Critiquing Using Word and Open Office

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

Part One of the Critique Series

Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Critiquing in the digital age. Gone are the days of sorting through stacks of line edits in your double spaced manuscript, bloodied with red pen in indiscernible handwriting, returned to you by critique partners that you met down at the local coffee shop. Actually, if you can find people to critique with at a coffee shop, wow. I applaud you. I for one haven't been so lucky. Okay, actually I was, but then she moved away. Sniffle sniffle.

But even if you do have local crit partners and don't have to collaborate via the internet, you can still find something useful in today's post. Meeting in person does not change the fact that you can save a lot of trees and make life a bit easier on yourself by using the built in functionality of word processing programs to help streamline some of the work for you. So let's get to it.

I've gone through and taken snapshots of both Open Office and Word 2007 in action in order to help guide you through the process. There are subtle differences in the two programs, so pay attention, but by and large you can get the same things accomplished in both.

Track Changes:

One of the first things you're going to want to do with any critique is turn on 'Track Changes'. This feature allows the recipient of the critique to go through and see exactly what you've changed and then choose whether or not they will keep the changes. In both Word and Open Office a black, vertical line will appear net to any line with a correction. Right clicking on the change will bring up an option menu that will let you choose to accept or decline the change.

MSW: Select the 'Review' tab and click 'Track Changes.' Yup, it's that simple.  

OOo: Once you're used to the Word tabs that are so annoying when you first upgrade to 2007, finding things in menus becomes annoying. For OOo you have to Edit>Changes and then choose 'Record' and 'Show' if you want to see it recording the changes.

Line Numbering:

Each time I get a document to critique I start by numbering the lines. I've found it to be helpful when going over any questions that the recipient might have. They can refer me directly to which line they are talking about as opposed to going through the headache of “third page, second paragraph, about halfway through the third line.” Just say, “Line 93,” and we're all set. No confusion there.

MSW: Go to the 'Page Layout' tab, select 'Line Numbers' and then direct it to number in the way you would like. I usually just go with continuous.

OOo: Tools>Line Numbering pretty simple, no?

Comments/Notes:

Gone are the days of trying to squeeze your comments between double-spaced lines of text. By using the comments feature you can be as wordy as you'd like. Normally, wordiness is a bad thing, but when you consider that you're trying to be delicate with your criticism, that you want it to come across as “you're going in the right direction, I'd just like to see you expand this,” rather than, “you suck,” then the extra words end up counting for a lot.

Both Word and Open Office expand your screen when you start using comments (they're called 'notes' in OOo, but I'll just call them 'comments' for both programs) and tuck them off to the right. Comments is one of the areas where Word outdoes OOo. Word will number the comments for you so that they are easier to refer to. It also allows you to highlight a section of text and comment on the highlighted section. OOo will only place an arrow marker at the beginning of your highlighted area, so it makes it harder to cue a person in to a line or a series of lines that you want to comment on. The person being critiqued with OOo has to guess at where your reference begins and ends unless otherwise specified.

As I mentioned in the Word vs. Open Office post, one way OOo one ups Word is through having an option to comment on a comment. Although, honestly, I don't see much point to the feature unless you're collaborating. If anything, this feature makes it easier to commit one of the deadly critique sins that we'll talk about tomorrow, responding to criticism.

Another nice feature of Word is that when you hover the cursor over a section of highlighted text, it will pop a dialogue box that shows you the comment. You know, just in case you can't trace that dotted line back to it's origin.

MSW: Each time you want to make a comment in Word, just go up to the 'Review' tab and hit 'New Comment'. Wherever your cursor is in the text is where your comment will be attached. Or, if you have a section of text highlighted (click and drag with the mouse) and then hit 'New Comment', the comment feature will highlight that text and attach the comment to all of it.

OOo: While OOo doesn't highlight, it is a bit easier to add your comment. Just hold down Ctrl+Alt+N and it will give you a new comment where your cursor is. Otherwise it's under the 'Insert' menu. I haven't been able to find such and easy keyboard shortcut for Word, so if you know of one, please share. With as much commenting as I do on crits it would save lots of time.

