Fiction Scribe

Stop with the over punctuation already!

I don’t know if it is because of the rise of the internet culture or what else, but the overuse of the question mark and exclamation mark is beyond annoying.

So stop it already.

If you use one question mark, I get it - it’s a question. I also understand with just one exclamation point that the statement is being made at a louder than normal volume. Using more than one of either those implies you think I’m not intelligent enough to understand what those punctuation marks mean without a couple more behind the first one.

The last thing I want to critique or edit is something by some unpublished author who hasn’t taken the time to open any other book on the planet and note that other authors don’t do that.

Yes, I said ‘unpublished’. You didn’t think you were going to get published abusing your punctuation marks like that, did you?

Did you know the current status of a certain site on the internet, small in size, has been given up by the original founder?

Ugh. Gag me with a spoon.

It’s true enough that most students who actually put in enough effort to complete their homework and finish their papers have most likely developed all the skills needed to meet those minimum word/page requirements. However, we should get over that habit as quickly as possible if we want to have any credibility as writers.

Why some people insist on putting entirely too many words for what they want to say is beyond me. Writing like that does not make you look smart; it makes you look like a writer who is keen on being redundant.

“reason why�
“current status�
“small in size�
“original founder�
“end result�
“refer back�
“two polar opposites� (Hello!)

There are plenty of them out there, and none of them are good. Unfortunately, most of them are a regular part of English. However, that does not mean you get to be lazy with your writing.

Check your work. Say more with fewer words. Be concise.

Please. Let the rest of the world get back to using spoons for soup and cereal.

Please submit a list of all employees broken down by sex.

We know what that should means, but we also know what that could mean.

I dislike double meanings when I’m reading a story because it distracts me from the novel. I truly hate sentences that could mean more than one thing when filling out legal documents or reading things for research.

Basically put, this is a lesson in paying attention to what you’re writing. The English language is a funny thing with multiple meanings and words that sound the same but have three different ways to spell them.

To, too, and two. Their, there, and they’re. These aren’t quite the sentence above, but they’re all the more reason to pay attention and get your intended meaning across. It’ll safe you from instant slush pile, and it might just save you from embarrassment.

A lot of embarrassment.

Compliment vs complement. This is one of the more subtle mistakes writers make in that it’s a difference of one letter. It’s not something I see entirely too much, though, so it doesn’t grind my teeth like other peeves.

Complement can be used as a verb as well as a noun.

Compliment is also a verb and a noun.

Lovely, isn’t it? You have to love the English language. So with this one, you have to concentrate on the definitions because the usual ‘tips and tricks’ don’t apply.

Complement means to satisfy a need or complete a whole.

Compliment means praise. If you remember that this means praise and only praise, then you should be okay with it.

To apply this one:

Her work complemented the rest of the team’s work. (satisfied a need, completed a whole)

The team complimented her for her work. (praised)

Think of all the “shiny, happy, perfect” people in your life. Most people have at least one. I had one who decided she would be my high school rival.

Until she realized I could pretty much wipe the floor with her.

These are the people you hate for some reason or another, be the person chauvinistic, loose with money, a braggart, or whatever other quality you want to dislike. Above it all, you dislike them because they’re ‘perfect’.

Now, unless you want your readers to abhor your main character, don’t make him or her into one of the happy, shiny people! Or at least take it all away from him or her as soon as possible.

People want to read about people they can identify with, not their boss who’d they’d rather see roast than in the next best seller. Give your hero a flaw, a crack, a prejudice, a something that makes him or her at least a little more human.

But let’s not pretend putting a cigarette in your MC’s hand will solve all of his or her perfection problems.

I want to read about a main character with a tick, a past, a bad habit - anything to make him or her seem more real to me. Having everything drop into his or her lap, having all the perfect qualities needed to beat the challenge straight off from the beginning… All of that is going to bore your reader.

People want to read about the struggle, and there is probably no struggle your readers can identify with quicker than internal struggle. I don’t want to hear about the internal struggles of the shiny, happy people. They’re likely struggles I either don’t care about or don’t want to read about anyway.

So take your main character off his or her pedestal, kick him/her around a bit, give him/her reasons to doubt/fear/question, and you just might end up with a character I want to read about.

There’s a little saying when it comes to writing I wish every wannabe writer would have tattooed on their forehead the moment they consider writing something:

If you don’t read it, don’t write it.

