The Final Touch

I just sub­scribed to Writer’s Digest’s YouTube chan­nel and hap­pened to dis­cover this very use­ful video. From a lit­er­ary agent’s expe­ri­enced point of view, it gives sev­eral great nuggets of infor­ma­tion about story-telling, plot, struc­ture, what works, and what doesn’t — all in just under 5 min­utes. Check it out:

I find lan­guage so inter­est­ing (per­haps the under­state­ment of the year). On any given day, I might edit the same sen­tence in two or three dif­fer­ent ways, depend­ing on the pre­ferred style guide — or just plain per­sonal pref­er­ences — of the client I’m edit­ing it for. And right there is a prime example:

Some clients would fiercely defend their right to end a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion because it sounds more like the real way we speak, while oth­ers would insist that it never be done, no mat­ter how pretzel-like the sen­tence may sound (do pret­zels sound? you know what I mean).

Indeed, when I was in 12^th-grade Pre-College Com­po­si­tion class, Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2008 Paul Swansen | more info (via: Wylio)
A line from a news arti­cle I read today at the New York Times blog for Kin­dle (and, yes, I know I said I wouldn’t reveal sources when I turn writ­ing errors into teach­ing moments, but some­how I think the Times is big enough to take it from li’l ol’ me; I won’t name the author, though):

“Mr. Blago­je­vich, a Demo­c­rat whose for­mer aides say once saw him­self as a pres­i­den­tial con­tender some day, was found guilty…”

To be fair to the writer, this is a really tricky con­struc­tion. I had to reread it a few times to even sort out whether it was incor­rect or not. But, alas, Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, I knoooooowwwwww… I’ve been remiss about blog­ging for waaaaaay too long! This is how I’ve always been with jour­nal­ing, too — off again, on again, always hav­ing a hard time keep­ing at it faith­fully. I like jour­nal­ing — the idea of it, that is — the con­cept of record­ing my thoughts to look back on later, espe­cially thoughts about faith and life, prayer con­cerns that I can see answered in ret­ro­spect, ques­tions I’m pon­der­ing, that sort of thing. But the only time I’ve kept at it steadily has been when I was trav­el­ing. I faith­fully recorded my expe­ri­ences in Nor­way daily for two weeks the sum­mer before my junior year in col­lege. No, two weeks isn’t much to brag about, but then I also faith­fully jour­naled (maybe not every day, but reg­u­larly) through­out my five months in Spain dur­ing the spring of my junior year in col­lege. That, I think, was the last time I faith­fully kept a jour­nal. So, no big sur­prise here that think­ing of some­thing to write about and mak­ing a point to do it every few days for the sake of my blog does not come eas­ily to me. So, my apolo­gies. But since I’m here now…

I’ve decided to start some­thing new and make a series of it — maybe a once-a-week sort of thing; we’ll see. As a copy edi­tor, and a fanat­i­cal one at that — one who can’t turn off her proof­read­ing brain, even after the client-based work is done for the day — I am often not just annoyed but appalled by the errors I see “out there.” Now, because my aim here is not to shame any­one — and since, after all, I wouldn’t have much of a free­lance edit­ing career if every­one had the gift of excel­lent writ­ing skills — and because whereas I have strong writ­ing skills, oth­ers have busi­ness or math or sci­ence or par­ent­ing skills I will never have — I will not reveal the iden­tity of a writer, busi­ness, book, etc. with whom/which an error is asso­ci­ated. What I want to do is to turn these fre­quent nerve-shredding nui­sances into some­thing pos­i­tive. So, every few posts, I plan to use a real-life sen­tence or phrase or some other snip­pet of writ­ing I’ve seen as a demon­stra­tion of what the cor­rect con­struct should be and why.

So, here goes. This is a com­mon error in ordi­nary, casual con­ver­sa­tion as well as in writing:

“It con­tains a story about my hus­band and I!” No. “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and ME.” Why “me” instead of “I”? Here’s a help­ful trick: Take the prepo­si­tional phrase (“about my hus­band and…”) and omit the object of the prepo­si­tion that is not the pro­noun in ques­tion. Get rid of it so you can focus only on the pro­noun. Now try it both ways: “It con­tains a story about I” or “It con­tains a story about me.” Clearly, even in casual con­ver­sa­tion, we would say “me.” So, too, should you choose “me” — an object pro­noun, it’s called, whereas “I” is a sub­ject pro­noun — when there is another object in the phrase as well: “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and me!”

Another post sooner than later… I promise!

Oh, and if you see an erro­neous gram­mar or punc­tu­a­tion con­struc­tion “out there,” please men­tion it in a com­ment below. I’ll do my best to explain what’s right and what’s wrong, and why.

Is any­one out there work­ing on writ­ing a novel? I’d love to hear about it!

I haven’t writ­ten a novel myself, but I love read­ing them. Some of my favorite authors are Jodi Picoult,

James Pat­ter­son,

John Grisham,

and Lynn Austin.

When you get fully engaged in a book, you’re not stop­ping every few min­utes to pon­der what makes the book so good. But you would notice if it weren’t so engaging.

That’s why the arti­cle, “How to Edit Your Dia­logue,” by a mem­ber of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity of blog­gers caught my eye. I thought I’d pass it along for the sake of any of you who might also be interested.

Even if you’re not a fic­tion writer, you might find it inter­est­ing to see just why you like to read the fic­tion you do, and what the author’s use of dia­logue has to do with that.

By the way, would you please share your favorite authors/books in a com­ment below? I’m always game for some new read­ing mate­r­ial!

photo © 2010 Allan Chatto | more info (via: Wylio)
Writ­ing to wish every­one a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of the turn from 2010 to 2011!

The occa­sion does present the oppor­tu­nity for a brief spelling/punctuation les­son, how­ever! This fes­tive night is not spelled “New Years Eve,” nor do we cel­e­brate “the New Years.” GAH!! I’ve heard and seen both of those too many times already! Here are our options:

• New Year’s Eve (the eve of the new year, thus the need for an apostrophe);
• Happy New Year! (we only cel­e­brate one at a time, so there is no “s” on the end);
• New Year’s, as in “We’re cel­e­brat­ing New Year’s at…” (I’ll give you this one, reluc­tantly, but only with the apos­tro­phe included to show that “Eve” is implied).

Just a tip to take with you into Jan­u­ary! For oth­ers like it, along with a wide range of pon­der­ings, I invite you to stop by this blog through­out 2011. I look for­ward to shar­ing new ven­tures with you!

–Heidi