054: 3 Tips for Writing When You're Not Great at Grammar
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3 tips for writing when you’re not great at grammar
Hi, friends, welcome to this week's episode of the blank page to book podcast where we're talking about grammar. But specifically what to do if you are a writer who is not so great at grammar, spelling, punctuation, all of that good stuff. For whatever reason, maybe you have not taken an English class since you were in junior high school and it has been decades and you're just not real confident on your understanding of grammar. Maybe English is not your first language. Maybe you are dyslexic, there are all kinds of reasons why someone might feel like their skills aren't quite there when it comes to grammar. And what I want to talk about in this episode, I'm going to give you three tips for what to do like tactical strategies you can use to help your writing to help your book. But I'm also going to give you a couple of reframes.
Let's go and do the reframes first, because I want to tell you that the reason I decided to record this episode now is I've worked with a few editing clients who have told me that they struggle with grammar. This has been something that they've told me in communication on calls, via email when we're communicating back and forth about their book about me being their editor. And in some cases, there's a tone of criticism of the of them being very self critical. That comes through. And I realized that this is something that a lot of writers struggle with. And so I want to talk about it because let me be very clear, being technically proficient at grammar, understanding punctuation, and how to use it, grammar, Subject, Verb Agreement, sentence structure. That's one skill area of being a writer. But being able to tell a great story, having strong characters having having a plot, a book that you can't put down that has good pacing, and dialogue and tension and world building and setting and all that stuff. That is a completely different skill. And you don't have to have a good understanding of grammar and sentence structure in order to tell a good story.
If you think about a Venn diagram, like yes, those things overlap. But I just want to offer you some encouragement that if you are one of those people I mentioned the beginning who struggles with this, you can absolutely write an incredible book and tell an incredible story that readers will love that people will really resonate with, you might have to do a little bit of work to polish the book just to make sure it's ready to go if you know that there are going to be a lot of errors. But that's okay. If you just know that ahead of time, if you just know that this is maybe not one of your strong suits, then you can take some of the strategies that we talked about in this episode, or maybe you've got other strategies and other tactics that you figured out, or will figure out to help you through this process. But please do not feel like if you don't have a good understanding of grammar, or English isn't your first language or there's some kind of learning disability going on whatever the case is, please don't feel like you are not a good writer because of it. Okay?
The longer that I do this, the longer that I edit and coach and work with writers the more I'm drawn as a reader outside of the outside of work to stories that are just well told and characters that I just fall in love with. And yes, I can appreciate beautifully constructed sentences. But really I just want to read good story. You know, that's that's really what I'm looking for. And I also have to tell you that I just in the spirit of honesty, I hesitated about recording this episode I put it off for a while because I I recognize that it can feel kind of achy and maybe even feel like kind of condescending to have someone who's good at something tell you about like how to improve at it. I don't know I don't want this to come across a come across as condescending or lecturing or like oh, just do this. It's so simple, and then you'll be great at grammar. I recognize it's not that easy. It's not that easy. The ball even though this stuff, you know, I do this for a living I edit for a living. You know, there's so many other things that I struggle with when it comes to writing. So yeah, I just I hope this comes across the right way that I'm genuinely just offering these strategies and reframes to help you and to encourage you in saying that you don't have to be a grammar expert to be a good storyteller and to write a good book that people are going to want to read.
Okay, so tip number one is to take advantage of AI tools. Like, I'm gonna give you three different options, Grammarly, pro writing aid, and auto crit. Now I have not used Grammarly or pro writing aid myself. I'm aware that they exist. And I know that you can use them for your manuscript for novels, you can also use them for social media content, for emails, all kinds of things. I have used auto crit, I used it for my when I was editing my first book, I did end up hiring an editor, but I used auto crit before that point just to help me kind of spot the weaknesses in my manuscript. And auto crit does have a really comprehensive grammar and spelling checker, it checks all of the nitty gritty, grammatical stuff, but it goes above and beyond that it can give you reports about how many adverbs you're using. So if you're relying too heavily on adverbs heavily on adverbs, it will tell you, you can get a little bit of it's almost like a little bit of line editing with auto crit. So I definitely recommend that if you are not in the position to be able to afford an editor. I know that hiring an editor is a privilege not everyone's able to do that financially. So So autocrit is a good option. You know, you can check it out if, if that's something you want to look into. I am not just saying this because I'm an editor. I'm saying this because I've used auto crit. I don't think it can replace an actual living breathing human, I don't think the software and the tools are quite to the point where they can replace a human, but they're pretty good. And I've heard people talk about their experience with Grammarly and pro writing aid who have said the same thing.
So again, I this isn't a review of any of these things. Again, I want to be transparent. I haven't used pro writing aid or Grammarly. And this is also not sponsored by autocrit. I don't work with them in any capacity. I just think they're a great tool. And they were very helpful for me when I was writing my first book. My second tip is to look into online courses through sites like Udemy or Coursera. If there are specific things that you want to work on, like let's say maybe you have not taken an English class since you were in junior high school and it's been decades and you're like Katie, I don't even know what an adverb is, when you say not to use too many adverbs. I don't even know what an adverb is. Taking a refresher course on grammar on one of these sites can be a really helpful way to get just a refresher about these basic components of the English language. You do not have to become an expert in grammar.
