Category: vocabulary

October 3, 2013 / 3 Comments

Do You Need Mechanical Assistance?

Your minds always go there first, don’t they.  You bunch of perverts…

Some of you may remember Watson, the supercomputer that played against two Jeopardy champions and beat them. Watson was specifically built to understand human language. That was the sole point of its appearance on Jeopardy—to show that a machine could be programmed to understand subtext and clues and irony well enough that it could compete against humans using their rules.

Why am I talking about a supercomputer—a fantastic and kick-ass supercomputer, granted—when I keep insisting this place is about writing?

Do you know how big Watson is? Or how long it took to build? How many people were involved? Watson was a six year project for a team of more than twenty engineers and programmers (plus a ton of students interning with IBM). It’s a collection of processors and drives as big as my first apartment in Los Angeles (which means it’s probably the size of your kitchen).

And you know what? Even with all that computing power and information, Watson still got things wrong. Several times in warm up games and even during the main event, Watson would miss obvious clues and give the most bizarre answers. If you run the numbers, Watson didn’t know how to answer a given question almost twenty percent of the time. When it did answer, it still got one out of every ten questions wrong.

Now, again, please remember what I just said how long all those people worked on this machine. A machine that was built for the specific purpose of understanding human language. That’s going to be important when I ask my next question.

How much work do you think went into your computer’s word processor?

For that matter, how much went into just its spellchecker? Or into that automated proofreader? Do you think the people programming it were IBM-level experts in their field? And in the field of writing?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say these things are useless tools.  I use my spellchecker.  I usually make a pass with it during my third draft.  There’s nothing wrong with using it as a tool to help me check spelling.  But I have no illusions about the fact that I still need to be the one checking the spelling.

See, I don’t blindly accept every “correction” it offers me.  And this isn’t my entire third draft.  I still go through the whole manuscript line by line, sentence by sentence.  It can take me four or five days.  Because I know the  machine can’t be trusted to do it for me.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until people listen.  A computer cannot write for me.  It doesn’t matter how cool someone’s system is, it won’t do the job.  That’s why, whenever you ask a real writer for advice, they’ll usually say to hire a good editor, not to upgrade your software.

If I want to be a writer—a working, paid writer–I need to know how to spell and how to use words and what those words mean.

These words, for example.

fair and fare –one of these is how you get through an experience

dual and duel—one of these refers to citizenship

vain and vein – one of these refers to similar things

tics and ticks – one of these is a twitch

mute and moot –one of these is irrelevant

reckless and wreckless—one of these means rash

vain and vane – one of these makes you think this song is about you

desert and dessert—one of these has whipped cream

shudder and shutter – one of these means to shake

soar and sore—one of these relates to diseases

vane and vein—one of these shows the flow of air or liquid

wreck and wreak—one of these means to inflict

wait and weight – seriously, it’s embarrassing I have to ask.

As in the past, these are all mistakes I’ve seen in articles or books over the past few months.  When I come across one and it makes me shudder (not shutter), I know I have to add it to the list.  Yeah, I keep a list.  You don’t think I just come up with all this stuff from scratch once a week, do you?

In the interest of fairness… Two of these are mistakes I’ve made in the recent past.  One of them even slipped past me, my proofreaders, my editor, the copyeditor, and then me again while I looked over copyedits and layouts.

Did you know all of the answers?  Did you know what the other word meant, too?  If I don’t know them both (know—not sort of recognize) there’s a good chance I’ll make a mistake at some point.  And, granted, we all make mistakes sometimes.

But some people make a lot of mistakes.  And they don’t catch any of them.  Because they’re depending on their computer to do it for them.

Next time, I want to…

Actually, before I talk about next time, I’d like to break my rule about no self-promotion and guide you to the Kaiju Rising Kickstarter.  It’s a giant monster anthology featuring stories from folks like Peter Stenson, Timothy Long, Larry Correia, and a bunch of others (including me).  It’s already fully funded (even stretch goals), but there’s still a day or two left to snag a copy for yourself, and possibly a pile of add-ons.

Anyway, that being said…

Next time, I want to talk about exceptions.

Until then, go write.

spellingvocabularyWatson
March 21, 2013 / 4 Comments

Vocabulary 101

            Yep, you’ve had some time off from my rantings.  Now it’s time to get back to basics.

