This is the Sentence that Never Ends...

You know you want to finish the song. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

*sits patiently*

Done? K, moving on.

He crept around the chair at the center of the room that sat facing away from the door he’d initially entered the room through.

*what?*

Ever written a sentence like this? After reading it, wondered “what did I do, and how do I fix it?”

I have. I read them, and I cringe. Then I remind myself that it is, in fact, a quick fix.

When you find these kinds of sentences in your writing, go back over the last few paragraphs (or back to the initial description of the scene location). These sentences often result from a lack of initial description. The writer suddenly realizes that “oh crap, the details about the room’s layout are necessary for this scene.” The writer then adds in the necessary information. The result is often sentences that look like this.

DON’T PANIC! (These may or may not be large, friendly letters.)

When this happens, take the sentence apart and make it a few sentences.

A chair sat at the center of the room, its back toward him. He crept to one side, quieting his breathing. There was no sense in letting whatever waited get the advantage.

Not the best, but you get the idea.

Then, if it suits the situation, put setting details in the initial description of the location. Keep action details where they happen. Result: shorter sentences that are less confusing and a clearer picture of what’s happening.

Now go forth and write clear prose.

Thanks for reading.

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book blog

My fingers are typing this blog post?

Technically, the answer to the question posed in the title of this post is “yes.”

However exact technicality of motion and awkwardness of phrasing are two different things, and I’ve come across this one quite a bit lately. And as I do when I repeatedly come across something that bugs me, I wrote a blog post. Here’s my writing advice for the day.

The title of this post exemplifies what I like to call disembodied body part syndrome (DBS for the rest of this post). Here’s another example from a sentence that no longer exists in my thesis.

“A hand rested on Kylander’s arm.”

…to which my mentor commented “was it attached to something?”

Er, yes.

“Natalie gripped Kylander’s arm.”

There we go. (The use of the stronger verb, gripped, is a discussion for another post).

But yes, avoid DBS. Give actions to people, not body parts. Otherwise, we end up with some of these interesting and potentially awkward images.

“His eyes rolled up to the ceiling.”
-flying eyeballs!

“Her arms flailed.”
-random, person-less arms flapping around in the breeze

“Her legs wrapped around his waist.”
-Oh man. This should be potentially sexy, but all I see is a set of legs with no person attached straddling some guy’s torso. *shudder*

So please, avoid DBS.

Now, back to “my fingers typed” for a moment. While technically correct, really I typed with my fingers. So to avoid awkwardness, the sentence should read “I typed.” “With my fingers” can be left off because that is the body part one would type with. However, if the person is typing with a different body part, say nose, mention that. It’s unusual and needs to be specified for the reader to get the picture.

Exceptions. As with everything else in writing, the rule is proved by its exception. (Or maybe that was the English language. Oh well.)

“Her eyes fluttered closed.”
“She fluttered her eyes closed.”

I don’t know about you, but the second one reads very awkwardly for me. You know when you’re so tired you can’t keep your eyes open? Your eyes just flutter closed seemingly of their own volition. This is a safe way to break the DBS rule if I’ve ever seen one.

“Her hair tangled in the wind.”
“She tangled her hair in the wind.”

Why would anyone do that intentionally? The only things that come to mind for me when I think about my hair getting tangled is pain and wasting time trying to untangle it. This is a decent way to break the DBS rule. Though, one might argue that “The wind tangled her hair” would be a better substitute.

There you have it. Disembodied body part syndrome. Now go forth and give people activities to perform.

Thanks for reading.

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog

Frozen Left Me Anything but Cold

Good Friday,

What did you do last night? I saw Frozen. It was very cute…. “Like little baby unicorn.”

You know you saw that coming.

I want an Olaf. That is all.

I also want Idina Menzel’s vocal cords, but I’ll take what I can get. That woman is amazing. I’m talking about the voice of Elsa. You might recognize her from this.

Or this.

Like I said, amazing.

Not that Kristen Bell was any slouch in the singing department. And for those of you who have seen/know a lot about WICKED the Musical, is there any irony in the fact that Idina Menzel is again put opposite a soprano named Kristen who is the girly one out of the two?

“For the First Time” was my favorite song, especially the section where Elsa and Anna sing together.

I kept feeling bad for the male characters in this movie. Then some of them did not-so-nice things, and I didn’t feel so bad anymore. Except for Kristoff. Poor Kristoff. First his occupation. Then Olaf can’t get his name right. Really, he was a bundle of sympathy waiting to happen. I won’t mention his, umm, family troubles.

Without giving away the ending…it surprised me, but in a good way. K, I might have seen it coming a little, but I didn’t expect Disney to go in that direction, and I applaud you, most amazing animated movie makers.

All in all, I really enjoyed Frozen. I think Tangled is still my favorite, but Frozen is definitely worth the movie theatre time for those who haven’t seen it yet.

And look at that, it’s Friday. Go see Frozen. Go on…go.

And have a wonderful weekend!

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog

I'm Breaking up with CAPTCHA

//rant//

K, I’ve had it. The last straw is broken. I went to comment on a blog the other day, and the audio version of the Completely Automatic Public Touring Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart (more commonly known as CAPTCHA…because no one wants to say the entire name) didn’t even work. How useful.

For those of you who haven’t read past posts where I’ve mentioned it, I’m legally blind and, thus, unable to operate the visual CAPTCHA challenge. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if the audio challenges worked. Actually, that’s a lie. They aren’t even helpful when they work. What would fix this? Oh I don’t know, maybe the audio challenges being the same difficulty as the visual challenges? As it is, I can’t comment on anything that uses CAPTCHA to “Please prove you’re not a robot” because the audio challenges are impossible.

