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Category: Editing Rant
Editing Rant: No Pronouns
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If you have been around my blog any length of time, you likely know my stance on this. (I am she/her by the way.) People are people. I’ve got a real name, a pen name, and a SCA name – be who you are, hide who you are (especially if safety requires it), explore who you are. It’s all good. I’ve dealt with too many teenagers who need the space to try on several boxes before finding the one that fits them. Heck, young children explore all the jobs include being bees.
That being said, when people post things like “I don’t believe in pronouns” and “pronouns shouldn’t exist.” I laugh and laugh and laugh in editor.
Have you seen a world without pronouns?
Some of my writer friends have joked about writing a story with no pronouns. It’s not possible.
Most people know about personal pronouns (I/she/he/they) and object pronouns (me, you, her, them) … some even get possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, theirs) – but we got a WHOLE bunch of other ones like indefinite pronouns (few, nobody, both, something) and interrogative pronouns (what, who, which). Taking them all out would be impossible and have anything resembling a reasonable story.
Okay, maybe not impossible, I’ve seen what some wordsmiths can do. But, structurally, the English language depends on all sorts of pronouns.
Including using (they/them) for singular, when the gender of the person is unknown or unknowable.
If you want to go back to the “old times” and “proper pronouns”, let’s (whoa, I forgot we actually make contractions (let us) of pronouns as the second part instead of just the first part like It’s for it is) talk about the difference between formal and informal second person which modern English has dropped. (See comic below)
A pronoun is simply something used as a substitute for a proper noun.
No pronouns? Not on my editorial watch.
Editing Rant: Commas with Short Phrases
ID 33150522 © Samotrebizan | Dreamstime.com
Commas provide a pause between thoughts, indicating when things are similar but not fully connected. There are a lot of rules related to conjunctions and commas, and just commas in general.
An interesting twist with commas is when “short” sentences are joined with conjunctions allowing the comma rules to be broken.
Before I get too deep into this editing rant, let me define “independent clauses.” These are complete thoughts. Independent clauses can be their own sentences; they are INDEPENDENT. Nothing actually needs to be added to them for communication of the idea to exist, not outside context, no other nouns or verb. They stand completely on their own.
For example: I love ice cream.
Conjunctions connect phrases, either independent or dependent. They are also used for lists. Commas are used to break up long lists or independent phrases connected with a conjunction.
Example of connected independent phrases: I love ice cream, and I love chocolate, and I love my pet.
Example of a long (at least three items) list with a serial (often called Oxford) comma: I love ice cream, chocolate, and my pet.
Example of cojoined dependent phrases: I love ice cream and hate chocolate mixed with coffee.
The second phrase following “and” is missing the subject of the sentence, and therefore depends on the first phrase before the conjunction (and) to be complete. The first phrase is independent could stand alone.
Everything clear as mud now? Good, onward into the rant!
Normally, according to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), which my publisher uses, states in section 6.28 (capitalization for emphasis is mine):
Commas with independent clauses joined by conjunction. When independent clauses are joined by “and, but, or, so, yet, ” or other conjunctions, a comma usually precedes the conjunction. If the clauses are VERY SHORT AND CLOSELY CONNECTED, the comma may be omitted unless the clauses are part of a series.
Example given in CMoS: Electra played the guitar and Tambora sang.
Don’t you just love when hard and fast rules have exceptions? Even better when the exception isn’t clearly defined.
Two words is a fairly straight forward exception, and when I edit, I nearly always let three words slide. But what about four words? How should the exception apply when taking into account the difference between narrative and dialog?
This is where editing switches from the science of language to the art of storytelling.
From clear, easily definable rules to clarify information across distance and time, to a beautiful language communicating vibes and implying concepts for which strict structure provides an inadequate base.
And, joy, as an editor and as a writer, you have to figure out how and when to apply a scalpel or a brush.
I’ve often talked about the science part (see the list of Punctuation Series below). But how to apply this exception of “VERY SHORT” as an art to enhance storytelling? An example could be when the New Yorker character who talks fast doesn’t get a comma for four-word independent phrases cojoined, but a Southern Belle’s drawl slows things down and she gets them for all the independent phrases, even the two-word ones.
“I tore down the road and the car turned right. Sliding like ice cream down a cone in July. I slammed the breaks and twisted the wheel.”
“We sat down, and Violet played the violin. Her mastery is music to the ears. I offered Missy ice cream, but she refused.”
