Some Quick Easy Editing Tips

Because these are things that everyone should know, and I have easy ways to remember them.

Grey vs. Gray

Although this is mostly a stylistic choice for a lot of people, there is actually a different. GrEy with an E is English/British. GrAy with an A is American. Because Americans are weird, man. We just are.

Effect vs. Affect

Affect with an A is an Action. Effect with an E is not. Therefore, affect is a verb; effect is a noun. (For the most part. Sometimes effect is a verb, but it means something totally different and 9 times out of 10 you're wanting to use affect anyway.)

Who vs. Whom

I like to use something I call the substitution trick here.

"Who has the ball?" "He has the ball." 

"To whom does the ball belong?" "The ball belongs to her."

If the answer to the who/whom question is him/her/me, then it's "whom." If the answer is he/she/I, then it's "who." Work in non-questions, too.

Susie Jones, who had the ball (she had the ball)...

Calvin Park, to whom the ball belonged (to him the ball belonged/the ball belonged to him)...

But most people just tend not to use "whom" at all because it can be pretentious.

So there you go! Quick, easy help. :)

Write When You're Angry

Write when you're angry.

Write when your blood is boiling and you can't contain the diatribe inside your head. Write when the words come to you, and let out everything you're feeling.

Write when you can't close your eyes and sleep for the fierce emotion inside you, and write when you can't think of anything but that fierceness.

Write when you're sad.

Write when the force of everything threatens to overwhelm you. Write when you've just spent an hour standing in the shower and crying.

Write when you can hardly breathe and the sensation of life becomes a source of terror.

Write when you're happy.

Write when you can't stop the smile on your face even if you probably shouldn't be smiling just then. Write when everything makes you giggle.

Write when you can't help but sing Taylor Swift at the top of your lungs, complete with a dance routine.

Write when you're feeling.

Editing Please Don't: Dialogue Tags

Okay, y'all, here we go again. I've decided to take one of my Please Don'ts from the annals of bad fiction writing (lots of it my own in my teenage years; ugh).

Please don't use weird dialogue tags/use actions as dialogue tags.

Okay, let's get something straight. 

"Hello! Welcome to the Please Don'ts!" Shelby greeted.

^^DO NOT DO THIS THING.

I can say:

Shelby greeted her readers: "Hello! Welcome to the Please Don'ts!"

or

"Hello! Welcome to the Please Don'ts!"

But please don't try to make dialogue tags out of action words.

*sidenote: Did I use the word "greeted" because besides being an action verb and therefore not a very good dialogue tag it is also impossible to use as a dialogue tag because it requires an object and therefore cannot be used in any other way besides "Shelby greeted [person]"? ...Possibly.

**second sidenote: I'm side-eyeing you people using this as a dialogue tag so hard every time I read it. Including in actual published stuff. So much side-eyeing.

Let me introduce you to my much-maligned friend, "Said."

Said would like you to remember that it is, in fact, a totally acceptable dialogue tag. For example:

"I was thinking about doing a Please Don't for my blog piece," Shelby began.

"Which of your pet peeves were you thinking of doing?" Matt questioned.

"I wanted to talk about dialogue," Shelby stated.

"Dialogue has a lot of rules," Matt sighed.

"Yeah, I wasn't going to talk about comma usage in dialogue or what order to put the speaker and dialogue tag in," Shelby groaned.

"That sounds like it would be a lot of work," Matt observed.

"Yes, but coming up with trite dialogue for a really long example is even harder," Shelby pointed out.

"How so?" Matt asked.

"I'm trying to keep the dialogue going as long as possible so people can begin to get distracted by the dialogue tags," Shelby explained.

"Do you think that will work?" Matt whispered.

"I don't know, but it's worth a try," Shelby replied.

"Are you running out of dialogue tags to think of?" Matt responded.

"Oh, no," Shelby chuckled. "If I were to bring in other things, like dialogue tags as action words, which I just told them not to do, I could go on forever."