Merge:

After I've gone through all of the comments, deleting those that I don't, hanging on to the ones that I need to give more thought to, and accepting the changes I feel should be made in all of my returned critiques, I start the merger process. This collects the remaining feedback and all the changes into a single document. Word call's this process “combine,” and it might take a little while for the process to complete, but hang in there. To be safe, I set my merges to take place in a new document. I haven't tried to do more than two documents at a time, and I really don't think that it's possible. I reduce by twos until I can get it all down into one document.

(Note: I haven't used this process of combining in a long time. Last time I used it was in the 2003 version of Word. I'm trying it right now in 2007 as an experiment, an experiment that is not going so well. I started the combination process about 30 minutes ago with two crits of the same chapter and I'm still waiting for Word to show me something.)

(Note to the Note: Crash! Word apparently could not handle all of the comments left by my crit partners.)

Highlighting:

As I noted in my crit guide. I use the simple highlight feature to draw attention to things like repetitive words. If I find that someone is using an odd word rather often, I'll simply conduct a search for that word and highlight it each time it appears. Explaining this in a crit guide helps cut down on explaining it each time you do it.

Whew!

And there you have it. Those are all the features that I use when critiquing. Of course I'm no word-processor guru or anything, so I'm sure that there are probably more features that need to be added to this. I'm also sure that as smart as all you folks are, you know of some of them. So please add them to the comments so that I can update this article. And don't worry, I'll be sure to give credit where credit is due.

The Last Five Minutes of Writing

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

You’re writing along, the words are flowing, one eye watches for typos while the other watches the clock in your taskbar. Not much time left before you leave for that appointment. If you can just keep typing, fingers speeding along across the keyboard, you can get out the rest of your thoughts, and beat the clock. 

More often than not, this does not work. You hit save and rush off to other things promising yourself that you will get right back to your story as soon as you’re done. But then one of the kids needs help with their homework, the dog managed to escape from the yard, and the toilette clogged while you were out and overflowed turning your bathroom into an amusement park fountain filled with 2000 Flushes blue water.

Days pass, maybe even weeks, and you finally sit back down to pick up where you left off. Only one problem, you don’t remember which way you were headed when you left off. You stare at that blinking cursor and the words that come before it and wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?”

That’s exactly the predicament I found myself in recently. It’s that special case of actually having something planned out before you were cut short, not the more common case of running into a wall.

I find that the only way to get back into the story is by reading over it again, lining up all of the elements of the story so that they are fresh in my mind. It’s something that you have to be careful with because if you’re not careful you’ll start revising things. Once you start down that path you open yourself up to a whole host of concerns, completely changing the direction of the story, getting stuck in a cycle of continuous revisions that deny further progress of the storyline, running out of time to get actual writing done.

If you know ahead of time that you are going to get to sit down and write later on in the day, I suggest printing out your WIP so that you can read through it during those mundane moments on the train or while waiting for your car to be worked on (like I’m doing at this very moment, though I chose to write a post with my spare time). This maximizes our writing time so that we aren’t spending a huge chunk of it rereading when we could be writing.

It also limits the amount of revision we can do. I find it far more difficult to get caught up in serious revisions when I don’t have the magical ‘delete’ key at my disposal. And while I do have the back of the page available for more additions and rewrites, I generally tend to stick to the margins.

Another helpful tip is to take preventative measures. While we can’t be sure when life will interrupt us, or how well the writing will go, if we know that we have to stop at a certain time, take those last five to ten minutes to free-write your remaining thoughts. Don’t pay attention to spelling, grammar, punctuation, just write. Send your internal editor on his coffee break and let the thoughts flow.

S needs to get to hospital going to wrong oone. Meets strange old man tells himhe is going in the wrong direction somethinginside doesn’t agree. like B is trying to tell him something, it is drawn to J. Moment of crisis, what should S do? Follow logical directions or follow the internal calling? Moves to follow directions but the pulling inside turns him around.

