Writing thoughts (to separate from the general thoughts blog) [NSFW material will be referenced occasionally, but will be blacked out] · 1:22pm May 6th
Writing mistakes
Hall of shame: dumb errors by me
These errors are late-stage errors which I left in my fic after multiple reads. It happens to us all :(
Ocean Mist trots back onto the quiet landing.
She idly looks at a wall-cupboard. Even though she knew it couldn’t be in there, she opens the door anyway. She wrinkles her nose at the musty smell from a stack of used dusters.
Under these is a stepladder which she looks at curiously.
“Ah!” she exclaims, out loud, the sound echoing.
She looks directly up to the square wooden trapdoor entrance to the loft.
What's wrong here? Grammar is OK-ish. It's clear who's doing what....
The main problem is repetition. She X, she Y, she Z. When I reread it my brain started sneezing. This is quite an annoying issue, because subject/verbs are such an obvious way to direct a characters actions. I'll have to be a little inventive. Also, the most boring seeing verb (looks) is repeated over and over and over in this and previous passages (and missed a comma).
Ocean Mist trots back onto the quiet landing.
She idly gazes at a wall-cupboard. Despite knowing it couldn’t be in there, she opens the door anyway and wrinkles her nose at the musty smell from a stack of used dusters.
Under these is a stepladder which Ocean examines, curiously.
“Ah!” she exclaims, out loud, the sound echoing.
Directly above is the square wooden trapdoor entrance to the loft.
She glances every so often to the doorway of Kimono’s house. To her intense relief, the doorway finally opens.
Oh, this one is special! So not only do 'doorways' not open (that would be the thing inside the doorway), but that repetition is ugly and unnecessary, as is the specification 'of this house'. For a very simple sentence, this one was wonky as anything! And that had survived to the final edit!
She glances every so often to Kimono’s front door. To her intense relief, it finally opens.
I see him occasionally. He doesn't recognise me. I have learned not to love him, but it is hard. I talk with Laura about it, occasionally.
This is obvious, because that repetition is ugly as sin. But even better! The second qualifier is totally unnecessary and adds nothing to the sentence (a bit like the tautologous phrase you just read am I right :P ).
Hitch lives above the jail, and it’s Saturday morning, so there’s a bit of noise.
For a bad error, this is pretty subtle, but I want to highlight it. The clauses don't feel right, do they? That's because the conjunction doesn't work. But why not? Oh, yes the 'and' connects two completely separate thoughts, but they shouldn't be separate. It's the noise being made that relates to Hitch living in a jail, in light of it being a Saturday morning.
Hitch lives above the jail and so, as it’s Saturday morning, there’s a bit of noise. Thankfully, there’s an entrance around the back, so we aren’t seen by the lowlifes.
ARGH!
I wait it out in the loo, with the usual worry that it wasn’t a good batch or that the mix was wrong.
It can be easy to miss some basic noun agreement. There is more than one 'worry' here, so this should be 'worries'. A single worry also conveys a very different tone to a more general set of 'worries', so it was quite a bad error.
“Boss don’t like it.”
“Sunny, likes it.”
The sentences are virtually the same, and yet I added a comma to the second one. The reason was that I verbally pause, due to the emphasis. This sort of mistake is one of the reasons why my written English education, which leaned heavily on the way things sound to work out grammar, was actually a bit crap.
“Unlucky for him. He used to go clubbing Fridays didn’t he. Before…”
This is a soft question, so my internal voice didn't realise it was a question. Also, it needs a comma. Also also, that should be an em dash.
An overarching error: inefficient language
I see face after face turning as my gaze passes over them — as a stallion, and even on previous [] trips, I have never been the focus of attention to the extent that I am now.
This issue runs through a great deal of the points below. We are not writing reports but, rather, nice and easy to digest media. Also, while occasionally we want the reader to slow down and dwell, sometimes we also want our reader to speed up and skim. Efficiency of language is crucial for a clean-feeling fic, especially if there are thrilling action sequences.
I see face after face turning as my gaze passes over them — as a stallion, and even on previous [] trips, I haven't received this level of attention.
