Category: Editing
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Why writing rules are so hard
Depending on who you ask, there are six rules for proper use of a comma or sixteen. Depending on who you ask, numbers should be written out or typed as numerals, or written out and then typed as numerals inside of parentheses. Why? What’s up with these rules? What’s the point, and…
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DIY Editing: Seems? I know not ‘seems’!
I’ve got a weird favorite Shakespeare quote. While other people are off getting lovey dovey with Romeo and Juliet, or sniggering along with Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I’ve got a thing for Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet: Shortly after the death of his father, Hamlet’s mother remarks that…
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DIY Editing: A comma conundrum
Behold the comma: it’s the most dreaded of punctuation marks, and one of the most misused and abused. And for good reason. In the English language, most punctuation marks have no more than two or three uses. A period will always either end a sentence or abbreviate a word. An…
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Adventures with Scrivener
Until now, I’ve only really used a few features of Scrivener: the goal and wordcount feature, the folders, the ‘split at section’ command, and occasionally the research file. This time I’m trying something different. I wrote the whole of this draft in Microsoft Word. Because I wasn’t using any features aside from…
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DIY Editing: Whose line is it, anyway?
If you want the basics of punctuation, check out these guys here: Mr. Clements.com Bubblecow.net Fanfic.TheForce.net A step past the basics 1) Avoid using synonyms for said/asked, unless that synonym dramatically changes the meaning of the sentence. 2) British English uses single quotes (‘You’re a wizard, Harry!’) while American English…
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DIY Editing: Changing the filter
Here’s another biggie in the self-editing world: Filtering. What is it? I saw, he heard, she thought, I felt, I smelled– the list goes on. Essentially, filtering is what happens any time we’re informed that the the character is observing the world around them, rather than letting us observe right…
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DIY Editing: ‘was’ and other has-beens
This is possibly the most common aspect I’ve seen editors complain about, and it’s one of the easiest to fix. What is it? Linking verbs. Being verbs. “Was” and “were”. These are verbs that, by themselves mean simply “this thing exists”: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, seems, etc.…
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DIY Editing
But Jennifer, you may say, isn’t this counterproductive if you’re starting an editing service? Not in the slightest. I’m a big proponent of editors– be they paid professionals or critique buddies, it’s essential to hand your story to somebody else before you try throwing it in the shark tank that…
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