I’ve been writing for a long time and became known as a writer in middle school. (As much as you can be considered such at that age and writing ability.) When it got around the rumor mill that I wanted to write stories, people would come talk to me about how cool it would be to write books or how they should start their own books (oh, glory), etc.

And wouldn’t you believe it, it still happens today.

Sometimes I welcome it and even encourage it. Some fail (miserably) and go back to reading and appreciating, while others demonstrate a very real talent.

When it bothers me is when someone who I know doesn’t like reading all that much declares s/he is going to write. Or even better, when someone I know is an avid romance novel reader decides s/he is going to write the next breakout crime thriller.

“Have you ever read a crime thriller?”

“Well, no, but I have this great idea -”

It only goes downhill from there.

WRITE WHAT YOU READ.

Writing sucks blood, sweat, tears, alcohol, and cigarette smoke from you. It’s a lonely existence at times with your only friends at that time being the computer, your music, and your sin of choice. You might as well be writing something you actually enjoy if you’re going to make the commitment. Writing something you a.) don’t read and thus b.) don’t know much (if anything) about is only going to lead to a bad story. That is, if you even complete it.

Look at wherever you keep your books. Are there mostly biographies? Mostly sci-fi? Mystery? That should give you a clue as to what you just might should be writing. And if you haven’t read at least fifty books in your chosen genre, don’t talk to me until you have. I don’t care about your grand visions or how good your mom says your story is.

It’s simple. It truly, truly is. I’ve mentioned it before, albeit briefly.

So, again, I’ll make it simple for anyone having trouble.

“Can” is about ability. “May” is about permission.

Can you fly? No. May you fly? Well, you certainly can feel free to try. You don’t need my permission.

“Can I have a piece of cake?” If you have a mouth and a digestive system, I reckon you can!

“Can” is a question or whether or not you have the ability to do something. Asking if you can have a piece of cake is pretty ridiculous unless you’re unsure of your food allergies, and you’re asking your doctor if it’s okay. Even then, s/he’s likely to say, “You can have a piece of cake, but it’ll go straight to your bum and make your tongue swell up.”

(Allergic to cake? My nephew has an egg allergy - no traditional cakes for him, so it does happen.)

“May” is all about permission. You have the ability, but the action is not yours to take without the permission of someone. May you go to the bathroom is a perfectly acceptable question. Asking can you go to the bathroom could very well mean you’re asking the person of authority to check whether or not you have a bladder.

Can = ability.

May = permission.

All clear now?

This is actually something I didn’t learn/didn’t pay attention to until my Women’s Studies course in college, but the lesson made enough of an impression to truly stick with me.

In my opinion, if you talk/type like a goon elsewhere, I’m not at all likely to read your work. That’s why I stray into mentioning pet peeves in what I hear and/or see in debates, speeches, etc instead of what I only see people doing in their writing.

I’ll forgive you if you say something wrong occasionally because we have our own weird accents. (If you type like you speak and type “gonna” instead of “going to” then we have something to talk about.) But it grinds my nerves when people use words when they don’t know the meanings and other things like that.

For the Princess Bride fans out there, remember this?

“Inconceivable!”

“I do not think that means what you think that means.”

So in comes sex versus gender. People tend to interchange these two words as if they mean the exact same things. I’ve even seen it done (repeatedly) in sex and/versus gender debates. So here it is in simple terms, and it’s easy to remember. At least, the sex bit is.

Sex is biological. His sex is male because he has balls, a penis, and a good lot of testosterone.

Gender is society’s way of fitting you in a box. She cooks and cleans because those are her stereotypical gender roles.

Your sex is decided by your parts and your chromosomes.

Gender is a social construct.

He can cook and clean just as well as she can because gender roles aren’t rules. She, however, can’t magically grow a penis and change her sex.

Have I made it clear now?

So the next time you tell your partner they do this or that because s/he is the wo/man, you’d better be talking about menstruation or getting a hard-on, not the dishes.

You may not have missed me, but you certainly missed pet peeves…

Or not. Moving on.

I am so, so tired of wandering around looking at writing sites and finding a multitude of sites dedicated to answering the same publisher and/or agent guidelines over and over. I can understand if you want to clarify something like a technical term or the like with someone who knows, but my teeth truly grind when I see someone ask something like this:

“The guidelines say to submit three consecutive chapters, but can I submit chapters three, nine, and eleven?”

