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Grammar GuideGrammar Guide For Self-Editing or Editing Groups

by Kelly Mortimer ©2008

A – Awkward Sentence Structure – Rearrange, rephrase, or try deleting unnecessary words.

Aa – Additive Adjunct – No comma before “too” when it’s the last word of a sentence, and “too” means also. Ex: “Jane graduated from high school too.” Use a comma when “too” appears elsewhere and still means also. Ex: “Jane, too, graduated from high school.”

Ap- Attribution Punctuation – When using an attribution such as “said,” don’t use a period at the end of the preceding sentenc
10 Tips for Novel Writers
1. Don’t Find Time, Make It. Too many authors think that they will “find” the time to write sometime today or this week or next month. But think about it: when was the last time you said, “Hey, look! I just found a twenty fifth hour in my jacket pocket!” You know how many hours there are in a day, so stop fooling yourself. If you’re going to have time to write, you need to make time to write. Whether you set aside the same hour every day or use those few minutes you have between classes, make sure you’re devoting that time entirely to your writing, not sharing it with your favourite reality tv show. Writing
The Joy of Crit: G-ratedThe Joy of Crit: The G-rated version

Please indulge me in a thought experiment.  Imagine that you drank some herbal tea that you found in the kitchen cupboard, not realizing that it would make you unable to tell a lie.  Now, what if later that evening you were planning to attend your high school prom with someone you would be dating for the first time?  You spend hours in the bathroom getting ready.  Finally you meet up with your date and he or she asks, "so, how do I look?"

If your date looks wonderful, this question is easy to answer.  A few superlatives, and maybe a comment about somethin
Punctuating Poetry Part OneSome people believe poetry shouldn't be punctuated and others are still taught to put a comma after every new line. So where is the balance? What does one - especially one new or growing in poetry - do? Well, that's simple: a poet must punctuate with purpose!

In order to punctuate with purpose, however, a poet must understand two things: what she wants to achieve with the poem and what a piece of punctuation can achieve in a poem. This means a poet must understand more than the common rules of punctuation; she must know the effect that certain punctuation points can have on a reader or in a text.

This overview tackles punctuation in poetry
Poetry Self-Edit ChecklistPoetry Self-Edit Quick Start Guide and Checklist

Introduction

The idea behind this is to give newer poets a way to better edit their poetry themselves, without having to rely as much on an external editor.  It can be frustrating, especially for new poets to request feedback from a friend, or worse, to post a poem, and have all of the responses be about grammatical errors and other details.  We write poetry to convey ideas and emotions, and when something is off technically about the poem it distracts the reader.  When a reader is distracted enough to notice an error or other problem it means they might spend th
Prose Critique BasicsProse Critique Basics

Critique... we all want it. We all need it. But what exactly is the embodiment of this fear-inspiring, often frustrating word?

Ever since dA rolled out their advanced critique system in 2009, I've made it a point to read through many prose critiques, mainly in seeking a person to look at my own work. While most critiques are helpful to some degree, it never fails to surprise me how many exist out there are nothing more than in depth comments. Just the critic's opinion or view on the piece, which is usually made of nothing but positives. In short... a review. Of course, the receiving authors snatch up whatever feedback
Writing Paranormal CharactersAs a writer of prose, you may at some point to want to write about a character or characters which are paranormal.  We could perhaps debate over the exact definition of the word ‘paranormal’, and some may prefer ‘supernatural’ - a word more closely associated with magic, whereas ‘paranormal’ tends to be taken to mean something outside the realms of science (though of course, it is not as clear-cut as that, and you may like to think that I am wrong in saying this).

For the purposes of this guide, both ‘paranormal’ and ‘supernatural’ refer to conscious beings, not found in the animal kingdom, t
Helpful NaNoWriMo Links and GuidesOnce again, the other cruelest month is upon us.  November is National Novel Writing Month, where aspiring novelists attempt to pen 50,000 words in 30 days.  The task is daunting, but possible—it requires an average of only 1,667 words a day. Last year, at least 42 deviants managed to reach their goal.
:pointr: Before You Begin:
:bulletpurple: Believable Fiction
:bulletpurple: Research: How to Do It
:pointr: The Process:
:bulletpurple: Writing Tips: Organization
:bulletpurple: The Writing Process
:bulletpurple: How To W
The Art of Refining Prose
The Art of Refining Prose

Many writers dread the editing process. Not only does it delay the showcase of prose, it can seem a tedious and painstaking task. Often, editing is more time-consuming than the initial writing and consequently, it is either ignored altogether or briefly indulged. This is a great shame. Sincere editing not only proves a pleasurable experience but invaluable to prose, as this is a wonderful opportunity to buff, polish and tighten the impact of one's writing.

Some might argue that editing is not only unnecessary, but detrimental to the “raw concept” of one’s inspiration. The answer to this is simple: se
Getting Published the Hard WayGETTING PUBLISHED: THE TRADITIONAL WAY
A tutorial by M. Alice Chown

If, like me, you have stories lying around gathering virtual dust on your hard drive, why not send them out to a publisher? You have nothing to lose. A couple of years ago, I attended the launch of an annual Canadian short story anthology, called Tesseracts 10. I knew one of the authors whose speculative fiction piece had been included in the book. Matthew Johnson and I had taken the same creative writing course. Our former prof, author, Robert Sawyer, was there at the launch too, as well as the editors of the anthology. Those who had contributed a story to Tesseracts 10 to
Effective Brevity
Effective Brevity

deviantArt is a minimalist experience. No one has time to use words unwisely. You may write lengthily, but not redundantly. This is good practice; a rule they don't teach you at school, but that all writers ought to learn before they break it.

