Category: Revision and Editing

Son of Comma-tose

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As I’ve   mentioned before, a lot of comma usage is a matter of individual style and taste.  Writers and their editors (and later in the process, their copyeditors) have had many a wrangle about exactly which commas in a particular work need to stay, and which to go.  As far as who wins — well, it’s an ongoing struggle, and over time the honors are about even.

There are, however, a couple of places where the commas are not just a good idea, they’re mandatory.  (One caveat: I’m talking here about standard American English usage, because that is my native idiom.)  For example:

Standard dialogue punctuation.  If a sentence followed by an attribution to a speaker would have ended with a period if it wasn’t in dialogue, then in dialogue it has a comma followed by the closed quote followed by the attribution.

“This is how you do it,” the writer said.
“Do what?” the reader asked.
“Punctuate dialogue, dammit!” said the writer.

Nouns and phrases in apposition to other nouns. Here you have sentences with descriptive words or phrases stuffed into them, like this:

Bob’s uncle, a traveling salesman from Indiana, retired to Jacksonville, Florida, to raise alligators.

Note that the commas in this case always travel in pairs — unless the appositive falls at the end of the sentence, in which case you have sentences like these:

Bob introduced me to his uncle, a retired traveling salesman.  His uncle raised alligators on a farm near Jacksonville, Florida.

It’s not a difficult thing to learn, it’s just a pain to remember if you haven’t already gotten the patterns burned into your brain.  As with most things, practice helps.

One of Those Days

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Every so often, a day comes along when absolutely nothing gets done.  Today was a day like that.

Well, I did make a beef stew and push on with the current editing gig, but as accomplishments go that doesn’t count for much.

I blame the weather, because — well, why not?

And just one heartfelt plea:  before you send out your finished manuscript, take a minute to go over the rules for English dialogue punctuation and double-check to make certain that you’ve been following them.  Pretty please? With sugar on top?

Your beta readers, editors, and copyeditors will thank you.

Dash It All!

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Where would writers be without the helpful em-dash?†

A dash, the style manuals helpfully state, indicates a break in the sentence, or (as part of a pair) encloses a parenthetical statement.  In practice, this makes the dash an informal replacement for several other pieces of punctuation:  parentheses, the colon, the semicolon, even ellipses.

It’s the protean nature of the dash that presents the greatest hazard.  Being so useful in a variety of different situations, it’s vulnerable to overuse.  A writer who isn’t careful can end up with a page full of dash-filled sentences, which lends a sort of panting urgency to the prose that usually isn’t wanted.  The best general advice I ever read on the subject was a stricture I encountered in a media fanzine back in the pre-internet era, and it ran something like this:  “If you use more than two dashes in one paragraph, you aren’t allowed to use any at all in the next.  So there.”‡

There’s a higher-level version of the same problem, involving semicolons.  There are some writers — I plead guilty here — who like semicolons entirely too much.  If I’m not careful, I can find myself committing a three-sentence paragraph where all three sentences feature independent clauses joined together by semicolons.  At that point, I have to force myself to take an axe to at least two of those sentences and break them back up into their component clauses.

Sometimes, though, I cheat, and replace one of the semicolons with a dash instead.

†There’s also a shorter version, the en-dash, but its uses are much more restricted and frankly, if you use a hyphen nobody’s going to call you on it. Well, maybe the typesetter, but unless you’re being your own desktop publisher, you aren’t likely to ever meet him or her.

‡I believe the zine reviewer in question was noted Star Trek fan Paula Block, but at this remove I can’t be sure. Whoever it was, I owe her for the words of wisdom.

So Today was a Short Story Day

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We’re about two drafts in on what will probably be a three or four draft story.

The thing about short stories is that they don’t leave you any room for error.  If a novel is like cruising along in a jetliner at 30,000 feet, a short story is like flying a WWI biplane at treetop level without a parachute.  One mistake, and you’re toast.

This is why I keep telling people that writing a novel is a lot easier than writing a short story — it just takes longer.

A Pitfall for the Unwary

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One of the bits of advice given to fledgling writers in the current era is “the spellchecker is your friend.”

Like a lot of advice-for-writers, this advice is both true and not-true.  Or, to put it another way, the spellchecker is your friend, but it’s not your best friend.  It’s the friend who’s fun to be with and helpful on the easy stuff, but who’s nowhere in sight when you’ve got a lot of heavy lifting to do, or the one who’s got your back right up to the point where they run off with your prom date.

A spellchecker will catch your typos, and it will catch your misspellings . . . but only so long as the typos and misspellings aren’t also legitimate words in your spellchecker’s language-of-choice.  It won’t do you a bit of good with the its/it’s problem, or the to/two/too problem, or the there/their/they’re problem, or any of those fatally similar and easily confused homonyms.  It won’t remind you to put apostrophes in your possessives, and it won’t catch embarrassing stuff like pubic for public or untied for united.

