen correctly, but it seems as if I must trust my senses more than I had used to," whispered Sol quietly, a truly frightful menace gripping the pupils to a small size within the ideal perfection of her flawless face.

"It is a theater man under a mask of the one I hated," Sol muttered to himself. A delicate finger, like a foil wire of mirror-like copper expected to crumple under its weight at any moment, raised to her lips in deep thought. He painted a better spectacle than any of the Grecian's great works in that very moment. All the while, his skin burned with hate at the air's touch, the detestable aura of the beast in front of him anathema to him.

"I am deeply pleased that my One Above touched you so thoroughly. That you can see through my disguise is proof, though you likely do not accept such evidence," said Alexa, her brow knit in zealous faith and her cheeks pull back, revealing a grin like the curtains pulled back on a window let in the Sun that melted Icarus' wings so. With a demure appearance; seemingly a shy child as she turned her head to the side. It waas as if she was averting her eyes from the palpable dread loomed behind Sol, the most painful love for family a specter that forces the most cruel utterance from the perfect star kept from her crippled brother. Though that was merely a deviant affectation to make her seem more human, which, contrastingly, had the opposite effect.

The teasing nymph in the dress of a doctor pulled back at her skin with a easing-in touch, pulling back flesh like the most expensive of satin fabrics.

"Are you not the Torment Princess? Are you not the Broken Mirror? Are you not the Forsaken Jester?" the dreadful play-actor said coolly, all the more worse for her previous mania. "And are you not the Happy Bard? Are you not blessed by the one we are not sinful enough to speak the name of? Are you not a bringer of the Successful Torments into our world? You have been given so many names. Why must you begrudge a name I took for myself?" she asked rhetorically.
Peace, child. Peace. There is nothing wrong with adopting a name to mask myself," she said now, affecting a teacher's tone. Smoothly as a con artist; she cast away the skin like the waste of a leatherworker. The face was removed, a hollow space as empty as a man with no philosophy or morals to fill the space of his heart, and mandibles and facets plucked from somewhere in the air to place upon themselves. The chest was pulled open with all of the delicacy of an opening robe, a demon of bastardized avarice pouring out of the open vase of a body, its stone body chattering together with nervousness and mania alike as it filled the space without actual size.

"A Torment?! What have you done with Alexa? Oh, how could you remove a human and put yourself in the savior's place, you corrupt priest." Sol's hands fell to the side, painfully strained in a wrath to shake the heavens. Their neck cracked, and they gave a look of disgust capable of shaming a King, much less their servant.

"Oh! You wretched thing," cried out Sol, "I will put you to rest, and though you may hate me like a boy wishing to escape the curfew his mother set, this will be the last time we meet," they sibilantly stated. Behind the perfect star of themselves, the very moon, though set in the image of a cat's eye, rose up.

The Zealot choked on her accursed lecture, gasping with all of the panic of a soldier in hysterics after the war.

Her final words before slain, painstakingly uttered through the rapier embedded in her head, are written here for the rest of history to know.

"Oh, I shall see you sooner than I thought, my one to whom all faith is given."

Oh my goodness!!! It’s amazing!! Aaaaa and count of Monte Christo???? Aaaaaaaa time to go relisten to musical adaptation’s soundtrack, rewatch the movies, and reread the book!

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Oh my goodness!!! It’s amazing!! Aaaaa and count of Monte Christo???? Aaaaaaaa time to go relisten to musical adaptation’s soundtrack, rewatch the movies, and reread the book!

Thank you!!! By the way, speaking of the musical adaptation, I really love this cover of one of the songs:

Have you listened to it?
Also, also!!! I was wondering whether you think that when I do a heavy revision of the most recent chapter, whether I should incorporate this into it?

 

[MintiLime]

Thank you!!! By the way, speaking of the musical adaptation, I really love this cover of one of the songs:

Have you listened to it?
Also, also!!! I was wondering whether you think that when I do a heavy revision of the most recent chapter, whether I should incorporate this into it?

I have not heard that version.

You could incorporate it into a rewrite OR save it for a future chapter, maybe for a character other than Alexa. In any case, I would love to see it included! I think it has a beautiful madness, a coherent one that speaks of the importance of a soul shattering moment which brings Sol to the present moment