We’ve covered a lot of the minutiae of grammar on the Write Practice, but today we’re taking it back to the basics and running through some of the most fundamental parts of speech.
What is a part of speech? A part of speech is a category of words that serve the same basic function in a sentence, and today, we’re covering the most basic of the basics: subjects and predicates.
This is a guest post by Emily Wenstrom (@emilywenstrom).
When I completed the first draft of my first-ever novel last December, I promptly did a little victory dance.
And then I sat back down and took the word count, which completely killed my buzz. My manuscript rang in at little over 45,000—half the length of your average novel. Eep! I had a minor freakout. What was I going to do?
But fortunately, rationality eventually returned. This was only a first draft, after all. Surely there was some room for development. Turns out, there was tons.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, here are five of the best ways I’ve discovered to beef up your word count without diluting your story.
So we now all know when to use “afterward” and “afterwards” thanks to last week’s -ward/-wards post, right? Good, because there’s another usage bomb about to drop. Occasionally, we confuse “afterward” and “afterword” as well. One is a noun. The other is an adverb. The meanings are not the same.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have little to no tolerance for modern romantic comedies (unless they feature Paul Rudd). They have so pervaded our culture that we can predict plot points with ease within the first ten minutes of the movie. The person that the protagonist picks fights with will be the love interest. There will be a snarky best friend. There will be a hilarious misunderstanding that causes the love interest to ditch the protagonist, until the protagonist makes a grand romantic gesture that will cause all to be forgiven.
These worn-out tropes are known as clichés.
Today, I’m heading to Telluride, Colorado, for the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival. My roommates and I bought tickets way back in December, and six months later, the time has come for us to load our gear up and drive the 7-9 hours into the mountains for four days of fun and banjos. We’ve been looking forward to this festival for a long time, and it’s finally arrived. You could say that we’re anxious to get to Telluride.
You could say that, but you’d be mostly wrong.