"Do you really think they could handle it?" Matt exclaimed.

"Watch. They might not even realized that I threw a couple in before I even started telling you I was going to," Shelby laughed.

"Well, some of them are very subtle," Matt nodded.

"Do you think we should stop now?" Shelby pondered.

"I think they get the point, yeah," Matt grinned.

"Okay. I'll go back to talking to the readers," Shelby proclaimed.

.....

You back with me? You're still here?

Phew. That was a fun read, wasn't it? Did you get distracted by some of the tags? Did you notice that some worked better than others? Did you notice that I just wrote an entire piece without using the word "said"? Did you notice that it started to get sort of repetitive and that you didn't realize the action was happening with the dialogue because it was all jumbled in there?

Good. You're learning.

Now let's try a different approach.

.....

"I'm back," Shelby said with a grin.

"Oh, good. Do I get to be part of the story again?" Matt asked.

"Of course you do. You're the only other person in this house." Shelby laughed and shook her head.

Matt smiled. "Okay, fine. But we should talk about something different."

"Okay," Shelby said. "What would you like to talk about?"

Matt shrugged. "Anything. How did your day go today?"

"It was pretty good. I worked a lot and wrote a blog piece about dialogue," Shelby said.

Matt sighed. "See, there you go again."

"What?"

"Talking about your blog piece!"

"Oh." Shelby frowned. "I guess it's hard not to do that when I'm still actually writing the thing."

"Maybe I'll tell you about my day?"

"Yeah," Shelby said. "Yeah, that sounds good."

....

Hello again! Okay, so do you see what I'm saying? Action words like "laughed" and "smiled" and "frowned" are set off in their own sentence, not as part of the dialogue tags. What's more, I used "said" a lot more because it doesn't distract from what's actually being said in the dialogue itself. I can use "said" as a placeholder to pause in the dialogue such as in this sentence: 

"Okay," Shelby said. "What would you like to talk about?"

See how that works?

Not to mention the fact that some dialogue doesn't even need a tag. Use them sparingly, use "said" lots more, and stop trying to "spice it up" with weird. Nine times out of ten, it's just annoying.

Now go to, my pretties, and reacquaint yourself with my friend "Said." He needs a home, and he'd love to stay with you if you'll just give him a place to stay!

Brain? Brain? Hello? It's Me. Your Body. I Would Like to Go to Sleep Now. Can You Stop Writing for a Sec?

Picture source 

Dear Brain,

Hello. This is your body speaking.

I know we talk all the time, and I know you think we've got this communication thing down. I mean, I'd think after a twenty-four-ish year relationship, we'd really have something real, right?

And I mean, I love you. I really do. You're all that keeps me going in life.

But darling, we have got to talk about your sleeping habits. Because you don't seem to have any.

Now, I don't mind if you go all daydreamy on me, because heaven knows life is five hundred times as interesting when I'm sitting on the couch dreaming up new ways to make my quadruple agent character even cooler than he already is than when I'm just ... sitting on the couch.

And I don't even mind if you do a little thinking before we go to bed, because we all know that when I'm relaxed, that's when you start getting ideas. I've even started keeping a notebook by the bed so I can write while you spew your nonsense.

It's just that you don't stop.

I know, I know. It's our passion. It's our life. It's writing.

But, like, I need sleep. Really badly. 

I know you're trying. I know that when you start drifting off into the Land of Plotting that you try to counter with something else. I know we've got one particular dream in which we get as far as "I've arrived at this place and this is what I look like and here are my bags I'm about to unpack" before we're dead asleep. So, you see, I know it's possible.

So how come you're still going?

At one point do I start looking into research into an off switch?

Because I know you get frustrated when we're tired. You can't work properly. How feels?

Seriously, just shut up for eight hours a day. Can you do that for me? Just stop, turn off, and let me sleep.

