Catching errors

[gunhilltrain]

I'm not proposing that the Web site change anything. Suggesting that writers use some restraint. The stories aren't babies. The writers need to get the perspective that stories are like new cars. The moment they're wheeled off the car lot, they depreciate greatly in value. After a day or so, the story has pretty much shot most of its load. The time to get it toned up is before submitting it, not a couple of weeks after it's posted.

Of course you are correct, but: I was simply implying that, at my age, I've been "black-pilled" about a lot of things. I no longer expect people, en masse, to have perspective or do the "right thing" or even make sense. Sometimes it's just a minority that mess up, but it can be a significant minority (like on Lit) that gums things up. In 2050, if the site survives that long, the same thing will be going on.

 

[32aa]

I found the free app "Grammary" has helped me find errors in word usage, punctuation, and just plain missing words. It has also helped to point out errors as I write. As an engineer, who does a fair amount of technical writing, it has helped a lot so that I don't look so much like an idiot.

Just for fun, I took one of my published chapters, which was over 10,000 word. It was one that i had read... and reread numerous times. Grammary found over 250 issues. A lot of them were like, "Why didn't I see that before?"

 

[gunhilltrain]

I found the free app "Grammary" has helped me find errors in word usage, punctuation, and just plain missing words. It has also helped to point out errors as I write. As an engineer, who does a fair amount of technical writing, it has helped a lot so that I don't look so much like an idiot.

Just for fun, I took one of my published chapters, which was over 10,000 word. It was one that i had read... and reread numerous times. Grammary found over 250 issues. A lot of them were like, "Why didn't I see that before?"

I've said this before, but Grammarly is not AI. Yes, it will miss things, as I just noticed yesterday on another site*. And it also offers corrections ("issues?") that may not make any sense. Still worth using anyway if one does not blindly follow everything it says.

* For the record, after two weeks I noticed (somebody had left a comment, so I looked through the story again) that there was a "she" instead of "she's." I checked the Grammarly output, and yep, it had missed that, but then so did I.

 

[tnhardon]

I would like to think I turn out a reasonable quality of work.

Yet, it never seems to matter how many times I read over and edit a piece of work, once it's published I always seem to find errors.

Anyone got a silver bullet solution to this?

When I started writing, I literally did it on a whim. Found the site one day when I was horny at work, searching stuff on my phone. Read a few stories and decided I could probably write some good stuff myself. I ended up writing my first half dozen stories (chapters) on my phone.

As you can imagine, this led to some autocorrected errors in my stories. My readers didn’t seem to mind much, but it bothered me. Finally moved to a Word document which allowed me to better review my work and check spelling/grammar.

That said, errors still happen. Look at professional writing (newspapers, even sometimes books) and even with professional writers and editors stuff falls through the cracks. My suggestion is to just do your best and understand mistakes will happen. If you minimize them, most people won’t be bothered by a misplaced comma or one misspelled word.

 

[32aa]

Granted, Grammary doesn't catch everything, but then it's a free app. i guess you get what you pay for.

Anyway, in my humble opinion, for me, it does a better job of catching stuff than i can, and it does give you the option to 'Dismiss' the flagged item.

Just saying.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I would like to think I turn out a reasonable quality of work.

Yet, it never seems to matter how many times I read over and edit a piece of work, once it's published I always seem to find errors.

Anyone got a silver bullet solution to this?

I have a fool-proof method. It’s called posting edited versions .

Now of only the process wasn’t so long!

Em

 

[PastMaster]

I would like to think I turn out a reasonable quality of work.

Yet, it never seems to matter how many times I read over and edit a piece of work, once it's published I always seem to find errors.

Anyone got a silver bullet solution to this?

Nope - it happens.
Even if you use an editor - which I do on some of my stories. they too miss stuff. and sometimes it's stuff that you look at and think "How the hell did I or they miss that"
You can only do what you can do.
I have to use an editor, because when I self edit two things happen, I read what I think should be there rather than what I actually wrote, and also I start getting involved int he story again and forget what I'm supposed to be doing.

 

[u1u1u1]

God, I just noticed an absolute howler in one of my stories.

It's a trilogy.

In the second and third parts of the trilogy, I have written it set in London, with protagonists working in financial services who recently met at a social event.

I just opened up the first part again, and... oops. In the first part they're Americans, living in Washington, working in politics, who met when they were at college and have recently reconnected.

In the first story, none of that has been plot relevant - but it's damn embarrassing! Especially as my main idea for the fourth part was going to include a European tour, where the male protagonist's hatred of flights would have affected the plot.

Looks like I'm going to have to repost it as an omnibus - which will also allow me to incorporate feedback better.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

So many good suggestions. I use most of them and still find the best method is to step away from the story for a while and then come back and read it as a reader, not an author. I find the voice of the story shifts just a bit, and I'm more able to hear the little things I've missed before.

I don't know how others work, but I'm very ADHD in my writing, flitting back and forth between dozens of stories like a bee collecting pollen. Once I get a story to where I'm comfortable with it, it goes into my pending folder, where I always seem to have a half dozen ready to go. I review and re-read those, editing and fixing errors until I can read it twice without changing anything. Some stories stay in the process a lot longer than others, months versus days, but it works for me.

Point is, the process is extremely iterative and sometimes tedious with each pass through the story presenting a chance to find one more glitch.

Still not perfect, but I accept it never will be. And just like everybody else, it irks me to no end when I find an error in a published work.

 

[R. Richard]

I use LibreOffice and it catches a few errors that Word doesn't. I don't have a silver bullet either and I'm bothered by werewolves.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I would like to think I turn out a reasonable quality of work.

Yet, it never seems to matter how many times I read over and edit a piece of work, once it's published I always seem to find errors.

Think of the television ad for Febreeze. It coined the phrase 'nose-blind'. Authors are the same way. As they read to edit their stories looking for errors, they read over skipped words, doubled passages etc.
I have re-read my stories and am appalled at how many mistakes I find. And I tried to edit.
One tool I use is when I feel it is ready to submit, I let it sit for a few days to 'perk'. That is really for me to forget what I intended and read it as a new reader would. That does not always work but it helps.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I would like to think I turn out a reasonable quality of work.

Yet, it never seems to matter how many times I read over and edit a piece of work, once it's published I always seem to find errors.

Anyone got a silver bullet solution to this?

Refrain from reading your work after you have published it. Or refrain from publishing. I'm told every story has an error or two in them.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I usually publish it. As soon as it goes live on this site all my errors become glaringly obvious.