I’m reading a horror of a book right now (and it’s not a horror story, but rather a story about relationships). The author has written several books, but I know I won’t buy another of hers. I’m sad to say, it is torture to read her work.
If you recognize any of these as mistakes that you make, don’t feel bad. But if you make all of these mistakes and more, it’s time to take notice.
The author whose work I’m reading just now has a problem with prepositions, dialogue, and word usage, just to name a few of the writing problems.
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Many words are naturally followed by certain prepositions. In the dictionary, you may find a word and it says, “usually followed by —-.”
Here are some examples I found that seem to be wrong because of what follows certain words:
consisted in – should be consisted of
embarrassed with me – should be embarrassed by (or about) me
ashamed with – should be ashamed of
she thought back of her children – should be she thought back to (or about) her children
Other preposition errors:
The car pulled in front of the house – What did the car pull? She could have said, “The car pulled into the driveway in front of the house,” or “The car stopped in front of the house.” Changing “pulled” to “stopped” avoids having to say, “The car pulled in in front of the house.”
“After moving in a small house” How did she move, I wondered. Did she squirm or walk around? What she meant to say was, “After moving into a small house.”
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Word usage errors:
her hands wondered over him (contemplative hands?)
he was secretly wandering if she would… (was he walking in his sleep?)
she wondered through the dining room (maybe trying to decide what to eat?)
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And of course, my pet peeve, the lay/lie verbs:
…he begged, laying on top of her – I was shocked. I groaned and laughed out loud. I had an image in my head of a man squatting on top of a woman, depositing eggs onto her stomach.
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As this list is getting rather long, I have decided to save the dialogue problem for another post.