www.holtuncensored.com/members/#mistakes
PS -- One of the worst cases of number 1 I've seen is R.A. Salvatore's The Sword of Bedwyr, in which Mr. Salvatore seems to have fallen in love with the word "pragmatic." Urrr!
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited October 15, 2003).]
I often look back at something I've written and find the repeat phrases, and it always surprises me. When I'm writing, I don't see it; it all reads smoothly to me. But on a second pass, I'm left scratching my head and saying, "Geeze, didn't I use that exact description two pages ago?"
I think #1 is a favorite of mine, and of course, #10, which is always a hot topic on Hatrack
quote:
Avoid words that are fashionable in conversation. Ann Packer's characters are so trendy the reader recoils. " 'What's up with that?' I said. 'Is this a thing [love affair]?' " "We both smiled. " 'What is it with him?' I said. 'I mean, really.' " Her book is only a few years old, and already it's dated.
Wouldn’t you want to use words that ground your dialog in the time period you are writing? You couldn’t use dialog like that above in a Victorian, or even in the 1970’s, but for something 2003ish? That language doesn’t sound dated for use in a "now" setting to me.
quote:
"Mrs. Fletcher's face pinkened slightly." Whoa. This is an author trying too hard. "I sat down and ran a finger up the bottom of his foot, and he startled so dramatically .... " Egad, "he startled"? You mean "he started"?
I don’t get the problem with the first one. "Mrs. Fletcher blushed" is more succinct, but the version above seems more descriptive of the nuisances of the situation. And in the second one, people can be startled when tickled. "He started" wouldn’t make any sense. He’s been alarmed, he’s not beginning something. The awkwardness seems mostly from the sentence starting to get a bit long for all the action (hard to tell since the sentence is cut off) and the use of "so" before dramatically.
So am I just blind to these sorts of mistakes, or are these just illustrative of a particular pet peeve of Holt?
I thought 'pinkened' just sounded awkward, when you've got the options of 'blushed' 'flushed' and 'reddened'. It doesn't sound like a real word, which I think would jolt you out of the story a bit.
Immi
Number 6 is good. I read a book on writing by David Gerrold; apparently he wrote an entire novel without using 'to be' anywhere in it. He reckons that it can make the writing clearer and more emphatic, that nearly every use of 'to be' softens the meaning of the sentence that contains it. That's a bit too weird for me, but I've certainly started looking at my writing and eliminating redundant 'to be's. For instance, I have only used it once in this paragraph, and rewriting that sentence would have resulted in a rather obscure phrasing for a relatively simple concept...
You'd get something like:
The 1,200
She 1,150
Etc--it was great. And I sure wish that WP or Word had that now. It was a great way to check for over usage of words. I pretty much have trained myself to look for repeated phrases. My trouble is pet words, that, just small words that most times are not needed.
As far as startled.
I agree with the show don't tell in this.
Saying She startled Dave when she tickled him. (telling)
Better to say She pounced on Dave by surprise. Dave squealed and tripped on the roller skate, landing on his behind. (showing)
We know she startled him, but we see it through actions.
Shawn
I wasn’t as clear as I could be about my issue with the other one. Something is wrong with that sentence, starting with the "and he startled so dramatically." I just didn’t get how "he started" (which yes I am aware also means "to move abruptly in surprise, etc," but that wasn’t the first thought that came to my mind where I read the sentence, hence how I worded my response) was so much better than "he startled." Both sound like awkward usage. I hadn’t thought of the whole show/tell dilemma being the root problem. "He jumped and fell off the chair" is more in line with what I would have chosen to use, but I hadn’t really thought of the rule behind it that way.
<sigh> The whole show/tell thing gets confusing. It seems like there is about 2-3 different ways to define it. Add that not all telling is bad at all times, and it gets to be a muddle.
You can downloading it from here:
http://www.moscow.org.uk/wordcounter.zip
It uses a windows edit control so you can copy & paste your stuff into it to get counts out, but it is unfortunately limited to 64K at a time (about 7,000 words or so). But you can get a good idea of a chunk of your work, and see if words keep cropping up in different sections.
Brian
Look toward the bottom of your list. That is where more obscure words that will stick in the reader's mind will show up as repeaters. An uncommon word used even twice in a 400 page manuscript will stick out like a sore thumb.
Jules-
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why the 7K word limit?
