Adverbs are sometimes overused but are they essential? Some people say that adverbs are redundant and that they weaken the verbs impact. Some say adverbs lead to messy prose and indicate lazy and cluttered writing. Is this true? To a degree, it is, but adverbs still have their place in my opinion.
What is an Adverb?
Adverbs are modifiers used alongside verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. Adverbs tell the reader ‘how, when, where, why, or to what extent’ They can be used to modify other adverbs as well. This is how they can end up being overused as you might find a direct verb is more succinct and clear.
A lot of adverbs end in -ly such as ‘quietly, quickly, loudly, slowly’. Any adjective that you can add -ly to will become an adverb. Be aware that sometimes adding an -ly isn’t correct. Avoid using it with linking verbs associated with using the senses.
“The cake smells nice/nicely.”
Using an adverb here suggests the cake is doing the smelling, so you need to use the adjective ‘nice’ instead of ‘nicely’. Nobody ‘feels badly’ after receiving sad news, as they’re not using their sense of touch. So they ‘feel bad’ about it instead.
Degrees of Adverbs
Adverbs, like adjectives, come in degrees. There is the standard form, the comparative form that compares one thing to another and the superlative form which compares three or more things. Here’s a couple of examples.
Adjective:
Positive: Good Comparative: Better Superlative: Best
Adverb:
Positive: quickly Comparative: more quickly Superlative: most quick
In formal writing you should use these forms of adverbs. Nobody is saying you can never use adverbs at all, but you should consider carefully if there’s a better way to say something.
How To Avoid Overusing Adverbs
One trap a lot of writers fall into is using adverbs to add more description and qualification to things. Especially in dialogue tags where writers will add adverbs to each dialogue tag to keep them varied and ensure the reader knows how each character is speaking.
So when you find this in your own writing, look carefully at it and ask yourself if the adverb serves an important function to convey your meaning. Or if the dialogue itself and perhaps a brief indication of body language is enough to imply tone of voice and emotions. Look at this example.
“I’m done with you! Never contact me again. Goodbye!” he yelled loudly into the phone before slamming it down angrily.
What do you think? I’d say that the exclamation marks indicate loudness, and the verb ‘yelled’ also implies a raised voice so we really don’t need ‘loudly’ in this sentence. Same goes for the action of slamming the phone down, nobody does that if they are happy. Let’s rewrite it.
“I’m done with you! Never contact me again. Goodbye!” he yelled, slamming the phone down.
See? You use less words but it’s still clear that the speaker is angry. There will be times where you need an adverb. Use them where you need to, but ensure you do need them.
Thanks for reading! I’ve got some more Fallout content coming soon, so look out for that. Follow me on social media for more behind-the-scenes and follow my YouTube channel for gaming and story-telling content.
There’s always someone telling you how you should write, that you must follow these steps and this routine to succeed as a writer. Then you find other people who tell you that these rules are utter nonsense. It can be difficult to know who to believe. As with any creative pursuit, writing has lots of myths and accepted truths that might not be quite so set in stone. So let’s discuss seven writing myths.
1. Write What You Know
This is a common one. The idea that you should only write about what you know about. The problem is, it’s difficult to interpret what this actually means. Most people assume it means you can only write about your own lived experience. So there is something to this, but at the same time, depending on your genre, writing only what you have experienced can limit you significantly.
A big part of writing, especially fiction, involves using imagination and creativity. If you want to write something that isn’t just an autobiography or a fictionalised version of your life, you need to think outside your own life experiences. You can use your own experiences and knowledge to embellish your writing and make it feel more real. But, if you want to include something you have no real world experience of, does this mean you can’t write about it?
Well, it depends. If you plan to include something you don’t know much about, the key to making it authentic is research. Learn all you can about the topic. Learn from people who have lived that experience. Be prepared to accept feedback and change things accordingly. For example, it can be difficult for someone who has never experienced depression, to write it authentically in a character. Not impossible, but you might find you have to really face up to your own misconceptions about what it’s like to experience depression. The same can apply to disabilities, gender identities, different sexual orientations and to race and ethnicity of real world people. Caution is advised, and thorough research will help you write this in a sensitive manner.
2. Reading Makes you a Better Writer
To a degree, this is true. If you’ve never been a big reader, writing can be difficult. Reading lets you explore new ideas and worlds, learning different styles and writing techniques and understanding the genres you’re interested in. However, writing is a skill and it can only be truly improved by practice.
Reading a lot won’t make you a better writer if you are not practicing the writing side of things. Analysis of what you read can help you identify techniques and skills that you can use as a writer, but you’ll only learn how to use them if you practice. Some people will say you should avoid reading too much, or you’ll end up copying other authors and stealing their style. This is also debatable. If you are writing for yourself, you will establish your own style, while perhaps taking influence from writers you like.
3. Write Every Day
A lot of writing advice is centered around this idea that you should write every single day no matter what. I disagree with this to some degree. I do believe having a good regular writing routine is a great idea, but like anything else, breaks are important. Just like going to the gym every single day and doing a full 2 hour workout is probably going to become counterproductive, writing is the same way. Forcing it too much will lead you to burn out.
