Pet Peeve #1

Disrespect is an intransitive verb.  John cannot DISRESPECT someone.  The verb doesn't work that way.  STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!!!!!  If you do not know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, GOOGLE IT!!!  JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE DOES IT DOESN'T MAKE IT WRITE!!!

Thank you, now back to our regularly scheduled blogging . . .

Telly

OK, so this  post is about television and not reading or writing, but there is value in television programs and movies.  Mostly, learning about plots and characters. 

You would think not having regular television would mean I have an excess of time.  I think I have less time than I did before.  But I have an extra $50 dollars a month to pay other bills with.  (Yeah, just $50, never been a BIG fan of the telly.)

I have a plethora of movies I've never gotten around to watching.  Yesterday, I watched Clockwork Orange and Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon.

In college, I would have loved Clockwork Orange.  It's very 70's.  Has great language and imagery.  But now, I'm an adult paying bills.  I spent the first 20 minutes asking my husband what the point was.  The rest of the time, I had my eyebrow arched, trying to see the young man in the crusty actor I presently know as Malcolm McDowell.  Nevertheless, not a complete waste.  As least, I can say I've seen the movie now.  Oh, and silver lining?  Yes, the guy who plays Dim was in the same Inspector George Gently episode as Emun Elliott.  :D


Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon, on the other hand . . . If you've read Vanity Fair, you'll have a heart attack over this version.  Beautiful scenery, luscious costumes and basically follows the plot.  But Becky in the book is a sociopath.  I couldn't help but pity Reese Witherspoon as Becky.  And that ending, that's the kind of ending romance authors would give Vanity Fair.  If you haven't read the book . . . well, why the *&%# would you want to watch Vanity Fair if you've never read the book?

Today, The Paradise is airing on PBS (I still have PBS).  Though I have The Paradise on DVD and it's also on Netflix, I am going to watch it again.  Just in case they changed something.

Aussi, mon francais est rouille, mais j'essayais faire avancer.

And last but not least: You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Emun . . .

Just a short one today & nothing to do with writing:  My husband was grumbling about Emun Elliott.  I said, "I bet you can't spell his name."  Pregnant pause.  "E--"  Baby-being-born pause.  "M-O-N."  Me: "E-M-U-N."  My wonderful, loving husband, "So backwards, his name is NOOM."  "Or NUMMY."

Undoubtedly, I'm not the first person in the world to come up with this, but it made me happy and it shut my husband up.

Evil Words

I'm gonna kinda be lazy today.  I know, been lazy for a while . . .

This is my evil word list.  Everyone who's worked with me knows about it.  Perhaps not the full list, but they know.  Hopefully, this is self-explanatory.  It's a guideline for words you should avoid or use sparingly.  I don't like to see more than four of these every 250 words.  And yes, I count them.  Computers are wonderful things. 

It's not that these words in and of themselves are evil.  They usually signal another problem in the writing skills. All adverbs & to a degree, adjectives: when writing you want to stick to nouns and verbs as much as possible.  I touched on this a little in blog two, but the truth is 'he ran fast' would be much better served by 'he dashed.'  So get rid the adverb/adjective and try to use nouns and verbs to accurately describe the scene.

Hedging words: same thing.  'He didn't quite smile.'  If he didn't quite smile, what did he do?  'He smirked' will serve better than a hedging word.  And aaaaa llllooooottttt of these words are adverbs, so it's a category that repeats itself.  AND WE NEVER WANT TO REPEAT OURSELVES.  But that category is particularly bad adverbs.

Overused words are words that novice authors really don't have a way of knowing without experience.  Most published books have cleaned up overused words because they've been fleeced by an editor.  Once you start to see them abused, you'll identify them quickly.  I have more patience with thing than feel, but both make me cringe when I see thing. And really, what does beautiful mean?  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  So describe WHAT the beholder sees.

Cerebral words:  These all get used wwwaaaaaayyyyyyy too much.  Cerebral words signal that an author is writing passive voice or telling instead of showing.  The action needs to stay action and stay out of your character's head as much as possible.  It's almost impossible to pull off good writing when using too many thought terms. 'I thought I saw a ghost.'  'The mist had coagulated into human form, tricking my eyes.'

And lastly: Mundane actions.  This is another one that's hard for novice authors to pick up on.  Editors are supposed to clean this last category up, but the more self-published and e-pubbed stuff I read, the more of the last category I see.  Which means the editor is as lazy as the author.  Nothing wrong exactly with the last category, except that the author has decided they don't want to work at describing something.  Me, I read, 'he nodded' twenty times and the character becomes a bobble head doll. That's fine for a rough draft, get through it.  But when refining the draft, those words need to go.   Printed books rarely let an author get away with that level of writing. 

All adverbs & to a degree, adjectives

Hedging words:

quite

seem,

sure,

almost,

maybe,

certain,

doubt,

so

some

suppose,

might,

lead-in & hedging phrases

just,

really,

kind of/sort of

perhaps

appear

Overused words:

thing,

feel,

hope

sense,

AND

there is/are/was/were,

beauty/beautiful

obvious

Cerebral words:

thought,

know,

consider,

recognize,

idea,

imagine,

assume,

understand,

believe,

wonder,

remind,

Mundane actions:

nod,

shook,

smile,

shrug

laugh,

Look & eyes

turn,

push,

grin,

giggle,

sigh,

pull

groan,

pain,

admit,

see/saw,

shrug

pause

 OK, that's enough for a Sunday morning.