Struggling Writer Needs Help.

While I agree with letting things sit for a couple of days (except when a real life deadline is staring at you in the face) I can't agree to a style guide. There are already several competing ones as well as variant spellings that color/colour the language.

English isn't a codified language which is why it is expanding when codified ones aren't and...

And I've already gone off on that rant/diatribe (I see it as a diatribe, others probably view it as a rant) too often.

Goodgulf

I wasn't aware anyone had suggested a style guide?

Sorry - for some reason I get defensive on that subject. I'm not sure why...

And I have seen, in published novels things along the lines of:
"And that's that!" He said.

Rather than:
"And that's that!" he said.

Goodgulf

That doesn't make it correct though.

No need for apology, Goodgulf.
But we do try to get things right and use the correct dialogue & we encourage authors to comply with our requirements. Not only does this ensure we have a consistent approach, it makes the validaters life so much easier if they don't have to spend hours of their free time correcting things.

This makes utterly no sense and I can not think of a way which it can be correct... Take the basic definition of a sentence... The largest independent unit of grammar, starting with a capital letter and ending with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark...

So, "You need spanking," he said. This is a sentence and it makes sense...

"You need spanking." He said... He said what? It doesn't work, it is two separate sentences.

The former would be correct if the speaker was the deity.

Concerning the later remark, there's nothing grammatically wrong with "and that's that!". You could quibble over starting a sentence with "and", but direct speech shopuld reflect what people actually say - and they DO start sentences with and, especially ones like "And that's that!". Moreover, it isn't actually a breach of any grammatical rule (at least this side of the Atlantic) to start a sentence with "and", only something frowned on by stylists. On occasion in prose, for effect it makes sense to do something against conventional style. Compare "You left your bedroom in a mess, you took my bike without permission, you rode out into the main road without looking and you swore at the motorist who had to brake to avoid you!" with "You left your bedroom in a mess. You took my bike without permission. You rode out into the main road without looking. And you swore at the motorist..."

There's a heap of good advice here, but may I add my own snippet?

Read your work aloud. If possible record it and listen to it back. This will reveal all manner of shortcomings in the text, particularly the occasions where a word is used too often or too close to the previous instance of it.

It's probably best to do this when there is no-one else around, particularly if you live with vanillas or children or even vanilla children.

The reason is that when reading silently in one's head, one skips over things, particularly if one is familiar with the text, as is the case when it's one's own work. Reading aloud emphasises the flow of the sentences and allows you to see whether the dialogue is believeable.


I recorded a number of my stories, and I wince whenever I hear the phrase ...the young men would endeavour to span the river in a single leap to earn the prize of fresh buns freshly baked by the single girls of the village.* Although in the text the first instance of "fresh" isn't there, I accidentally said it on the recording and it stands out far more than it would have done in the text.



* The tale of Rosie Bottom

That's great advice which all writers should follow. If you've reread your own work too much, your eyes will tend to skip over the errors and "fill in" words as if they were there. When you read each sentence aloud, it is easier to catch what is missing. Reading aloud also makes it easier to notice when the same words are repeated within a short time span or when you've expressed a fragment rather than a complete thought.

I want to thank all the great authors for their advise. What a community I am fortunate to be a part of as I am determined to learn and get better in my writing. Currently Rollin has agreed to read over my last story part for the sitter story and I have painstakingly gone through the copy and reduced the story size to under 2,200 words. His help along with other library members is and has been appreciated by this enthusiastic, inspire but challenged writer. thank you every one for your comments and know there are other writers in the same boat who want to contribute their best to the library.