Welcome back to the Blood-Red Pencil podcast, with your host, Elle Carter Neal . We would like to wish all our readers and listeners a very happy new year and a successful and prosperous 2023.  New Year’s resolutions—no matter how well-intended—are made to be broken. Why so? Could it be that they are created on a whim and aren’t backed by the commitment that turns spoken words into physical (or mental) action? Links mentioned in this episode: Linda Lane - Resolution or Commitment  When Linda Lane moved into a smaller place, she spent days going through old files and eliminating bags full of no-longer-necessary papers. She found several rejection letters received years ago when she had sent out her not-quite-ready-for-publication first novel. Most were form letters, but one agent sent a personal note, commenting that the manuscript needed "revision". He was right.  Helen Ginger - Making Writing Resolutions     For the late Helen Ginger, the area of commitment s...

  I still clearly remember the first grammar error made by an adult that outraged me when I was probably only eight years old or so. My mother had returned to work after a long illness, and my grandmother had moved out of our house, where she was helping to care for me, into her own apartment. I was to be sent to an after-school care centre for the first time in my little life. I already had a grudge against the place, of course, and this pique was cemented by the matron in charge ordering us all to “ lay down for a nap”. My small ears had only ever been exposed to “lay” as the past tense of reclining or as the objective form of my mother’s demand that I “Lay the table!” (Also, hens lay eggs. People do not “lay” without an object in the sentence.) This error falls into the category of Ignorance when made by Civilians (also known as non-writers), and Carelessness when perpetrated by Writers. Certainly, some writers are ignorant of the nuances of Lay versus Lie , but this is such...

My biggest pet peeve these days is a story that doesn’t get going until halfway into the book. I’m reading one of my favorite authors right now, and nothing is happening, at least nothing that inspires me turn the page. This book is turning into a solution to my usually sleepless nights. I feel betrayed. Not only are there external characters I couldn’t care less about, but the two main characters who have kept me riveted over eighteen previous books don’t have an interesting enough story to give them anything to do. My favorite of the two characters is nothing more than an afterthought, and the interaction that made the duo famous is non-existent. Another gripe, and yes, I know it’s a matter of writing style, but when the character has a thought and then dialogue, I find it confusing when they're in two different paragraphs. It seems like padding, and when it happens throughout the book, it is padding. This book is padded. Previous books might have been, but the story kept me ...

With "pet peeves" being our theme of the month here at the Blood Red Pencil, I had soooo many to choose from! But in the end, I went with a simple peeve that grates on my mind like nails on an old-fashioned chalkboard: The misuse and confusion of it's  (with an apostrophe) and its (no apostrophe).  Honestly (if I can vent for just a second)...  It isn't that hard! Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Here's the skinny on  it's and its , short and sweet: It's  is the contraction of "it is" or "it has." (To rephrase the sentence above:  It's  not that hard!)  Its  is the possessive form for the pronoun "it." ( Its  grammatical companions include hers, his, theirs.) Most (but not all) of the mix up I see comes from using it's in the possessive sense. And I see this everywhere—not just in books, but on websites, in advertisements, and in menus (especially in menus!). I don't really have much more to say about th...

This month we’re posting about our pet peeves here at the Blood-Red Pencil. Previously I’ve shared some of the craft issues I see repeatedly in some published books that bother me as a reader, and I like to think of them as a mishap. Those same craft issues also bother me as an editor, especially if I'm working with a new client who decides that just because they see it in already published books that must mean it’s okay. It's not okay. We owe it to readers to give them our best, and our best doesn't include weak or ordinary writing. In a second or third draft of a story we can take an ordinary turn of phrase and make it extraordinary. Here are just a few little things that could be changed to improve a narrative. They're ones that jar me every time I read them in a novel and prompt me to consciously pay attention to avoid them while writing: Shrugging shoulders . Very few of us ever shrug anything other than a shoulder, so why not just write "shrugged." Or ...