Thanks again,
Brian
In fact, I’ve been trying to think of a legitimate use for “actually.” Any sentence I come up with is just as good without the word. The best I can do: “He went to the men’s room, but actually it was the women’s room.” And even that “actually” can be left out in a pinch, although I like it better in -- sentence flow and contrast.
“Start” is a strange word. It also means to protrude or bulge, and to become loose, so eyes can start and so can rivets, but I’m not sure I’d use the word that way. “Start” may be a verb, but it seems more understandable as a noun, as in “You gave me a start.” In the example cited
quote:
"I sat down and ran a finger up the bottom of his foot, and he startled so dramatically.... "
quote:
Wouldn’t you want to use words that ground your dialog in the time period you are writing? You couldn’t use dialog like that above in a Victorian, or even in the 1970’s, but for something 2003ish? That language doesn’t sound dated for use in a "now" setting to me.
quote:
" 'What's up with that?' I said. 'Is this a thing…?' " "We both smiled. " 'What is it with him?' I said. 'I mean, really.' "
It’s no different than ahs and ums – you end up with either bloated conversation or running the risk of making your character sound stupid, even though when people actually talk [case in point; see above 
], they do use ahs and ums without sounding stupid. It just translates differently to paper. In the example, “It’s absolutely wild. I love it.”, that “absolutely” may sound fine in speech, but on paper, unless it’s an affectation of the character, it’s unnecessary for clarity and bloats the sentence.
quote:
Jules-Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why the 7K word limit?
Basically, it's a windows restriction. That's as much as you can put in a normal Windows edit box. It's the same restriction that notepad has (hence the fact that notepad will open really big files in wordpad instead).
Some day I'll finish writing my improved text editor component, then I'll release a new version without the limit. But that'll take a cold day in hell, or me coming up with that killer app design that I've been chasing for years now...
quote:
Look toward the bottom of your list. That is where more obscure words that will stick in the reader's mind will show up as repeaters. An uncommon word used even twice in a 400 page manuscript will stick out like a sore thumb.
Point taken, so I did it again and I still don't see a problem word, at least not on my current manuscript. I'll probably check my word usage from now on since it's such an easy thing to do.
quote:
Basically, it's a windows restriction. That's as much as you can put in a normal Windows edit box. It's the same restriction that notepad has (hence the fact that notepad will open really big files in wordpad instead).
I take it you are working under win 9x? I know in w2k and winxp that limit is gone. I have opened some 500M text files in notepad before.
Anyway, I'm absolutely certain that my biggest problem lies with overuse of weak adverbs. Verily, thusly...incredibly... I certainly do need to work on it.
Excellent list, by the way. I'm going to start searching for the other ones that may not be so apparent.
Shawn
cat filename.txt |tr " [A-Z]" "\n[a-z]"|sed s/[^a-z0-9]//g|sort | uniq -c |sort -n
You might want to redirect the output to a file or pipe it to less, because it is rather long. It also may take a few seconds for a long work (it's about 160 pages/second on my computer).
Hope this Helps
Be patient the outgoing on the server isn't that fast.
I'm hoping to add a phrase search and first word count for sentances and paragraphs.
[This message has been edited by Lord Darkstorm (edited October 23, 2003).]
Just replace 'actually' or 'to be' or whatever your crutch word is with something like zxcv or some other nonsensical group of letters. It will tell you how many times it was replaced, then you can change it back and decide if there were too many of your crutch words. Or save your story in a 2nd file to play with the replace options and you won't have to worry about screwing something up.
Zixx
Once I figure out how to count phrases without it taking all day, that will come in handy too. Just last night I noticed a phrase that I had used 4 times in the matter of 3 paragraphs. Part of the problem with reviewing your own work is that you can miss some obvious problems that are there. If a simple utility can help find those problems then the story improves.
Besides, programming is something I can do well, and still enjoy.
cat filename.txt| perl -e '@s=();while(<> ){tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/;@s=(@s,split(/[^a-z0-9\']+/));while($#s>3){print "$s[0] $s[1] $s[2]\n";shift(@s);}}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
This counts three word phrases. To change that, change the bolded 3 to some other number.
http://www.holtuncensored.com/members/column376.html
Sadly, I haven't been writing lately, so I haven't frquented the boards much. I have a few vague story ideas running around in my head, and I'm still editing that beast of a novel I wrote...
JOHN!