Cooking with Commas

There are many things that can (and will) drive an editor batty. Punctuation just happens to among them. There is much confusion about punctuation. Often writers get them confused. Hell, even editors get muddled at times.

Today, I wanted to address the importance of the comma.

I will grant you that there is a significant amount of debate over the usage of commas, particularly the Oxford comma (whether we should or shouldn't use it). It probably doesn't help that the Oxford comma has now won a legal court case.

However, many editors will agree that commas seem to be disappearing from text, partly because of the increasing usage of smartphones and social media. This, folks, is not a good thing. I will grant you that when writing a hurried tweet, the comma can consume precious character counts. However, one little comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence. It can mean the difference between being a cannibal or a time traveller.

The Synopsis for Editing and Writing

Those who are heading down the road toward traditional publication will be familiar with a beast known as a synopsis. Many agents and publishers require that you submit a 1/2-page synopsis with your submission materials. The chore of writing a synopsis that length is a frightening task. Many writers have been known to run away from it, screaming. So, when I mention that writers should write synopses as an editing tool, it’s not surprising that many look at me like I’m crazy.

In a querying synopsis, you include only the main plot thread, ignoring ALL subplots. The only characters named are your protagonist, antagonist, and often a love interest; everyone else is irrelevant. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s completely disheartening to see this complex masterpiece whittled down to a few short paragraphs, but for the querying synopsis, that’s what you need to do.

However, for editing purposes, that short, main-plot-only synopsis is useless. You need to create an entirely different beast.

Length matters, but story matters more.

Every writer that is serious about publishing, particularly those attempting the traditional publication path, will know that agents and editors put a lot of weight on word counts. The acceptable limits vary depending on the age category and genre of the book.

(By the way, Young Adult is NOT a genre. It's an age category. And Fiction is NOT a genre either. You can find more information about the various age categories here. More information about the main genre classifications can be found here.)

It's incredibly important to have a good understanding of the average word counts for the type of story that you are writing, but it's just as important to understand word counts are not an excuse for poor storytelling.

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: Apps that Read Aloud

You spend hours/days/weeks editing and you're struggling to get through it. Here is just one of the many tricks one could when editing.

Use an app to read your story to you

Many will happily agree that hearing a passage will trigger different editing skills than reading a passage. When we read a passage, our brains often fill in the missing words or correct the awkward sentence so it reads as we think it should, but it's not what it says. As mentioned in a previous post, reading a passage aloud allows you to register unnatural dialogue, awkward phrases and many other things that could have been missed.

Let's face reality: not everyone is comfortable with reading things aloud to themselves, but there is a solution. There are apps out there that will read a story to you.

Time to Add Zombies to Your Manuscript

We are almost midway through the month and many writers are pushing themselves toward their NaNoWriMo goals. It might be just to write the 50,000 words to become a winner. Or maybe they're pushing themselves that much further to complete a full first draft within one month. Regardless, it is roughly about this time of the month when many writers lose steam and they feel their stories are running flat.

Time to add zombies.

It's an old saying, one that relates to how some writers deal with that age-old problem called writer's block. Some writers will take the phrase literally and add flesh-eating monsters into their manuscript. Why not? This is NaNo. Anything can happen in our manuscripts. However, those monsters only suit certain genres and only a fraction of the stories in those genres at that.

No... The phrase "just add zombies" means much more than that.

Developing the habit of writing…

Right now, writers from around the world have pledged themselves to either the NaNoWriMo or CampNaNoWriMo challenge. They’ve signed their lives away, at least for remainder of the month, determined to write 50,000 words within the span of 30 days. (For CampNaNoWriMo, they have elected to work toward something much smaller.) 50,000 words may sound like a lot, but it really isn’t. In many cases, it’s not even a full novel. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was 76,944 words.

So, 50,000 words in 30 days… For some, it can seem like a scary number, but it’s only 1,667 words a day. But this is where things can start to go awry.Read More→

To Oxford Comma or Not?

Before one can make the decision about whether they should use an Oxford comma or not, one must first understand what the Oxford comma is.

Consider a list with at least three different items: apples, oranges and bananas. If one was to use an Oxford comma, then the list would look like apples, oranges, and bananas. Notice the use of the comma before the and. However, you won’t always find a comma before the and. If the list has only two items, that list of apples and oranges wouldn’t use a comma.

Confusing, right?Read More→

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: Use Paper or an Ebook Reader

You spend hours/days/weeks editing and you're struggling to get through it. Here is just one of the many tricks that I employ when editing both my own and clients' writing.

Use Paper or an eBook Reader

I never do all my editing directly on the computer. The back-lit screen is too much on my eyes. The smooth reflective surface will catch the overhead lighting, adding to the eye strain. This is why I don't use a tablet for editing either. They too are back-lit and reflective. No, when I can, when the size of a document permits me, I will print out the manuscript and pull out my trusty red pen, writing all over that printed document. In those instances where the manuscript is too large, say 100k words, then out comes my Kindle and I'll read the document on that, adding comments and notes to the file as I go. (Yes, you can do that on a Kindle.)

Finding value in a critique…

Every writer who puts their work out there will have to face critiques of all flavors: the good, the bad, and the outright mean. For the new writer, one just starting down the journey, sending that baby out for review can actually be a terrifying experience. "What if they don't like it? What if I'm doing it all wrong? What if they tell me my writing is shit?"

Well... Not everyone is going to like what you write. Writing is like art — filled with subjective opinions. If you're determined to have everyone in the world like your writing, then you might as well give up now. It's never going to happen. The best you can ever hope for is that the fans of books you like to read, the stories that influenced your writing, also like your book.

In terms of doing it wrong... I'm sorry, but this is your writing. You are the only one who can judge if you are doing it wrong or not. What others can do is tell you why something didn't work for them, potentially providing suggestions to make your writing stronger. Whether you take on board those suggestions is entirely up to you.

Editing Reality Check

When writers have spent such a long time at writing, crafting their stories, many will happily turn their attention to editing. However, it saddens me to realize that many writers don't fully understand what editing actually entails.

In a post earlier this year, I spoke about the who, what and when of editing. In that article, I mentioned that editing falls into four main categories: critique, developmental, line and copy-edit. Each stage is important for a manuscript's development but for different reasons. Unfortunately, the number of writers that seem to miss the critique and developmental editing phases, going straight to line editing, is surprising.