It also depends on your life. A lot of writers, especially those just starting out, are probably doing it around a full time job, family life, studies or any other commitments. It makes much more sense to set aside time in your schedule you can dedicate to writing. If it’s one evening a week, great! If you can fit in an hour or two every day and that works for you, great! It needs to be sustainable
4. Writer’s Block
There’s a lot of opinions here. People will say ‘Writer’s block isn’t real, it’s just laziness’. Others will be keen to give you a list of different things you can do to overcome writer’s block. Basically it is a situation which many writers and creatives face, where they are struggling to produce any work. They can’t come up with ideas, you can’t write anything you’re happy with or you have no motivation.
It can be so difficult, when nothing seems to be working and you have no motivation or interest in your work. Personally, I do believe writer’s block is very real, I have experienced it myself. I find the key is figuring out why you’ve hit this stumbling block in your writing. Are you getting a bit burnt-out? Do you need to take a break? Are you just struggling to figure out what comes next?
Knowing what has caused it may help you find a way to overcome it. If you need a break, take a break. You could try looking at another project. Go and do something else and leave it for a few days. Maybe watch a new TV show or read a new book. You might just get an idea when you least expect it. If you are struggling with the next plot point, take some time to review what you’ve written so far. You don’t need to go ahead and do a full edit, but re-reading it might help you pick up on the plot threads again and figure out what you want to do next.
5. Your Idea Should Be Perfect Before You Start
To me, this is flat out wrong. If you wait until you have a perfect idea and a perfect plan, you’ll never get started. Perfection can come later, that’s what reviewing and editing is for. You have the idea, you’ve written a rough plan from the initial idea and after that, you should start writing. Things might change as you write, you might come up with new ideas and plot points as you go. That’s okay. This is why you write drafts and go back and edit later.
Very few pieces of media are published in their initial form. Movies and TV are edited extensively, a huge amount of footage filmed is removed. Music is the same, and writing is the same too. Some people advise against editing as you go, and recommend finishing the entire first draft before you go back and edit. Others prefer to edit a bit as they work. Either way, don’t be afraid to write everything that comes to mind.
6. You Must Write in a Certain Order
Some people will insist you should write your book from start to finish in that order. Even going so far as to insist you follow an established story structure format. Others will advocate for writing the ending first before filling in the rest. Is this really okay? I think it depends on you and how your brain works. As a rule, I tend to write from start to finish, but there have been times where I’ve had an idea for a specific scene that takes place later in the story than where I’m at.
I think if your inspiration is leading you to a later part of the book, it’s okay to write it and figure out exactly where it fits in later. My current WIP came about from an old writing experiment I did years ago where I basically tried to write a description of a journey. I read over it, and an idea came to me, and before I knew it, I had four chapters written. And it went from there.
7. Planning Stifles Creativity
The old ‘pantser’ vs ‘plotter’ debate. Pantsers are people who fly be the seat of their pants, i.e they get in their flow and write without having a plan in place. Plotters are the opposite, preferring to have an outline in place before they start writing. And plenty of writers fall somewhere in between. People who are pantsers will often claim that having a plan stifles their creativity and slows them down. Plotters will often argue that having a plan reduces the risk of writer’s block.
So who is right? Again, it depends. I do think it’s a good idea to have an idea of the overall plotline of your work before you start writing, at least having the ending in mind. You’re probably noticing a theme here, that these ‘rules’ are not as hard and fast as some people like to insist they are. There is something to most of them, but everyone works differently and I think these rules can be interpreted and applied to your work the way that works best for you. Or as they often say in Pirates of the Caribbean: “They’re more like guidelines, anyway.”
So that’s a view on some of these common writing myths. I’d love to hear any thoughts or experiences of what we’ve discussed today, so feel free to chat about it in the comments. For more, stay tuned. We’ll be staying in this vein for the rest of the week. I post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe below to get an email whenever a new blog post is live.
For more on writing advice, I have other posts including cliches and editing as you go. For more on writer’s block, this blog post on Reedsy has a lot of good information.
In the first part we discussed verbs, what they are and the different kinds of verbs you might come across. In part 2 we covered the different tenses and forms of verbs., In this part we are going to cover the use of verbs within the sentence. Subject-verb agreement is essential for clear writing. If the verb and subject are not in agreement, the sentence can sound awkward and the meaning could be confused. We’ll also touch on split infinitives and implied subjects.
Subject-Verb Agreement
What does this actually mean? Essentially, the form of the verb used must match the subject of the sentence. Remember, the subject is what is doing the action of the verb. So a singular subject requires a singular verb, and a plural subject requires a plural verb.
“The dog is in the kennel.”
So above, the subject ‘the dog’ is singular, so we use the singular form of the verb ‘is’. If we said: “The dogs are in the kennels.” There is more than one dog so we need to use the plural form ‘are’. “The dogs is in the kennels.” would be incorrect, and it sounds awkward when you read it aloud.
That brings me to a good way to tell whether your subject and verb are in agreement. Reading aloud is a great way to check your writing makes sense and is correct. It’s easier to tell if you have the correct words and word order, by hearing it out loud. You can read it out loud, record yourself reading it out loud or even use software to read it aloud for you.
Exceptions and Rules
As with all good English rules, there are exceptions. Using the first person pronoun ‘I’ means you need to use the plural form of the verb. If the verb is following up a main verb, in some cases you use the basic form of the verb. “He helped the old lady cross the road.” ‘Helped’ is the main verb so the secondary verb ‘cross’ is used in its main form.