It's a subtle difference, but "to the extent that I am now" is seven words that do nothing for the reader except waste their attention. A formal writer might be interested in the fact that previously a certain level of attention was given to the character but, for informal writing, this nuance is pointless. I can't use it, so I should discard it. I am not writing for accuracy, but for feel.
“Thanks, Ocean,” Derpy says, and goes in for a hug, extending her wing.
“That’s okay, I’m glad to help!”
Ocean nuzzles into the warm under-feathers.
This is subtle. Can you spot the issue?
What does the character's affirmation add? If she's gone in for the hug, of course she agrees. You hear the agreement without me writing "OK". I deleted numerous simple affirmations from this story. Unless strictly necessary, avoid them.
“Thanks, Ocean,” Derpy says, and goes in for a hug, extending her wing.
Ocean nuzzles into the warm under-feathers.
The object collides with Ocean’s tail. Its propeller winds into the pink strands, pulling painfully.
“Sorry Misty!”
Sky Wishes bounds forward and seizes the object tangled in Ocean's tail.
This sequence creates an annoying repetition, which is impossible to avoid. If I am specifying whose tail it is, I have to say "Ocean" because there are multiple females, depriving me of a non-confusing pronoun substitute (her tail).
This is also a classic example of trusting the reader. If I just say the plane is entangled, the reader knows it's tangled in her tail BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I SAID LITERALLY A FEW SENTENCES AGO
The object collides with Ocean’s tail. Its propeller winds into the pink strands, pulling painfully.
“Sorry Misty!”
Sky Wishes bounds forward and seizes the entangled object.
Ocean heads past her own bedroom, past alternately eldritch and beautiful tapestries hanging on the walls, to the spare room
Did you spot the issue?
WHERE THE HAY ELSE WOULD THEY BE 'HANGING'. Also, this is a little action sequence. The extra words just stick out like a sore hoof.
Ocean heads past her own bedroom, past alternately eldritch and beautiful tapestries, to the spare room
Bad grammar or jumbled thoughts? The reason editors aren't everything
I clutch the bottle of [], as I make my way back to Hitch.
The above is grammatically correct, but it reads poorly. The reason is simple. Clutching a bottle is not the action that should drive this sentence. The action here is my character returning to Hitch, and the fact that they are clutching a bottle is a description of what they are doing as they return to him. There are story reasons why I ordered the sentence that way. I wanted to emphasise the bottle. But that desire is poorly recognised by the sentence. An editor cannot save you from this sort of jumbling. Grammar is not the issue here. If the sentence reads poorly, that is a signal to the writer to think again.
I make my way back to my stallion. Clutched tightly in my hoof is the bottle that could make me his mare.
This sentence better uses the opportunity created by that sentence to strike at a core theme of that story (read Mare By Midnight, once it is published!).
Said tags
“I thought… please never leave me like that,” she has tears in her eyes.
"Dialogue is weird," she said. English doesn't like the fact that "she said" is not a sentence. Said tags seemed like some arcane weirdness to me at first, but actually they just reflect a parenthetical structure. If X = ["Dialogue"] then it would read: X, she said.
But the fun doesn't stop there. Because that parenthetical structure is easy to miss, and because a great deal of dialogue is said with description, it is so easy to put false said tags in. I read that sentence 11 times and didn't realise! Using the form above you can't say: X, she tears. Instead, the two things are just separate. It is clunky, though, so you might need to further adjust - there is clearly a relationship between the dialogue being said, and the presence of tears. Hmm what should I do? Well she is obviously saying X, with tears in her eyes. Oh. Wait.
“I thought… please never leave me like that,” she says, with tears in her eyes.
Much better.
“Me, I'm fine!” he begins. "Actually..."
Ignoring the inevitable mix up between a short-pause comma and a short-pause question, "X, he begins," really sounds like it should work. But... it doesn't. 'Begins' isn't the right verb for a parenthetical saying of something. You have to write: "begins to say" here. Once I realised that, I recognised that then the only way is either to have clunky periods, or to just not cut up the dialogue, like that. It is difficult to overstate how little "begins" adds to that dialogue. If he wasn't beginning to say it, then, um, how could there have been the dialogue in the previous line? 
