Craft Wednesday #20 Catching Mistakes

This blog needed a place for talking about writing. "Craft Wednesday" will be me talking about all things writing: how to write, why to write, and my own craft journey. I hope to learn and to share experiences with you.  

Catching Mistakes

     One way writing communication is better than verbal communication is that a writer can go back and edit what they have said. If someone tries to go back and edit what they have said in personal, professional, or political conversation conducted by real-time speech, that person can appear -- in the phrasing of some of Charlie Brown's friends -- "wishy-washy."

    This is not to say that a writer can never make mistakes.

    A published manuscript cannot be entirely overwritten, even if a new edition comes out; an author may make poor choices in tone, setting, characters, and point-of-view (among others) that an editing team overlooks in the stages before a work goes to print.

    Some people will also entirely disagree with a writer's opinion, saying that the argument or themes are what is wrong with an otherwise well-written work.

    To ensure a written piece is correct in any medium, follow these guidelines:

            1. Fact Check With Available Knowledge -- This is the information age. Checking the accuracy of sources, facts, and spelling should be easy, given access to the internet, public libraries, and books. Truth is needed even in fiction.

            2. Read Through the Work -- Reading what has been written, typed, or texted provides context and allows a writer to see how the smaller units fit into the whole.

            3. Brush Up the Work -- Read through the work again and again, as many times as possible; something can always use tinkering or putting in place. After a long hiatus from writing the work it also best to read through the work again with fresh eyes, even if the work has already been read fifty times. Some sense of what came before must be obtained before proceeding.

             4. Comb Through the Work -- Cohesive context is great, but the smaller parts of a work should also work well together. Check words, especially adjectives and verbs, and see if there is a word more appropriate to the style and purpose of the work.

      Fact checking, proofreading, and editing are only a few refining processes that can be applied to writing. Along the writing journey there will be mistakes, but good writers establish a process to find, correct, and ultimately limit mistakes before anyone else reads the complete work.

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