Fonts

Is Courier New, like, a thing? I mean, really. Almost all of the books I've edited in the past few months have been written in Courier New, and I find this impossible to read, especially when double spaced in long paragraphs. Why are we all of a sudden using this font? Can someone explain this to me?

Song Titles/Lyrics

"Somebody That I Used to Know" Wrong.
"The One That Got Away" Wrong
"...maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me..." Wrong.
"I'm glad that you're the one who got away." Hey, look at that!

Thank you, Michael Buble, for using "who" and not "that."

Quantifying "Bad"

There's crap, and then there's just bad writing. This is when my job gets hard. It's easy to explain a misused comma or a run-on sentence. It's not easy to explain bad.

For example:

The middle-aged man looked at the young man.

See how this is bad? Right. But how do you explain it?

I've Got Something In My Pocket...

Sentence structure is a fun thing. Take this one, for example:

He analyzed how best to scale the cartons, dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief, and stuffed it into his pocket.

The way this is written, "it" could actually refer to the handkerchief or his forehead.

It really takes away from the dramatic action if you imagine the guy continuing the scene with his forehead in his pocket.

Rules for Writing Fantasy

Thinking about writing a fantasy book? Good news! Here are some quick guidelines:

1.    If there is a vampire, by law there must also be a werewolf. This is the golden rule of vampires.

2.    Vampires smirk. A lot. They may occasionally smile or brood, but don’t even think about writing a vampire who doesn’t smirk.

3.    There is always a princess. Or an heiress or whatever the most important form of royalty is.

4.    Supernatural creatures can do anything. Make it up as you go along. Princess is trapped in a tower? Vampires can probably levitate. Princess is mortally wounded? Fairy tears probably have healing powers. Princess is ugly? Yeah, right.

5.    Names must sound exotic and/or vaguely biblical. When in doubt, throw a –ius or –io on the end of a name. For women, use an uncommon flower, gem, bird, etc. (Oriole, Dandelion, Quartz, etc.)

6.    There is magic. Don’t even think of writing a fantasy story without spells, curses, and magic. It’s not fantasy if there’s no magic.

7.    There is an evil magician. He’s probably old, and he probably cackles a lot. Most likely he casts some sort of spell on the princess in an attempt to take over the kingdom.

8.    Time and location is unimportant. Are you in medieval England, Hogwarts, or Middle Earth? Not important. Moving on.

9.    Someone can fly. This is useful for traveling long distances. Note: “someone” does not include the princess. She can do nothing but be in peril.

10. Teleportation is a must. Travel scenes are super boring. Teleportation is a useful device to skip that crap, and it can also get your characters out of dangerous situations without any logical explanation.

11. People wear cloaks. Regardless of when or where the story takes place, people wear cloaks. It’s so they can swirl them dramatically when they walk away.

12. There’s always crazy shit in forests. Maybe the trees can talk, or maybe there’s an ancient race of people vaguely reminiscent of Native American or ancient African tribes. Whatever the case, some weird shit always goes down in forests.

Action Words

Today I had to explain to someone what a verb is. Seriously. Apparently some people don't know that a sentence must have a verb in it.

I'm going to add this to my list of dealbreakers.

Oh hi, blog

Just wanted to say hi and that I'm coming back to my blog.