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I thought John Hewitt’s advice on revising the first draft of a novel came at the perfect time- right as thousands of people were finishing up National Novel Writing Month.
I have my own way of navigating the revising and editing processes, but these tips might be perfect for you if you’re just looking at your first or second manuscript, and asking yourself what to do next.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:45 AM EST
Copyblogger had a great post the other day on common punctuation errors that keep people’s writing from looking as polished as it could be. Master these few tips to keep your work looking good.
He’s given his advice on each one, but I’d like to add my own thoughts on what to watch for with each one.
1. Apostrophe for plurals- Ask yourself is you’re talking about an owner or if you’ve created a contraction. If you haven’t done either, leave the apostrophe out.
2. The Comma Splice- Ask yourself if you’re joining two related clauses or two independent full thoughts. If it’s the second, make them separate sentences. (A number of my students commit this error because they know long complicated sentences are supposed to be the sign of better writing. They learn fairly quickly that this doesn’t help.)
3. Quotation marks for emphasis- I’ve never seen this one happen, but if you feel compelled to use quotation marks, then ask yourself who you are quoting. If you aren’t quoting anybody, leave out the quotation marks.
4. Multiple exclamation marks- Your words should convey the emotion of your sentence, not your marks. Keep that in mind.
5. Punctuation outside the quotation marks- I wrestle with this one. It’s really a matter of where you live whether or not this is true. That said, if you’re writing a sentence inside the quotation marks, then the punctuation must go inside as part of the sentence.
6. The missing comma after introductory elements- Ask yourself if part of your sentence could just as easily come at the end of the sentence. If it can, put a comma behind it to separate it from the rest of the sentence.
He gives some great examples of the right and wrong way to approach these.
If you’d like to learn more about punctuation, read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 8:54 AM EST
National Novel Writing Month started last week. Writers around the world are wrestling with plot, setting, characters.
That last one can be a bit tricky. Naming characters has always been my least favorite part of the process. In fact, I probably wrote the majority of the first volume of my graphic novel script referring to the two main characters as Writer Girl and Actor Boy. I used to keep a baby naming book in my stack of writing books to help me, but it pretty much only contained English names, and I needed more than that.
There are tons of name generators on the web, but I like my character names to have something of a purpose when possible, so those don’t work for me, either.
PoeWar.com offers some tips for naming a character, but those don’t necessarily work for me, either. The very first tip is to keep names distinct, and my current series doesn’t do that. I intentionally named a pair of characters who are frequently near the main character “Michael” and “Miguel”. The story is set in a school, and you have and incredible chance of running into people with the same or similar names, so I had this pair. The two are quite different, and their relationships with the other characters are pretty different. No one has any trouble differentiating between them.
PoeWar also offers links to other naming resources. If you’re trying to name a character and are feeling stuck, give them a try. Just remember to Google your created name to make sure it isn’t a real person, or that your character is absolutely nothing like the real person.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 8:22 AM EST
There seems to be this debate raging quietly: Are bullet points still effective?
Bullet points were originally used to call out important information the writer didn’t want the reader to miss. They then became ubiquitous with presentations, sales material, learning material, and nearly everything else.
As with all widely accepted practices, bullet points are now wavering between overused and, as such, greatly ignored, or still the best thing since peanut butter.
Presentations, trying to keep up with this new surge in media, are trying to decide how much bullet points contribute to the audience’s absorption of information. Beyond Bullet Points (great book) suggests that presentations should drop bullet points in favor of blended visual-auditory experiences, the argument being that bullet points invite audiences to tune out the speaker and miss important supplementary information.
Writing, on the other hand, seems to still be trying to find the balance between well-done, well-used bullet points and bulleting for the sake of bulleting. Bullets are still being used to show what’s really important, but writers are finding they need to use them with purpose, too. (My source on this one is actually a very nice post on how to not write a how-to post. She really does a great job of showing the inherent benefits and problems with relying on bullets.)
Perhaps it’s a matter of the information you’re trying to convey, and the way you’re trying to convey it.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 8:27 AM EDT
Just in time for NaNoWriMo, there is a cool new mash-up to help you find popular names for the United States and parts of Europe.
Of course, this only helps if you’re trying to name characters set in the real world…and at the current time. For those writing in the past, you can always research census data. For those writing in the future, you can find interesting names and mangle them to your heart’s content.
If you’re writing in a world of your own creation, research name generators!