That's how the last paragraph of my WIPs usually look when I come back to them later on. Just a bunch of rambling thoughts poured out of my head and onto the screen. (Note: I have no idea what that image says, I swiped it from some obscure corner of the net)

And so on. It’s an example of what I should have written last week when I had to stop working on Spark. I was sure I was going to get right back to it. But life is filled with uncertainties. Granted, it might not make complete sense, (okay, so it doesn’t really make any sense, life or my rambling) but having something to start with is much better than nothing, especially when you’re staring at a blinking cursor at the bottom of a page with the white pit of nothing hanging below it.

Kill the Said Bookisms and Dialog Tags

Posted by Unknown |3 comments

Your high school English teacher was wrong, dead wrong, when she growled, “find another word for said.” 

Your high school English teacher was wrong, dead wrong, when she pointed her finger at you, beady eyes glaring over the rims of her glasses, words barely sneaking past her pursed lips as she said, “find another word for said.”

Déjà vu? Almost. The first is an example of being lazy. The second, description. Alright, alright, so it’s not just laziness, it’s flexing your lexiconical type muscles (so what if that’s not a word) and that’s definitely a good thing. The trouble is, in fiction writing it’s a no-no.

Lazy
Now, the examples above came from the top of my head (another example of laziness I suppose) but even still I think they illustrate the first point rather nicely. Said bookisms are usually used in an attempt to let the reader do all of the work. Rather than describing the teacher, the mood in the room, her mannerisms, or her tone of voice, the author is hoping that by simply saying “growled” the reader will fill in all the gaps for him.

But look at that picture next to the examples. Are you going to try and tell me that "growled" or "angrily" is going to communicate that face? No way.

On the other hand, by avoiding the said bookism, the author is forced to describe the scene in more detail. The author has to show. And we all know that old rule, Show, Don’t Tell. Said bookisms are telling and eliminating them forces you to show.

Be Realistic
Extreme said bookisms just aren’t realistic. Growled, shrieked, hissed: try to actually do that. Try to growl words. It’s not possible. You’re growling, how could you be talking at the same time? I mean, maybe you could get out a “Grrrrrrreat!” But that’s about it. Everything else would end up coming out like some deranged Smeagle-bear creature voice.

For a list of said bookisms or dialog tags, see the previous post. And please comment with any additions to the list so that we can keep a running tab.

You Can’t See Me
One of the most important reasons for avoiding said bookisms is that ‘said’ by itself is pretty much invisible to the readers eye. Sure, there are those readers out there who allow it to bug the hell out of them, but trust me, they are in the minority. The rest of us gloss over the word ‘said,’ paying attention just long enough to note who happened to be doing the saying. And face it, we should be lingering on what was just said, not the fact that it was growled.

But There Are Just Too Many
If you run into this problem:

“I love you, John,” she said.

“No you don’t,” he said back.

“No, I do. I really, really do,” she said again.

“I heard what you said, but I don’t see it in your eyes,” he said.

Be aware that your problem is not a lack of said bookisms, it’s a lack of pacing in your dialogue. You also don’t have to use the said tags when you have a clear back and forth exchange between two characters.

White Elephants
A famous example of avoiding even the word said, appears in Ernest Hemmingway’s short story, “Hills Like White Elephants,” (read it here). No really, read it. It’s only three pages long. An excerpt follows: 

The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?”

“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”

“Could we try it?”

The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.

“Four reales.”

“We want two Anis del Toro.”

“With water?”

“Do you want it with water?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”

“It’s all right.”

“You want them with water?” asked the woman.

“Yes, with water.”

“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.

“That’s the way with everything.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”

“Oh, cut it out.”

“You started it,” the girl said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”

“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”

“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”

“That was bright.”

“I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks?”

“I guess so.”

The girl looked across at the hills.

“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.”

