Round 20, Hour 18

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Round 20 is now old enough to drink legally in Australia. I celebrated this by spilling coffee all over myself.

I know we have lots of people in revision mode right now. How's the revising/creating/minor domestic accidents going?

Comments

[a-q.livejournal.com]

I just spilled coffee too! Spooky...
Still waiting for the plot bunny to come out of hiding, where ever it went - probably drinking booze with penguins, its Saturday night after all...

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Saturday Night's all right for Penguins! I hope your plot bunnies come out to play.

[laurie-ky.livejournal.com]

Getting a little antsy. I'm having impulses to look through music to add a few more songs to a fan-mix. I'll hold that off as a reward.

I'm really grateful for this free grammar program I found that works with Open Office. It catches a lot of my dumb mistakes that are so ingrained in my writing. Things like "try and" instead of "try to." and passive voice wording.

Laurie

[a-q.livejournal.com]

What program is that? I've been using the Edit Minion I found from internet, but I've been wondering if there was something else out there... Because I have a bad passive voice problem, the Edit Minion lights up like a Christmas tree every time

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Mai opinion on passive voice, you can haz it even though you didn't ask for it: It's not really something that should be flagged as an error. It can be a very useful way to construct a sentence. Not a bad thing to be aware of, but makes me want to punch MS Word in the throat every time it tries to tell me I'm doing it wrong.

[a-q.livejournal.com]

I'm not a native speaker, and all the grammar books I own are rather light on the topic, so I've tried to avoid the passive voice in case it is super-annoying thing... Hard to tell.
Some of the grammar issues aren't that clear - one books says one thing, the other something else...

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Passive voice is great if you want to put the object of the sentence into the position of focus. So it's really useful sometimes. I want to talk about a story you wrote. Well, "that story was written by a_q." The story is the important thing in the sentence. I want to talk about you writing a story. "a_q wrote that story."

Does that make more sense to think about it? It can be helpful when you want to change the emphasis of the sentence. It can also be overused as a way not to identify the subject of the sentence. (Help, my grammar is really rusty...) "The plane was crashed." Well, by whom? No idea. And the de-emphasis of the responsible party for an action is one reason why some people advise against using passive voice. It can also be less exciting than active voice, but it certainly has a place.

Your posts leave no suggestion that you're not a native speaker; your English seems pretty idiomatic and comfortable. If you read a lot of English, you'll know things instinctively about how grammar is used. Many native English speakers I know (including me!) didn't get a lick of formal grammar in school... I only got it because I studied other languages and the teachers had to school us on English grammar so we could understand comparative grammatical structures.

[lolmac]

Yes! I learned some of my formal grammar from my parents, outside of school, some of it from my French teacher, much of it from reading really good writers, and none of it from my English classes.

I also would not have known you weren't a native speaker, a_q. Your English is excellent.

[a-q.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[a-q.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that does help to see the difference!
I take the Edit Minions suggestions with a pinch of salt anyway, it is not same thing as a human reader. But in my lack of beta, I figured a program is better than nothing...
And it lights up adverbs as well, so it's easy to see when there is too many of those buggers :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Ha ha yes, I spend a lot of time in revisions taking out unnecessary adverbs. (she said grumpily!) Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're just a sign that I need to describe the character's behaviour in more visual/sensory terms.

[lolmac]

There's a book called Strunk and White, in which two people who didn't know what they were talking about declared that the Passive Voice is Bad. It's true that passive construction is usually a poor choice when you're writing college papers and essays, and that a non-passive construction is often a better choice. The solution to this is to develop a better ear for strong construction, which only happens with time and practice and ongoing study of other people's really well-written prose.

Unfortunately, that same stupid book became a best-seller, and its lousy advice has now been hard-coded into most grammar software, thereby perpetuating mediocrity. Worst of all, the advice that should have been restricted to college papers and other presumed non-fiction writing has been arbitrarily extended to fiction as well.

I long since shut down the grammar checker on my system and threw away my copy of Stunk and Blight Strunk and White.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

I had a small argument on the internet this week over whether Strunk and White was better than nothing. (Me: no.) I ended up recommending English as She is Spoke as an alternative. Sometimes you just have to troll.

[lolmac]

Heh. Yes, I agree that Nothing is much better than S&W, on the grounds that bad advice does more damage than no advice.

Here's a lovely article that goes into detail on the subject:
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497

"The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it."

[a-q.livejournal.com]

Yes, I noticed that same thing while browsing through grammar sites - the advice was mainly addressed to college students, not fiction writers. And I know from my own university studies that scientific writing is far from literary writing - tricks that work for one won't work for other.

Thanks for the tip, I'm sure not to read that book :D

[lolmac]

The infuriating thing is that the "rules" from Strunk and White were used by the people who originally created the grammar software used in MS Word and other grammar-checking programs -- so you end up dogged by the rubbish advice even if you never see the book itself.

Here's an analogy: you can buy an electronic device that will help you tune a musical instrument precisely. But every professional musician learns to tune his or her instrument by ear. If you blindly accept the instructions of a second-rate tool, you don't develop the skill you absolutely must have to grow as an artist.

[a-q.livejournal.com]

That's true. And besides, since we write fiction, hence create art (of course), we are allowed to fudge the rules a bit - too much grammar will stifle the muse :D (probably not true, but sounds convincing)

[lolmac]

A professional writer from Australia recommended a fine book to me: "Spunk and Bite", which is about breaking the rules in the best way and for the best effect. It's a truly marvelous book.

http://www.amazon.com/Spunk-Bite-Punchier-Engaging-Language/dp/0375721150

Sample chapters include "How to Loot a Thesaurus", "Intensifiers for the Feeble", "The Joys of Hyper-Hyphenation" and "A License. To Fragment. Sentences."

[laurie-ky.livejournal.com]

http://afterthedeadline.com/download.slp?platform=OpenOffice

I read the other comments with interest. I find this program helpful, but I don't always change things it suggests. It does help me think about how I do want to contruct the sentence. Sometimes passive voice is better for what I'm trying to convey and at other times I realize changing the passive voice to active makes the sentence less clunky and more clear.

I use betas also, but I've found I can weed out a lot of silly goofs before I sent it to a beta, and make it easier for them to read through.

Laurie

[lolmac]

Ah, so you're using it as a learning tool instead of accepting it as 'law'? Good for you!

[lolmac]

I'm back from grocery shopping and trying not to develop a migraine. Ack. I have, so far, not spilled anything on myself or anyone else.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Crap. Migraines being what they are, all I can do is utter soothing platitudes, because my home remedies probably won't do jack for you. Hope it holds off.

[lolmac]

Darkened rooms and calm and quiet and cold (non-alcoholic) fruit drinks are helping a great deal. Phew.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

That sounds lovely. I like a cold pack to the back of my neck and sometimes swapping it to my forehead, too. But the dark is the best bit.

[lolmac]

My partner made me a smoothie while I sat in the dark and cuddled an ice brick. Ice bricks are not terribly cuddly, but you do what you can.

[sid]

*shoos stoopid migraine away*