Fifty Shades of Edits

A large portion of this chapter is wasted spent giving us the exact text of the contract and so many boring/stupid e-mails between Ana and ChristianGrey. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. There’s only about 6 pages of actual text in this 22 page chapter. Yes, you read that right, less than a third of the chapter is actual story. *shakes head*

The contract:

• Unnecessary and boring, but I get why she included it.
• However, if you are going to have excerpts from a contract appear multiple times in the book, please god, have them match up. There are direct contradictions in this contract with the one that she read a few chapters ago.

ChristianGrey bought her a MacBook Pro. Shocker. Having a guy come into her apartment and set it up for her seems a bit overkill though.

Her bewilderment over having and e-mail address it a bit much. I’m really tired of Ana’s “I’m so innocent and naive I don’t even know how to do things that a girl like me would need to know to survive” act.

Okay, the detail of the e-mail exchanges is just…unnecessary. If you take away the headers of the e-mails, this is what the second transaction reads:

ChristianGrey: I hope you had a good day at work

Ana: Sir…I had a very good day at work. Thank you

ChristianGrey: Delighted you had a good day. While you are e-mailing, you are not researching.

Ana: Stop e-mailing me, and I can start my assignment. I’d like another A.

ChristianGrey: Stop e-mailing me- and do your assignment. I’d like to award another A. The first one was so well deserved. :)

It continues much like that. Are they 12? Also, that conversation took up two pages of the book. TWO PAGES WERE DEDICATED TO THAT EXCHANGE.

At the end of the chapter Ana finally does a little bit of research about being a submissive. She researches what she is thinking about getting herself into and decides that it repulses her and makes her sick. Logically, this should be the end of the story right? She doesn’t like it. It’s not for her. She tells him no. End of story.

Tell me why I’m only halfway through the first of three novels.

I can’t wait to get home, the lure of e-mailing Christian, and maybe I can begin my research project.

You are not a sentence. These pieces do not go together.

1- What does that mean? How is a Hispanic-American smile different than a plain old American smile.

2- OH GOD. SO RACIST.

Ana is a 21 year old college student who is shocked to have an e-mail address.

I’m sorry. Even if this was set as much as 8 years ago (which I don’t think it was. I don’t remember an exact time frame right now but it was definitely in the last decade) she wouldn’t have been able to function as a college student without one.

I don’t think a mind can boggle. It can be boggled though.

ETA: No, *the* mind boggles… in the UK. Actually I’ve never heard of the mind *being boggled*. Perhaps this is a little-known Atlantic divide? (MY mind boggles doesn’t sound right to me either though.) (via syntactician)

Hmm..maybe I’ll just chalk this up to another case of James using out of place Briticisms.

If you don’t think you can do this, Ana. Don’t. It’s really not difficult

Last time I checked obey was a single word.

At the top we have the contract as it appears in Chapter 11. The bottom is a terribly edited picture of the way it appears in Chapter 7. Is it really that hard to just copy & paste a chunk of text so that you don’t have inconsistencies in your writing?

Unless this is supposed to be a newer, updated version of said contract, in which case I take away all of the ambiguity of my previous post. He didn’t make that change because he is trying to get one over on Ana, which is NOT okay.

They have talked about this, and he agreed to decrease this to three days a week for her. You’re telling me he had time to add her address to the contract, but not to change a clause that they have already discussed changes to? I don’t buy it. I think it’s a ploy to try and get things to go his way, hoping she doesn’t notice.

Well, this would be all fine and dandy if it wasn’t for the fact that a few chapters ago, when CG gave Ana this page of the contract to read, it said seven hours of sleep. Continuity, please!