Hello, stranger!
This one is all about the nitty gritty of the editing process. Moreover, the confounding mistakes I’ve found myself making. Hopefully you learn something from my errors. Hopefully I learn something.
But first, a quick announcement: Inciting Event is on Facebook! Like and follow to never miss an update! Or, if e-mail is your go to, you can subscribe.
Okay, enough avoiding airing my editing laundry…
Writing quirks that bother me but aren’t actually wrong
- Double words
For example, “had had”, “that that”, “her her” According to Grammar Girl, these are grammatically correct, if a little awkward. I just can’t stand them.
- (unnecessary) adverbs
Look, I know adverbs are controversial, but I tend to fall into the Stephen King camp of “adverbs pave the road to hell.” (On Writing by Stephen King)
Bad habits
- Tautologies
For example, her own choosing, she herself, His own wooden sword, raised up, the sun was high in the sky; I tend to overwrite, so less words is always more for me. Redundancy bad. Clarity good!
- American vs. British English spellings
Okay, this one doesn’t actually bother me. But, apparently, I naturally spell “judgement”, “backwards”, “towards”, and “leapt” by the British standard, not the American standard.
The American standards would be: “judgment”, “backward”, “toward”, and “leaped”.
Crutch Words
We all have them. Here are a few words, phrases, descriptions, and actions I use too often:
- Still
- Just
- That
- pregnant
- fire as a descriptor (eg. “her voice was fire”)
- “drawn tight like a bow” and equivalents
- arms crossing
- brows furrowing
- like a sack of potatoes
- describing reactions using the heart eg. “heart raced, heart pounded” etc
- frowning
- snorted
- Looked
- describing every single doorway a character walks through
My most confounding typos
- Pronoun gender swapping
That’s right. I’ll be writing a POV I know is a specific gender but halfway through a scene or sentence I’ll just switch pronouns. You could excuse this as missing the “s” when typing she, but that doesn’t explain mixing up him and her, which I’ve also done. Frequently! Maybe my characters are trying to tell me something…
Grammar concepts so simple I’ve made them hard again
- VERB TENSE
You haven’t truly been in the editing trenches until you’ve switched “was” to “were” half a dozen times and devolved to a puddle because Grammarly tells you both forms are correct. Did you know, there’s this whole thing thing called “subjunctive mood”?! I do! Now!
As an example:
There were two dragons in the forest.
One dragon was a baby and didn’t know how to fly.
If I were a dragon I’d hoard all the gold in the world.
- CAPITALIZATION
Is it, “your Majesty” or “Your Majesty”? Did I go for a swim in Exposition Lake, or Exposition lake? Are my made up concepts and titles proper nouns?! Sometimes?! Always?!?!?!
- Commas vs. semi-colons
In high school, I vividly (see sometimes I do use adverbs) remember the stick-figure fairy my English teacher drew on the top of (at least) one of my essays. Below it he wrote, “You’ve been visited by the comma fairy!” Because my essay was littered with commas. As if they had been sprinkled on by Tinkerbell herself. My comma fairy has graduated to a semi-colon elf. I’m trying to get better at using those two pesky punctuation marks correctly; it’s a journey.
- Affect vs. Effect
I’ve read every grammar article I can find on these, but I still mess them up constantly. I can never seem to know how they affect each other. If that usage is correct, you’ll never know if I did it on purpose. 😈
Worldbuilding’s Revenge
Remember when I wrote about establishing internal logic in your worldbuilding?
Let’s just theoretically say I decided there aren’t clocks in my world. Theoretically. AHEM
A list, dear reader, of all the things I can never write in my prose as a result of this asinine decision:
- counterclockwise (or clockwise)
- wait a second
- hang on a minute
- after a few minutes
- tick (like clock ticking; ticked off, as in angry, is okay because it’s etymology is different)
- last minute
- beat the clock
- zero dark thirty
- eleventh hour
- around the clock
- every minute counts
- hours/seconds/minutes passed
- five ‘o’ clock shadow
- hour of need
- like clockwork
- after hours
- the hour was late
- the finest hour
- on the hour
- happy hour
- take five
- mile a minute
- on your six
- half past
- quarter past
- for a second
- split seconds
This might seem trivial. But I dare you to go an entire day without referencing a clock or what hour of the day it is. The number of times I’ve searched for the words “hour” or “minute” in my manuscript and found results is… let’s just say it’s a sore spot.
The lesson: make these decisions early. Instead of two-thirds through your nth draft…😅
Last but not least!
My Writing Guilty Pleasures
- Once a horse girl, always a horse girl
Horses whuff. This is NOT a snort. And a snort is not a whuff. THEY’RE DIFFERENT.
- Being very specific with terminology for armor pieces and castle battlements
Google “balistraria”. It’s a real thing, I promise.
- Alliteration
Although advice altogether advises amateur authors to avoid alliteration, once in a while I appreciate the artistry of an alliterated adage.
- Vague references to other media I adore.
Try to find all the subtle references to The Matrix in my work, if it’s ever published, I dare you.
Until next time!
-M