{"id":141,"date":"2014-02-04T10:53:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T10:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2014\/02\/04\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-5\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:16","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nHave you
\never known someone who has an annoying habit? Every time they do what they do,
\nit drives you up the wall?<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nSometimes
\nauthors develop annoying habits, and those habits can destroy a writer\u2019s
\nrelationship with a reader. Authors will say it has everything to do with style,
\nbut as discussed many times, style stops being effective when it is overdone,
\nand when style is overdone, the cause is usually that the author has picked up
\nan annoying habit. I\u2019ve listed a few of these practices that self-editing will
\nhelp to eliminate:<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nStarting
\na sentence with a conjunction is sometimes a way to bring emphasis to the
\nsecond portion of an independent clause. The comma and conjunction doesn\u2019t hold
\nenough of a pause. But letting that conjunction stand out does the trick. That
\nis, unless the author starts every other sentence with a conjunction. Then it
\nbecomes a bad habit that weakens emphasis elsewhere in the novel.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhile
\nwe\u2019re discussing conjunctions, another annoying practice is to continually
\nplace an incorrect comma after the conjunction. Sometimes, the rules of
\npunctuation call for it, especially if there is a non-restrictive or
\nparenthetical clause or maybe an interjection following the conjunction.
\nHowever, 99.9% of the time, the comma has become a habit of incorrect punctuation.
\nThe conjunctions so <\/i>and yet<\/i> are the exception. Sometimes, the
\nauthor needs to have that pause a comma brings. So, the key is? Let your ear
\nplace that comma where it is needed.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nRedundancies
\nare a plague of writers who are unsure if they\u2019re getting the message across. He
\nfears the reader isn\u2019t going to get his message. The easiest route for an
\nauthor to take is to repeat himself, and when an author takes that easy route,
\nthe reader believes she\u2019s being talked down to. The truth is, the author should
\nmake sure that he\u2019s painted a clear enough picture and move forward.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nExclamation
\npoints! I actually get headaches when characters scream and yell at each other
\nin every other sentence, but some authors mistakenly believe the exclamation
\npoint is used to add emphasis to what is being said or, heavens to Betsy, what
\nis being thought. The truth about exclamation points is that they\u2019re to denote
\nloud speech. When a character is yelling at another character or cheering
\nanother character, by all means, use the exclamation point. Examine real-life
\nspeech. Do people screech at each other often? Not really. It\u2019s a good way to
\nget smacked or worse. For that reason, one or two exclamation points in a novel
\nmay be one or two exclamation points too many. Tone it down.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nEm
\ndashes and ellipses marks are another form of punctuation that authors discover
\nand then pick up the annoying habit of using. Finding a manuscript without a
\npage peppered with either one or both of these marks is becoming increasingly
\nhard to find. Often the author doesn\u2019t use the mark correctly. For example, the
\nellipses point or mark truly doesn\u2019t hold the function of showing a pause in
\nspeech. Authors have adapted it because it is easier for them to take a
\nshortcut rather than to add an action that denotes the pause. <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nSometimes,
\nthe dialogue on a page has every speech ending with an em dash to note that the
\ncharacter has been cut off mid-sentence. I don\u2019t know about others, but if I\u2019m
\ninvolved in that type of conversation, I\u2019ve left the room by the time I\u2019m
\ninterrupted more than twice. Readers might make it through one such
\nconversation in a novel, but they probably won\u2019t turn the page after the second
\none begins. Why? Rudeness isn\u2019t tolerated for very long in fiction or in real
\nlife.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhen
\nself-editing, it is important to look for these stylized areas to determine if
\nthe habit we\u2019ve taken up is annoying enough to prevent the reader from enjoying
\nthe story. <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nRemember:
\nstyle is about effective usage, not over usage.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nHappy
\nediting.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever known someone who has an annoying habit? Every time they do what they do, it drives you up the wall? Sometimes authors develop annoying habits, and those habits can destroy a writer\u2019s relationship with a reader. Authors will say it has everything to do with style, but as discussed many times, style […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[21,32,114,73,115],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-editing-advice","tag-grammar","tag-habits","tag-punctuation","tag-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}