I'll even let you pilot the dreams. Pick whatever you want. Just get to the REM part of dreaming first, not the daydreaming part. Okay? That's all I ask.

Pretty please?

Love,

Your Body

This Post About Reading is Secretly About Writing

It'd been a long time since I really sat down to lose myself in a book.

I had lots of good reasons. I was in the middle of a massive rewrite and didn't want to have other stories in my head when I was trying to focus on that one.

I was getting my husband through his last year of college, and he'd just lost his job, so I had to choose how I used my time.

I was tired. I was making dinner. I don't know. Lots of other excuses, I'm sure.

But it was Christmas Break, and we were going to be on a plane for six hours on our way to vacationing with the rest of the family. And I packed six books.

I was ready.

Ultimately, I only read one of them, but that's okay. It was amazing.

I bet you've heard of it. It's called The Book Thief.

I opened up to the first page, and before I even got a few lines in, I literally gasped out loud with delight. I'd never fallen in love with something this quickly. The poetry of even the first page, the unique narrator, the asides, everything about it was perfect.

I turned to my husband excitedly and waved the book in his face. "This book," I said, "is amazing."

He looked at me with this expression sort of like, "That's great, honey, but stop disturbing the other passengers."

I devoured the book. I was a third of the way through it before our flight even landed. Then, of course, I got distracted. I took all sorts of pictures of everyone at the beach because I was the designated photographer for our family. Not because I'm good at photography (seriously, Becca is clearly the photographer here on Ographies) but because I'm terrified of the ocean and the only way I was going to get involved in beach shenanigans was by documenting the whole thing.

We were out in Hawaii for ten days. On the eighth day, everyone went snorkeling except for Mom and the littlest kids . . . and me and my husband.

He took a nap. I finished The Book Thief.

I don't think I can adequately describe what it's like to read that book. It's just . . . perfection. Every single line seemed to dig its claws deeper into my soul. I was so tightly hooked that I managed to forget that the narrator had spoiled the ending at the beginning of the book and as I sat there in disbelief at [SPOILERS] massive character death happening all around me, well, I just cried.

I cried and cried. Silent tears, the kind that you cry when you're reading because, wow, you've got to read the words on this page, and those tears are very definitely in your way of getting any reading done.

It's something very private, I think. The crying while you read. Because in that moment, you are inside the world of the book, so taken in that you feel the emotions the characters feel. You are drawn into the world, and it's real to you in that moment, and that's why we read. Because it's a new place and old emotions.

I managed to clean myself up just as everyone was getting back from snorkeling, but I never did quite recover. I still cry just reading reviews of that book.

And that's what books do, I think. I still grin like a loon whenever I read the line: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." I am still a proud member of the "Fred Weasley Death Denial Support Group." I even flipped through the Jewel Princess series I read when I was, like, eight, and I still smiled through the whole thing.

Books are our companions. They are milestones in our life journey. They mean something to us the first time we read them and then something new the second time.

That's why we read them. That's why we write them. Not out of some grand, deluded idea that we can influence the world, but maybe we can capture it. That small little piece of truth, a memory, a feeling, preserved in pages.

A little slice of humanity, bound and printed. That's what a book is.

5 Editing "Please Don't"s

Okay. Let me sit y'all down for just a bit.

Comfy? Okay. Good. Because I've got to level with you: you need to stop.

Yes, I'm talking to you, person who insists that "your" and "you're" are the same thing. And you, person who thinks commas are for crazy people. It's time you learned about the English language.

I'll probably make this an ongoing series, with various Please Don'ts added in for writing, editing, whatever else. I was going to make this a "Top Five" list, but I realized it's really hard to pick just five. And to make them not the usual "it's versus its" argument.

So, in no particular order, here are my Please Don'ts for the week.

1. Please don't ever, ever say "The reason is because."

Please. Never. Never ever. 

Why? I'm glad you asked.

"The reason is" literally means "because." Literally. (Not the "literally" when used to mean figuratively, mind you, although that somehow made it into the dictionary.) 

