sophinisba | Help!

Last week I reread a fic of mine that I'd posted a few months ago. I still like the story a lot, but I was distressed to find several typos and one real misspelling. I thought about putting up a post begging readers to inform me any time they noticed an error in one of my fics. But then I thought, Why should they bother to do such a nice thing for me? And, How do they know that I'm serious about wanting to know?

So, I'm going to try out a new policy/challenge: Anyone who e-mails me pointing out two or more mistakes in one of my fics gets a free drabble on a fictional character or pairing of her or his choice. (My address is sophinisba at gmail.com; a comment on LJ works too.) This is extending to all fics old and new, wherever they're posted (unless it's somewhere where I can't fix them), until I take it back. If you write to me about just one mistake I'll still be grateful but I might not give you a drabble. And this applies to clear-cut technical mistakes like spelling, missing quotation marks, etc., although I'm also interested to know if you disagree with me on more substantive stuff like canon and characterization.

And if I apply this retroactively, I owe a drabble to

mews1945 for helping me out with one of my first Faculty ficlets. Julia, anything in particular you'd like?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, as I love proofreading, and have been known to be quite picky, I thought I'd try out one of your stories. However, I found that it was quite hard to track down any typos or grammar errors. There were a few sentence fragments and sentences beginning with conjunctions (and, but); however, I could see that those were deliberate and part of the style of story-telling. I didn't bother to note those.

I did, however, catch two items. The first one you might not choose to accept, but the other needs fixing!

There! I feel triumphant in catching something! :D

"Conspiratorial fic"
http://sophinisba.livejournal.com/27215.html

1. "It's to do with the ring, yes?"

This isn't exactly an error (depending on how you view it), but once the Ring has been given importance in the eyes of the speaker, and simply called "the Ring", the R is customarily capitalized (customarily, that is, by Tolkien.)

2. "Ah, well, that's the last thing Frodo needs in a time of crisis, isn't it? His cousin and his gardener at each other's throats." He grinned. "Don't worry, Sam, I know how to handle him; though you can't leave it all to me either. From what I understand we have a few months left before we need to leave, so you and Merry have time to get more comfortable around each other before we're all sleeping under the stars together and deciding who carries how much in his pack.

Aha! You forgot the closing quotation marks.

So, there you go. One error, or 1.5, or even two full errors if you're feeling generous. :)

(While I like to proofread my stories and keep them 'clean' so-to-speak, one of my weaknesses is in closing quatation marks and also parentheses. Argh!)

Of course, there are also momentary problems in spelling "quotation"!

;)

Goodness, I'm impressed. You definitely get a drabble for this (if you want one), even though I'm only planning on fixing one of the things you mentioned. I am indeed feeling generous. Just let me know what you'd like (though I may be a little slow).

Good points, all of these. I am fond of my sentence fragments and even more so of my sentences starting with conjunctions. If you ever read some of my slash you'll find that in the sex scenes just about every sentence begins with "And" and that most of them are run-ons! That is just part of my style though, as you guessed. I don't think my stories would flow very well without them.

About the Ring: I know I did think about this at the time I was writing and posting, though I've thought about it some more tonight. I think I'm going to stand by the lowercase R because at this point in my story Merry isn't aware that this is the One Ring. He knows it has some importance, yes, but he knows somewhat less about it than Frodo knows at the beginning of "The Shadow of the Past" (right up to the point where Gandalf recognizes the writing on it) where it's referred to as the ring. He knows it's the ring that Bilbo brought back from his travels and that makes him invisible, but he doesn't know it's the One Ring. That's my feeling anyway, but if you want to try to convince me have at it! I know you know the books a lot better than I do. (And thanks, by the way, for not taking me up on issues of canon in this particular story. I have some angst associated with the posting of it, as you could probably tell from the author's notes and some of the comments.)

Quotation marks omg!!! I forget them all the time. That was one of the things I found in the story I reread last week. That and spelling "to" as "too". Arrrrgh! I will fix this as soon as I get this comment posted. Thank you so much!

Also! When I went back to fix the thing you mentioned, I found a missing period! And a missing title! Arrrgh! (And again, thank you.)

While I rarely use sentence fragments, I agree that they can be effective. However, I am just as fond of beginning sentences with conjunctions! I adore those bold conjunctions. They do give a flow to the writing that other words rarely manage. Tolkien loved them, and they seem to also give a bit of that mythological grandeur in writing.

I won't try to convince you about capitalizing the 'r' in the Ring. You've obviously thought about what it represents to you, and I think 'fair enough'! :)

I don't know which stories other people have proofread for you, but I'm willing to try another if there is one you'd particularly like to have looked at. :)

Ooooh! I do get a drabble? Yum! :)

I'd love to read something intense -- angst or h/c that is Quest-related/canon.

Thank you!

I'm not looking to have anyone proofread particular stories (except for the beta reader, and I do usually use one). It's more a general plea, that if you're reading something of mine and happen to notice a problem you'll e-mail me rather than keep it to yourself.

While we're talking capitalization though, do you have any thoughts on elf versus Elf, orcs versus Orcs, etc?

I like your drabble request, as I do enjoy the intense angst. I'm thinking post-Weathertop maybe.

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