            I keep coming back to spelling.  There’s a reason for that.  Talk to any editor, publisher, contest director, or producer and they’ll say the number one problem they see in writing is spelling and grammar.  No matter what the story is, lots of manuscripts get rejected because the raw number of mistakes make them look amateurish and unprofessional.  It’s not the only reason they get rejected, granted, but I’d put money down that it’s a major factor in most rejections.  There’s a reason I lump such things into the 50% rule.
            I can’t be a chef if I can’t distinguish between chicken and turkey.  If I can’t tell an alternator from a carburetor, my career as a mechanic is going to be very short-lived.  And if I want to succeed at this writing thing—not in a spiritual way or a making-Dad-proud way or an I’ll-show-my-ex way, but in a serious, financial, this isn’t just a hobby way—I need to know how to use words.  There’s no way around it.  None.
            So here are some words that get misspelled—or misused—a lot.  And the writer doesn’t know, because they don’t know how to spell.  They just use a spell checker, because they thing it will never, ever mace a mistake… even if they did.
            The list is going to be a bit shorter this time around.  One of my regular contest-reader sources cut back on his hours a bit, and I haven’t read as much as I wanted to the past few months.  But my regular rules still hold—pretty much all of these words come from major websites, screenplays, or manuscripts.  Two of them are from published books.  My definition is for the word they thought they were using.  So if you’ve got a good vocabulary, you’ll probably get a chuckle or three over these.
            Pick up your signaling devices and….
solid and soiled – you only want to step on one of these things
foul and fowl – one of these tastes like chicken
balaclava and baklava – only one of these should be on your head
grisly and gristly – one of these is a tough piece of meat
grizzly and grisly – one of these is a bear
bear and bare – one means to endure or tolerate
passed and past—one of these means you didn’t get the promotion
definitely and defiantly – one of these is absolutely correct
succeed and secede – one of these means your state ends up alone
succession and secession – one of these is the process of ending up alone
due and do – one of these you pay
capital and capitol – one of these is money in the bank
            Did you know all of them?   
            Bonus round.  Which of these words get applied to a horrific scene?  Which one’s a tasty dessert?  If I owe money, which two of these words will probably be on my next bill?
            As I’ve mentioned many times before, it’s not enough just to know the words I’m asking about.  As a writer, I need to know all of them.  These are the tools of my trade, and I can’t be half-assed with them.  Knowing three ingredients in a recipe and winging it with the rest just doesn’t work.  If I’m going to call myself a chef, I’ve got to know them all.
            Because if I don’t know my words, my story starts to become muddled and unclear.  And I can’t be lazy and say “people will understand it from the context,” because using the wrong words changes the context.  If Phoebe decides togrin and bear it, it means she’s not going to let on how much the current situation is getting to her.  If she decides to grin and bare it, though, it means she just pulled her shirt open in a moment of naughtiness.  That changes the whole tone of the scene, and it could really change our view of Phoebe as a character.  So to speak.
            I need to learn to spell.  Me.  Not my spell-checker, not Dictionary.com.  Me.  The more I depend on someone else to do it for me, the weaker I am as a writer.  And if I’m a weak writer who’s decided to partner up with an idiot, well…
            Next time, I’d like to offer a quick tip I came up with while down at ConDor a few weeks ago.
            Until then, go write.
50% rulespellingvocabularywriting
August 10, 2012 / 3 Comments