So when you say "the reason is because," you are actually saying "because because" and unless you are singing along to "The Wizard of Oz," there is pretty much no valid reason for that.

"But Shelby!" I can hear you saying. "I say that all the time!"

Yes, well, saying things out loud and writing them down are different. When we speak with our mouths, we are speaking off the cuff, as it comes to us. We break all sorts of rules when we talk, but that's because we're still thinking about it, and our listeners can usually pick up on things like hand gestures and expressions to fill in the gaps. When we speak with our pens/pencils/laptops/other writing devices, we have time to think through it and to read through it. 

*note: Reading through does not mean using spell-checker to automatically do this for you. I'm looking at you, pre-teen me.

2. Please don't ever try to make something plural by added apostrophe-s.

I don't know who started this trend, but I would like them to stop. Seriously, in what universe does making something possessive make it plural?

Okay, so let's sit down and do the middle school thing.

My friend's jelly beans = The jelly beans that belong to my friend
My friend's a jelly bean = My friend is a jelly bean.
My friends love jelly beans = I have multiple friends, and they all love jelly beans.
My friends' jelly beans = The jelly beans that belong to the multiple friends I just mentioned.

Oh man, I should have picked other examples. Now I want jelly beans. And friends.

I understand that with things like "the 1980's" there can be an apostrophe (though I prefer "the 1980s" myself) depending on what style guide and rulebook you prefer but for crying out loud that is the exception and please stop pretending that's an excuse to run amok throwing apostrophes around willy-nilly!

3. Please don't use "where" when you mean "were" (or vice versa).

I understand. They are very similar, except one has an "h" and the other does not.

Here, let me explain.

"Where" = place
"Were" = the past tense of the verb "to be" 

The jelly beans were where we left them.

The jelly beans at a previous point in time happened to be at the place that we left them.

Yep, I still want jelly beans.

4. Please don't write sentences that try to hide your verbs.

This one's a little trickier to explain. I'll try to do it by example.

Okay, so let's say I want to tell you that I ate the last of the jelly beans. 

"The eating of the jelly beans, which previously had been in a full container, had the result that no other person got to eat any jelly beans besides myself."

That was a really awful sentence, y'all. I cried a little bit writing it.

First of all, let's look at the actual verbs, okay?

"The eating of the jelly beans, which previously had been in a full container, had the result that no other person got to eat any jelly beans besides myself."

Oh my gosh, I hate this so much. 

Do you see what's happening here? I've hidden all the blame and all the action in so much garble-dee-gook that it's very hard to tell that I'm the one who ate all the jelly beans.

*note: This is why legal jargon follows this pattern. Stuff gets hidden in bills all the time because why would we just speak plain English?

Now let's use more exciting verbs!

"I ate the entire container of jelly beans myself, so no one else can have any."

Look at that! CLARITY. *cue the Hallelujah chorus

Please, please, please do this when you write. There is nothing more obnoxious to me than reading a piece that tries to hide its verbs.

5. Please don't noun verbs.

*Please read Calvin and Hobbes. You will be enlightened on the joys of "verbing weirds language."

This is another one that's best illustrated by example, and it sort of ties into the previous point. Remember that awful sentence?

"The eating of the jelly beans, which previously had been in a full container, had the result that no other person got to eat any jelly beans besides myself."

Oh my gosh, why. 

Anyway, "the eating of the jelly beans" is the most awkward construction of all time, but I did it on purpose because I see you do this all the time, political science major self. 

I don't know why we like to do this with our language, but for some reason, we are absolutely convinced that we sound more distinguished or smart or whatever if we take all our action verbs and make them into boring nouns.

Spoiler alert: it just makes you sound like a badly-written lawyer in an over-hyped legal drama.

"The eating of the jelly beans was done by myself" 

Oh gosh I made it worse.

Please stop doing this. Please just write, in plain English, "I ate the jelly beans."

