Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

At some point in the process there's no substitute for standing in your living room and reading the whole thing aloud, beginning to end.

Roger J Carlson said:

What do others think? I'm considering a Preposition Highlighter (prepositional phrases are a lot harder), but is is worth it?
The real question is: would it be useful?

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If it'd be useful to you, and it wouldn't cut into your writing time, why not? If you've written your adverb highlighter sufficiently broadly, the preposition bits might be easy to plug into it... hee. I was going to describe it, but why bother when I can just code it? Check your PM; I've stuck the code there for you. If anyone else wants it, let me know here or in PM.

I don't think a preposition highlighter would be as useful. When you read through your work -- which you should do two or three times with each story anyways -- it's a lot easier to notice convoluted prepositional phrases than it is to notice adverbs.

that pesky "was"

Just wanted to thank the person who brought up the "was" and passive voice problem. I'm 65,000 words into my WIP, and have found a plethora of passive voice problems. Wish I would have caught this before. But then again, it would have interupted that white-hot flow (ten pages a day). I'll contend with it in the major rewrite when all is set to ink.

Now, you never told (anybody) me how to write a radio converstation on a page. Just like regular dialogue? Caps? Italics? Thanks for any answer on this.

Triceratops

I would use italics for the radio conversation, but it's really up to you. You're a writer, you have artistic license.

Pardon my ignorance, but could someone explain to me what a 'run-on sentence' is? I thought I knew. I was wrong.

dink said:

Pardon my ignorance, but could someone explain to me what a 'run-on sentence' is? I thought I knew. I was wrong.

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Pardon my ignorance but could someone explain to me what a 'run-on sentence' is I thought I knew I was wrong?

or

It was a dark and stormy night, the shutters were flapping against the siding of the house, the fire in the fireplace burned like a fire, casting smoke upward into the tubular chimney pipes encased in brick, while the hot chocolate was hot and choclatey in the mug that Jane Seymour held in her lily-white fingers as she spoke to me in her warm, soft, choclatey British accent whilst they attempted to film a commercial for a skin-care product with her children, who were now climbing all over the sofa and trying to beat me with toy lightsabers (the one kid's lightsaber was blue, and the other had a red one), and I think they were reenacting the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin on the volcanic planet of Mustafar from Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, and I think I was the personification of the dark side while their mother was the personification of the choclatey good side.

Now that is a run-on sentence!

(As well as a choclatey-good plot premise)

Jlawrenceperry, I can see that there is something wrong in the examples you give, but I'm not entirely sure what. It seems to be to do with punctuation, lack of commas, full stops e.t.c. Is that right?

Yes, that's part of it. But also because in one sentence I have tried to encapsulate a dozen or so ideas. Best to have one or two ideas per sentence.

Plus when I said the fire burned like a fire... well, that's a useless simile. There's also passive voice lurking about.

So, again, with feeling:

It was a dark and stormy night. The shutters flapped against the siding of the house while smoke billowed from the chimney. Jane Seymour held a mug of hot chocolate in her lily-white fingers as she spoke to me in her warm British accent. A crew attempted to film a commercial for a skin-care product with Jane and her two children, who were now climbing all over the sofa and trying to beat me with toy lightsabers. One of the lightsabers was blue, and the other red. I think they reenacted the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin on the volcanic planet of Mustafar, from Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. I was the personification of the dark side while their mother was the personification of the choclatey good side.

Okay, I think I've got it now.

My original understanding was that a run-on sentence was more like your first example, where the second sentence carried on from the first without any punctuation break. Two sentences incorrectly glued together.

I wouldn't have described the second example as a run-on sentence -- merely bad writing -- because all the different ideas did seem to follow on from each other with some semblance of correct punctuation and grammar (even though it was patently bad). But I've seen that kind of thing described as a run-on sentence and not really understood why.

I see now that it's like a semibreve (whole-note) rest. It can either mean no music for the value of a semibreve, or it can mean no music for the length of a bar.

I understand now. Thank you.

Not that I condone this, but there are a few rare exeptions to the 'no run-ons rule.'
For instance, Hemingway used run-ons in 'A Farewell to Arms' to emphasize his MC's thoughts, and I think 'On the Road' by Kerouac used the same type of endless sentences. So not all run-ons are evil, but they must have a significance to the overall WIP.

jlawrenceperry said:

It was a dark and stormy night, the shutters were flapping against the siding of the house, the fire in the fireplace burned like a fire, casting smoke upward into the tubular chimney pipes encased in brick, while the hot chocolate was hot and choclatey in the mug that Jane Seymour held in her lily-white fingers as she spoke to me in her warm, soft, choclatey British accent whilst they attempted to film a commercial for a skin-care product with her children, who were now climbing all over the sofa and trying to beat me with toy lightsabers (the one kid's lightsaber was blue, and the other had a red one), and I think they were reenacting the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin on the volcanic planet of Mustafar from Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, and I think I was the personification of the dark side while their mother was the personification of the choclatey good side.

