An Agent Talks about Writing Problems
...and about submissions, and grammar, and finishing.
onyxhawke talks here about how many submissions he sees from writers who don't seem to have a grasp of grammar.
This is not an isolated observation. I've been noting with dismay how many books are making it all the way to print with not just the occasional oopsie, but consistent grammatical errors. Enough of it can ruin the story for me because I am a very visual reader, so some grammatical howlers--like dangling modifiers that force the subject onto the implied subject, making a peculiar combination image--throw me right out of the story until I backtrack and disentangle what the text says from what it apparently meant to say. Then there are those increasingly common errors with lie and lay (people "laying" in bed, and "I laid down") that make my mind search around for the object being laid, when the author meant "Lying" or "lay"). Enough of those too close together just trashes the building tension, the sense of "being there" that is so much a part of the reading experience.
I don't believe the writers are being sloppy, not any more. The American educational system is at blame--there are a lot of smart, dedicated, talented writers under the age of oh, say forty, who do not know their grammatical grasp is tenuous. Who do not know the difference between the passive voice and the progressive verbs, who are told by someone else who has a poor grasp of grammar, "Any use of 'was' is passive--don't use it!" I don't think I need to go into just how many ways that statement is incorrect. The thing is, the writers weren't taught during various sea-changes in education that turned out to be disasters.
But not finishing the story...now that sounds odd. Are we talking here about not winding up the plot, or about a lack of any kind of resolution--emotional resolution or conflict resolution?
First drafts dashed out the door, maybe? Are these volumes in a long story? Multi-volume stories are what I've thought of as a roman fleuve but which is coming to be known as a cycle. I like cycles--if what we have really seems to me part of a long story. I get impatient i I get the sense that a quest story is being protracted through numerous volumes. It makes me feel like there's a lot of toil but the horizon keeps receding. There is no sense of forward movement. A nested chain of quests--that is, goals, which open into consequent events--that, I like. The Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maaturin cycle a nifty example. Ditto the Lymond Chronicles.
onyxhawke talks here about how many submissions he sees from writers who don't seem to have a grasp of grammar.
This is not an isolated observation. I've been noting with dismay how many books are making it all the way to print with not just the occasional oopsie, but consistent grammatical errors. Enough of it can ruin the story for me because I am a very visual reader, so some grammatical howlers--like dangling modifiers that force the subject onto the implied subject, making a peculiar combination image--throw me right out of the story until I backtrack and disentangle what the text says from what it apparently meant to say. Then there are those increasingly common errors with lie and lay (people "laying" in bed, and "I laid down") that make my mind search around for the object being laid, when the author meant "Lying" or "lay"). Enough of those too close together just trashes the building tension, the sense of "being there" that is so much a part of the reading experience.
I don't believe the writers are being sloppy, not any more. The American educational system is at blame--there are a lot of smart, dedicated, talented writers under the age of oh, say forty, who do not know their grammatical grasp is tenuous. Who do not know the difference between the passive voice and the progressive verbs, who are told by someone else who has a poor grasp of grammar, "Any use of 'was' is passive--don't use it!" I don't think I need to go into just how many ways that statement is incorrect. The thing is, the writers weren't taught during various sea-changes in education that turned out to be disasters.
But not finishing the story...now that sounds odd. Are we talking here about not winding up the plot, or about a lack of any kind of resolution--emotional resolution or conflict resolution?
First drafts dashed out the door, maybe? Are these volumes in a long story? Multi-volume stories are what I've thought of as a roman fleuve but which is coming to be known as a cycle. I like cycles--if what we have really seems to me part of a long story. I get impatient i I get the sense that a quest story is being protracted through numerous volumes. It makes me feel like there's a lot of toil but the horizon keeps receding. There is no sense of forward movement. A nested chain of quests--that is, goals, which open into consequent events--that, I like. The Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maaturin cycle a nifty example. Ditto the Lymond Chronicles.