As for your characters’ names, or for any terminology coined especially for the story you’re working on . . . unless you remember to add those words to the spellchecker’s user dictionary, it’s not going to keep you from messing those up either.  And heaven help you if you accidentally add a wrong spelling to the user dictionary, because getting in there and taking it out again is not something most word processors tend to make easy.

The sad  fact is that spellchecker or no spellchecker, there’s still no substitute for going over your manuscript by hand and eye before sending it out.

A Seasonal Opportunity

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In honor of the midwinter holiday of your choice — or the summer solstice, if you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere — Dr. Doyle’s Editorial and Critique Service (i. e., me) is offering a special seasonal opportunity:

Now you can give your writerly friend, relative, or significant other an editorial-services gift certificate.  Purchase it now on their behalf at the usual rate, and I’ll enter it on my scheduling spreadsheet as a paid-for job, date TBD.  I’ll even supply a printable PDF gift certificate suitable for putting into an envelope and sticking in somebody’s Christmas stocking.

 

Comma-tose

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Of all the punctuation marks in English, the comma is probably the one where usage varies the most.  The period, the exclamation point, and the question mark are simple and straightforward by comparison; dashes and parentheses only become controversial when used to excess; semicolons are respectable and well-behaved.  But every era has its own ideas about what constitutes the proper use of the comma, and every author has his or her own preferences as well.

Some writers deploy the comma with a light hand, and strictly according to textbook grammar.  Others regard the comma as a tool for controlling sentence rhythm and pacing, over and above its grammatical functions, and use it accordingly.

Determining which sort of writer you are is one of the steps toward recognizing and cultivating your own prose style.

(At some point in your journey, you’ll probably find yourself developing a strong opinion pro or con on the question of the serial comma.  No matter which side you choose, you will at some point end up in an argument about it with an editor whose house style calls for doing it the other way.  Think of it as a rite of passage.)

Crass Commercialism for the Win

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It’s that time of year again — the time when I remind all my faithful readers (and anybody else who happens to drop by) that in addition to nattering on about words and writing in this blog, I also offer freelance editorial services.

If you’ve got a NaNoWriMo first draft that you’d like help whipping into shape, or a finished novel that you want to spruce up for submission, or a self-publishing project in need of an editorial eye . . . I’m available.  I’ve still got some slots open at the moment in late December and in January; if you’re interested, best to grab them while they’re hot.

Peeve of the Day

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If you’re writing a story in the past tense — as most of us do — then events and actions that took place in the past of the story go into the past perfect tense.  You know, the one with all the “haves” and “hads” in it.

If you’re writing a story in the present tense — not so common, but it happens sometimes — then you can put past events and actions into the simple past tense.

(What about all the verbs with all the “mights” and “shoulds” and “oughts” and stuff in them?  Those are the so-called modal verbs, the ones that are principally responsible for the observation that looked at one way, English only has two verb tenses, but looked at another way, it has roughly thirty-odd.  If you feel uncertain about dealing with them, your best bet is probably to find yourself a beta reader with a really good feel for language and prose style and run everything past him or her.)

Looking Forward

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Soon — a matter of days, now — I will have the novel finished.  And then I can begin the fun part:  revision.

No, I’m not being ironic.  I’m just one of those writers for whom generating the first-draft text is the tough part.  Revision, on the other hand, is a pleasure, because that’s when I can take the rough lump of undistinguished prose and work on it until it sings.  (Or shrieks, if that’s what I want it to do.)  At times like that, I’m convinced that the proof of God’s love for writers is that he gave us the opportunity to make a second draft.

Other writers don’t see it that way, of course.  They’re the ones for whom writing the first draft is the pure joy of creation, like God on the first day, and revision is hard, brain-breaking work.

If you’re reading this, you probably know already which kind of writer you are.  But a couple of diagnostics, just in case:

Do you keep on tinkering with your finished story or novel, rather than biting the bullet and sending it out?  Do you tell yourself, “I have to follow up one more bit of research” or “I need to tweak the last paragraph just a little bit to make it perfect”?

You’re a reviser.  Because that’s the reviser’s way of shooting him-or-herself in the foot.  Perfection is always one more iteration away, and until the work is perfect, it can’t be turned loose into the world.

Do you finish your story in a blaze of energy, then put it aside “just for a little while, to get some perspective” — only to have your attention caught by the idea for a new story instead?  Is your desk drawer or your hard drive full of completed one-draft stories, languishing untouched while you pursue the latest and brightest butterfly?

You’re a first-draft wizard.  Your problem isn’t with getting ideas and giving them form, it’s with neglecting them afterwards instead of making them wash behind their ears and put on clean clothes and show prospective readers their company manners.

Either way, there’s only one cure:  You have to learn how to do the part of the job you think is hard work, in order to do the part of the job you think is fun.