Writing Tips

Punctuation

Composing your sentences: Please punctuate before it punches my brain.  Seriously.  Do it.  You can.  You can really do it.  I've edited and critiqued so many works with such wrong or so little punctuation that it hurt my soul and made the process nearly intolerable.  You don't even have to be a Grammar Nazi to do a relatively good job of it after some minor research and practice.

Utilize your beta readers and trade reviews with others in order to improve one chapter at a time--and use someone who actually knows what they're doing.  A lot of pretend editors do more harm than good--they're just as much a Noob as the next Noob, or they're EXTREMELY LAZY.  You should be able to spot them, but if you can't, ask around.  Don't always take the first "I'll do it!"

Most of us love to just concentrate on writing, and we love how it makes us feel. But in order to have others fully enjoy the story you have spent so much time on-- possibly too much, though in many cases on writing sites, not enough -- you need to edit just a little bit before posting it in any kind of forum--or edit a lot, lot more in the case of sending it on to an editor, agent, or POD (publish on demand). Otherwise, you may end up with everything jumbled up and legible only to yourself.

You should not always trust those who love you to be honest or capable of giving a good edit, or even heavy editorial advice.  First, they're not writers, you are.  Unless they are, in which case listen.  Second, loved ones usually want to encourage you.  They usually cannot give a trained critique most of the time, and their personal styles may be completely different than yours. They might use more elliptical commas than you do, or more interruptive elements.  They usually don't have the eye developed for plot construction, for enhancing or fully fleshing out character arcs, for mirror or major red herrings, or for most things technical.  And a lot of them can't write very well, either.

Some of those loved ones could have passed college but may have given their English classes enough of a thought only to barely pass so they could focus on their career's core curriculum.  Same with math--I was great at math, but don't ever ask me to repeat any other formula but the quadratic equation.  That's the only one I can repeat, and I know polynomials can be divided by other polynomials and binomials, and that matrices can be multiplied, too.  I don't remember most of what I learned.  It is unlikely they'll remember, either.

Old English is an excellent example of the lack of punctuation, where only certain people could manage to make out one word from another, or to separate sentences. Did you know they used no spaces between their words, no periods or question marks, and no defining marks to end a sentence or begin one? Add to it that every letter had to look exactly the same way and touch one another. Let me think of a word or sentence that will really drive this home . . .

"ilikeiceitisdeliciousitissodeliciousienvyiceeverdreamofscreamingoverdeliciousiceitiscoldandicywowilikeiceicecomesinwintericeisthecolorofglassiceiseverythingweneedtomakeanicedrinkcoldandwearawaythewarm"

Can you read this? It is horrible.  My eyes screamed a little. Yet somehow the priests and scholars who wrote it were able to decipher it. As the years passed, they began to realize what a pain it was. So they began to separate their words and even to come up with a system of spelling so that everything was set into units and categorized better. Things became easier to write and read, so documentation became more widely used.

Our brains stop to ponder breaks in ideas (between sentences).  We have to recall and understand how one idea leads to another; otherwise, the meaning is all jumbled.  Therefore, the scholars decided there was a need for certain new marks that could tell when a sentence or idea ended and when another began. They also wanted to know when someone was asking a question or answering one.  When something was emotionally evocative, or interrupted or clarified by another idea temporarily.