Yes, I’ve seen it.

First, it’s not “can I” it’s “may I”. Secondly? Open a Word document, type in “consecutive”, and press shift and F7. (I’m assuming if you have a question like this about the guidelines, you don’t have an actual hard copy of a dictionary or thesaurus.) In none of the alternatives does it even hint that “three consecutive” is anything other than three in a row or three chapters - one after another.

Again, I understand clarifying something important and not obvious with someone who knows what they are doing, but do you really need clarification beyond your dictionary for what the word “consecutive” means?

Your manuscript is not special. Your manuscript is not a best-seller. The day your manuscript is special and/or a best-seller is when you’ve:

*Been accepted by the publisher/agent.
*Had a agent and/or copy-editor(s) go through it.
*Have your book on the stores shelves.
*Had people actually pick up your book and want to buy it.

If you let the experts get back to their jobs and stop answering questions about exactly what consecutive chapters means and why you absolutely shouldn’t send your manuscript on colored paper, then they’ll get through their piles of manuscripts faster and just might see yours some day.

Last week I mentioned people not paying attention to the point of misspelling titles. In the past, I’ve also mentioned taking care in all you do when it comes to writing properly.

Along those same lines, this week’s pet peeve is about writers who don’t pay attention overall. Their blue-eyed beauty mentioned on page 17 suddenly has green eyes on page 32. Not for any magical reasoning or because her eyes change color with her mood, but because the writer forgot.

Take notes. Write your story. Reread notes. Rewrite your story. Read your notes again. With any hope, your readers are interested in what your characters are doing. If you’re lousy at keeping your blue-haired hero with blue hair, then you need to start keeping better notes.

Don’t even try to get me to read something lengthy of yours if you don’t have some sort of notes.

For those who are forgetful and/or don’t pay attention, here’s a list of the previous pet peeves. Call it a 20th Anniversary Edition.

1. That vs Who
2. Just… Just…
3. Filler Words
4. Thinking
5. And then… And then…
6. Words
7. Spelling
8. Consistency
9. Dialogue Tags Part One
10. Dialogue Tags Part Two
11. Stating the Obvious
12. Repeating Yourself
13. “Said he.”
14. Paragraph Breaks
15. Poetry Capitalization
16. Blogging for Money Discussion
17. Nausea
18. Prose or Poetry
19. The Basics

I am certainly peeved this week with this one. I wasn’t even planning on this for a pet peeve, but it needs to be said. I’ve had it.

Writers, start paying attention! I don’t care who you are, what your age is, or what is on your resume (assuming you have one) - if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you have to pay attention! (Watch me make a bunch of typos in this post. Ha.)

I am a staff member on two writing forums which, obviously, see a lot of beginning writers. This pet peeve is especially for those writers. This is also for my delightfully persistent spammer “Timoty” who can’t even be bothered to spell his own name right. If I’m wrong and you have a weirdly spelled name, step up and try to make a useful comment which won’t end up in my trash bin.

We all make mistakes. I understand that and have received emails about my own typing blunders. That’s the reason (beyond plain not having the time) I don’t go through and correct the grammar and spelling mistakes I find on blog posts. I usually just end up not going back to those blogs if the errors are severe and plentiful enough. As far as forum posts go, my policy is: “I’m not your spell check.” If you can’t correct the things any basic word processor would catch and/or auto correct, then you need to go back and work on it before I’ll look at it again.

What makes me really grind my teeth is when writers, who often proclaim to have the goals of getting published and being taken seriously as a writer, spell titles wrong. Yes, titles. You’ve gone to the trouble of writing something, gathering the courage (or simply stroking your ego enough) to post it up, and you don’t take the care to spell your title correctly?

I wouldn’t be as peeved about this as I am if I wasn’t all too aware that:

Want to know a little secret? If you don’t spell the title of your post (blog, forum, or otherwise) right, I’m not going to read it. I won’t read the first word, the first line, or the first paragraph. Nada. Harsh? No. You want to be a writer? Pay attention at least enough to do me this favor. Always keep in mind what your readers will see/read first. Always.

When it comes to poetry - free verse poetry - there is a thin line to tread between poetry and prose.

This
is not
poetry.