There are a few additional rules for certain circumstances. Detailed explanations and examples can be found here. The Blue Book of Grammar is a great resource for English grammar, with good explanations and there are quizzes too, so you can test your knowledge. A lot of people might say that this is intuitive, and it is to a native English speaker, however, mistakes are common and if you know the rules, then you’ll be able to apply them properly in all situations. Especially if you plan to be a proofreader or editor.
Rules for Subject-Verb Agreement
In a sentence with the word ‘of’ the subject will typically be before the phrase ‘of…’ and thus it is this part that must agree with the verb. Take the following pair of sentences for example:
“A bunch of colourful flowers bring cheer to any room in the house.”
“A bunch of colourful flowers brings cheer to any rom in the house.”
Can you work out which one is correct? Try reading them out loud, and try to identify what part of the sentence is the subject, and what the relevant verb is.
Did you think the second sentence is correct? You’d be right! The subject is the ‘bunch’. the flowers are a secondary noun, and the verb is ‘brings’.
If you have two singular subjects connected by ‘either/or’ or ‘neither/nor’ requires a singular verb. If you have a singular and a plural subject in a sentence like this, the verb agrees with the noun or pronoun nearest to it. Caution is advised, as some sentences can end up awkward, even if they are grammatically correct. In this case, rewording the sentence might be the way to go.
If you have two or more singular subjects connected by the word ‘and’, you will usually use a plural verb. Be careful, some nouns connected by ‘and’ become compound nouns and should be treated singularly, such as ‘breaking and entering’. It is often considered to be incorrect to place a personal pronoun first in a list of pronouns/nouns but grammatically, it is not. It is more a convention of politeness.
Phrases separating the subject and verb such as ‘besides, along with, as well as, not’ are not part of the subject and should be ignored, so the verb matches the subject. The same applies to anything in parentheses (brackets).
Prepositions and Amounts
Sentences that begin with ‘there’ or ‘here’, the true subject is after the verb so the verb should match the subject. “There are the keys,” or “There is the key.” Singular verbs should also be used for distances, time periods or sums of money, when considered a single unit. “Ten years is too long.” But if you are talking about money like hundreds of dollar bills, then it becomes plural.
Finally for portions of something, phrases like ‘some of, a lot of, the majority of’, the opposite of the first rule applies. The verb should agree with the noun after the word ‘of’. “Most of the cake is gone.” vs “Most of the cakes are gone.” With collective nouns, it can be subject to the writer’s intent but the phrasing of the noun might need to be changed to make it easier or clearer.
Finally, if the phrases is expressing a wish or something that is contrary to fact, ‘was’ is replaced with ‘were’. “If your father were here, he would stop you.” Normally, ‘were’ is a plural verb but in this case it’s expressing a wish that is not factually true. This is called the subjunctive mood, a hypothetical or wishful thought, or a request. “I wish you were here.” In this case you pair a singular subject with a plural verb. Make sense? Hopefully I’ve made it a bit clearer. English rules are full of odd exceptions.
Split Infinitives
Infinitive verbs are verbs that are used with the word ‘to’ before them and are not the main verb of the sentence. “He is going to pay.” ‘Going’ is the main verb and ‘to pay’ is the infinitive. A split infinitive is where a word is inserted between ‘to’ and the verb, often an adverb. “He is going to grudgingly pay.”
It is a held belief that you should never use a split infinitive, however, technically speaking it is not wrong. However, they can be awkward and clumsy, so they are usually not necessary and most experienced writers won’t use them unless it is necessary. You might find that there are other ways to word the sentence that read less awkwardly.
Implied Subjects
There are certain situations where the subject is not included in the sentence and is considered implied. This is usually when the sentence is a request or a command of some kind. “Stop right there!” or “Please bring me fresh towels.” Both of these have the implied subject of ‘you’ so it is not considered necessary to state the pronoun. It is assumed that the subject is ‘you’ and the context is enough.
This is not as common in English, but is much more common in other languages, such as Japanese. In Japanese, for example, pronouns are dropped and implied all the time. While pronouns for ‘you’ and ‘i/me’ do exist in the language, it is generally assumed from the context that the listener knows who the subject is so it is not stated unless needed for clarity. Indeed, it is often considered quite rude to say ‘you’ in Japanese. It also means that it is not uncommon for a single verb to be a complete sentence. If you said “Eating.” in English, it would sound quite weird, without saying “I’m eating.”
Conclusion
That concludes our foray into understanding verbs and tenses. I hope this has been helpful and interesting. If you missed part 1 and 2 you can find them here and here.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or questions. In the mean time, happy writing! Don’t forget to subscribe for updates on new blog posts three times a weekend come find me son social media for more updates. Next week we’re going to look at some myths about writing and some ‘rules’ that you should break.
Welcome back to understanding verbs. This is part two, where we will be covering irregular verbs, reflexive verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs. There are a lot of different kinds of verbs. So hopefully I can make this more straightforward to understand. Last time, we covered what verbs are, how to understand conjugation and tenses and how regular verbs work. Regular verbs follow a regular pattern, hence the name! Irregular verbs, as you can probably tell, do not.
Understanding Irregular Verbs
How many irregular verbs are there in English? Quite a lot! There’s around 200 of them. If you remember in the last part, we compared this to Japanese, a language I’m studying for fun, and found that in Japanese, there are only two irregular verbs. So, I’m not going to cover every single one here, but we’ll look at a few of the most common ones you’ll come across.
With regular verbs, we saw that there’s a consistent pattern in how we conjugate these verbs for different tenses. With irregular verbs, there’s no pattern and the word can change drastically when we conjugate it for different tenses. This is where there can be difficulty in knowing which word we should be using.
