Editing
I always have so much trouble editing my short stories. I can sometimes pick up obvious errors, but a lot ends up going unedited. I'm embarrassed to post my stories anywhere, because I'm always afraid they're full of mistakes. I takes me, maybe, 2 read throughs of my stories to pick out all the mistakes I can find, and that feels too few to me. Yet, when I go through it a 3rd time and a 4th time, I can't find anything else that looks wrong to me. It makes me paranoid that I'm conveying certain ideas in my story incorrectly, or that someone will get the wrong idea about a certain situation in the story, or that they just won't get what I'm trying to say at all. I'd say I'm pretty decent at writing, but it feels like it's all for nothing if I can't properly edit it.
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You are not alone in that feeling. My editing process is read it myself at least twice, then to throw it into a grammar program, then into a program that reads it aloud to me, then read it over once more before I go and post it anywhere. And I'll still find mistakes in it the next day. Very frustrating. Sometimes I'll leave the story alone for months just so I can forget what I wrote and reread with fresh eyes.
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Exactly! I try to ask others for their input, but I suppose editing is the most uninteresting part of writing, and never get any replies. My sister suggested I look for a writer's forum and see if I could find someone willing to assist me in editing.
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A good beta reader is hard to find. I don't write consistently enough to find one willing to stick with me through all my silent months. There were some tips I saw how to conquer editing but I don't have them handy at the moment. But it was stuff like how you should edit 5 days a week, at like 350 words, something like that. Makes it easier to handle or something.
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That's all well and good, but what if you don't realize you've made a mistake and you skip over it, thinking it looks fine? I mean, I know it's not going to be 100% perfect all the time, but writing is the only thing I'm really good at, so I'm kind of a perfectionist about it ^^;
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Just repeat the process? Haha I'm actually not sure since I don't use that method. I guess the other way is to continue improving on your grammar so you make less mistakes? The good thing too, is that most people won't pick up on the mistake in the first place unless it's an obvious misspelling or broken sentence. Plus we rarely speak in perfect English so, one could consider it be style! -bricked-
Don't mind me, I'm rambling. xD |
Yeah, I suppose that's true. I have made spelling errors on purpose, so I guess I could just play it off?
~also, a little unrelated, but I've always wanted to make my own word that caught on in casual language like Shakespeare or something~ |
Yup it happens. X3
Ooo that would be cool. I always wanted to invent my own language like how Tolkien did Elvish. |
Conlang. Constructed Language.
I am a fan of that. The best place to play Conlang would be fantasy. I created all of the names. First step into Conlang. lol. Back to Editing. I have very bad grammar. I am sure I still mess up with prepositions, past tense, present participle and such and so on. I would really need someone else to edit all this vital mistake out for me, cause I really am not interested in grammar. -___-;; |
xuvrette: I think, the biggest problem I have is poor phrasing and punctuation. I'm usually pretty good at spelling, but sometimes I phrase things strangely, but it sounds okay to me and I won't notice until someone points it out - and I have problems recognizing punctuation errors.
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punctuation? Isn't that ,./;'[]?!@#$%&*() about symbols?
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Yeah, it's all the marks like that. I mess those up sometimes, like I put too many commas or something.
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heh. I have the tendency to use a lot of ...
XD |
xuvrette: Yeah! I do tend to over uses ellipses XD
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ooo so ... has a name! XD
Sounds like eclipse. |
xuvrette: Oh, yeah! I just learned this recently myself!
Singular is ellipsis and plural is ellipses C: The more you know, eh? |
I don't know the name of many symbols.
"" - always use but don't know the name. [] {} () they should have different names instead of just general brackets? \ / different direction slash. ;: and these... |
not meaning to butt in, but when I saw this I couldn't help myself. now I'm not too sure about the other symbols you mentioned, but the ()brackets are called parenthesis. the : is a colon, and the ; is a semi-colon
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heh? so that is called parenthesis?
how about the [] and {}? |
lol, I've actually done some research since first seeing this thread, and can now answer with some modicum of informity. the square brackets [ ] are called 'crotchets' and are used either to insert explanatory material, to mark where a passage was omitted from an original material by someone other than the original author, or to mark modifications in quotations. the curly brackets { } are called braces or squiggly brackets. they mostly are used in poetry and music to mark repeats or joined lines, or in mathematics and writing to delimit sets, e.g. "Select your poison {arsenic, nightshade, my cooking} and follow me". and in programming they are used to enclose groups of statements. lol, not sure exactly what it is that you mean to do with this little snippet of knowledge, but if its take over the world, can I have Australia?
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You are a researcher type! I love.
Crotchet? isn't that the same name with some musical notes? |
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I have a pretty developed editing process and I don't like being rushed in it. It's true it's hard to find a lot of the mistakes if you reread right after you finish writing. I've been taught to set the story aside for a while before editing it. I've heard professional writers suggest that. I would normally read over once immediately, then let it marinate. In that time, I come up with ideas and think over what I've written. You lose some of your connection to the piece and can rip it apart later without wanting to cry. Also, you just forget some of what you meant to say, whether that is if that is supposed to be 'there' or 'their' or awkward phrasing, or anything. If it doesn't make sense to you after a month, it really won't make to your reader. But it would make sense to you a day after you wrote it.
I read over my things at least five times, and that's just fics. I've been wallowing over a short story I want to enter into a lucrative contest for closer to a year. |
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