This is Partially Your Fault

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of reading the first chapter of a friend's book. He has been chewing on the story for the last few years and finally buckled down to get it on paper.

It was worth the wait.

It is a fantasy tale stretching across at least three books and is very unique. I haven't been a hard-core fantasy reader since high school, but I haven't stumbled across anything really like it before.

He has quite a task ahead of him, though. I'm not going to go into much detail because it is his story to tell, but for his first book he has chosen to world-build, have characters jump worlds, and created a mythos that is nearly as large as our universe is wide.

Oh, and there's time manipulation. Did I mention that?

He has bitten off more than I'm capable of chewing as an author and I wish him luck.

Now, to the purpose of this.

Not only did he let me read the first chapter, he encouraged me to edit it. Poor guy didn't know what he was getting himself into.

I haven't done much editing of other people's work since high school (I had a friend refuse to let me work on her papers anymore because I essentially tore them apart... nicely, I'm not a mean person), so I enjoyed the challenge.

It took me nearly 2 1/2 hours to get through the chapter.

Now, it's not because it was terrible. Quite the contrary. He can set-build (don't know if there is an actual term for it in writing, but basically where the author builds the setting in which the action is happening) exquisitely. I wish I was half as good as he is at that. The action flowed fairly well and it did a good job setting up the rest of the book.

But he had a lot of mistakes that I made when I started writing: $5 words tossed in haphazardly, wooden dialogue, words tripping all over each other, and unnecessary commas all over the place.

From Authors Pay it Forward
Still better off than Yorick

When I think there are too many commas, that means there is probably three times as many commas as necessary... I do love my commas... and ellipses.

He and I are both guilty of writing how it's "supposed" to be written instead of using our own voices.

Most of those things will be fixed with time and practice. Some will take some research (hello, Google, my old friend), and a lot of it will smooth into his own personal style.

I love watching authors develop their stories, characters, and voices (especially when I'm not the one writing) and I hope he lets me stick around to help when I can.

The first thing I wrote on my comments sheet was "Everything I write is suggestion and my opinion. You can use or ignore anything you want. You won't hurt my feelings. You're the author and you hold the power!"

This is something I tell everybody. I don't want to make them feel like I hated their writing or that everything they're doing is wrong. Writing is so subjective that it is difficult to distinguish right from wrong (except spelling and some grammar rules, and even those are somewhat gray).

The very last thing I want to do is crush a budding writer, especially one who has an amazing story locked inside his head.

A story that I am desperate to read so hurry the hell up, man and get it done!!