So let’s look at a couple of examples:
To know:
The past tense of to know is ‘knew’, the past progressive tense is ‘was/were known’, the past perfect tense is ‘had known’ and the past progressive perfect tense is ‘had been knowing’. The present tense is ‘know’. The present progressive is: ‘I am knowing’, ‘he/she/it is knowing’ or ‘you/we/they are knowing’. Present perfect tense is ‘has/have known’.
So you can see from this that the word can change a lot depending on the tense you are using. The verb ‘to find’ can change to ‘found’ or ‘finding’ depending on the tense. The verb ‘to think’ can become ‘thinks’, ‘thought’ or ‘thinking’. It’s not intuitive, and unfortunately there’s not really a shortcut to remember these, you just have to learn them. For more, see the Blue Book of Grammar here.
You might have noticed something else, in the above example for ‘to know’ and that is the various forms of the verb ‘to be’ used in the verb phrases. That leads us into the next section nicely, helping verbs.
Helping Verbs
We’ve used helping verbs in a lot of the examples already, as one of the things they help with is expressing the tense of a verb. They are used to form the progressive, perfect and progressive perfect tenses, and the verb ‘to be’ is the most commonly used one. So can you list the 8 forms of the verb ‘to be’? See below for the answers.
Click here to see them.
be, is, are, am, was, were, being, been
Did you get them all? Do you know when to use each form? Let’s do a conjugation table to show you them, then we’ll discuss the uses of it in more detail. Remember that ‘being’ is the present participle and ‘been’ is the past participle.
Person
Past
Present
Future
I
was
am
will be
He/She/It
was
is
will be
You
were
are
will be
We
were
are
will be
You (pl)
were
are
will be
They
were
are
will be
Basic conjugation table for ‘to be’
Main verb vs Helping verb
‘To be’ is a verb that can be used on its own such as “It is there.” It is also used alongside other verbs to help indicate tense. “I am going to the party.” In this example, the main verb is ‘going’ and ‘am’ is there to help the main verb ‘to go’. “She was leaving work.” In this one, ‘was’ is helping the main verb ‘to leave’ and indicates that this is past tense. “She is leaving work.” Present tense. Does that make sense? These helping verbs also have an impact when we look at using the passive voice, which was covered in a previous blog post here.
Linking Verbs
Guess what? ‘To be’ is also a linking verb! There’s a reason it’s the most commonly used verb in the English language. It’s so versatile! So, what do we mean by linking verb. Essentially, it’s a verb that links a noun to an adjective. “The ball is blue.” The noun is the ball, blue is the adjective, and the linking verb ‘is’ is basically telling us that the adjective is describing the state of the noun’s existence. You can use a form of ‘be’ to link a noun to adjectives, adverbs and adverbial phrases.
There are a few other common linking verbs, such as ‘become’, ‘seem’, ‘feel’, ‘taste’. Note that most of them indicate something to do with our senses, which makes sense given you are linking adjectives.
Reflexive Verbs
Reflexive verbs are verbs used when the subject and object of a sentence are the same thing. Similar to when we talked about reflexive pronouns, reflexive verbs work in a similar way and are always used with reflexive pronouns. “The cat grooms itself.”
The use of reflexive pronouns and reflexive verbs is often used for emphasis and can come with certain connotations. Take a look at these three sentences, which all say the same thing in essence, and see if you feel differently about them.
I cleaned the house.
I cleaned the house myself.
I cleaned the house all by myself.
The basic meaning of all of them is the same. The subject ‘I’ performed a verb ‘to clean’ on the object ‘the house’. The addition of a reflexive pronoun does imply more feeling. It’s stating that the subject performed this alone, and depending on how you read it, it could indicate the person’s feelings on the matter. You could get a sense of pride, that they completed the task on their own, or you could read it in a bitter tone.
The third sentence can have the same, but with a bit more emphasis on the fact that they did the task alone, and perhaps are unhappy that they were left to do this without help. Or extremely proud that they achieved it on their own for the first time. The context will give an indication of which kind of tone is implied, but you can see how using reflexive verbs and pronouns can change the meaning of a sentence and change the feeling, or ‘mood’ of what you write.
Conclusion
So we’ve covered quite a bit today, although there is plenty more to read on this subject. On Friday, part 3 will cover subject-verb agreement, split infinitives and implied subjects. If you missed the first part, you can read it here. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to comment. I’ve got a few interesting things in the works and I will soon be sharing updates on my novel, where I’ve been doing a lot of world building.
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How to understand verb tenses and verb conjugation. I know, I know. The word ‘conjugation’ brings up memories from school, especially if you ever studied a language other than your native language. I remember memorising verb conjugations in French in high school. I don’t remember any of the verb conjugations from French, however. Clearly that was a waste of time, but the thing is, I didn’t really like French. I didn’t have much choice in languages, as the last Latin teacher retired before I chose my subjects. Latin would have been much more useful for my career aspirations as a vet, since a lot of medical terminology and species names are derived from Latin and Greek.
The thing is, I don’t really remember being formally taught how to conjugate English verbs in the same fashion. That’s something that I learned organically through learning to read and write, rather than memorising lists. That’s why it stays with me, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just because English is my native language so I understand it intuitively, and incorrect grammar just sounds ‘off’ to me.
