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M is for Make: Better Verbs Make Better Writing

Erin Penn 2 Comments

Meme created by Erin Penn

If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you know about copulas – the “to be” verbs which are harbingers of passive writing. Being a good writer’s conference, the topic came up a couple times at SAGA (sagaconference.com). Michael Mammy captured its essence during the afternoon presentation on Pacing and Structure with “Better Verbs Make Better Writing.”

He also said “More problems, more better.” Which is the essence of Give Your Characters Trouble, but not every piece of advice is a gem, or meme-worthy.

Back to BVMBW: verbing makes better writing because the verbs drive the action. Don’t be “run fast” – instead “dashed” or “rushed”. Don’t go all “spoke softly” but “purred” or “mumbled”.

That being said, don’t spend the First Draft figuring out the perfect word. That is for Draft Three. Draft Two is getting all the scenes to actually flow together, adding and subtracting or just moving large swaths of the manuscript. Once you know what is actually happening, verbs can be polished.

Two fixes are (1) do a search on “was” and “were” for the entire manuscript and cut that number by a third. (2) every paragraph switch out one verb/adverb for something stronger or more specific.

Below is another meme I made a while back. Write with Style. Because, you know, better writing is just sexy.

Write with Style

Meme created by Erin Penn

K is for Kill

Erin Penn 2 Comments

Meme from the Internet Hive Mind

Exposure kills – heat or cold … or doing creative work for free.

Now, you can choose to release some stuff for free, like blogging. And not everything you do needs to be capitalized – I love my embroidery, but I don’t sell it. Hobbies like watching television don’t need payment.

But asking someone to do their professional occupation for free, well, that is like asking them to go without food and it isn’t fair.

Editing Rant: We Judge Your Emails (J is for Judge)

Erin Penn

From the Internet Hive Mind (ICanHasCheezburger.com)

You reach out to an editor/publisher asking to submit a manuscript.

They respond with “We are closed at the moment. Here is how to monitor when we reopen.”

The proper response, if any, is to say thank you.

The improper response is ANYTHING OTHER than thank you.

Even worse when

  • punctuation is optional
  • capitalization is random (Example “I Already finished” “And i’m halfway”)
  • use of emojs … incorrectly
  • verb tense switches within two sentences of the email (At least I think they were sentences, punctuation was optional.)
  • misspellings
  • unclear wording.

No, really, even if we were open for submissions, your manuscript would bounce into orbit if your email communication is anything to go by.

Oh.

AND.YOU.ARE.RUDE.

Like I am going to go through the effort of keeping your fragile ego safe when editing. If you can’t handle, “sorry, we are closed” as an answer, ESPECIALLY when to get our contact information you went to our website where are submission guidelines are listed including the fact we are closed right now, you can’t handle being edited. I correct over 1,000 things EACH pass, and I do more than one pass and I’m one of three editors you will be working with.