Word Crimes

Have you heard of Weird Al Yankovic? If you haven't now the time to find out :)

He does marvellous parodies of popular songs. This one has to be my favourite  - and I'm sure all the other writers and editors out there will agree with me :)

Parody of Blurred lines by Robin Thicke

Zombie Nouns

I went to a great talk by Helen Sword over the weekend (cool surname). She primarily helps academics be better writers, but a good sentence is a good sentence no matter the genre. One of the things she talked about really ticked my fancy: Zombie Nouns.

Zombie Nouns eat all the strong action words, verbs, adjectives and even other nouns, leaving the sentence to lurch forward. There is of course a real term for this nominalization (pretty much a zombie word all by its self).

However, I think Helen can describe this better than I ever could. Check out this video on zombie nouns :)

Rules for Mystery Writers

People often talk about how romances are formulaic, but it looks like they might have nothing on mystery stories. many of you know I like Ilona Andrews's books and blog, she drew my attention to Father Knox and his rules.

In 1929 Monsignor Ronald A. Knox a British clergyman, editor, a literary critic, a humourist and a detective story writer complied a list of what makes a good mystery. We'll never know quite how serious he was about the list but...

1.	The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2.	All supernaural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3.	Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4.	No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5.	No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6.	No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7.	The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8.	The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9.	The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10.	Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

NB: For the record I don't think genre fiction is so easy any old sod can write it. I write romance and it's anything but easy. One of the things that's hardest is readers know how the story is going to end (romance here, other genres have their own quirks), yet as the writer you still have to make your story interesting enough to take the reader from the first to the last page. My view is in some respects genre fiction is harder to write. So, yes, I've had a giggle at the rules above, but it's a giggle kindly meant.

Punctuation - it can save lives

Today a topic close to many writers' hearts: punctuation. I'll be the first to acknowledge its importance even as I admit it's really not my strong point.

A few fun pics that tickled my fancy punctuation-wise this week:

 And I think we'll end it there this week :)