What's the favorite price for valuable items? How about -- free! I was reminded of this recently when a writing group member mentioned using a really helpful program. I have no idea how much it cost and won't mention the title (except it's named for a famous author!). But as the group member extolled the program's benefits I thought, wait, that's all available free online.
The benefit of buying a program is the labor-saving cost of not having to conduct the research alternatives. But for the exceptionally thrifty, here's a peek at some of the things I've found. Including stuff that may even be in the word processing programs we're using right now.
First up: Among the most anguish-inducing writing issues is one that has nothing to do with our writing skills. It's what number of spaces to use following the end of a sentence. Writers who learned to type on a computer can skip this point. But for anybody who learned to type on an actual typewriter, then got dissed by fellow critique group members, it's agonizing.
We know the answer. In order not to look like dinosaurs, we should only leave one space after a sentence. One of the clues of the college entrance scandals a few years back was that essay writer spaced TWICE after each sentence. This automatically signaled the writer as older than the average first-time college applicant. In this case, most likely a parent.
If this sounds like us or anyone we know and love, there's not even a need to break that two-space habit. We simply click on "editing" in our machine's toolbar. The tell it to "find" (space space). And "replace with" (space.) If this seems spooky, be assured our machines know what to do.
Our writing looks thirty years younger!
I once heard an editor at a conference say cleaning up the spacing was the first thing she did after receiving a manuscript. Although, for that, of course, she used a program.
Next up: Excessively long, complicated sentences/words. The ones our fellow critique members may describe as "run-ons" (although that's another story). This time, the fix isn't quite as simple as the space bar one. It's possible our writing programs already include it as well. But years ago, I learned to love the free Flesch-Kincaid grade level calculators. There are several of these, sometimes found under such titles as "readability calculators.
They're also free at Grammarly but for those who want freedom from passwords, grab any available.
All iterations focus on how easy the text is to read. As a former reporter/city editor for a small-town newspaper (remember newspapers?) I click along at a level supposedly easy reading for a 7th to 8th grader.
This rating includes such factors as length and complexity of sentences, and number of syllables in words. A lower grade level doesn't reflect badly on a writer's intelligence, vocabulary or imagination. In fact, my writing has about the same Flesch-Kincaid rating as Lewis Carrol's imaginative poem, "The Jabberwocky."
That said, such readability statistics aren't a huge issue except in writing for very young readers. Although keep reading here for some other suggestions for their use in story character development.
What's next? How about passive voice? Is it a holdover from bad academic writing habits? Or maybe a cultural issue? I've seen and heard it most frequently in writers with backgrounds in former commonwealth countries.
It's perhaps not surprising, then, that at least one BBC site notes passive voice can be used to make writing appear more formal and objective. So, it's not always a bad thing. Except in the sense that too much of anything can be.
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| Image: Sidney Paget at Wikipedia |
What, exactly, is passive voice? And how do we fix it, if it even needs fixing? Passive voice is writing in which the subject (supposed actor), instead of acting, is being acted upon by the object (receiver of action).
If that sounds confusing, here's my go-to example: "There will call upon you tonight, at a quarter to eight o'clock. . . a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. . . "
As readers will recognize, that's a quotation from Arthur Conan Doyle's inimitable, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Doyle's hero, Sherlock Holmes, notes the convoluted grammar to deduce, perhaps unfairly, that the writer's first language is not English.
Readers will use it to deduce that the writer is a self-absorbed ass.
My normal word processing software will sometimes catch instances of passive voice. But in other cases, it can be dead wrong. All I can say is, practice. Pay attention to the squiggly lines. But use judgment.
By the way, Flesch-Kincaid rates "Scandal" overall at a 6th grade reading level but jumps to 8th grade when only assessing the note from the king of Bohemia. Because he's the kind of guy who wants to show everybody that he finished middle school!
I'll end with an easier issue. The last one I remember the writing group member mentioning was the use of adverbs. Adverbs are those parts of speech that modify verbs as well as their fellow modifying words, the adjectives.
However, most of the angst about their use focuses on adverbs ending in -ly. That's the low-hanging fruit.
Again, go to the toolbar's "editing" and ask for "-ly." In this case, the solution may be as eliminating the word with that dreaded ending. Or we may need to consider substituting a stronger word for the verb being modified.
Or the writer may want to retain the word ending in -ly if it suits the character being described. Such as the king of Bohemia. Considering his note again, why not eliminate words such as the word "safely" in his phrase "safely be trusted"? If someone may be trusted, may they not also be safe to trust?
Not if the character in question is not himself trustworthy!
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I noticed in my last post a promise to blog about comparative titles in literary query letters. However, I am still researching that. Will return when I have more answers!
