Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
So far I am about 35% into the book and have some 20 screen captures with notes from my reader.
Some of those errors are straight quotes vs. typographical quotes,
words like hetro bar (shouldn't be hetero?). It is invented word anyway ...
Things like using Kilos and Kilometers for distance in the same sentence.
A few missing spaces *possibly* a missing colon or two ...
So far I haven't caught any glaring inconsistencies - that is mistakes in facts, relations to the previously described scenes, scientific impossibilities (*)...
This is what I usually spot in such books that I am writing a critique for. You see, English is my third language (used to be fourth), so I do not consider myself a spelling or grammar expert ;-), at least not in English.
I think, you need somebody that is totally disinterested in your book, so he/she pays attention to spelling and grammar and formatting and facts. Not people like me that find themselves "lost" in a pageturner way too often ;-).
One of the authors here (author of Lethe - a book that I thoroughly recommend) said that she received the best and most detailed error log from somebody that hated her book, so he was looking at it with a very critical eye and was not distracted by the book itself.
(*) apart from the scene on the moonbase where main hero is hypnotized and hypnotizer elaborates how he is going to hide some info in an unused part of his brain. This explanation somehow didn't resonate well with me.
|
Wow - that is great Kacir. Thanks. What three languages? I only have two now. English my first and Thai. I used to have a fair grasp of Cantonese, but since I haven't lived there for 21 years it has slipped away.
Hetro is what I intended. Languages evolve and I think "common English" will evolve greatly over the next hundred years. An example of this is SMS or Chat messaging; i.e. I shud b der soon. I have kept these to a minimum because I didn't want to distract the reader too much - having to flip to a glossary every 5 lines is a pain.
I had to invent some new terms such as Devstick. I doubt we'll be using the term "mobile phone" or "notebook" to describe a PC in the future. I doubt we'll be using PC (by then the idea of anything personal related to an online computer will be such an oxymoron as to illicit howls of laughter).
I'll have to work on finding someone who absolutely hates the book, so far no takers on that. But if you are lurking out there please do send me a message.
I may have written the hypnosis scene too simply, but it is possible to hypnotize someone and block information which can be recalled later. I checked this with another writer who is also a Neuroscientist in her spare time. She also debunked the urban myth that we don't use 95% of the brain - which is where I'd first had the information stored.
Thanks for your efforts as always.