You could argue it is poetry. You could say it’s some sort of artistic statement. That’s the annoying thing about poetry. However, there are entirely too many people who consider themselves poets because they put strange line breaks in prose that reads just like prose when the line breaks aren’t there. An example:

You could argue
it is poetry.
You could say
it’s some sort of
artistic
statement.
That’s
the annoying thing about poetry.

Don’t. Just don’t do that. If you can remove the line breaks and it reads like prose, it is prose.

Yes, there is such a thing as prose poetry, but even prose poetry reads slightly different than regular prose. (You can see my example of prose poetry The First Drinks below.) It’s closer to the prose line than any other poetry is/should be, but it’s still poetry in that it doesn’t read like regular prose.

Yes, I’m repeating myself, but I’ve seen this happen entirely too many times.

You don’t have to rhyme, but you do have to write poetry if you’re a poet.

Some people claim the way the English language works only does so to piss them off.

Sometimes I’m inclined to agree.

Nausea, nauseous, nauseated… This is one of those things people get wrong so much it’s almost becoming the normal way to say it despite being incorrect. In fact, I don’t recall anyone ever using it right in my presence.

Putting it simply:

Nausea = Sickness of the stomach, an ill feeling, a feeling one my vomit. It’s a noun. A feeling.

Nauseous = Causing nausea. Think about this the next time you claim you are nauseous. You may very well be, but I have yet to encounter a person who makes me want to vomit on sight. Let’s assume you’re not.

Nauseated = Feeling nausea, about to vomit. Do you have an “icky” feeling? Then you’re feeling nauseated. Smell something bad that makes you want to vomit? You’re feeling nauseated. Not nauseous.

The nauseous smell invades your senses and causes nausea.

The nauseous smell invades your senses and causes you to feel nauseated.

The feeling of nausea came this morning, and you’ve been feeling nauseated since.

If you’re still a bit confused, check out this post by my friend at My Pet Shadow, which inspired this post.

No, this isn’t a pet peeve about discussion. I’m opening the floor to what may or may not be a pet peeve for you.

In the post Making an Honest Blogger’s Dollar, Richard from Just Poker Talk and I got into an interesting discussion.

The main subject is that of blogging for money.

While I believe that sometimes you just have to do what’s necessary to pay the rent, I also agree with Richard’s comment:

“Part of me thinks that the old way is better, that writers who are published through traditional means are more respectable.”

I believe traditionally published authors (submission processes, etc are part of the publishing process) have a more respectable position in the writing world than the average blogger who signed up with one of the many advertising sites. Younger writers and bloggers may cry no fair on that one, but no one should be an instant hit. You have to work at honing your craft, which might not be such a necessary thing to put on your resume when posting reviews and advertisements for these companies.

I mean no insult to writers who do this, but as I said in the comments of the Making an Honest Blogger’s Dollar post, I have no doubt that with some companies, a lower quality writer with higher traffic (though ideally that shouldn’t happen) would be chosen over a higher quality writer with lower traffic.

What happens, though, is both low and high quality writers are hired so there’s little to have as far as respectability goes with this sort of writing.

I recently read a post called Should I Blog for Money? over at ProBlogger which I found interesting. There are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to blog advertising - including ruining your reputation - but would you take the chance? Or do you hold to the ideal of being traditionally published?

Where do you draw the line? Is working for PayPerPost or the like wrong while working for an advertising company offline acceptable? Is it the same thing or different?

Does it come down to a matter of necessity or a matter of honor?

Let me know what you think. Where do you draw the line with your writing? Do bloggers advertising hold a place on your writing related pet peeve list?

Two years ago, if you would have called me a poet, I would have backed away shaking my head. One year ago, I would have smiled and nodded. I may have not been writing poetry for long, but in my short time writing and critiquing it, a few pet peeves have arisen.

While capitalizing the first letter of the first word on every line may be a stylistic poetry, I’ve never seen it used in a way I’d know it was a stylistic choice instead of a mistake.

In my experience, capitalizing in that way in poetry shows one of three things:

a.) you didn’t take the time to check it over after you typed it in your word processor
b.) you’re new to poetry
or
c.) both

If you hate the tediousness of going back and correcting the capitalization, Microsoft Word has a way to turn it off and on as you please.

At the top of the screen, go to “Tools” and then “AutoCorrect Options” in the drop down menu.

It’s worth the correction, not only to show you care about your own work but that you have respect for your readers.