Hi all, I am busy self editing my novel for the passed year, one sentence annoys me the most because in the entire book I have tried to stay away from dreaded hyphens and semi colons which I think most authors and editors prob use in all the wrong places unnecessarily. This is one sentence in my entire novel I am stuck on. Sure, it is grammatically correct when put through an automated grammar algorithm but to me I still feel there is a grammar issue with it, namely needing one of the above. It is as far as sentences go, a list. So I would really appreciate some feedback.
'The headlines say things like Police brutality, and my favorite Justice is served.'
I really feel there should be something after 'and my favourite'
Maybe just another comma? But this does not fall into the grammar of a list does it?
thanks in advance
glen
just updated with correct italic bb editor
thanks centron. I honestly don't have hundreds of pounds to spend on proof readers, editors and everything else. Hopefully this book can fund all those sort of lavish things for the next one. I really figured a semi colon because it was a list. I learnt back in school that semi colons were only for speech but idk alot of teachers taught some nonsense. Yes, maybe just another comma. thanks for the reply.
Don't hold your breath on your book funding all that stuff.
I speak as an indie author - even very successful indies take a while to catch on. Even people who constantly sell out their books at conventions and the like aren't wealthy. And even the pros take a long time to quit their day jobs.
And books that aren't properly edited are going to be hurled across a room by a lot of people. A few typos here and there won't bother most people, but great swathes of errors will take people right out of the story.
I say this not to depress you but to help you to manage your expectations.
thanks for the reply Jespah. There is a lot of debate regarding self published authors spending hundreds of pounds / dollars on editors and the like that probably deserves a decent thread of it's own. I did once read a really good blog post about this issue which I will find and share. The long of the short is that you can dress a bad story up as fancy as you like but even a badly written good story stands out. It is a common thing now that we all need these 'editors' to spend a week on a book that in my case I have spent 15 years writing and a year alone editing. I have no expectations personally but the will to write. This book itself is actually going to be the possible basis of an indie movie I want to make.
Good luck to you - and I'll just drop this here from a friend who is a pretty successful indie author and a Dragon Award nominee from 2016 (he will probably be nominated again this year).
0 Replies
glen74
1
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Tue 20 Jun, 2017 04:38 pm
@centrox,
excuse my short hand sorry but I am still currently editing therefore 'I am ' is more in context than 'I have' which is past tense. Funnily enough, this is one sentence in a 100 000 word crime novel, in a decent attempt to prove that authors and editors use semi colons, hyphens and colons in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons. My novel is written in the present tense in the first person so such grammar issues have been numerous. Common sense prevails.
0 Replies
PUNKEY
1
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Thu 22 Jun, 2017 09:35 pm
. . . .brutality; my favorite one being "Justice is served."
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