Hemmingway does such a fine job of describing the characters through their dialogue that even noting who is speaking can be skipped over in parts. Even with the further complication of the waitress, it remains obvious who is speaking at any given moment. We can also tell that the waitress speaks another language and that Sam is playing translator during the interaction. Now that’s strong dialogue, and strong dialogue will always win out over a carefully chosen said bookism. That brings us to the most important point.

Exceptions to the Rule
Some said bookisms are quieter than others. For instance, whispering or yelling. I think that much of that has to do with the fact that these two words, and those like them, also refer to the volume of one’s voice. Said implies something spoken at a normal volume. To mix a description of a loud or quiet voice with the word said would be contradictory. Such contradictions would once again attract attention where none should be placed.

The windows shook as he said, “Go away. Just go away and leave me in peace.” Are we supposed to be imagining the character yelling or speaking quietly? Is there a gust of wind outside that shakes the windows? I don’t know, you tell me.

Other times you need that little help that a said bookism can lend. Let’s suppose that we have a stretch of dialogue where two characters speak back and forth. The dialogue may need to be tight in order to keep the pacing right; therefore, we can’t use a great deal of description to communicate anything beyond what is said in dialogue.

“I love you with all my heart,” he lied. In this set of circumstances, were we to eliminate the said bookism altogether, the reader would have been left to guess at the speaker’s intentions. But it only works because of a convergence of circumstances that cause it to be required.

Don’t Be Fooled: Adverbial Tags
Okay, so I can’t use ‘growled.’ I’ll just use, “he said angrily.”

That’s an adverbial tag, and sorry, that’s still cheating. Your dialogue and the character’s actions should be communicating that anger, not the adverb. If the anger is not communicated through these preferred avenues it’s time to go back and rewrite it so that they do.

Now, what happens when we read adverbial tags? We’re cruising along, reading the dialog, “I think you should leave,” everything is going just fine and then comes, she said angrily. My eye likely skipped ahead far enough to know that the said was coming, but not the angrily. Oh crap, I think, I was supposed to read that angrily. So I stop and reread the words because when I read them the first time I read them the way I thought they should sound. Now the great director of the story is telling me to try again. Take two.

As the reader, I’ve just hit a speed bump. Not only am I rereading things, I’m also questioning exactly how angrily sounds, so I might reread it more than once. After that, I might even question the director’s instructions.

Remember, an adverb in most cases, even when not a part of dialogue, is nothing more than a shortcut. It’s a copout for stronger writing. The emphasis should be on the verb. If that action needs to be better described, describe it, don’t try to get an adverb to do all the work for you. While that’s not always the case with adverbs, it is pretty much always the case with adverbial tags related to said. So carefully watch how you delicately place them into sentences.

But So and So Does It

If so-and-so jumped off of a cliff would you jump too? I’m sure that there are plenty of examples out there of published authors who ignore these rules. Some do it consciously. They know the rules and how to break them, and they are doing it for a reason. For instance, you’ll see said bookisms in comedic writing. If you really want what you are writing to have an immature feel, than by all means, use them.

You also see them in romance a lot. I’m not quite sure if it has to do with the reader being expected to incorporate a very active imagination and therefore not need the description, or if it’s just bad writing. There are a lot of bad writers out there that somehow got published. We’re better than that though.

Dialogue Is Paramount

The most important words on any page filled with dialogue had better be the dialogue itself; otherwise you need to ask yourself why it is even there. When you use said bookisms you are giving a single word a bullhorn and letting it yell, “look at me, look at me.” They both distract and detract from what is being said. Dialogue is so much more powerful than that.

Look at the Hemingway example again. Did you notice the point where the girl tried her drink? Did you have to be told she was trying her drink, or that the drinks were set on the table? I’ll go more into the power of dialogue in another post, but for now I just want you to keep that idea in your mind. Remember how powerful dialogue can be and you’ll be less likely to disrespect it with said bookisms.

What counts is not what is said but the effect of what is meant.  –Sol Stein, “Stein on Writing”