That's not the point of this episode is to tell you how you can study and hustle and get another degree like none of that. I'm just saying if you want to improve, there's something that you want to brush up on. Maybe, you know, there's something maybe English isn't your first language. And there's something you're not totally solid on like maybe a specific verb tense or something. Go to one of these sites. I when I was first starting to edit, before I went onto Fiverr, and started marketing myself as an editor and getting editing clients, I took a refresher course on Udemy, and it spelled UDEMY. And it's a site that has, I don't know, hundreds of 1000s of courses, probably on any topic under the sun. And if you just search grammar or English language, you can see the different options that come up. Some of them are more, you know, broad in scope, and they cover a lot of different things. Some of them are more, I don't know specific to like punctuation.
For example, if you just need to kind of get your get a handle on what a semicolon is and what a colon is and how to use an ellipsis then you can take a course that's specific to punctuation. And what's great about Udemy again, not sponsored I've just used them before. The courses are really inexpensive like I think I paid like 20 bucks for the course that I took. I googled Udemy and grammar right before this and pulled up their first page of results that was on Udemy and the courses are anywhere from like 15 to 30 bucks, you're not going to get a graduate level course for that price, obviously. But if you just want to brush up on something, that's a good way to do it. And that might just help your confidence a little bit to kind of feel more sure of yourself when you're, when you are writing, that you're using punctuation or verb tense or spelling that you're that you're doing it correctly.
My third tip is to take advantage of beta readers. This is something where you're going to have to do a little bit of work a little bit of legwork to find beta readers who can read and proofread for grammar for you. Because this goes above and beyond just a normal beta reader. If you want someone who is going to look at your grammar and spelling and proofread for you, then you have to pick someone pick a beta reader who has that knowledge and who has the ability to do that. If you want a general episode about beta reading, you can check out episode 38. It's called all about beta reading, just for an overview of what beta readers are, how to find them, that kind of stuff. This is something that I've seen on social media, people who just are not in a financial position to afford an editor have used beta readers who will look at their grammar and punctuation and verb, tense and Subject, Verb Agreement and all of that good stuff. And, you know, again, I think it's good to, like I mentioned, make sure that you're getting somebody who has that knowledge and has that ability.
But also make sure that you're either compensating them in some capacity, or maybe doing a swap just so it feels fair, over the course of y'all working together so that you're not asking them to proofread a manuscript that is 300 pages, and chock full of things that they'll have to go in and correct. Because that's, that's a lot to ask. Now, maybe you can't do the same for them, because you are maybe like, well, I don't have a great grasp of grammar, I don't want to they're finding all these errors in my manuscript, I don't want to do that for them, then totally fine. Maybe y'all can work out some other kind of swap where you just beta read more frequently for them to kind of balance it out. I guess the point, what I'm saying here is to figure out a way that you can work with someone where it feels good, and it feels like you two are supporting each other. And it might take a little bit of time to find someone who can do this for you.
But I know writers who have used BETA readers who have self published their books, and it just wasn't an option to hire an editor. So definitely explore that route. If that's something you're interested in, in. You can search beta reader hashtags on tick tok or Instagram, other social media sites, even just Googling to figure out like how to find beta readers, getting involved in your local writing community. There are all kinds of ways to find beta readers again, you can check out that beta reading episode, if you want more information generally about what beta readers do. You'll notice that one of the tips is not hire an editor. Of course, that's a good option. Of course, that's going to help if that feels like it doesn't even need to be said. Again, I know it's not a possibility for for everyone.
So those are the three tips that I have. And one other kind of piece of encouragement or slight reframe, that I want to offer you is the English language is maddening, it is so frustratingly complex sometimes, the longer that I edit, the more frustrated I get sometimes with English. I'll just be honest. Different editors use different resources or different style guides for editing. So style guide is simply a collection of rules related to grammar and usage. I follow the Chicago Manual of Style. So the Chicago Manual of Style is this massive book. It's almost like a textbook that has all kinds of rules for usage and punctuation and grammar. And they might have slightly different rules for when a comment is needed, or not needed, as opposed to another style guide, like AP style, for example. Which means there's no hard and fast rule in some cases. In some cases, it's pretty clear when a comma is needed. But in some cases, there's not a hard and fast rule about when a comma is appropriate. And depending on which resource you look at, you're gonna get two different answers.
That is maddening. It is maddening that we all cannot just agree on when a comma should be placed in a sentence. But there's a lot more stylistic stuff that goes into grammar than I realized. Before I started copy editing. I sort of just thought like, well this is grammar. It's just hard and fast. And that's it. There there's no right you know, there's no nuance. It turns out there's a lot of nuance. So I just have to tell you like as someone who offers copy editing, which is solely focused on a type of editing that is focused on grammar and punctuation and all of that, I still have to consult my style guide to look at different things like should this be hyphenated or not hyphenated, both are appropriate, both have been used, what is Chicago say is the right word to use here. I still have to look at Chicago's Manual of Style all the time. So the fact that the average person out there is not a grammar expert, like makes total sense. Of course, who would be it's maddening? I mean, yes, the English language is also beautiful and wonderful and I adore it, but it can be very frustrating.
Alright, thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.