Ah light at end of tunnel

[nadinbrzezinski]

so when do you know you are done with a novel?

Draft eight... and all I am doing is changing a period here, a word there, perhaps adding a word or two, and removing a word or two.

Yep, time for me to put this project to bed. Exported today from liquid story binder, so I can start the layout of the book.

But that is when you know...

And truth be told, best novel I've ever written.

So depending on whether there are takers or not, I will probably self publish, as it is part of the Future Nexus world

I also found the STANZA software so I will also probably format it for e-book and pod, as well as rtf.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Well running the grammar checker on it

always a good idea, and it does catch things that you may have done... not on purpose.

One of the things one of these characters has is a lower level of English, never mind he's in charge. So I did use a few too many incomplete sentences. A few, here and there sprinkled for linguistic effect are fine... but after a while yep even I am getting annoyed.

So yes, running the damn thing...

Of course there is also the little thing of telling me, this world you made is singular. No, it is not, it is plural... but, but... it is an it, not a THEY...

Oh shut up...

Of course doing a decent job will mean being rested so on the morrow I guess I will finish doing the grammar and spell check... and then finish all the settings. As is I still need to do the synopsis for the website...

Oh and yes, these boys and girls are still quite shrill and INSIST on another volume....

They keep that up I think some of them are going to start buying it.

:-)

Of course one almost did... but hey plot and all required that he live... but boy did he pay for it.

[Orrex]

2. Grammar helpers mess me up when I use them on fiction

Dialogue punctuation always seem to befuddle them, and in my (admittedly limited) experience they don't have a lot of flexibility regarding style.

Congrats on reaching the stopping-point of your long narrative journey!

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Well that is where judgement comes in

and as I said, I was using way... WAAAYYYY too many incomplete sentences. Granted, that is a speech style but that drives readers nuts at times, even when you use them in dialogue.

But hey, TAL is singular, it keeps telling me... I just go, IGNORE ALL... oh shut up.

[Orrex]

4. That's exactly the problem

In my writing, it's rare that a character speaks entirely in complete sentences. In part that's because it's so rare in real speech, but also because I find that it can grow too heavy to the reader.

When I need to Ignore the grammar "error" in four out of five lines of dialogue, the Grammar Helper becomes more of a hindrance.

YMMV, of course. I'm not exactly using a top-of-the-line grammarizer...

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. I have yet to load it, but I like to use

just enough incomplete sentences to give the sense of what the character is doing, or language level. But not so many that the reader goes... damn it, I am getting tired.

Of course this is the debate between realistic speech and not so realistic speech. I also need to mod some of their speech depending on where they are, or the situation. This guy can smoothly go from the lowest dredges since he spent some years there, to the top tier (with difficulty) since he's supposed to be among the top tier of his society. Of course if he wanted to speak badly at the end of the novel, he has all the excuses he needs.

Of course with some characters you just have to ignore the grammar checker because yes, poor language IS a character trait. Hell I have one that uses a lot of SSSSSSS... in the words he uses. That chapter was a nightmare... will be a nightmare, you get the picture.