Here’s how it works for me. I go to a site. I comment. I click publish (which in a normal universe publishes something). Then I think I’m set…but no. CAPTCHA pops up and asks me to prove I’m human. Fine. Click the “get an audio challenge button.” If I’m lucky, sound comes out. I’m greeted with either a series of beeps, presumably as a warning to get ready to listen, or a too-cheerful automated voice telling me to “please type every digit you hear. Spaces are not required.” Then some garbled-beyond-recognition noise starts up that I have to listen to while typing. Did I mention that my screen reader speaks everything I type? So now I’m trying to listen to the next number while I’m typing the previous number and….

Oeiorgiongieoghuiwegweiojgeiwgoiwengoiwejf!!!!! Owegowengoiewhguewbgowegoijwoef!!!

You get the idea.

And to top it all off, the audio CAPTCHA’s are barely understandable. Don’t believe me? Let’s sample a few.

Here’s an example of one that gives numbers.

I encounter this one somewhat often. It’s not too bad, but it’s not great. They give me the digits twice, and I always think I’ve got it right. Then I click submit, and it says to try again.

I heard the following numbers: 71385830257

You?

K, moving on. The one above was a sometimes. Unfortunately, what I get is more often like this.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

I think this is the type that asks me to “type every word you here.” And then gives me like ten words. Because the visual challenge asks its readers to read ten words. It’s what? 2, 3 at most?

I’m not even going to try and decipher this. Feel free to try and leave your guess as a comment.

Then there’s this one. Holy CAPTCHA, Bat Man! Is that understandable?

I’m pretty sure I got this one right.

54964342

Neat, huh?

And only found on YouTube.

Yes, the one that I’m the most certain of is the one I’ve never actually encountered in an actual CAPTCHA-necessary situation. Go figure.

“But, Mary. JAWS (Job Access with Speech) now comes with Convenient OCR, which is image recognition software that allows text to be read from pictures.”

Except not CAPTCHA images

Because reasons.

K, I’ve ranted and quite nicely if I do say so myself. This is usually the part where readers (either to me or in their minds) say something along the lines of “k, you’ve complained. What are you going to do now?”

Short answer—I’ll contact CAPTCHA, which I imagine will have little impact because I can’t be the only legally blind/blind person who’s ever complained. And look how much that’s done.

But then again, I can’t think of a better way to audio challenge people. My guess is that CAPTCHA can’t either, hence the stuff featured above. Rest assured, though, if I think of something better, you’ll see the MAPTCHA test all over the internet—Mary’s Apparently Possible Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Huzza!

//rant//

As always, thanks for reading. Shares of this one appreciated! 

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

Follow My Blog With Bloglovin

-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog

Ringing in the 2013 Christmas Season!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

And now it’s time for a little tradition. Every year on Black Friday, I kick off Christmas by blasting this song as loudly as possible. Please, join me this year...

RINGING IN CHRISTMAS!

I saw these guys live last week. If you haven’t, go see them. It’s…there are no words. And this song live. A part of my soul is complete.

Also, to those who celebrate, we are partway into it already. Happy Hanukkah!

And to everyone else, a happy holiday season!

Enjoy the rest of this holiday weekend.

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog

2013 NANOWRIMO=NANOWINO!

BAM!!!!

I said I’d get it done, and I got it done. My first Nanowin! Clocked in at 50,132 words last night. Printed my certificate of awesomeness. Uploaded my Facebook picture of bragginess. And now I’m writing the blog post of successfulness. BAM! RAAH! And to quote Hades...

And Kuzco…

I’d like to thank @NanoWordSprints on Twitter . They kept me going the last couple of days. I also got some of my more creative typos from sprints. Here are a few.

Litesen – listen—not too bad
Jayleln – should have been my heroine’s name—Jayleen
Yfo – of—really not sure how that happened

And now info, a pledge, and news.

Even with all this productivity, my thesis is not “done.” I still have a few scenes to write. Much of the 50k went to rewriting chapters that I realized I couldn’t use as they were. I didn’t cheat. It was all new content, believe me.

Nanowrimo is big on continuing the productivity year-round. Motivation is key, and here’s mine. My goal is to finish this draft of my thesis by January residency—Jan 9, 2014. Plenty of time? Let’s hope. But to help keep myself honest, I’ll post weekly updates on here. And when I finish the draft, there will be an excerpt. K, I’ve said it. I’m sticking to it. Keep your eyes peeled for a bit of my thesis upcoming.

And now, the news.

I participated in an aspiring author blog tour this month. My interview went up on Monday, and I’m sharing.

2013 Aspiring Author Blog Tour: Mary DeSantis

Hop on over and check it out. I’m being my usual (interesting) self, and there’s an excerpt from my urban fantasy.

Thank you to Tracee Ford for organizing the event and allowing me to participate. I had a lot of fun with the interview.

Right (Write?). This is DeSantism signing off. If I don’t get back on here tomorrow, Happy Thanksgiving!

A friendly reminder—the Goddess Fish book tours I used to host and all other book/author promo stuff is now done over at my book blog: Kit ‘N Kabookle.

As always, thanks for reading.

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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Mars and a Haiku

Maven went to Mars today.

There was a Mars haiku contest earlier this year for the Maven. Winners would have their haiku sent to Mars. Everyone who submitted got their name sent to Mars. I missed the deadline—life—but I wrote a haiku.

In honor of the trip, I will share that haiku here.

*drum roll*

It was once a god.

And now it’s just a planet.

What a culture shock.

Have a good night, everyone.

Mary
@desantismt on Twitter

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-Kit ‘N Kabookle
My book tour blog