I'm having to "unscreen to reply" every time you post something here, and I have no idea why. We're mutual friends on DW, that I do know and I've had other posts in the past from DW accounts so I have no idea what the problem is. I'll double-check my settings but I can't imagine what I would have done to cause this. Huh.
But I am getting your replies in the threads, just not in my inbox. *ponders*
I generally trust anyone who says something sounds awkward or doesn't flow.
But as I always tell my friends when I'm critiquing, "this is just my opinion, I may not be right." (Except when I am, of course.) And "have someone else look at it." I admit I'm not in the avant garde of literature, my reading experience tends towards older novels and nonfiction. Its entirely possible there are conventions I'm unaware of, or that I'm not the audience for the piece.
There are times when I've said to a friend "this doesn't make sense to me" and they've replied "It made sense to so-and-so and so-and-so." Sometimes my brain totally misses things on the first pass.
One of my BIG pet peeves is "who/that" : "the little engine THAT could", "the man WHO married my daughter", etc. I'll point that out to writers, but then websites I checked are contradictory and it turns out that "that" is fairly common useage. (In fact, Buffy uses "that" instead of "who" on the show, so if I correct a fanfic writer for having Buffy say that, I'm in the wrong. But holy sweet potatoes does it hurt my eyes and ears anyway.)
it might not be the way I want or expected it to be read, but I'd rather clean it up so that it can't be read awkwardly.
Sometimes when I'm uncertain about a passage - mine or someone else's - I'll read it aloud and I find that a lot of times that helps me confirm whether or not the passage is awkward. Not just in hearing it but having to slow down to do so.
Thank you for the link! I will definitely check it out. (I bet it will be helpful for my fanfic - my Dawn, in the little bit I've written, is a Super Linguist Chick *lol*)
no subject
But I am getting your replies in the threads, just not in my inbox. *ponders*
I generally trust anyone who says something sounds awkward or doesn't flow.
But as I always tell my friends when I'm critiquing, "this is just my opinion, I may not be right." (Except when I am, of course.) And "have someone else look at it." I admit I'm not in the avant garde of literature, my reading experience tends towards older novels and nonfiction. Its entirely possible there are conventions I'm unaware of, or that I'm not the audience for the piece.
There are times when I've said to a friend "this doesn't make sense to me" and they've replied "It made sense to so-and-so and so-and-so." Sometimes my brain totally misses things on the first pass.
One of my BIG pet peeves is "who/that" : "the little engine THAT could", "the man WHO married my daughter", etc. I'll point that out to writers, but then websites I checked are contradictory and it turns out that "that" is fairly common useage. (In fact, Buffy uses "that" instead of "who" on the show, so if I correct a fanfic writer for having Buffy say that, I'm in the wrong. But holy sweet potatoes does it hurt my eyes and ears anyway.)
it might not be the way I want or expected it to be read, but I'd rather clean it up so that it can't be read awkwardly.
Sometimes when I'm uncertain about a passage - mine or someone else's - I'll read it aloud and I find that a lot of times that helps me confirm whether or not the passage is awkward. Not just in hearing it but having to slow down to do so.
Language Log is a linguistics blog: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
Thank you for the link! I will definitely check it out. (I bet it will be helpful for my fanfic - my Dawn, in the little bit I've written, is a Super Linguist Chick *lol*)