Brevity is the best way to show-not-tell. It is the best way to keep pace. It is the best way to create convincing characters and plot.

5 steps to keeping it brief:

NOUNS
Why use a genus when you could use a species? When describing Aunt Maria's dog, is it more effective to say "dog" or "dachshund". "Dachshund" not only tells me what the dog looks like, it tells me about Aunt Mari
Lesson 2 - More MeterQUOTE OF THE DAY

"A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweler, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more."
 - Horace Walpole

While every metrical poem will have a base meter to serve as its backbone, many poets often find that writing in ten-syllable iambic sentences, for example, is too limiting for their purposes, either because pure meter doesn't provide enough variation for proper emphasis or because it quickly gets dull and tedious, or a combination of the two.

You might have notic
Creating VoiceWhen you write dialogue, when you write dramatic monologues, when you write in first person, your character must have his own voice.
Voice is in part the distinct vocabulary, grammatical tendencies and spoken patterns which are unique to your character. A linguist would call this his idiolect.
Voice’s other part is made up of the interests and obsessions of your character: what sort of things they notice about the world, how they interpret them in relation to their previous experiences, and what emotional colouring they give events. We might call this perspective.
 
Idiolect
Firstly, a story: I am English, middle class, and I studied at Oxford. When I worked in a supermarket cafe in inner-city Cardiff (Wales) I’d get customers who would say, after half a minute’s banter about their breakfast at the till, “hang on, you’re too clever to be working here!” They didn’t say this because I had told them my life story,
Prosody GuideHere's a short and limited guide to prosody. Thought it might be helpful. Let's start with few terms:

Rhythm - refers to the natural rise and fall of the voice when something is being spoken or read aloud.

Meter - comes from the Greek word for "measure," is used to describe a regular rhythmic pattern that operates throughout a given poem.

Cesura - is a strong break/pause in the middle of a line.

Scansion - the act of determining the meter of a poem by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables in its lines.

Accents - (Stressed syllables) are marked by a slant line above the syllable (/)

Slack Syllables – (unstressed syllables) a
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More from `ATrue

The End of the World I wish I could tell you I didn’t know how it started. I wish I could say it happened gradually and that nobody saw it coming. I wish I could tell you we all had ample warning, but none of it is true, and I am nothing if not true.
It was the most organized coup in the history of the world and entirely unbelievable. I suppose that’s why nobody believed me and the few Unbelievers that remained when we tried to explain it. There were a few times I wasn’t sure I believed myself. Have you ever doubted yourself like that? Have you ever known the truth, spoke the truth, knew the facts beyond any shadow of a doubt, yet for a moment f
MoneyMoney flies
like an elastic from
America’s finger.
Colour                    Colours,
               swirling circles,
             celebratory smiles
  as cameras flash. Mind numbing fun
of toasts, swigs, and refills escalates to
cries and the squealing sound of tires,
        cracking of helpless bones,
              as pavement dis-
Beneath                    Beneath
                 her collected,
          cool demeanour, anxious
    childlike romantics reign. Equipped
with butterflies and first-time jitters, she
    maintains her charming composure,
            but all she can see is
              
Mother                             Mother,
                         may I have a-
                  nother chance to keep him
                close to me? No driven madly,
      
The Future of LoveToday, true love is hard to come by, but in the future all that will be needed in order to find that one person whom we love more than anyone else is a cloning machine.

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EDIT 10/31/12 - I've edited this piece to streamline it and make it flow a bit better. I also had the pleasure of meeting several people from NaNoWriMo a couple weeks ago and they're going to publish this on their website soon!
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Daily Deviation

Given 2010-11-04
Although HOW TO WRITE WITHOUT EDITING.. by `ATrue is intended as a guide for those who even now are braving National Novel Writing Month, its lessons are universal to budding novelists everywhere, at any time. ( Suggested by ~Magic-fan and Featured by `Memnalar )
love 2 2 joy 2 2 wow 0 0 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconnocturnalsilverwolf:
~Nocturnalsilverwolf Apr 4, 2013
Hmmmm... I'm gonna do the NanoWriMo this year.... (hopefully if I can be bothered)
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:iconlostinthemorning:
~LostInTheMorning Feb 26, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
I epicly failed NaNoWriMo last year, couldn't shut up the editor. He was barking more than my dog does :XD: These tips have given me the hope that I might get close to finishing this year. Thank you!
Reply
:iconk-h-o:
~k-h-o Dec 25, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
This is brilliant. Would pasting a white sheet of paper over the monitor help with blindfolding Mr. Editor? Sure can't read anything, but if anything happens while typing, at least the blurry image of pop-up messages are still somewhat visible through the paper.
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:iconatrue:
`ATrue Dec 29, 2011
sure! As long as you can see if that were to happen I see no reason why not. :)
Reply
:iconwhistleandsnap:
*WhistleAndSnap Oct 31, 2011  Student General Artist
I really like #3. I'll definitely use it! Thanks for this great article! <3
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:iconatrue:
`ATrue Oct 31, 2011
You're welcome, and thank you for reading :)
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:iconwhistleandsnap:
*WhistleAndSnap Nov 1, 2011  Student General Artist
Welcome. ^^
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:iconraneva:
~Raneva Oct 31, 2011
Great advise!
..I'm SO using the font-trick, I'm terrible at shutting up my inner editor!
Reply
:iconfeddafella:
~Feddafella Jul 30, 2011
I'm going to be attempting NaNo for the first time this year and I was kind of worrying about how not to stop and just be like "NO! IT'S WRONG!" but I think this will help heaps, thank you!
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:iconatrue:
`ATrue Jul 30, 2011
You're very welcome! Thank YOU for reading. :)
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