Making Your Vocal Piece Readable: 101

So many obvious ones, but that we often forget. Reading aloud is such a goodie- and you catch way more than you think! “Break 'em good and hard, but do it on purpose”. Agreed very much. Knowing the rules means you can then go about breaking them, but it’s no good if you don’t know what you’re breaking haha.

Well deserved placing on the Leaderboard 👍🏼. As you said, it’s a great idea to proofread read aloud & slleep on stuff before publishing as it catches mistakes… I pay for a subscription now as it drove me crazy waiting for stuff to come back from drafts, no matter how hard I tried to pick up mistakes, some would sneeek thru 😵‍💫… 🙃 Great job 👏

Well deserved & worthy placing on the Leaderboard!✅… lots of excellent advised👍🏼. As you said, reading aloud & slleeeping on things before publishing is as great an idea as you could get… catches lots of mistakes!!😵‍💫😊🙃 I now have a paid subscription because it drove me nuts waiting to fix errors that had escaped my best efforts. Thanks💖.

I think you've covered this well LC!! I used to have a reading buddy but he says I write too much so I found myself one pair of eyes short, so for now AI does a great job to help me!! Loved this so much!! Congrats on second place this week for most discussed story!! Very well deserved.

Congratulations on the Leaderboard win!!!🥰🥰🥰

Great job! Great insights!

Some very useful and well-intended tips and advice.

Cleverly-written insights! This is an enjoyable and helpful read!

I always enjoy articles where writers leave supportive, clear, and valid guidance for others. I think that sometimes it qualifies as the best M.O. so that people don't feel singled out or targeted and can quietly apply principles and improve. End goals are end goals after all.

Excellent advice! Having a second pair of eyes to proof read and just taking a break and going over what I wrote with fresh eyes has really helped me.

1. Useful reminder would be not to use as-hole sentences, lol. I don't know if I use them but I'll ne more conscious of it next time 2. Nope, no writing buddy. No AI. No any software. Just me and my eyes 3. I try to tell my story with just dialogues if possible and lesser non-dialogue stuff. That shit is boring for me

One other trick on the proofreading front. If you're like most writers, you're composing in a word processor of some sort. Your brain becomes accustomed to that digital format. Thus, you can break that familiarity simply by switching up the format. Sometimes it's as simple as changing from single space to double space in the word processor. When it comes to my books, I'll pay for professional printing so I can proofread the entire thing with actual pen in hand. It just *feels* like a different work, even if it's the same exact thing I'd see on my screen. Of course, having someone else serve as proofreader is always the gold standard, but in lieu of that, whatever you can do to look at your words in a new light will go a long way. Taking a break after drafting before jumping into editing is also a great trick, like you said.

Ok, now I’m full from eating the cookies. These are great tips. While each writer has to focus on their style, basic rules like this help the overall story line.

Thank you! This is so well written and funny! I agree with the big block of text. That, poor punctuation, and not capitalizing (on things that need to be) really make it hard for me to read something UNLESS it makes sense. There’s always room for improvement! Thank you for putting all this together (:

I love this! It's great advice for new (and aged) writers! I love that you included your own edits in this. Breaking the rules!!

Thanks for the advice! For me, ideas are always there, the execution is not. I’m still learning how to successfully turn these ideas into readable stories. Thanks to all the wonderful creators here and advice that I run across like this, I’m getting there slowly. Your mention of the “as” rule is funny. I try to avoid it at all costs but it’ still finds a way in there. It’s like an easy bridge to cross that I cross too often when I should be taking a more scenic route to stick the landing, lol. I do, however know when it’s used too much in a single paragraph, and you’re right, if it doesn’t sound correct when you read it yourself, chances are the reader will feel the same. I guess you’ve given me something to work on. Eliminate ‘as’ as much as possible. Oops 😅

Oh no. It's me. I'm the a(s) hole. Definitely use that all the time. Yikes. Panicking at my desk as I sit here reading this!!! Ha! Actually, I'm going through my story now and rewording. When I was in journo school, my tutor crossed out every time I'd used the word 'currently' and said "currently, there are too many currentlys in this story." I have never been able to see that word again without cringing. Anyway. God. This was a very long winded way of saying that I thought your article was really helpful. Nobody really says what's wrong with your writing so it's good to find out what is annoying. Hope you're having a great weekend. Cheers!

Great pointers, LC! I proofread the heck out of my stories, especially Moscow Calling series, and still find some little typos when I pass through them to read the comments. Thankful for the edit option even though many people here wouldn’t probably remember Vocal without it. As a Russian, I always struggle with the definite and indefinite articles even though I of course know the usage rules. It’s one of those things that lets me recognize another Slavic writer (and Russian bots). I deliberately mess up the articles when I write in Putin’s voice. I use proofreading buddies and even professional editors when I want to publish a book, and am grateful when people point out mistakes here. By the way, I noticed you’ve missed “to” in “go to town” in the second paragraph after the blue bird pic in Sentence Structure.

I break the rules all the time, not out of defiance, but in writing too conversationally. You're actually right; I'm actually wrong.

Thanks for the advice, teach! I do a lot of what you suggested but it's always good to review from time to time. If I eliminate the modifiers and shorten my sentences I'll never reach 600 words.

I'm no expert, and all of this sounds wonderful, but I just write crap the way I want to to sound. Thankfully some of my writers will point out my oopsies, some I find after publishing. But I agree with Rommie, sometimes a style works a bit different. I am prob guilty of most of these faux pas. White spaces annoy me, elipses are my darlings...Dana hates em...so I guess everyone just gotta please themselves. "Your style should come from your unique narrative voice, the one inside that speaks for you, not necessarily from some or another formula. Formulas are a foundation, but the pinnacle to which we build from that foundation should be a work of architecture that represents us as individuals, not a prefab floorplan thrown up according to a set of instructions". Amen Rommie. That is why Poe comes to mind. Repeats so lovely. We all have pet peeves, so freedom to please or not to please. Love the debate here.

Goin down the list like "yep, yep, yep, yep..." I RESONATED with the spellchecker one

I'm a horrible profreader who does a lot of edits after publishing on Vocal, so there's not much in here that doesn't apply to me. I would like to add one item that was mentioed in an article I read no-so-recently: You can often get rid of "of". "He scratched his chin as he looked out the window." "Get out the car" just doesn't work, for me, though... Also, eplipses are annoying "as" hell, don't you think?

Doing some editing this morning, and had back-to-back as-sentences...get out of my head lol

You have covered most of the points I've used in my writing...and have often forgotten. Thanks!