Writing and cluelessness

[halfshellvenus]

I've been meaning to post up a bunch of thoughts on writing, and it seems that it would be better to do it in chunks rather than all at once. Otherwise, I don't see myself getting around to it at all

Comments

[jeyhawk]

Thoughts on writing always makes me happy. :0)

I either use too many commas, or too few. I'm hopeless like that. Sometimes when I read through a sentence it sounds like a ran a marathon before with all the pauses and sometimes I run out of breath before the sentence is over (because I was always too fond of the run on sentences as well). :0P

I consider writing a learning experience, always trying to get better, so I'm looking forward to more thoughts on the subject.

[halfshellvenus]

Nice picture of you, BTW!

I either use too many commas, or too few.
I tend to use MORE commas rather than fewer, and then in the woodshedding phase I'll see what can be eliminated. Too many can make people feel like a ping-pong ball being whacked back and forth across a net. Too few can make people go "Huh?"

One of the areas where I almost always use commas and people often don't (but should) is in introductory phrases. Such as,

The thing is, Dean's been through this before.
As Dean rambled on, Sam's attention wandered back to yesterday.If you leave out those commas, you get "The thing is Dean's..." and "As Dean rambled on Sam's..." (!) That starts start the reader in the wrong direction for where the sentence is going

[jeyhawk]

Point of view, yes please.

It's not only beginning writers, I recently read Elisabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her and there's a few slip ups in there as well. One, or two, really jarring ones and a few minor ones that might just be the turn of phrase. (There's a chance it's just translation mistakes, I don't know.)

[halfshellvenus]

One of the things I've noticed with POV, which is worth addressing, is that the writer may drift from his/her original intent (and then needs to go back and revise).

I have SO MANY stories where I start out intending to write in 3rd-person omniscent POV, but then later find that the story is really solidly Sam or Dean or Lincoln or what-have-you. The voice has settled into a particular person, which I did not expect. At that point, you have to consider whether to revise the part where you seem to have gotten into a good groove... or revise the beginning to consistently be in that single person's POV.

But sometimes if you drift, you don't notice that you've drifted. Ten pages of Sam POV and you may still think you're writing omniscent POV because you meant to when you started. :0

[deadbeat_nymph]

[halfshellvenus]

Is this the barrier at the funeral wearing a dark suit? :0

[deadbeat_nymph]

It is! It made me laugh really hard when I read that; I got a visual of it in my head, and so I had to make it for you. =D

[halfshellvenus]

Haha! HOW did you put that together so quickly?

It's perfect-o. :D

[tyrical]

Can I just say I suck S-U-C-K at grammar.
It's why every piece must have a beta and that beta has to be awesome and I do mean awesome at grammar. Even when you tell me what I did wrong I just don't understand it! :headdesk:

Why do I like to write again... sigh!

[halfshellvenus]

One of the things that really helped me with grammar (I'm completely serious) was taking German in high school.

You cannot learn a foreign language in a formal setting without also learning its grammar. And as it happens, German grammar is very similar to English gramar. There are Nominative, Accusative, and Dative cases, there is "present," "near-past," "distant past," "subjunctive," the thing I like to call "future conditional." These really force you to decide whether you have the the subject, the direct object, the indirect object, etc. It's very helpful in seeing the parallels in English.

I have been tempted to post up a quick little table for people, like
Present=> am, are, do, does, go, may
Near-Past=> was, were, did, went, might
Distant Past=> had been, had done, had gone, might have done/gone

It can be learned! But it's easier for some than for others.

[tyrical]

Does it count that I'm watching a sometimes subtitled German Soap? :fingers crossed:

[halfshellvenus]

Does it count that I'm watching a sometimes subtitled German Soap? :fingers crossed:

:D Sadly, no. But I'll bet you're enjoying every boy-kissing moment of it, aren't you? :D

[halfshellvenus]

:D I'm still trying to figure out what the dreaded "Sam was sat" means to the British. I can't figure out a use for that phrasing at all!

And the Brit=>American document I'm still working on (which I can email out at any time, though-- just needs LJ coding) has things in it like "had got" is "had gotten" in American.

I remove about half of them on my edit pass and then my beta removes about half of those still remaining.
I have seen excess commas in some writing, but I find that the problem of too few is far more prevalent. I've read so much fanfic that reads like a run-on sentence of mixed verbs because people are not separating the sub-phrases with commas. Clauses are your friend!

However (and this is a subject for a future post), "inside-out" sentence structure is NOT your friend. If that's the reason a person has a lot of commas, it's better to rework the sentence (sometimes breaking it into two or more sentences) until it's more straightforward.

[halfshellvenus]

I'll try to remember to email you the document (did I do it already? Can't remember), and you might have some additional things to add. For instance, I would think "chuffed" was so obviously slang that Brits would know not to use it. But I saw it in an f-list post the other day from an Australian person (not used badly-- it was a casual entry), and that made me wonder if its use is so widespread now that it is NOT obviously slang to Brits. Kind of like one of the 'Wizard of Oz' books I read last week, where Dorothy criticizes someone for using "such awful slang." Well by now... whatever that was is no longer slang. I can't even discern which part of it was once slang.

I had to laugh at your last thought - my last beta note came back with "use a bloody FULL STOP" in large red letters.
The example I intend to post on that topic, when I get around to it, is one I wrote as a joke years ago: "Fritz was someone whom I, when I was in the war, had known

[halfshellvenus]

I am a worthless, hack of a writer! *g*
:D I wouldn't say that. :D Look at the emotion of your writing! Let us say, you work well with betas. :) And it's important to remember that the beta does not supply your original idea or the story that you're telling. That's all you.

frequently write "Blah, blah, blah." he said when I know full well that I shouldn't.
:D I remember THAT one distinctly, but it's a reminder that I need to post up a "how-to" on dialogue, because THAT is something that writers are typically learning via osmosis (or not learning, in some cases). You'll find a lot of information on grammar and sentence structure, but very little explicitly addressing dialogue. *adds to list*

I always write in English, when I should be writing in American.
Still working on my helpful document. I've got an MS Word version of it-- it just isn't in HTML. That would help you.

And I never know whether Dad should be capitalised or not!Haha! If I'm speaking and it's MY Dad, it's capitalized. If I'm speaking about someone ELSE'S dad, it's

[halfshellvenus]

:D So you're utterly serious about the novel-writing then? Is it an orginal fiction setting?

Most people do the "NaNoWriMo" in November, the "National Novel Writing Month" (though I suppose the "nation" in that title is probably the U.S.). And then there are those who are doing the SPN "big-bang" challenge now in April (20K words minimum). I'm lucky to crack 5000 words!

Please hurry up with your 'How-to' guides before I write much more! *g*
Hee! I'll probably get a few of them out. It's more likely to happen in chunks like this one than a big long Unibomber-like Manifesto. As if I were in the position to be the final authority on that anyway, but still. ;)