Write the Vision Wednesday


Ten Commandments of Writing

1. When thou knowest not the spelling of a word, thou shalt look it up.
2. Thou shalt edit each manuscript before submitting. Yea verily, thou shalt put chapter ten before chapter eleven.
3. Before thou speakest ill of the comments of thy critique partner or thy editor, thou shalt remember they are readers too.
4. Thou shalt spend less time worrying why thy critique partner or thy editor didst not mark thy mistake and remember the mistake is thine.
5. Thou must use thy logic, else hands and hair shalt fly to the heavens. Yea verily, eyes shall roll upon the floor.
6. Thou shalt ignore the teachings of false prophets who use such words as snuck, alright, and brung.
7. Forsake not the semi-colon, ellipse, and the em-dash as acceptable punctuation.
8. Allowing thy character to doeth a thing doest not prove that thy character should do this thing. Thy character must have motivation.
9. Thou shalt first see that thou hast punctuated thy manuscript correctly before bearing false witness that thy critique partner or editor lieth.
10. Thou shalt forsake repetitive dialog tags and repeated -ly adverbs.


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3 comments:

  1. Dora Hiers05 March, 2014 14:31

    Oooh, this is good, Lisa. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Delia Latham09 March, 2014 15:58

    Love, love, LOVE it! But now I'm hoping it wasn't my manuscript that prompted this lovely post... lol

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lisa McCaskill, Editor12 March, 2014 09:15

    This inspiration came from hearing from one of my former (very former) teachers. Several Ten Commandments were posted for students. One for teens was very thought provoking and another for math was hilarious. :-)

    ReplyDelete