“Me? I'm fine! Actually..."
Simple!
“Yeah,“ I interrupt, not wanting him to praise her.
“But she has so little time, now. I miss when she was just a kooky fringe girl, y’know.”
“Selling smoothies,” I add.
Did you spot the error? Yup. Neither used verbs of saying, despite using 'said tags'. Now "I add" can be used, if you have a form like this. "Dialogue is hard," he said. "Really, really hard!" he added. That is because: X, he said. Y, he added to (what he said about) X is fine, and then you just cut the words in brackets for flow. But I can't do that in this dialogue, because I haven't used a saying verb previously.
“Yeah,“ I say, interrupting, not wanting him to praise her.
“But she has so little time, now. I miss when she was just a kooky fringe girl, y’know.”
“Selling smoothies.”
Common pieces of informal language that I get wrong
Uh-oh
OK
Oh, Sol
Accuracy or flow?
After a while of the room spinning, a voice distinguishes itself from the mare-chatter, outside.
"After a while of the room spinning" is just bad. I have stretched the phrase "After a while" and mangled it. It should read "After a while, during which the room continues to spin, a voice..." BUT that is bad for flow. Did I really need to re-state that the character thought the room was spinning? In that fic, Mare Before Midnight, I had stated all of four sentences ago that the character felt that way. Restating it was not necessary. Even better, once I removed that clutter, it became easier to see that I had put an unnecessary comma on "outside" which is just a run-on.
After a while, a voice distinguishes itself from the mare-chatter outside.
So much more flowing! And without losing any of the sense.
Informal language still needs to be written in sentences
I cringe inwardly, this was not the place.
Again, it sounds obvious, but the internal voice here will place a small pause between these two separate clauses, regardless of the punctuation. That is because they are short clauses, and the mind sees the connection between them quickly. Nevertheless, the comma is technically wrong here. It should be born in mind that commas are not merely 'pauses,' but are part of the structure of the language and they indicate clauses within sentences. Here, both are complete sentences — it is just that there is a causal connection between them, in terms of what my character is doing.
I cringe inwardly — this was not the place.
I could have used a period, but an em dash works, as the connection between the two complete clauses is more clearly preserved.
Informal language shouldn't be elliptical unless the context can be inferred.
The reward is wolf-whistles. I tingle, happily.
Efficient use of language is crucial in informal writing, but that must not be allowed to confuse the narrative. While it might sound obvious, it is extremely easy to slip into confusion by writing elliptically. The quote is adequate, in terms of that (the story context for Mare Before Midnight is needed to fully understand it), but it didn't bog down the narrative, much, to state what was going on less elliptically:
This is greeted by wolf-whistles around the club. The attention makes me tingle, happily.
Unlike a piece of snappy dialogue, or an action-scene, the extra little bit of explanation could be slotted readily in.
Inside his apartment, he gestures to a spare room.
The grammar here looked off, so I double-checked this. It's just straight up missing what is called a 'subordinating conjunction' - things like 'once' or 'before' which relate the sentences to each other in a way that places their subjects in time. This is very important for sequences in fiction. Anyway, by writing elliptically, I had just missed that off. The result was just bad writing.
Once inside, he gestures to a spare room.
Conjunctions that co-ordinate words in a clause vs conjunctions and subsequent clauses and run-on clauses
I wonder if this guy is genuine and I feel a familiar pang.
When you have subsequent clauses that are incomplete without each other eg an action-clause and a subsequent description that is associated with the clause and is incomplete without it, then you need a comma. BUT be careful not to add commas to composite actions that are actually part of the same clause: "He took off his boots and coat" and not "He took off his boots, and coat". 'And coat' is not a clause — your brain hiccups angrily with the attempt to suggest it is, because it can't relate to the phrase 'and coat' in a parenthetical way to the previous clause and, if it is subsequent clause, it wants the noun to have a verb. You can convert it to a subsequent clause easily, but only at a cost of efficiency: "He took his boots, before taking off his coat." Unless, for some reason, you wanted the reader to waste their time and slow down, you would not write like that, though.
