How many times do you stop and mentally edit another’s work while reading his or her books? I’ve concluded that knowing too much about the technical aspects of writing has diminished my enjoyment of the books I read. I’m not a grammar queen, but when I see a mistake or typo, I SEE IT, especially in someone else’s writing. I miss quite a few of my own. One thing I’ve noticed lately is head-hopping. POV switches are making a comeback―or maybe they’ve never gone away―but it’s driving me crazy. (Do not confuse head-hopping with omniscient POV .) This is happening with writers I’ve read before, both well-known and lesser-known. The writers of two books I’ve been reading lately have been guilty of head-hopping. Female comments, then she has an internal thought. Male comments, then he has an internal thought. There is no scene break to acknowledge the POV switch. It’s equivalent to watching (reading) a ping pong match. Photo: Pixabay When I first started writing, I knew nothing...

It’s a writer’s truism: the most important paragraph is the first one. It opens the door to the reader, inviting him or her to come into the place you have prepared for them. Your opening must convince them that this place is somewhere they want to visit, and perhaps stay for a long time. I have two rules for writing openings, which I (almost) always try to live up to. Here they are: The first rule is to provide a few sensory details in the first paragraph, so the reader feels as though they are “there.”  What does the character or setting look like? Colors, shapes, designs? What sounds are there? Loud voices, whistles, screams, bells? What smells? Strong like gasoline? Sweet like lilacs? Wet wool drying on a radiator? What tactile sensations? Soft wind on skin? The rough scrape of a poorly shaved chin?  The second rule is that the first scene should either encapsulate or foreshadow the theme of the entire chapter or book. Here’s an example from a book I work...

SELEKTED RITING WRULES: 1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects. 2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. 3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. 4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. 5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.) 6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration. 7. Be more or less specific. 8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary. 9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies. 10. No sentence fragments. 11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used. 12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. 13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. 14. One should NEVER generalize. 15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches. 16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 17. One-word sentences? Eliminate. 18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 19. The passive voice is to be ignored. 20. Eliminate commas, th...

I've lately noticed that authors have started typing their book titles in capital letters on many social forums. I suppose this trend began on sites that didn't allow for formatting. Properly, book titles should be typed in italics like this: My Best Book Italics are also used for the titles of: Plays Movies TV shows Newspapers Magazines Ships Spacecraft Another curious and recent practice comes from news services which have decided to blare their headlines in all caps. This, too, is incorrect. Quotation marks are correctly used to enclose headlines. Quotations are also used for other shorter works like the titles of: Short stories Poems Songs Chapters Articles So there you have the rules as they stand today, subject to public abuse and change, of course. Do any items on either list surprise you? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dani Greer runs the Blog Book Tours yahoogroup which teaches authors how to promote their books with a virtual tour. Next class starts May 1. She is a founding mem...

Language is not static. Language evolves over time. Words come en vogue (or are invented) and some words become passé or even archaic. As language changes, so do the “rules” of its use. For example: someone says to you that “every sentence ends with a period and that rule will never change.” Oh, really? That’s news to me! Here are examples where a period does not end a sentence: It ends with a question mark It ends with an exclamation point It ends with a colon “Never start a sentence with a conjunction.” But why not? This can be a personal preference or a “house rule” for a publisher or publication, but it is not a law and if you break it you go to jail. My husband, who also edits, follows this “rule” but I don’t. We still manage to have a happy, loving marriage despite this difference in our editing preference. “Sentence fragments are wrong.” Baloney. What kind of writing are you doing? I would say this is true for academic and professional writing, but in fiction writing, ...

Commas are the single worst thing about being an editor. How can such a tiny little piece of punctuation cause so much time-sucking anguish? The rules are both inflexible and squishy at the same time.  Rule One: Two independent clauses separated by a conjunction need a comma. So the following sentence (with two subjects: he and it) is punctuated correctly with a comma.  He started the car, and it made a noise.   This next sentence (with only one subject: he) is also punctuated correctly without a comma.  He started the car and drove around town for a few hours but soon got bored and went home to clean out the garage and mow the lawn.   This drives writers crazy because these examples make no visual or auditory sense. Nobody wants a comma in the first example, and everybody wants to put a comma between “hours” and “but” in the second example.  Here’s the squishy part. Technically, the comma in the second example isn’t necessary, but many editors and publis...