This is a wide subject area, but I want to focus on just a few things.

As a segue, I have to share this post I came across. I was on a forum where people were posting for help about making money blogging. One poster was frustrated and confused and posted this:

“Been using these for over a year and made 2 penies.  How do I earn money on goggle.  It is simply frostrating.  I posted so many adds  on my blog but I have earned no money. what is happening? I have been trying to write all the rite types of subjects,and no one buys. the codes is on the page but the adds are never seen I geuss.what am I doing wrong.what do I need to do.”

{you need to give up, right now, before anyone else gets hurt. The Grammar Nazis are watching….}

Now, no one had the heart to tell this guy the truth. I almost did, but realized it would just make me seem like a pompous ass. It probably wouldn’t have helped anyway. Anyone who writes a short post and has, at my first count, 13 obvious errors, not to mention the errors in INTELLECT, can never expect to make money as a writer.

It baffles me how so many people think that writing is a cush job. It’s hard work just like any other profession. But if you can’t spell, can’t construct proper sentences, and generally present yourself as a moron (because, of course, you ARE a moron), you will have no luck. You have to possess a command of language in a broad sense, and an understanding of human nature–what’s interesting and what is not–and your ideas about plot points and events in general have to be unique or at least rendered in an interesting or entertaining way. There are plenty of talented writers out there, and THOSE are the ones you will really be competing with, not the frostrated [sic] imbecile quoted above…

Still, it bears mentioning that presentation is just as important as content, because if your presentation sucks, no one will read your content.

Notwithstanding the Village Idiots out there, in a manuscript, Glaring Errors can pop up frequently, just by virtue of the length of the work. That’s why you have to be doubly careful to check and recheck your writing. (And as I typed that, I was terrified that perhaps I had used too many commas in that sentence…there’s a down side to criticizing someone else’s writing, when you’re WRITING your criticism. It pays to invest in a good helmet, quality running shoes, and to develop a taste for crow).

One example of this need for vigilance, is when a character or element or object is mentioned, described, given a bit of backstory, and then halfway through the book, this character/element/object disappears, and it has nothing to do with the plot (for instance, there are no magicians or wizards populating your pages). This usually happens when the natural evolution of the plot might cause this thing to vanish unintentionally. If you’re an organic writer like me, the story will take you places you didn’t plan, and sometimes certain people, places, or things will become unimportant. Always go back to the beginning and read over it, with an eye toward catching those absconding Nounages…(yes, go ahead and notify the nearest Grammar Nazi. I made that up, and am prepared to take my demerits).

I had a character in one of my novels (Achilles Forjan) who owned a dog she was very fond of. The animal was with her frequently. Then, as the story morphed and took on a life of its own, I noticed that the dog had evaporated. This would qualify as a Glaring Error.

Sometimes the Glaring Error is that a character’s name or physical description changes. This is often caused by the act of changing a character’s name and then missing some instances of it. That happened to me in another novel, As You Were, – before I changed that character’s name because it was too close to another character’s name in another of my books (Armchair Detective). When I changed that main character’s name, using global Find and Replace, I forgot that there were instances of it in the possessive form (i.e., “Beth’s”) and the replace feature didn’t find it. So you have to be mindful of that, so that your reader won’t snag on it, and say who the hell is Beth?

Also remember that sometimes another character uses that character’s name, and so the instance would be “Beth,” –you have to watch for that too. And the same goes for text like, “Beth, always aware of the unusual, ”  That comma keeps search from finding Beth all by itself. That’s where the variations on FIND and REPLACE in Microsoft Word can be helpful. (And if you’re a writer, you should be using MS Word. It is the most versatile and powerful word processing program–more on that in another article).

But to avoid a character name error like this to begin with, you should have at least a clear vital stats sheet on each of your characters to refer to while writing, although sometimes your muse won’t always allow you to do that, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (More on that in another article as well).  Just be mindful of this and the other glaring errors that can disrupt the clarity and quality of the writing to which you attach your name. It is often permanent, and you can’t take it back. Although, with the advent of today’s self-publishing, those errors can usually be corrected and the file re-uploaded. That’s both good and bad–that anyone can publish, not that you can correct errors. (More on that, too, in still another article.)