I’ve been learning Japanese, as a hobby really, and I definitely feel I’m better at understanding verb conjugation in that language than I ever have in French. It might be because Japanese is such a different language, the grammar rules are vastly different from English. In Japanese, the verb always goes at the end of a sentence. With English it usually follows the subject. Spoken Japanese verbs have different conjugations for politeness levels, while in English, that’s not really a thing.
Understanding Verbs and Sentence Structure
So, on to the meat and bones of this article. Understanding verb tenses and how to conjugate verbs correctly will make a massive difference to your writing. This applies to all kinds of writing, whether it is an academic paper, a story or a blog article like this one. Why? Because of things like subject-verb agreement and syntax, the order of words in a sentence.
A basic sentence consists of a subject and what is said about the subject, sometimes referred to as the ‘predicate’. This is where the verb will be. Usually there will be an object as well, which is receiving the verb from the subject. Some verbs don’t need a direct object to make sense, these are known as ‘intransitive’ verbs. Verbs that do require a direct object are called ‘transitive’ verbs.
So let’s look at some examples. To make things clear, the subject will be underlined, the verb will be in bold and the direct object will be in italics.
The catlicked its paw.
Licked its paw.
The catlicked.
So in the list above, it’s clear that only the first sentence is complete. It makes sense. We know that the subject (the cat) licked (verb) its paw (object). The second sentence is lacking a subject, so we don’t know what performed the verb. The third sentence is lacking a direct object, so we don’t know what the cat licked. Licked is a transitive verb, we need a subject and an object with it for it to have any meaning.
This might seem really simple, but it’s important. Writing is about communicating, and if there is anything unclear, then it’s not communicating properly. When you use more complex sentences than these examples, it’s even more important.
Verb Tenses
Verb tenses are an important part of English language. At a basic level, you can split them into past, present and future. That obviously tells us when the action of the verb occurs. You also split the verb forms by first, second or third person, and within these there are singular and plural forms. English has regular and irregular verbs, like most other languages.
What’s the difference? Regular verbs follow a consistent pattern when conjugating the different forms of a verb, essentially the word is changed the same way for each form. Irregular verbs do not follow this pattern and often are changed significantly or even entirely. English has a lot of irregular verbs, while Japanese (my go to as it’s a language I’m studying) only has two irregular verbs: the verbs for ‘to do’ and ‘to come’.
For regular verbs, you take the base form (or stem) and use it as the present tense. To change the verb into other forms, you add a suffix. For example in the past tense you will usually add -ed or -d (if the word ends in an e). For some tenses you may need additional helper verbs to make it clear. The best way to show you is a list. So let’s take the verb ‘play’. The base form, known as the infinitive, is the word ‘to’ and the base form of the verb.
Regular Verb Conjugation: To Play
Infinitive: to play
First person singular: I play
First person plural: We play
Second person singular: You play
Second person plural: You play
Third person singular: He/She/It plays
Third person plural: They* play
Simple present: I play
Simple past: I played
Simple future: I will play
Present continuous: I am playing
Past continuous: I was playing
Future continuous: I will be playing
Present perfect: I have played
Past Perfect: I had played
Future perfect: I will have played
Present perfect continuous: I have been playing
Past perfect continuous: I had been playing
Future perfect continuous: I will have been playing
As you can see, some of these require linking words or helping verbs to make sense. This is the pattern used for regular verbs. English does not have imperfect verb conjugation. Instead, you should add the phrase ‘used to’ for something that occurred in the past but no longer occurs in the past or present. “I used to play video games when I was younger,” implies that you did play in the past but you stopped in the more recent past and no longer do it now.
* Note: as discussed previously, ‘they’ is also a singular pronoun for people of unknown or unspecified gender. However, you would still use the third person plural conjugation when using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. For more on this, see this post on pronouns.
Conclusion
I’ll leave it here for today. The subject of verb conjugation can get quite tedious, so I won’t drag this out too long for today. If you do want to read more on the subject, I highly recommend the Blue Book of Grammar. Check out their blog post on verbs here. In the next part of this series on Wednesday, I’ll cover irregular verbs in more detail and talk about reflexive verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs. On Friday I’ll cover the concept of subject-verb agreement, split infinitives and implied subjects.
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The term ‘Mary Sue’ is one that has been used to describe a character archetype that is too perfect. It originated in the Star Trek fandom in a parody fanfiction. It is an archetype that is especially common in fanfiction. Essentially it is a character, usually the primary protagonist, who has amazing skills, is extremely attractive, has unique abilities and no weaknesses. They have no real flaws, any flaws mentioned are usually meaningless and inconsequential.
The archetype is generally considered a ‘self-insertion’, a character that represents an idealised version of the author themselves. It’s common for them to be female. Although you do see male characters too, often named Marty Stu or Gary Stu. Again, this is a generalisation but they are often written by adolescent authors, especially in fanfiction, as a way to insert oneself into a fictional world.
What is Wrong About a Mary Sue?
These characters are a sign of poor quality writing, and most people don’t like reading them. There’s a number of reasons for this. For starters, these characters are perfect, unique and all powerful. They have no real weaknesses, win every fight easily and can pass any challenge with little difficulty. If they have flaws at all, they tend to be pointless things, like being too trusting or being too modest despite being so brilliant at everything. It’s boring to read.
