I’ve discovered that if an author can open with a motivated character in a surprising and dynamic situation, they are likely to keep my attention for the whole book, unless they stumble severely. The first step to this is crafting a first line – though, actually, it needn’t be the first step chronologically. You can go back and do it after you’ve figured out everything else.

Here are some compelling first lines, with brief analysis of what makes them so.

Originally shared by Andy Brokaw

Some of this is specific to live narrative nonfiction, but a lot of it can be carried over to written storytelling.

Via a private share. If you write speculative fiction, and are over 50, and have recently started working at a pro level, you can apply for this grant. There are two available.

I was thinking this morning about how New Zealanders just know, by linguistic osmosis, that certain geographical areas of the country get a “the” in front of them and others don’t.

For example, it’s always “the North Island” and “the South Island”. If I ever see anyone refer to “North Island” with reference to New Zealand, I know they’re not from around here. But the third-largest island is “Stewart Island”. No “the”.

Then, regional names: it’s Northland, Southland, Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, Otago, Poverty Bay, Taranaki; but the Waikato, the Coromandel, the Bay of Plenty, the King Country, the Mackenzie Country, the Maniototo, and the Wairarapa. (The) Hawkes Bay can go either way. As far as I can work out, there is no rule operating by which you can tell whether to use a “the” or not, but any geographically aware New Zealander will know which is which, and use the right version without thinking.

This is the kind of thing that a local just knows, but you won’t usually see written down anywhere for non-locals. (You won’t usually, maybe won’t ever, see the above distinctions made on maps, for example.) So, if you’re setting a story outside your own locality and culture, it pays to check with someone who knows that place and culture as an insider.

I’m well aware, of course, that language changes; I studied English language for my master’s, after all, including Old English and Middle English. I know that change is inevitable, and resisting it is futile.

At the same time, I advise people who are writing today to know and follow today’s conventions – by which I mean the conventions followed by today’s most skilled writers. I posted a piece a little while back about the five errors I see most frequently in published fiction: missing past perfect tense, “may” instead of “might” in past tense free indirect speech, over-application of the coordinate comma, missing the vocative comma, and missing or (more frequently) misplacing the apostrophe.

All of those are conventions. They’ve been different in the past – in some cases, the not particularly distant past – and will doubtless be different in the future, should we last so long. But if you don’t use the conventions because you don’t know the conventions, you don’t look as professional as the people who do.

And then there are matters of clarity. If you use “enormity” to mean “enormousness”, you now have two words that mean the same thing instead of meaning very different things, and you’ve lost the ability to mean the first thing without some extra contextual cues that tell your readers that’s actually what you mean. If you dangle your modifiers, you not only reveal that your thinking is a bit fuzzy; you risk making a seriously-intended piece ridiculous, which will distract readers from your point. If you use “alright” instead of “all right”, at least some readers will object (even though that’s a change that’s probably now inevitable, and will join “altogether” and “anymore” in the category of “compressed words that mean something subtly different from the uncompressed version”).

I suppose my point is: think about language. Be aware of it. If you’re a writer, it’s both your tool and your medium, just as brushes and paint are for an artist. Be aware of what your language is doing and what it’s conveying about you to various groups of readers. Don’t just slap it on any old way; think about the brushstrokes and the colour wheel.

But don’t obsess about the brushstrokes, or insist on only using the ones that appear in classic paintings, and none of your newfangled acrylics, either, and my art teacher when I was nine years old never let me do X, and…

If you’re an editor, or a book reviewer, I believe you have a form of professional responsibility and also an explicit or implicit invitation (respectively) to critique an author’s usage as well as their style, craft, and other choices. If they’re offering a product for sale, it should be professionally prepared to the best of their ability, and following current conventions is part of that. Otherwise, try not to get too wound up about other people’s brushstrokes. There are more important things; and some of the strokes are changing, whether you like it or not.

Originally shared by Karen Conlin

An excellent post, as always, from my colleague James Harbeck.

These are good tips. One that I used to use when I was a copy editor that I’ve never seen anyone else mention: read upside down. It’s another way of slowing yourself down so that you see what’s actually on the page.

Personally, I don’t print my manuscripts, but I do send them to my Kindle for at least one of my proofreads.

Originally shared by Grammar Girl

It’s human to make mistakes, but these computer and printing tricks can help you catch your typos. http://ow.ly/iHBa30isK3l

Originally shared by Samantha Dunaway Bryant

Since I’m teaching a creative writing class for a local community college right now, a lot of this struck home.

Grammar Girl is useful and thorough, as ever.

Originally shared by Grammar Girl

9 Ways to Use an Apostrophe http://ow.ly/1J5u30ikXPk

I’ve just made a post on the five most common errors I see in books I review (both indie and trad-pub). A good 70% of the books that are appealing enough for me to actually pick up make at least one of these errors, presumably because the authors don’t know that they’re errors.

Are you making one or more of them in your work?