A Pullet Between The Eyes

            Don’t worry, that title will get explained soon enough…

            First things first, though.  I was doing some clean-up here and realized there were a few old drafts that had been saved.  Stuff no one ever saw where I was testing how things worked here.
            Long and short of it… this is post #200 on the ranty blog!  I can’t believe any of you have hung around this long.  Heck, I can’t believe I’ve hung around this long…
            Many thanks to all of you.
            Anyway, to celebrate, let’s talk about one of my favorite topics.  Spelling.
            As I’ve mentioned here once or thrice or twenty times, in order to be  a writer I have to have a solid vocabulary and I need to know how to spell those words.   Absolutely nothing will shoot down my chances faster than an editor finding a half dozen misspelled or misused words.  People can argue all they want about literary brilliance and arbitrary rules, but at the end of the day spelling mistakes are always going to be the first thing an editor or reader judges my manuscript on.  That’s why I need to know these things and get them right.
            And when I say “I” in this case, I mean “me.”  Ineed to know these things.  One of the absolute worst mistakes a writer can make is to become reliant on their computer’s spell-checker.  A computer doesn’t understand context or nuance, it just understands if a word is spelled correctly or not.  To the logical processes of a spell-checker, there’s no difference between oozy and Uzi, rain and reign, or shear and sheer.  They’re all spelled correctly.  So if I’ve got a mercenary waiving his oozy as he tries to climb a shear cliff in the reign… well, the spell checker’s going to tell me that’s fine.
            Case in point—the title of this week’s little rant.  That golden gem was found in the manuscript for Ex-Communicationby one of my readers.  That’s how one of my zombie killers made sure his friend wouldn’t rise to become one of the undead.
            With a chicken.  And the spell-checker saw no problem with that.
            If you don’t understand the comedy there, work on your vocabulary.
            Y’see, I use a spell-checker, but I don’t depend on it to do all the work for me.  I get a second set of eyes on the manuscript (and a third, fourth, and fifth) and I go over it myself line by line, usually in two different formats.  And I own a dictionary.  A real-world, three-inch-thick copy of Webster’s with a bright red cover that I can turn to if I need to check spellings or definitions.  So when I send something out to a publisher or an editor, they’re not going to see someone take a chicken in the head.
            And that brings us to the new list of misspelled and misused words.  One of these appeared on a major retailer’s website.  Another one showed up on a fairly big pop culture website.  And a couple of them are, alas, examples of  people who trust the spellchecker a lot more than their own common sense (I’ve got a few friends who are professional readers who love to share typos with me). 
            So, a vocabulary test.  As always, feel free to keep score…
overseas and oversees – only one of these is a place
hoard and horde – one of these is a mob, one is a collection
bus and buss – one’s a playful kiss, one’s an electrical conductor
flout and flaunt – one means show off, one means to mock
monolith and monogram – one of these would be your initials
whole and hole –one of these you fall into
hurdle and hurtle – one is a verb, one is a noun
pair and pare – one of these means to whittle down
racket and racquet – one is sports equipment, one is noise
pane and pain – one is a shape for glass
discus and discuss – one is an Olympic event
breaks and brakes—one is for wheels, the other is for windshields
tactical and tactile—only of these pairs with logistics.
reek and wreak – one of these stinks
heroine and heroin – one of these is a bad addiction
plaintive and plaintiff – one is sad, one is accusing someone
least and leased—one of these refers to rental contracts
corral and coral—you’ll only find one of these underwater (hopefully)
drier and dryer –one of these is a machine
site and sight –one of these is found on a firearm
            Did you get them all?  Remember, you only get points when you knew what both words meant.  Which one of the above words relates to touch?  Which one’s a large stone?  Which one’s an attraction?
            For some folks, it doesn’t matter.  They’ve become so dependent on the spell-checker they can’t even grasp the idea that the machine doesn’t know what word they were intending to use. All they see is that the spell-checker said it was right, therefore their hovel is flawless! 
            You’ll find a lot of these same people in forums bitching about how all the big editors have unrealistic expectations and don’t know good stuff when it’s right in front of them.
            Y’see, Timmy, spelling and vocabulary are not mechanical because language is not mechanical.  That’s why I can’t trust a machine to know these things for me.  If I can’t be bothered to learn them, I’m going to fail again and again and again.
            So buy a dictionary.  Learn to spell.  Learn what words mean.
            Next time, one last quick cut I forgot about.
            Until then, go write.
Ex-Communicationspellingvocabularywebsters
August 3, 2012 / 2 Comments