You also tend to need something like 'and,' a conjunction, to link together subsequent clauses. However, 'and' is not always used as a coordinating conjunction for clauses , but also to co-ordinate words within a clause eg "It's not black and white." So be careful.
I wonder if this guy is genuine, and I feel a familiar pang.
I reluctantly hand her the bottle, and she puts it back in her purse.
The comma here is unnecessary because there are not two separate sub-clauses. This is actually two actions with one subject (the bottle), involving two passive actors (my characters) who each have their verb. This is a very common error for me. This, to me, looks like a subsequent clause, but is, in fact, a run-on clause. Putting the comma in there suggests that there are sub-clauses in a way that breaks the run-on, which would lose its subject (the bottle), if I broke them up in that way.
I reluctantly hand her the bottle and she puts it back in her purse.
My eyes drift to his broad chest, covered in ginger fur.
The comma felt right here, because I am missing out "which is" covered in ginger fur and "which is" always takes a comma, right? Nope eg "A cat which is black." But there is another issue: are there really two sub-clauses here, with the chest being described by the second sub-clause? No. My internal voice was simply wrong.
My eyes drift to his broad chest covered in ginger fur.
Covered is a run-on. Rather than see "broad chest" as one sub-clause and "covered in ginger fur" as another there is really one describing phrase "a broad chest covered in ginger first" like a "small person covered in tattoos".
...
Careful with the ellipsis. In informal writing it is so easy to overuse, and it is often worse than the em dash, or just common punctuation. You want to use it for genuine absences (eg a character who tails off for no reason) but never for interruptions or mere pauses.
Genre blindness
This is a mistake I am just learning about. Certain genres need very specific writing. Writing action, for instance, is very tough. We are practical beings, and will follow an action sequence logically, relating the decisions of a character we read about, to the ones we would make. We might be taken out of the narrative if a) we can't follow the action, due to non-action writing within the sequence, such as description, or b) if we cannot understand the decision being taken (eg because an easy alternative presents itself "wait, but why didn't he just...").
For example, in the fic I am writing one of the reasons the action was tough was because I never really thought about it. I don't like violence, but for other reasons I needed my character to be hurt, and that involves an action sequence, because of course she tries to escape and he tries to follow her, and there's thrill for the reader. "Will she escape, won't she? Will he get her, won't he?" etc. Unfortunately, being unplanned, it is unexpected for the reader, and was, perhaps, a structuring error (one I am committed to now). In the future I will try to think more about the genre implications of the scenes I am planning for, and whether they are absolutely needed and suitable, and especially how to minimise action scenes in a generally non-action narrative.
Over-explaining
This has to be the most common writing issue when describing actions.
He ignores me and, with his other hoof, reaches for the handle and turns.
It's not wrong, but what on earth else is going to happen when someone reaches for a door handle? It can be inferred that he wanted to open it by turning. Also, in action scenes like this - extra words kill the tension.
He downs the whiskey and slams it on the table, so hard that the glass cracks.
In addition to the clumsiness, the addition of 'hard' after 'slams' is just unnecessary.
He downs the whiskey and slams the glass on the table, cracking it.
'Unnecessary Qualifiers'
Qualifiers tend to limit a thing eg
Eventually I begin to realise that I’m not dying
Both "eventually" and "begin to" here emphasise that the subject did not immediately think they were going to survive, thus 'qualifying' 'realisation'. Only one is needed. 'That' is also unnecessary. I also missed a comma, because writing are hard.
Eventually, I realise I’m not dying.
so much cleaner
'My'
Another thing to be cautious with, when writing is unnecessary determiners, like the possessive determiner "My"
"I head for the exit but, scrabbling with my slippery hooves"
It's not the end of the world, but 'my' only slows this down, and clearly it's an action scene, so the sentences should be sharp and fast.
'Now'
Common words that I have to edit out in my writing are unnecessary adverbs that specify time like "now" eg
He is panting more and more now.
It is tempting to highlight the passage of time like this when there are developments in the verb - eg in that case his panting was increasing (no need to spoiler this hopefully), but actually the 'now' is inferred, and adding it after just disrupts the flow of the text, I think.
