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1/27/2017

Me Bad. #MFRWauthor

No matter how much you write, whether it be blog posts, synopsis, or full-length novels, a hard lesson for many authors to accept is that their pearls of wisdom will not be perfect. We are human beings. Skilled ones, but still human beings. What can make writing a challenge is that we don't necessarily make the same mistakes every time. The word that got stuck in our head and appeared fifteen times in one chapter is replaced by another in the following one. A review of the first draft showed that we wrote the same dance scene twice in the book. Among the tools I use are style sheets, crib sheets and checklists to help identify problem words. Word processor spell check programs are useful, but I've often found them more frustrating as they insert words that I don't mean. The fall back is a dictionary and keen eye.

And now the list of things that have haunted and frustrated me in the past.
  • Words stuck in your mind. Highlighting suspected ones and using a word frequency counter can help. The latest one to be used is from WriteWords. Although a beta reader with a keen eye is also useful.
  • Dangling modifiers
  • Affect vs effect
  • Farther vs further
What is your bugaboo that you can't seem to avoid? Leave a comment. And be sure to click on the below links for more tips from the other authors in the hop.

~till next time, Helen








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2 comments:

  1. Tina GayleJanuary 27, 2017 at 10:57 AM

    Great post. Thanks for sharing. Tina

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cathy BrockmanJanuary 27, 2017 at 11:53 AM

    I use Grammarly but the paid version I can pick and choose what I insert or not. I need ot find one to help find all the repeated words I am thinking of trying Smart edit.

    ReplyDelete

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