One of the reasons that many characters are loved is because of their flaws and weaknesses, and the character development they go through during the story where they overcome these things. You can’t learn and grow, if you’re already perfect. When the challenges posted by the plot are so easily overcome, there’s no tension or excitement. It becomes predictable, when the Mary Sue can just pull a ‘deus ex machina’ out of thin air for every potential issue.
Unique and Special Appearance
Their appearance is incredibly beautiful and otherworldly, unique and often with unusual eye or hair colours and an elaborately overdesigned outfit. Everyone else will see how beautiful she is but her, because she is so modest and shy. The descriptions are on another level as well, often falling into what is termed ‘purple prose’. Excessive descriptions with minute details, paragraphs of adjectives to the point where it becomes tedious to read.
You can spot these situations easily, as only the Sue will merit this kind of description. Other characters will be lucky to get more than two lines to describe how they look. All the other characters are mundane and average, with little to set them apart. Any physical flaws will only enhance her beauty, or remind her of her Dark and Traumatic Past (which they always have but are rarely actually affected by).
How to Spot a Sue in the Wild
You’re probably already sighing and rolling your eyes at some of the points I’ve made. That tells me you’ve read this kind of thing before, and certainly if you’ve read fan fiction at any point, you will have seen it. You’ve probably written it at some point, let’s face it, most of us have. It’s fun, to insert yourself into your favourite fictional world and interact with all the characters you know and love. Well, it’s fun for you. It’s probably not as interesting for other people to read.
Even so, there’s plenty of characters in pop culture that could be considered Mary Sues. It is often a matter of opinion and debate. Many people will cite Bella from Twilight, Anastasia from Fifty Shades of Grey and James Bond as clear examples. Personally, I can agree with that. Anastasia goes out of her way to be described as plain, boring and unremarkable, yet this millionaire tycoon with a skewed view of a BDSM relationship is enthralled by her.
Obviously, plenty of people enjoy these stories and these characters, and that’s okay. It’s not to my tastes, but it’s not up to me to judge other people for what they like. Some characters Sue statuses are hotly debated online, like Rey from the Star Wars sequels or Arya Stark in Game of Thrones (TV) being the big hero in the end, when it was set up for Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen.
Not Every Self-Insert is a Mary Sue
This is an important fact to remember. Not every author self-insertion is automatically a Mary Sue, or a bad thing. The point is that most people will want a bit of realism, even with the protagonist of a story. People who are realistic are easier to relate to. We want to be able to cheer when they succeed, but also sympathise when they fail. People like to read characters that are like them, in essence, not perfect. Most of us struggle to see our positive traits and tend to focus on the negative things about ourselves. Seeing characters overcoming these negative traits reminds us that we can do the same. The key is balance.
This is absolutely a matter of opinion in some cases, and realistically some genres almost require your protagonist to have some Mary Sue like qualities: look at Superman and many other comic book heroes. Superman has all the superpowers, strength, speed, ability to fly, invulnerable, laser eyes, and whatnot, including the ability to apparently fool everyone by putting on a pair of glasses. We do want to read about protagonists who are interesting, and a bit above average in some ways.
Further Reading
There is a lot of information out there about this trope, and a lot of discussion. So I’ll share a few links where you can read more. One of the best known fanfiction examples is ‘My Immortal’, a notorious Harry Potter fanfiction. I’m still convinced it is a parody of the entire trope, but who knows.
TV Tropes: an extremely thorough analysis of the Mary Sue trope, the variations and examples.
PPC Wiki Litmus Tests: a whole list of litmus tests, some adapted for specific fandoms.
My Immortal Wikipedia Page: all about the infamous ‘My Immortal’ HP fic, it is possible to find it online although the original posting on fanfiction.net is no longer there. It’s quite… something. I read it in its entirety back in the day.
My posts on Characters: introducing your characters and when your characters develop a mind of their own. More to come soon!
Finally, my post on cliches, which often come into play when we’re talking about Mary Sues.
So, hopefully you found that interesting, there’s a lot to read on the subject and a lot of debates and discussions to be found online. Keep an eye on the blog as I will be covering more topics in characterisation and writing characters going forward. Subscribe below to get notified whenever new posts are up. Follow me on my social media channels for more little bits and if you want to talk about working with me on your writing, drop me a line! Until next time!
What do I mean by this? Let’s get into it. Homonyms and homophones are words that are similar but have different meanings. Homonyms are a kind of catch all term for homographs, words that are spelled the same, or homophones, words that sounds the same (with different spelling) and have different meanings. Some words are both, and come under homonyms.
‘Homo-‘ is a prefix used in a lot of words, and it means ‘the same’. Homogenous, homosexual, homozygous, it’s used a lot. It’s opposite being ‘hetero-‘. These prefixes come from Greek. So let’s get into the definitions properly before we look at some common examples.
Homograph: words that are spelled the same, although may have different pronunciations.
Homophones: words that have the same pronunciation but may have different spelling.
Homonyms: words that have the same spelling and pronunciation but with different meanings.
Homograph Examples
Read: a verb which is spelled the same and pronounced differently depending on the tense. Pronounced like ‘reed’ for present or future tense, and pronounced like ‘red’ for past tense. Oh, look some homophone examples too!
Bow: can be pronounced two ways, one meaning a weapon designed to shoot arrows, another referring to a respectful gesture of dipping one’s head. There are other meanings too.
Tear: can be a rip in something or it can mean the fluid produced that protects the eyes, and falls when someone is crying.