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:37 AM EDT
(Before you worry, that was both intentional and very painful to write!)
One of the things that drives me up the wall when I’m helping my writing students revise and edit their papers or when I’m editing for clients is the horrifying misuse of homophones (words that sound alike, but have radically different meanings). When I point out the misused word, nearly every single one of them, student and client alike, exclaims, “But I used SpellCheck!”
I try not to laugh, instead trying to point out that SpellCheck can only tell you if the word you’ve typed matches a word in its (rather limited) database. It can’t tell you if you’ve typed the word you meant to, or if the word you typed makes sense in the sentence you’re typing. That’s simply not what it was programmed to do, and it’s unreasonable to expect it to those things.
What you can do, though, is make use of great tools like Confusing Words. If your vocabulary isn’t strong enough, or if you haven’t learned enough grammar to know you might need to check a word, then you should consider running more words than you think you should through here. Confusing Words is nice because it gives you the word you typed in, any words it’s confused with, and the definitions of all words involved. There is also a list of examples and notes to help you determine which word you really want to use.
Homophones are a constant part of the English language, but you can appear to have mastery over them by using this awesome little tool!
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:46 AM EDT
I realize it’s summer, and for many students that means no schoolwork. For those stuck in summer or year-round school (both of which, I’m betting, just went into session, if Dead Bunny is any indication), check out this incredible guide for writing essays.
Not only do they cover how to approach each section of the essay, they also tackle the different types of essays and include a section on creating citations under various style guides. It’s great!
If you’re a student who isn’t currently in school, bookmark this site so you can use it in the fall!
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:44 AM EDT
One of the challenges I find stumping many of the students I help edit their writing is trying to capture what they hear people say in writing. The most common errors I catch lately are “could of”, “would of”, or “should of”.
I’ll ask the student if that phrase makes sense. They have no idea; they just wrote it because they hear people say it. They use the actual phrase correctly, at least, but the have no idea how to translate it into a written word.
Let’s think about this. “Of” is a preposition. It’s a word that describes the relationship between two objects, in this case indicating direction, origin, cause, a part. In the sentence, “I should of gone to the store with you,” what is the word “of” signifying? There’s no direction in there, no sense of origin or cause, no part. Further, because “of” is a preposition it needs an object, a noun, to form a phrase with it, but the nearest noun is already in a prepositional phrase with the word “to”.
As it stands, this sentence makes no sense.
This is because what’s actually being said is “should’ve”, the contracted form of “should have”. Look at the sentence with the correction: I should have gone to the store with you. Contracted, the sentence reads: I should’ve gone to the store with you. “Have” is a helping verb to help clarify when an action took place. The sentence now makes sense.
You’ve probably also realized that “could of” of actully “could’ve” and “would of” is actually “would’ve”.
Writing like you talk is great advice, but then you absolutely must read what you’ve written to see if the words themselves make sense together. If they don’t, do a little research and figure out how to make it all work correctly. (Or ask. Some of us like questions…) When all else fails, grab a dictionary and look up the words you are using.
Nothing will make you look like an incompetent writer faster than misusing simple words.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:49 AM EDT
(Clever, huh?)
Apostrophes are that one little punctuation mark that everyone believes strongly that they know how to use, and yet most people get it very, very wrong.
More and more is being written to help make this little mark’s usage clear, but most of it can be boiled down to this:
Everybody clear on that? Good.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 8:12 AM EDT
Children are natural storytellers. They tell us about their day, their imaginary friends. They explore what-ifs. They love the art of the story.
I remember when I was little, I had these cards that had sentence bits on them. Some of the cards contained nouns, some verbs. I used to love shuffling them and reading a new story. Sometimes, I’d even string together my own story. By the time I’d left elementary school, I was writing down my own stories, and to this day I still have a notebook in my bag dedicated to writing whenever I feel inspiration strike.
It’s important to encourage the development of storytelling in children because the basic building blocks of just about any story are the foundation of writing in general. It grounds the student in the beginning-middle-end formula that can elude people. They learn to weave a point in to their stories. They develop characters. They create and resolve problems.
Erika Dreifus has a great method for developing storytelling with her niece that I think is just wonderful! Her niece tells her a story, and Erika writes it into a special notebook. I’m sure as time goes on, this toddler will fill many such notebooks, and will be able to watch her storytelling develop as she learns and grows.
Perhaps more children should be encouraged to keep stories in a special notebook, too.
Posted by Rebecca as Resources at 7:51 AM EDT