Remember everything is guidance, because the final rule for all editing of fiction is “Storytelling is Sovereign.” (Historically, it would be “Storytelling is King” but time to degender that phrase, don’t you think?)
Punctuation Series:
Editing Rant: Medium Matters
Photo 2865655 © R. Gino Santa Maria / Shutterfree, Llc | Dreamstime.com (Picture paid for)
“The movie isn’t as good as the book.” “I don’t know why people think this statue is so great, I mean look at this photo of it.” “This song is awful (when played on my phone).”
“Medium” in art covers both the skill set needed to create the art (painting, photography, scrapbooking, violin, orchestra), and the materials used to create the artwork (marble, wood, instrument).
And when judging art, Medium Matters. One of the most amazing books I read was an urban fantasy by Darin Kennedy, The Mussorgsky Riddle. The mystery centered around a piano suite in ten movements (Pictures at an Exhibition) written by Mussorgsky, inspired by paintings at a show in the Imperial Academy of Arts from Viktor Hartmann. Plot, piano, and paintings mixed together (and if you hear it on audiobook, another artist is added into the mix).
Not any one medium is better than the other, but being aware of the limitations can help one appreciate the transference of art from one medium to another. How is a painting different from a sculpture? What happens when pop music is played by an orchestra (as sometimes happens with songs by Queen)? Should we judge a book against a movie or are they two different things with two different audiences?
I recently heard people comparing a single book to the three-season television show which spun off it, saying the secondary characters, which developed as the television show ran beyond the original story, lacked depth in the book. No kidding. Yet both the book and the television show felt the same as they explored victory and growth, adulthood and loss.
Other conversations I had recently compared black and white movies to technicolor television. Comics to graphic novels – and I’m not talking about long comics, I’m talking about well-loved science fiction and fantasy novels translated to book format, for example “More than Human” by Theodore Sturgeon (published 1953) released as a hardback graphic novel in 1978. Each of these have their own particular imprint on my soul.
Pulling this back to writing and reading. Medium Matters. Figure out what best fits your story. Is it a flash (under 1,000 words) or novel (75,000 words)? Should it be shrunk to a short story (5,000 words) or will a novella length be better (20,000 words)? Will one hundred words, precisely, for a drabble be the right size? Should it be a play, or a serial? Could it work in audiobook, and, if so, should one person or a cast read it?
Choose the presentation of the story. Write it to the end, then carve it like a statue until only the parts that should be there remain.
Editing Rant: Know your Genre – Christmas Edition
Photo 31391356 | Bad Christmas Tree © Wojtek Kaczkowski | Dreamstime.com
The story I was reading was a Reverse Harem Superhero Christmas tale – ’tis the season and all. Somehow it manages to fall down on all three genres badly.
Reverse harems/Why Choose are basically three-for-one romances. The heroine falls in love with each of the potential love interests in turn, and they fall in love with her back. “Why Choose” sub-category is more about the romance, while “Reverse Harem” is more about the erotica. Each of the love interests (usually, but not exclusively male) should be different – individuals in their own rights – bringing a different set of character traits which match the heroine, filling a need in her, and she, in return, fills a different need in each of them. With one male, she might be strong and be by his side in battle, with the gender neutral mate, she and they might craft and create together, bouncing ideas off each other, and with the final “choice”, she could be the soft he needs, while he can be vulnerable with her. These books are so much fun to have the zing of falling in love three (or even more) times in a row, but they are hard to write – giving each couple a chance in the spotlight takes up time and requires a lot of work at pacing.
To save time, the author in this book always had the three potential love interests (PLIs) on screen together. The PLIs never had solo time, they always appear together, and they always did practically the same thing. Really, one PLI could have worked as well as three.
For the superhero genre, her powers had no impact on the story, were amorphous in their definition, and were hardly used. The plot would have been the same if she could fly or travel through time or turned purple.
For the Christmas part of the genre, the author was exploring someone who always had a bad time at Christmas. The Christmas genre is about found family, discovering joy, and gifts. At the end of the story, the reader should feel uplifted. It’s okay for the character to have a crappy time at the start of the story, but the plot should pull them out the other side with all the reasons to live. Instead, we end the tale nearly as desperate as w
It’s okay to turn tropes on end, pull from other genres to create new mashes, but you still need to deliver the POINT of the genre. Science fiction without science, Fantasy without magic, Romance without at least a Happily for Now – these are not genre.