So beware 'now', when used as an adverb of time.
The writing stages
The editing stage
REMINDER: Read it out loud before publishing
It doesn't matter how many times I have read-through for the edit. I WILL ALWAYS MISS EASY STUFF IF I DO NOT DO THIS!
I have just had to brush some serious knots out of the narrative for Mare Before Midnight (fortunately still in the queue). Do not be like me. Be Thorough! Your ideas deserve it!
This is a reminder to future abrony.
You will be excited. You will want it gone.
JUST WAIT
ONE. MORE. TIME
OUT. LOUD
Only after doing that virtually flawlessly, should it be submitted.
Mare Before Midnight [NSFW]
WARNING NSFW REFERENCES AND VERY SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR A STILL UNPUBLISHED STORY
It's funny the details, some big, some small, that change at the editing stage.
In the naughty story I'm writing, I hadn't described the characters' bodies, and who cares about saucy stuff happening to characters that aren't described. So I worked that in.
But a more striking change was that the narrative accidentally made it look as if my feminised char disregarded their best friend, meaning there was no pay-off from the start, where they are portrayed for the first chaps as very close. That was just an oversight - it wasn't my char's fault, it was my fault, because I'd forgotten about her (sorry Jazz!). So I wrote that back in. Just a couple of thoughts about the friend. So much better, I think.
Another minor thing, is that describing sauciness with... um horsey chars... needs a decision on how much horse. My answer, for me, is always no horse. Firstly, because the mechanics of sauce are boring at the best of times. Secondly, because how do you relate to a person with, say, a tail? Have you ever been intimate with such a person (don't answer that). So talking about him or her flicking their tail, somehow diminishes the impact. But my char has a tail... so the reference to it becomes analogous to a person wearing a tail. You can't move it, but you can angle your butt... and you get the picture. Feeling the need to alter that description for the sauce was new.
There's also all the boring grammar errors, and sequencing errors. Fortunately, the latter weren't too horrible, even though I wrote this one in a rush. Doing that is a dull as for any editing work.
Constructive tips and word use
Avoiding 'he said / she said'
“Don’t tell me she’s still beavering away on her book!? Even during the Spring Promenade.”
“She’s promised to read me a bed-time story,” Ocean says, trying to assuage Wysteria’s concern by referring to Kimono’s more ‘normal’ behaviours.
What's wrong here? It seems ok. But actually, using said a "says" tag when you are not describing the way in which something is said, is dull. Also, here, Ocean is not answering the question, so it is vital to call that out immediately.
“Don’t tell me she’s still beavering away on her book!? Even during the Spring Promenade?”
“She’s promised to read me a bed-time story,” Ocean deflects, wanting to defend her mentor.
Interruptions in dialogue
I love seeing these in stories, and I love adding them to mine, because they are part of normal conversation and it keeps things snappy, but they are weird to write. So apparently, the below is OK! This makes me happy.
“Unlucky for him. He used to go clubbing, didn’t he? Before—.”
“You know it. Freakin’ horn dog.”
(from Mare Before Midnight, which will hopefully soon be published!)
All right
Is 'all right' right at all?
Although both forms are technically correct, the topic is still debated among writers. If you'd like to take the safe route, the older “all right” version is the most widely accepted, particularly in formal writing. “Alright” is growing in popularity and is frequently used for informal purposes.
“Sheesh, so ‘Strawberry’ has come out to play, has she?”
Like a lot of informal writing, I was never taught how to deal with expressive stuff like 'sheesh' in school. There are also expressive phrases like "Oh, God" or "Oh, no" (commas optional btw). Their grammar seems pretty fluid. I tend to avoid connecting these with sentences, like I do in the quote, because they are complete in themselves, but you can play that by ear eg "Oh gosh, thank you!" is clearly fine. Also, expressive phrases often need their associated punctuation. This one clearly needs an exclamation mark. It is, literally, an exclamation and nothing else. Also, note my failure to understand that commas are more than a 'small pause'. Again, my English teachers in primary school (OK, and the dunce writing this) got this one wrong.
“Sheesh! So ‘Strawberry’ has come out to play, has she?”