Cut to the Quick

            Two cutting references in two weeks.  Hmmmm…

            Bonus points and a vocabulary star if any of you actually know what that title phrase refers to.  No, don’t cheat and look it up.  Be honest about what you know and what you don’t.
            So, since I was away editing for a bit I though this would be a good time to toss up some thoughts on editing.  I’ve been doing this professionally for almost a decade now–full time for close to six years–and I still need to do lots of editing.  It’s just one of those unavoidable truths–99.9999% of us don’t write usable first drafts.
            For the record, that .0001% is Paul Haggis, so don’t think you’re the exception.  He is.  And it took him thirty years to become the exception.
            Cutting is painful, though, because it means losing lots of stuff.  I poured my heart into the first draft of 14, but in the end I still needed to cut over 20,000 words from it.  That’s a hundred pages, gone.  And it’s a leaner, tighter, stronger book because of it.
            Well, because of most of it.
            Knowing that my writing needs work is a strength.  It’s not admitting failure.  It’s admitting I can improve, and if someone can’t admit that they’re never going to improve.
            The thing is, so many folks think making cuts means lopping off entire subplots or removing well-developed characters or cutting out that three page monologue from a random guy on the street explaining how tax cuts for the rich are really good for the middle class.  Editing doesn’t mean cutting all that (although you probably could lose that monologue and not a lot of folks will complain).  It can mean just a general tightening and trimming of all the little things. 
            Think of those Olympic swimmers, runners, and bicyclists.  They know that shaving their exposed hair and wearing tight clothes reduces drag.  Not by much, but the little things pile up and can make the difference between a gold medal and a silver one. 
            So here’s a couple very easy, straightforward ways you can make cuts and maybe trim a few thousand words from your writing…
            That— Whenever I start editing, I always start with a “that” pass.  It’s a word we all drop into our writing in an attempt to be grammatically perfect, but four out of five times the writing would be just as clear (and more concise) without it.
————————————–
            Phoebe thought that Wakko would love her new dress.
            He chose the same weapon that his predecessor had used.
vs
            Phoebe thought Wakko would love her new dress.
            He chose the same weapon his predecessor had used.
————————————–
            On my first pass through 14 I removed over 600 uses of that.  That’s over two pages.  In Ex-Communication, I cut over 200 of them.  Use the Find feature in Word (it’s up there under Edit) and search for it in your writing.  See how often it shows up.  Check how many of them are necessary.  Odds are you’ll find at least half of them aren’t.
            Adverbs—  This is usually my second pass through the editing draft.  This time I use Find to locate all the places “ly” shows up.  I can admit it—as I get caught up in the flow of words a lot of adverbs sneak into my writing.  And they’re pretty useless…
————————————–
          They all screamed loudly at the approaching psychopath.
          “Shut your damn mouth, bitch,” snapped Phoebe angrily.
          He eagerly grabbed the statue he’d spent weeks searching for.
————————————-
            Do those adverbs add anything to their sentences?  Would a reader figure out that Phoebe was angry, or that the scream was loud?  I’d guess three out of five times I find an adverb in my writing I don’t need it.  The fourth time I’ve chosen the wrong verb, and once I’ve got the right one… well, I don’t need the adverb.  If I’m using my vocabulary well, there aren’t many times I’ll need one.  I cut over 500 adverbs and adverbial phrases out of 14 and 330 out ofEx-Communication.
            I heard a great rule of thumb from writer/ editor Pat LaBrutto that I’ve mentioned a few times.  One adverb per page, four adjectives per page.  It’s just a guideline, granted, but if you’re averaging six or seven adverbs per paragraph maybe you should give them all a second look.  And then a third look.
            Useless Modifiers — I’ve also called this Somewhat Syndrome a few times.  This is one I struggle with a lot, but I’m getting much more aware of it.  It’s when I pepper my sentences with  somewhat, almost, a bit, slightly, and other such modifiers.  They show up in dialogue a lot, and sometimes in prose when I’m trying not to sound awkward with a bunch of specifics.
            Nine times out of ten they’re not doing anything, though, except adding to my word count and slowing my story down.  Use the Find feature again, see how many of them are doing anything, and look how much tighter and stronger your writing is without them.  I cut almost 450 of these out of 14and over 200 from Ex-Communication.
            …Of…–The word of can be a flag that something could be cut.  A fair amount of the time, of is being used to tack on an extra bit of description.  More often than not that description’s unnecessary and something the reader already knows.  Which means it’s dragging my prose down and slowing the pace.  There’s a reason we all tend to say United States far more often than United States of America.
            Check out these examples…
————————————–
Captain Lancaster of the Defiant is here to see you, sir.
The razor-sharp edge of the sword flew through the beast’s neck without hesitation.
vs.
Captain Lancaster is here to see you, sir.
The razor sharp edge flew through the beast’s neck without hesitation.
————————————–
            It’s not a sure-fire thing, but once I went looking I found three or four of these in Ex-Communicationthat could go away.
            Appeared to be…   –This is one of those phrases some people latch onto and use all the time.  It slips into my writing, too.  It tends to be used as an introduction of sorts, leading the reader into some purple-prose description.  This phrase sometimes disguises itself as looked like or seemed to be or some variation thereof.
            The thing is, though, appeared to be doesn’t get used alone.  It’s part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction to the appearance.  So when you’re saying…
            –Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall.
            …what you’re really saying is…
            –Phoebe appeared to stand six feet tall, but she was actually closer to five foot five without her stiletto heels.
            And what you meant to be saying all along was just…
            –Phoebe stood six feet tall.
            If you aren’t trying to establish a contradiction, using appeared to be and its bastard stepchildren isn’t just wasted words– it’s wrong.  I cut thirteen of these that had slipped into Ex-Communication at one point or another.
            “As you know…” –I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  If you take nothing else from this little rant, take this one lesson.
            “As you know…” is probably the clumsiest form of exposition there is.  Really.  Think about it.  Just by saying “as you know,” I’m stating that you–the person I’m speaking to–already know the facts I’m about to share.  As a writer, why would I have two characters engage in such a useless bit of dialogue?
            When a writer uses “as you know” or one of its half-breed cousins (“you may recall” or “if you remember” or many others), it’s a weak attempt to put out some exposition through dialogue.  My lovely lady pointed out that a lot of these sentences tend to start with “Look…”.  If I’m using any of them, almost across the board there’s either (A) a better way to get the information to the reader or (B) no need for this information because it ‘s already covered somewhere else. 
            If I’ve got a really solid manuscript–I mean rock-solid– I might be able to get away with doing this once.  Just once.  As long as I don’t do it your first ten pages.
            In Ex-Heroesit’s on page 98.
            Anyway, there’s half a dozen quick, easy, and relatively painless cuts.  Try them out and see if you can drop a thousand words or more.
            Next time, I think we’re long overdue for a talk about spelling.  And I’ve got a great list for you this time.
            Until then, go write.
14adverbsdraftseditingEx-CommunicationEx-HeroesHaggisvocabulary

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