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I read a novel once that had several sentences very similar to this one, except that they went on for an average of about two pages. Yeuch.

Our very own ZaZ writes like that, and I think it bodes very well for satire and humorous passages. Kind of a "hold you under the water until you can't breath" style, that does have it's place.

I'm starting to object to this mass condemnation of the word "was." It cannot be eliminated entirely--not from my script at any rate--but I've certainly pulled a lot of excess "was" words from my work. I thumbed through a dozen novels and that damn word is everywhere! However, when I do my first massive re-write, I will look for that pesky devil just to see how I've used it, or abused it.

I swear, every time I see a new writing rule in this forum it serves as a major block and inhibitor to me LOL. I'm one of those fly-by-my-pants writers who has to get it all down. I think I'll return when the book is done. Must...leave...somehow...

Tri



Tri

dink said:

My original understanding was that a run-on sentence was more like your first example, where the second sentence carried on from the first without any punctuation break. Two sentences incorrectly glued together.

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That's almost what I understand a run-on sentence to be. It's also called a comma splice. There's punctuation in the middle, but it's a comma where a period belongs.

Hi Jack, nice to see you over here, how is the 200 hundred author thing going?


Anyway, where can I post a couple pages of work for those who know to look at it.

I'm looking for your comments as to clarity of scene, and, anything else that stands out.

Thank uncle Jim, and gang.

Changling, if you care to post the piece in the Share Your Work forum, I'm sure several would be glad to have a look.

LiamJackson said:

Changling, if you care to post the piece in the Share Your Work forum, I'm sure several would be glad to have a look.

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Will do, if I can find it.

Thanks Liam.

Found it, posted in mystery.

run-on's

Not all run-on sentences are created equal (-ly).

Too many of them in a row annoy the crap out of me (what a visual), but the occasional run-on for stylistic purposes works nicely. The authors I've read that use them the best do so at precise intervals (usually in specific characters' POV, not all of them). To me, it makes the the particular passage more varied in rhythm and conveys a less hectic pace. Whereas a bunch of back-to-back simple sentences convey a heightened event. Like carb's in your diet, best used in moderation.

Elmore Leonard uses them frequently (and brilliantly, if you like comical crime stories like I do).

jdparadise said:

If it'd be useful to you, and it wouldn't cut into your writing time, why not? If you've written your adverb highlighter sufficiently broadly, the preposition bits might be easy to plug into it... hee. I was going to describe it, but why bother when I can just code it? Check your PM; I've stuck the code there for you. If anyone else wants it, let me know here or in PM.

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Well, I completed the Preposition Highlighter. But instead of writing my own, I adapted Jon's. (Thanks, Jon.) His routine checks the number of prepositions in a sentence and a paragraph and only highlights those above a pre-defined threshold. I just bundled it into my standard package which gives the user the ability to choose threshold and color.

It's on my website here:
http://www.rogerjcarlson.com/WritingHelp/TechTips.html

jules said:

I read a novel once that had several sentences very similar to this one, except that they went on for an average of about two pages. Yeuch.

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Yes, and I imagine it was The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks.... Talk about a Yeuch book.

"OMG, what is that shiny cylindrical object that casts a faint white light?" Middle Earth grows out of a Nuclear Holocaust? Yikes.

Actually, no. It was "Day of the Dolphin", I forget the author's name, a translation from the original French novel into English.

A *very* odd book, in many ways.

black winged fighter said:

Not that I condone this, but there are a few rare exeptions to the 'no run-ons rule.'
For instance, Hemingway used run-ons in 'A Farewell to Arms' to emphasize his MC's thoughts, and I think 'On the Road' by Kerouac used the same type of endless sentences. So not all run-ons are evil, but they must have a significance to the overall WIP.

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In one of his books on writing (I think it was How to Write Best-Selling Fiction), Dean R. Koontz recommended using run-on sentences very sparingly in some types of action or suspense scenes. (IIRC he recommended gnerally using shorter sentences in action and suspense scenes.)

He showed a great example from one of his stories. (The scene involved a character's POV after he got shot.) Of course, I tried the same technique in the suspense novel I was writing at the time, and it ended up sucking.

Didn't The Simpsons use that thing for one of their Halloween shows? Where the dolpins start walking on land and shove all the humans into the ocean? I know the skit was called Day of the Dolphin. LOL