WTBN session 6 - Writing Errors

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Don’t emphasise for emphasis

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Along with redundancy, one of Stephen King’s (whose books have sold more than 350 million copies) pet peeves is the overuse of adjectives and adverbs. After you’ve finished your first draft, he suggests, go back and take out 10% of what you’ve written – especially the adjectives and adverbs. They’re supposed to strengthen the writing but, most of the time, they weaken it.

A recent issue of People Magazine refers to an “incredibly popular, groundbreakingly racy sitcom.” That’s tough to say even when you don’t have to move your lips.

In Still Life with Crows, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child describe a mysterious row of corn in the middle of a field: “It was, in fact, the only row that actually opened onto the creek.” Here are two attempts at emphasis (“in fact,” “actually”), but they just junk up the sentence. 

Remove them both and the word “only” carries the burden of the sentence with efficiency and precision: “It was the only row that opened onto the creek.”

The simpler, the more powerful.

Other emphasis words are very, so and quite.

Read these sentences out loud with the words in and out:

He was very tall … he was tall.

She was quite picky … she was picky.

The writing is generally more powerful without the emphasis words and the best test is to read it out loud.

Repetition

Just about every writer unconsciously leans on a “crutch” word. Hillary Clinton’s repeated word is eager. Cosmopolitan magazine editor Kate White uses quickly over a dozen times in A Body To Die For. Jack Kerouac’s crutch word in On the Road is sad,” sometimes doubly so - sad, sad. Ann Packer’s in The Dive from Clausen’s Pier is weird.

The editor for my last Australian thriller, Scars Can’t Tell, found 1,011 exclamation marks!

Commas

Commas are those funny little things that suggest a pause between words. To decide whether a comma should be there or not, read the sentence out loud to yourself. If you pause, momentarily, between any words, there should be a comma there. If it’s a longer pause, there should be a semi colon and, if you stop for a longer pause, a full stop is needed.

Some say that a pause for half a second should be shown with a comma, a full second is a semicolon and longer is a colon or a hyphen … or a new sentence. Again, read your writing out loud and you will know what’s best.

To break it down, there are four main reasons for commas: 

·           After an introductory element: There should always be a comma between an introductory word or phrase and the rest of the sentence. For example: In the novel Twilight, Bella lives in Forks.

·           In a compound sentence: A compound sentence has two or more parts that could each be a single sentence, joined by a conjunction. Before the conjunction, insert a comma. For example: The recipe sounded simple, but Julie burnt the cookies.

·           With a non-restrictive element: If there is a part of a sentence that could be removed, and the sentence would still make sense, use commas before and after to separate it from the rest of the sentence. For example: On wikiHow, the world's largest how-to manual, there are over 100,000 how-to articles.

·           In a series: When making a list, it's best to have a comma after each noun, unless you're a journalist. For example: Jane needed to buy milk, eggs, cheese, and butter.

Now you can astound your friends, at a literary cocktail party, with your