"But Shelby!" I can hear you saying. "I need to vary my sentence structure!"

That's fine. Let me show you how to do that in a not-stupid way.

First, the wrong way:
I saw the jelly beans. They were in a jar. The jar was full. I pulled the jar off the shelf. I ate everything in the jar. I put the jar back on the shelf. It was empty. I was sorry for eating all the jelly beans. I told my roommates I ate all the jelly beans. They were mad at me.

See how boring that is? Subject-verb, subject-verb, subject-verb.....

"But Shelby!" you're saying right now; I can just feel it. "Doesn't that prove the point?"

NO. No, it does not! 

The right way:
I looked up and saw the jelly beans, sitting in a jar on the shelf. It looked like most of the jelly beans were still there; it was almost full. So, I pulled the jar off the shelf, and I proceeded to eat everything in the jar. When I put the jar back on the shelf, it was empty.

Almost immediately, I felt sorry for eating all the jelly beans, and when my roommates arrived, I told them what I'd done. They were, justifiably, mad at me.

Look at that variation of sentence structure! Look at those action verbs! Look at the ebb and flow of the story!

Feel the hunger for jelly beans! (No, that's just me? Okay.)

My point is, you can vary your sentences and have your story ebb and flow without noun-ing your verbs. So please stop. The rest of us will thank you for our sudden ability to understand what the heck is happening in your sentences.

Well, thus ends my Please Don'ts . . . for now. Please do go out and stop doing all these things, and come back next time when hopefully I will be less hungry while I'm writing my blog posts . . . .

Love Your Sidekicks!

At last, advice I actually take.

. . . Actually, I should probably take this advice less . . . .

Anyway, today's topic is sidekicks. I'm talking the Robin to your Batman. The Ron Weasley to your Harry Potter. The Sam to your Frodo. 

Let's start with why I love sidekicks. Think about your favorite movie. Or book. Or whatever. Think about who your favorite character is. The one you could write an entire novel about describing all the reason they're the best literary masterpiece ever created.

Nine times out of ten, it's not the main character.

Me, I like Fred Weasley more than Harry or even Hermione. I like Finnick more that Katniss, Gale, or Peeta. I like Robin way more than Batman. I like Merry and Pippin more than Frodo or Sam.

Why?

Maybe part of it is because we see sidekicks through the eyes of the main character. And while it's easy to see faults in ourselves and therefore in the narrator, it's hard for us and the main character to see anything but obvious faults in other people. We see sidekicks as the narrator sees them, and that's in a rosy light. (Usually. Sometimes we just see them in a more interesting light.)

Or maybe it's because sidekicks don't carry the burden of the entire story/plot. Fred is here to make us laugh. Pippin is here to be generally adorable. Pepper Potts is here to kick butt and take names without taking the spotlight. We can have more fun with the sidekicks because they don't have to be burdened with the typical angst/frustration that the main character faces.

Whatever the reason, it's clear we love our side characters. So let's make sure that when we write, we give them plenty of love.

Make your characters rich and engaging. I need more sass and more flair always. I need more characters with surprisingly deep backstories once you get to know them always. I need more characters with huge flaws always. I need more characters filled with undying loyalty and more characters who just follow the strongest side always.

I need thieves, rogues, and scoundrels just as much as I need pranksters, snarky kids, and love interests. I need Kronks as well as Luna Lovegoods.

I need more Lois Lanes, more Kate Bishops, more Phil Coulsons. 

Give your B-list more spice, and you'll be surprised what it does for your story.

Plus, you know at least this reader will be about five hundred times more interested. ;)

Story Time About Collaborations

Okay, so I always figured I was never ever never going to write anything with another person. Like, I tried it when I was fourteen/fifteen (I don't know exactly when; it was that age when my writing was self-apologetic and overly dramatic), and it didn't go over all that well. I wanted the story to go all super cool plot and she wanted it to go all emotional resonance.

