Me, myself, and I

[onyxhawke]

Verb conjugation is apparently a dying skill. I've had more than one manuscript in the past few dozen that seem to lack this basic skill. Maybe it is too much for me to expect that people who want to be published should be able to know what tense of a verb to use, if so please tell me. But I can't escape the sneaking suspicion that some of these people just don't care enough about their work to finish it instead of merely writing to the end. Sure they care enough to collect words in a string until they have something they construe as a story, possibly over the objections of first readers. What gets me is that a careful reading by the writer would probably catch these things and save them from killing the chances of an agent or editor accepting the book. Grammar is in my opinion the one fundamental of writing good fiction that really is teachable to almost everyone.

I don't think that plotting is really something that everyone can learn. Most people yes. But its a skill that escapes many a story teller who none the less displays good grammar and and decent character building.
Character creation I think is probably the hardest skill to develop, and world building being something that most people don't apply anything like moderation too. It's either vast quantities of information that doesn't advance the plot, build the character(s), or otherwise draw the reader to care about the book or the equivalent of talking heads in space or with swords (sometimes both).

Seriously, for the grammatically challenged there is help, most libraries will have some level of English text book that teaches the hows and whens.