Deciding where to start a new paragraph is important. Readers can get confused or lost if everything’s all in one. So, I made a list of the top three reasons to start a new one. Who’s speaking changes If a different character talks, start a new paragraph. Having two characters speak in the same paragraph … More CWM: #18 — When to start new paragraphs
Lay, lie, laying, lain, etc. always get mixed up. It’s hard to keep them straight. So, I’m going to break them down with some examples that’ll hopefully clear everything up. Lay To lay means to put or set something down. The character has a thing in their hand and places it somewhere. Remember that an … More To lay or to lie?
Misplaced modifiers modify the wrong part of the sentence instead of what they intend to. They are fun to read though because they can sound silly. It makes more sense in practice, so here are some examples: Running away from me, I stumbled after my dog. Running away from me is the misplaced phrase because … More CWM: #16 — Misplaced modifiers
I’ve done one of these on commas before. I had talked about using commas to continuously add information to a sentence. But I haven’t talked about when to use a comma and when not to. Commas are complicated. What tends to get overlooked with them though is independent clauses and dependent clauses. An independent clause … More CWM: #14 — Misusing commas
In writing, there are three main dashes you come across: a hyphen (-), an en dash (–), and an em dash (—). I’ve seen writers confuse them all the time. However, these are easy fixes. It’s all about understanding the difference between them. A hyphen (-) is the most common and goes between words to … More CWM: #11 — Different types of dashes
I’ve had a few authors use commas to add detail after detail onto a sentence. But they don’t realize how jam-packed the sentence becomes. Here are two fictional examples: Laurence came through the door, looking for answers, looking for something to turn his path around, and looking for that foolish cat who messed up from … More CWM: #10 — Adding too many details with commas
Besides the gray with an a vs. grey with an e battle, there’s one common spelling error I’ve often noticed while editing: hyphenated words. Sometimes we believe a word needs a hyphen when it doesn’t. Or we forget the hyphen when we actually need one. It could also depend on how we use the word … More CWM: #5 — Misusing hyphens
We type a word. It’s spelled correctly. Microsoft Word isn’t flagging it either. It sounds right too! But I love that Disney fairy tail doesn’t quite look right. It can get more complicated than that. There are long lists of words we think we know, but we don’t. Or we have a brain fart. We … More CWM: #4 — Common misused words
“The house on the hill was old, broken, and abandoned. I always passed it on my way home. It stared back at me with its empty, death-glaring, sick eyes.” Adjectives help, but too many of them back-to-back can weigh down a story. It sounds more like a bumpy ride on a Louisiana highway than anything … More CWM: #1 — Using multiple adjectives
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