It lasted a couple chapters, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I'm 23 now, and I got an invitation in my inbox for a collaboration. Not a big book that would be published in New York or anything, but a fun little exercise, just to share with the Internet for free and for fun, in which we'd write a 24-author 24-tribute Hunger Games/Marvel Universe event. Every Tribute, Mentor, Capitol Escort, stylist, everybody, would be a Marvel character of some kind. 

My inner fangirl was thrilled.

I ended up getting to write the character of Kate Bishop (look her up; she's amazing) and went about my business writing my part of the chapter.

It was all business as usual. I mean, after all, all I had to do was write a lone wolf archer, just write my chapters and turn them in on time, right?

And then, the chatting started up.

Little introverted me was all "Oh, that's fun. All the authors are getting together and talking. I should probably introduce myself."

Oh no. Oh no. Bad road. I got sucked in so fast.

Next thing I know, I'm reading rough drafts of everyone's chapters. I'm swapping scenes with people to get constructive feedback and giving feedback on their ideas and possibilities and characterizations.

Next thing I know, I'm already swapping ideas for upcoming chapters that haven't even been assigned. I'm discussing possible future interactions with other characters for my character.

Next thing I know, the time comes for all 24 characters to be in the Capitol, and we can't go fast enough chatting with each other about possible interactions and costumes and all sorts of ideas.

I've got a conversation in my inbox that lasted at least 30 different chats with just me and a fellow writer going back and forth basically having a conversation as our characters.

I've got hilarious little snippets of other people's characters from both their chapters and mine.

I've got little sneak-peeks of what's to come from these amazing authors.

I've got tips and tricks on how to improve from other writers reading my rough drafts.

Seriously, this is the most fun I've had in ages. This is the most supportive, wonderful, amazing group of writers, and we're all taking the time out of our usual writing schedule and our busy lives to just have fun.

This is the best. Seriously, if you ever get the chance to write in a group, do it.

Well, y'know, do it if the company's good ;)

Get Yourself a Social Media Platform

Full disclosure: I'm basically like Alice in Wonderland. I give very good advice, but I seldom ever listen.

Okay, so you wrote a book. Or maybe you wrote an article. You wrote something.

First of all, congratulations.

Second of all, I'm so, so sorry. Nobody told you, but your work has only just started.

Now comes the part we don't like to talk about. The part where you get other people to read what you've written.

If you're like me, this is ridiculously hard, because you don't want to be seen as bragging or pushing things in people's faces (I'm looking at you, friend who is a Mary Kay salesperson and thinks I don't mean it when I say I don't need any more makeup).

If you're like me, it's hard, because this is the part where you have to (gasp) talk to people and leave your bubble and why the heck would you do that?

Well, you could not do that...

You could, instead:

1. Get an author Facebook page. (Full disclosure: I still don't have one of these, but Ographies has one, and I'm learning how to run a page so I can get one of my own.) That way, your Facebook friends can see what you're up to writing-wise.

Oh, and make sure you post regularly. Maybe once a week, maybe once a day, depending on how much you have to say.

2. Get a Twitter. (Oh yes, finally advice I actually took.) And don't just tweet about your writing. Tweet funny things. Be yourself. Connect with other writers or other friends or just people. Just connect. And be yourself.

And post regularly. Once a week, once a day, whatever you're comfortable with.

3. Get a blog. Blogger, Wordpress, whatever. I myself have two (not including Ographies), and while I definitely stink at updating regularly, I have divided them into writing and personal. One blog has little snippets of stories, the other has my own little ramblings.

And post regularly. Oh wait, are you starting to see my pattern?

4. Get a Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, or whatever suits your style. Me, I'm a Tumblr geek. I have a fandom tumblr and a writing tumblr, and I mostly just use the fandom one. But maybe you like Instagram better for showing off your character sketches. Or Pinterest for cute quotes. I don't know, I don't care, just get out there and do it, okay?

Now, off you fly, my pretties! Go blog!