Homophone Examples
Lead and Led: lead meaning the heavy metal and led being the past tense of the verb ‘lead’ (which is a homograph of the noun, ‘lead’)
Sea and See: sea meaning coastal water between landmasses and see meaning to use ones vision to collect information.
Bear and bare: bear meaning a large grizzly animal and bare meaning to expose or reveal.
Homonym Examples
Stalk: can mean both the upright portion of a plant and to follow someone
Bark: the protective outer coating of a tree trunk and a sound a dog makes
Left: the past tense of leave and the opposite of right.
The Important Ones to Know
You might be thinking I’ve left a few out of the lists above. That’s on purpose, because I want to address them here. These are groups of homonyms that are commonly mixed up and confused. So I want to highlight them to help you make sure you know which is which. To read more, please see previous blog posts on pronouns and apostrophes.
Their, they’re and there
These ones get confused all the time. They all sound the same, but have different spellings and meanings, making them homophones. So, which is which and how do you know which to use?
Their: a possessive pronoun relating to either a group of people or a single person of unspecified gender. “It is their dog. They’re over there.”
They’re: a contraction of ‘they are’. “It is their dog. They’re over there.”
There: a demonstrative adverb referring to a place or position. “It is their dog. They’re over there.”
Your and You’re
Again, very commonly confused, these two words. Your is a possessive pronoun, used for something that belongs to you. “That is your dog? You’re lucky.”
You’re is a contraction of ‘you are’. “That is your dog? You’re lucky.”
Remember the apostrophe post? You’re has an apostrophe because it’s a contraction of two words. Make sense?
To, Too and Two
And the third group of homonyms that are very frequently confused, is these three.
To: a preposition expressing motion or approaching a place or condition. “Going to the supermarket.”
Too: means either ‘also’ or excessively. “She was driving too fast. You thought so too?”
Two: is the number 2.
Conclusion
I know this might all sound very simple and easy, basic English from primary school, but I’ve chosen to cover it for a reason. These are frequent mistakes seen everywhere from social media posts to academic essays. They’re easy to miss as well, as a basic computer spell check will not catch them, unless you have spelled the word wrong as well as using the wrong word. Modern grammar checks might catch them and realise you have used the wrong word, but they might not catch it either.
That is where a good proofreader comes in, because part of our job is to spot these kinds of mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, modern software and AI tools are a lot better than they used to be in the early days of spelling and grammar checkers but they’re not perfect, a human eye is needed to be sure it is all correct.
You hear it a lot, especially when talking about writing or producing media. So what are they? Clichés are phrases or ideas that are so overused that they are now boring and unoriginal, so the phrase has lost meaning or become a stereotype. Unlike tropes, which are story elements commonly used and liked by people, such as a ‘happily ever after’ at the end of a romance. Are cliches cliche?
You can spell cliche with or without the accented ‘e’ by the way. It’s a word that has its roots in French. Many consider cliches tired and unoriginal, and you will be told to avoid them at all costs. I bet you can probably think of hundreds of them, a lot of them come from old sayings and idioms. Here’s a few examples:
“Think outside the box.”
“There’s plenty of fish in the sea.”
“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“Beating a dead horse.”
How to know if it’s a cliché
The way to tell is if you hear a saying and it makes you sigh or roll your eyes, it’s probably a cliche. They had meaning once, but overuse means they just don’t have any impact anymore. Some have been misused for so long, people have forgotten the original meaning. Like this one:
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
It’s a warning against asking too many questions or looking into things you shouldn’t. Curiosity is dangerous, so you might not like what you find.
A fun fact, the original proverb was “Care killed the cat.” This means worry is detrimental to you. A different meaning, isn’t it? The earliest printed reference is found in Every Man in His Honour by Ben Jonson written in 1598, and again, a year later by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing.
The current version is more recent, it was notably used in 1916 in a newspaper report about a cat who had climbed up a chimney and gotten stuck, resulting in a fall that did, in fact, kill the cat.
Are cliches always bad?
Well, mostly, yes they are bad. Readers see cliches as lazy, so it will put them off reading what you’ve written. Cliches indicate you lack imagination and are unable to use your own creativity to say what you want to say in your own way. Avoiding using them shows you can think of other ways to say the same thing, and it therefore improves the impact of your writing. There are occasions where using a cliche can help you connect with your audience, by provoking that familiarity. Still, I would advise caution.
Subverting cliches
The other thing to do is to subvert cliches. Introduce a cliche but then change it around to make it more interesting. One of my favourite uses of this is, from a classic video game by Valve, Portal 2. Every syllable of dialogue in that game is absolutely amazing, but one of the best monologues is Cave Johnson’s recording around the halfway point, affectionately known as the ‘lemon rant’.
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A video by Ignis on YouTube of the Lemon Rant with typography.
The context is that he has become seriously ill by crushing up moon dust, and he records a message talking about how he plans to make the best of the situation, ending with the cliched phrase: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” A bit later, he comes back to it, and goes on a rant, stating that “When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager…”
I won’t transcribe the whole rant here, but I’ll link to YouTube so you can listen to it all for yourself. Or, better yet, play the game if you haven’t already, it’s worth it for the writing alone. The point is, the original cliche is telling you that when bad things happen, you just have to make the best of what you have. Turning it around on itself, the character is saying “No, I’m not accepting my lot. I’m going to do something about it.”
