Typos
September 23, 2011 4 Comments
In my last post I accidentally included a couple typos that were pointed out. I thought, why neglect this issue? It’s interesting to note where typos often come from. For example, in my two typos, the original text was as follows:
Bibi stood with her head propped on her sister’s shoulder. “Let’s dance, sisss… terrrr.”
“We’ll have to restrain her.” The doctor rushed around the bed.
From there I hoped to show how an author could junk up dialogue with too many adverbs in conjunction with dialogue tags. I wrote:
Bibi stood with her head limply set on her sister’s shoulder. “Thanks, sis.” She said drunkenly.
“We’ll have to do something.” The doctor expressed professionally. He came around the bed.
The first paragraph’s error occurred as a simply typo. Unlike the action tag, which is a complete sentence, the dialogue tag is a clause, requiring a comma before the end quote mark and lower case in the first word of the tag clause, as follows:
Bibi stood with her head limply set on her sister’s shoulder. “Thanks, sis,” she said drunkenly.
Now, we all know this, but we are human. I’ll get to that later. The second error is more interesting because it is what often happens through the process of editing. We change one component, and leave other parts of the sentence unchanged, creating an error by default. The (something.” The doctor) is unaltered from the original text, which becomes an error when I added (expressed professionally), which changes (The doctor rushed around the bed), from an action bite to a dialogue tag. Corrected, it should have read:
“We’ll have to do something,” the doctor expressed professionally. He came around the bed.
Thus, errors often occur in a writer’s work because of simple human error, but they can also occur through the process of editing, which is just another form of human error. I’m fairly certain I’ve never written anything significant that didn’t include some errors, proving my pedigree.
When an author writes then goes back and edits, the same set of eyes that made the error are looking at the black and white on a page in roughly the same manner they looked at the page previously. The chances of missing the error are huge, even though someone else pointing the error out makes the mistake appear obvious, as if emerging from the paper after having been in invisible ink.
What we need for the second pass is a new set of eyes or a new piece of paper. It is literally physical. There are strategies for doing this.
One way of showing this quirk of human magic is to post your work somewhere else then read it. For example, I often use Scribophile.com as a means of presenting novel openings to other writers and getting a quick review. After I post, I usually read my own posted story portion and instantly find a handful of errors that are glaringly obvious.
I don’t even wonder about why this happens. It’s simple physics. I have my work on a different piece of electronic paper, and my eyes are seeing the lines of text in what they perceive to be a different way. Things show up.
The need to edit can be eternal, but I determine that a novel is ready to be submitted if I can print the novel out and forge my way through with less than one edit per page. Of course, I’ll have to put the changes onto my electronic file, and in so doing I know I’m injecting one new error per ten changes. One can become vary anal about editing.
Another way of earning a new set of eyes is putting the piece down for a time. What seemed perfect the night before is full of mistakes a day later. This effect increases with time. Obviously this means working under a deadline is bad news.
It also means that any author who writes a book and tells his or her friends that they’ll be ready to send it off after a couple weeks is showing a lack of experience. I’ve put finished novels on the shelf for as much as a year, and I can tell you that the longer it sits on the shelf the more awful it looks when you pick it back up. That’s a really good thing. The book speaks to who you are. You want people to be impressed. When others point out errors in something published, it’s painful and usually something obvious, which only makes it more painful, but it does make you human.
About Gary Wedlund
There’s a word missing in the first paragraph of the first story I had published this year. It was the result of multiple edits to the paragraph by the editor and me, going back and forth. So sometimes, having a second pair of eyes can make things worse trying to make things better! I was pretty annoyed when I found the error, but then I laughed and thought, “well, now my readers will know I’m human!”
Oh, and I discovered the error reading it aloud for the first time, so I highly recommend putting a story aside for a few weeks and then reading it aloud. That will force you not to skip over words that your brain would otherwise fill in. It would not have saved me in the instance mentioned above but has definitely rescued me since!
I totally get that. I found a few in my book, Zombies in Our Hometown, some injected by the editor and some by me. But, I still appreciate the editor, because they usually catch more than they make and most readers never see them. And, as time goes by I start to think of errors in new light. If I write, for example, “He was walking toward the house,” I consider that an error. I usually should have written, “He walked toward the house.” A thing like that makes me cringe. But, like I say, that’s a good thing. The pickier you get, the better you get.
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Although I can’t remember the author, since I don’t read romances, I read recently of a typo that made it past everyone into the published novel.
The sentence should have read, “She felt his muscles loosen as he shifted on the ground.” Personally, I wasn’t all that impressed with the sentence as it should have appeared.
What ended up in print was, “She felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground.”
Not really that much worse than the original, but definitely a change in meaning (and mood).
I have mixed thoughts about all of this, and when I reread what I wrote below, I think I go well beyond the issue of typos (but I think you were trying to make a larger point in any case, so I think I either added to it, or hopelessly muddled it up).
I agree that sticking a story or novel in a drawer (literally or figuratively) for a while can give you those “fresh” eyes when you take it out again. I think this is a good technique to polish a story before sending it out, or even fixing a flawed story with some promise. It’s also vital for a writer to have others take a look at his or her work. A good writers’ group can spot the picky stuff your brain skips over, or maybe they’ll even let you know when something you thought worked, didn’t. At my most recent writers’ group meeting I tried something a little different with the beginning of a novel I’m working on, and I got a pretty clear message that what I tried just didn’t work. I don’t always agree that the problems others spot are actually problems, but when you get several people telling you the same thing, you can be pretty sure you NEED to make some changes (it gets trickier when just one or two say something is a problem). I’ll do a rewrite of the beginning of the novel and see how it goes.
The reason I have mixed thoughts about all this, however, is I think it’s possible for a writer to become paralyzed by the pursuit of perfection. I know a handful of writers who are sitting on pieces I think are really great, but no one knows about them because instead of submitting their work for consideration, these writers keep polishing their work over and over again trying to make them “perfect,” make them “ready.” Ready for what? Months and months of waiting for what’s likely going to be another rejection anyway? Fire away, stop worrying, and write something else in the meantime.
While I think it’s true that a writer generally gets just one shot with any particular publisher for any given piece, and writers don’t want to blow their chance to reach the widest possible audience over careless mistakes that might get a piece rejected out of hand, I think there’s too much danger in trying to make any one piece “perfect” and as a result, writers keep that one piece–and worse, OTHER pieces!–out of a publisher’s hands (and they can’t say yes or no if they don’t ever get to read it).
Writers, your story or novel is never going to be perfect. Polish it, polish it again, then fire that sucker out and hope for the best. If a story is a good enough, a few flaws won’t sink it, and if it’s good but not great, maybe it won’t get published at the highest tier, but at least it gets published. In the meantime, write something else. Write something BETTER. Experiment with stuff. Maybe that NEW idea is going to be that one story that breaks you into the market you always wanted to break into (or win that award, get that contract, whatever it is you’re hoping for)
There are a few pieces of mine that have been published or will be published that I wish I’d held back on a bit longer before firing them off, but to heck with it, someone is going to read them and they’re good pieces (if not perfect). A writer is really never going to know what ONE story or novel is going to capture the interest of a reader who then goes back and reads EVERYTHING else that writer has written (and then everything else that comes later).
I’ve been writing and submitting fiction for just over a year now. Not everything I’ve written has been published at the “pro” or “semi-pro” level (some pieces have), but everything I’ve sent out has been published or accepted for publication–except for the newer pieces I have circulating right now which I’m confident will also be accepted sooner or later.
Damn the typos, full speed ahead! (you can always fix it when you reprint it)