Forum: Author Hangout

Here is my process to write a chapter for a story.

1. I work in MS Word. I prefer the UI. The spell check leaves a lot to be desired.

2. After I write a draft I read it a few times. I make changes often to the underlined areas. I tend to break out complex sentences. I like to check my use of to and too because I frequently make that mistake and confuse them.

3. I paste it into Grammarly. Grammarly is a powerful tool and I have a subscription. It forces me to use the rules about commas after prepositions that MS Word doesn't even consider. I usually have 140+ issues to check per chapter of approximately 9 to 11 typed pages (Single space paragraph).This is very tedious. It would be great if I could do a "Fix all" of a certain kind of error but Grammarly does not have that concept.

4. I paste it back into word then I send it to my friend Mike who reads it and sends it back with his edits.

5. I read it and make at least two more passes through it and tweak it. Then I save that word document as an HTML using openoffice (because it makes a cleaner HTML than word) and consider that chapter ready for posting.

What I would like to do is add another filter/tool to the process somewhere between step 3 and 4 that looks at things Word and Grammarly does not to improve my writing.

I can catch mistakes in other people's writing very easily but my brain is often fooled by my own writing. I know what SHOULD be there and so I miss what is actually there.

I can often catch my mistakes once it posts up to SOL (odd how that works, eh?) but I think in part that is because the fonts and the style of the posting helps make errors really stand out in stark contrast to everything else.

This is usually when I will catch continuity errors that no editor would ever catch. ie; I refer to someone as Gerald when they were really named Joe.

However, I still find spelling and grammatical errors even at this stage. I need a really powerful proofreading tool.

Is there another tool you can suggest? I don't need a story writing tool to create databases of characters/timelines as I have my own system for that. I just want something powerful like Grammarly.

I can catch mistakes in other people's writing very easily but my brain is often fooled by my own writing.

I'm a slow reader. It's always been a handicap in school and business. But it's a blessing for proof reading.

I read words, not sentences. I suggest you read it out loud. That will slow you down. Just don't rush it (that is, speak rapidly). The goal isn't to get to the end. It's to proof every word.

Why convert it to HTML (step 5)? The SOL Wizard now accepts a docx file.

Here is my process to write a chapter for a story.

My own now is somewhat similar. And as I tend to write 2-4 chapters in advance, I finish up a chapter, then simply move on. Then when it is time to add another chapter, I go back to the one I need to post next.

To give an idea, I just posted chapter 97, as I am putting the finishing touches on chapter 99.

When I am ready to post, I will go through the chapter again. I use Open Office myself, I only want a spell checker for this phase. I will go over the chapter again, even making some minor corrections based on things I have written after, or things I thought might be a good addition (or removing things that do not work).

I then send it to Grammarly, and go over it again. And ironically, most of the time it wants me to remove commas. I will admit though, that because of a speech impediment (chronic stutterer) I tend to use a lot more pauses than is normal when talking. And this seems to be reflected in my work as well. Some I remove, many I leave because it just seems right to me.

And I also ignore a great deal of their "suggestions". Especially if they want me to clean up things inside of quotations. I am a huge believer in writing down things exactly how a person would say them. Not as some English Major would insist they be written.

And I hope that comes across, as I have frequently had a character from Russia speaking in the style of an immigrant. Or various other groups, trying to be accurate in how they sound, not what is "proper English".

I then go over it yet again. Only then do I post it, and move back to the chapter I was writing before. For the corrections, I have a few that have stepped up, and generally send me a message in a day or so. Generally, I think I average 1 correction every chapter or so, maybe 2 sometimes. And the occasional name transposition.

A vast improvement on my previous 10+ corrections per chapter. Grammarly helps a lot, but I would never trust it or any other program to just fix my writing however it wants. I think it would make it look sterile.

And I for one also tend to use a great many styles. Interestingly enough, when I write in the First Person, I tend to end with a score somewhere around 85%. But when I write in a Third Person style, it normally jumps up to around 95%.

This is because when writing as an omnipotent narrator, I tend to be much more precise. As opposed to my first person style, which is more of a narration from the main character to the reader. Who of course writes in his (or her) own style, complete with how they would phrase and say things. I do not care at all if these are "correct English", only that they sound as I would have the character say them.

I ran a chapter of AWLL3 through Garmmeryly and at least half the 'corrections' were flat-out wrong.

The one that really set me off is this one:

"The guest room is upstairs first door on the right," Mary said. "The bathroom is across the hall."

It insisted that I was missing 'the' before 'upstairs'. There is NO possible way that's correct, no matter how badly you try to misunderstand the sentence, and examples of which I could find in movies, TV, or writing by the shedload by barely lifting my little finger.

Now, the TRUE correctin is to add a comma, and then Grammerly is OK with it.

One more observation - Grammarly does NOT understand hockey nor NASCAR, and tries to make ridiculous corrections to things which are simply natural descriptions of hockey plays or racing events which regularly appear in newspapers and magazines or are said during television broadcasts.

I realize this is 'specialty' but I suspect the same would be true of footbal (gridiron, association, or rugby), basketball, baseball, etc, but I tested those chapters for exactly this reason.

That's my last test, because giving me 100+ suggested corrections with perhaps 10% of them being accurate is really a total waste of time and effort. A regular spell-checker + human editor beats it by a country mile!

NB: I did test a non-sports chapter and half the suggestions were wrong (see above for an example).

I use Scrivener and have recently added Media Wiki (Thanks Michael!) for writing and planning. When I have a chapter ready I run it through Edit Pad. The background color is different so it forces me to do a fresh read. It also points out spelling errors and blank spaces (Ex: A uto, Auto). I have basic Grammerly in my browser so that helps.

I then use the Hemingway editor because it helps me avoid overly long and complex sentences. Once I'm happy with it, I move it on over to Scribens to create more dynamic prose and a final Grammar edit.

By then, I'm sick of looking at it and post it. I have SOL set to a different font which again forces a fresh read. I then see how the formatting looks. I check for errors and a lot of times I correct them. At this point, I know I've done my reasonable best and call it done.

I say "reasonable best" as I am prone to obsessive behavior and could and have literally spent four or five hours to get a sentence the way I want it.

I'm no great artist, but I know I'm a good one and can be proud of what I post.

Grammarly will have some strange suggestions at times and it has to be watched. It's software, not a human mind. It wanted to change "brown stone" to "brownstone," which wasn't correct for that sentence. It also suggested changing "in sight" to "insight," which was also not correct. At one point it confused "her" with "here." Still, it has some value if used with human proofreading.