Conclusion
So, you know how to identify cliches, and why they are generally to be avoided like the plague. Yeah, I know exactly what I did there. They are everywhere, but using them in your writing can really turn your reader off and make them lose interest in what you’re writing. So use them sparingly, if at all, or find a better way to say what you want to say. Or give them a good twist like the writers on Portal 2 did.
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It’s something most of us have seen at some point. Especially in the early days of MS Word’s grammar checker, it was something I remember seeing the passive voice a lot when writing essays and school assignments. I didn’t really understand what it meant at the time, although I do now!
So, what is the passive voice? Essentially it’s the order of the sentence. So the subject becomes the object, and the verb happens to it rather than the subject doing the verb. It’s become passive. If the subject is doing the verb to the object, then it becomes active. Yeah, I know it’s probably still not clear. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples so you can see what I mean.
Passive vs Active voice
A classic scene from a classic novel and movie, let’s look at what happens in The Wizard of Oz at the beginning when the cyclone hits.
“The house was carried away by the cyclone.”
vs
“The cyclone carried the house away.”
Which one is in the passive voice, and which is in the active voice? Hopefully you got it right. The first one is passive: the house is the object being acted upon by the verb ‘carried’ and the subject ‘the cyclone’. The second sentence is active: the subject ‘the cyclone’ is acting ‘carried’ on the object ‘the house’. So they are different ways of looking at it, but both sentences do effectively say the same thing.
The difference is where the focus is placed by the word order, which will affect the impact of the sentence. It shifts the readers focus onto the subject and the action the verb is describing. The subject is doing something to the object, rather than the object having something done to it.
An easy way to spot the passive voice is to look for the ‘was’ or ‘is’ before the verb. You might be able to make passive sentences without these words but most of them will have one of these in it before the verb.
Is it always wrong?
That depends. Often you will find it being flagged by grammar checking software (such as the aforementioned MS Word) and even the SEO and Readability scoring software on this WordPress Editor. I get frowny faces if I use too much passive voice. This is likely because often passive voice is less engaging and interesting to read. Active voice gives your words more impact for your reader.
That said, everything you write has a purpose and you might choose to use the passive voice to direct your reader’s attention to something else. You may even want it to be misleading in some way, or to ‘soften the blow’, so to speak. That said, it is the general consensus that you should use the active voice the majority of the time. Certainly if you are writing advertising copy or another kind of persuasive writing, the passive voice will lessen the impact significantly. So when you are editing, proofreading or writing, it’s something to be conscious of and evaluate if there is a more impactful way to say what you want to say.
Thanks for reading! Remember, for more tips and tricks, subscribe to get an email every time there’s a new post. I’m posting three times a week on here. If you want some help with your writing, including spotting the passive voice, get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help you out! Any questions or thoughts, the comments are open!
So, you’ve got your book idea and you’ve started writing it. You’ve produced an outline and set up your plot, you’ve gotten to know your characters and how they are going to develop throughout your story. Great. But for some reason, your characters have developed a mind of their own.
What if they decide to do something different though? Does this happen to anyone else, or just me? It’s something I have dealt with a lot over the years, from my early days writing fanfiction to now. My characters, especially the well developed ones, seem to have a mind of their own. They do their own thing, sometimes reacting differently to what I expected.
It’s not unusual. Even if you are an avid plotter, someone who likes to have everything planned out before you start writing your story. Once I get into the zone and the words are flowing, things can change unexpectedly. The question is, do you go with it? Or do you try to force things back to your plan.
Can you be too rigid?
I would say yes. Your outline is just that, the outline. Having a plan and knowing the ending is a good thing, but as you go you might deviate from your original plan. No matter how much planning you’ve done for your characters, how much you’ve already developed them, sometimes you can’t really be sure how they will be affected by the events of the story. When you are writing your first draft, you are still getting to know your characters, and how they go through the storyline. If a new direction is flowing freely, I would say go with it.
Remember you can always change it later when you are editing, if it doesn’t quite work. If it works, stick with it. Trying to force it back to your original plan could make it awkward to read, or it could result in your characters responses feeling out of character or unrealistic. If you force it, it could feel forced and your reader will pick up on that. It can jar them and bring them out of your written world.
What if the plotline takes off on its own?
This can happen too. Your plot starts off in line with what you had planned, but partway through a scene, a new idea comes to you. Again, I think it’s worth going with the flow in this case too. It depends on your writing process and how you like to work. Some people can jump around the timeline, writing scenes wherever their inspiration takes them. Others prefer to stick to writing start to finish and in order.
If you have an outline, keep it. Don’t remove anything from it, add your new ideas if you like. This means that when it comes to your first revision of your writing, you will be able to see how it fits with the overall story and if you still have your original outline, you will be able to assess if your new idea works better or if your original plan is the better option. Then you can rewrite or insert scenes to suit it.
What should you do when your characters take on a mind of their own?
Go with the flow is my advice. Even if you are a thorough plotter and you like to have a clear and detailed outline for your writing, it’s okay to deviate from that at times, if that makes more sense. Writing fiction is like any other form of creative work, you don’t want to stifle your creativity too much by sticking rigidly to rules and plans. Sometimes you are telling your characters what to do, sometimes they are telling you what they are going to do. It’s part of being an author, having all these little voices in your head as you write. At least I hope it’s something others experience, is it just me?
For more on characters, see this tag here: characters. I plan to cover a lot more on this subject in the next few weeks, from avoiding Mary Sue Syndrome to how to develop well rounded characters.
