I have a short Christmas story.  It's 42 pages and about 15K words. Even though I have re-written the story four times, I feel like it's still disjointed. So not only am I looking for an editor for the numerous mistakes, I also want someone to give me some advice on the narrative as well. That could be one person or two. If anyone is interested let me know. I appreciate all the help I can get as I really like this story but I'm not sure if its good or not.

J

 The story is set in contemporary North America and deals with a half dozen boys in various relationships with each other, some almost mystical and others bluntly sexual. These relationships evolve in the context of the climate crisis, the covid pandemic, veganism and animal rights, with a dash of the supernatural in the mix. Sometimes I think of it as a mixture of The Jungle Book, The Silent Spring, The New Testament and The Wild Boys rendered in a style that reaches toward Steven King and Ernest Hemingway. The result is prosaic, I'm sure, but it's original and different. It has touching moments and passages that should be amusing. And though it may not achieve it's aims fully, they are high.
 
 I seek editorial assistance of every kind. If you like to look at every sentence, every word, every comma, I welcome your help. If you prefer to look at the bigger picture, underlying structures and relationships, I look forward your suggestions. If you just want to read something original and make a few comments, I'll be happy to send you what I've written so far.
 
 I generally compose in LibreOffice Writer. It produces .odt files. They can be read by Microsoft Word. If you have another preferred format, let me know and I'll try to provide the text in that format.

Be warned, it is a big job. Being Johnny is 61 chapters in total and most chapters are just over 8K words.

If you are interested in helping, please email me.

I have a 7,700-word short story, and it's the first one (really) I have completed since 10 years ago. Not to scare you, but. Haha!

It is written in British English but there are parts of the dialog which are in dialect.

If anyone is prepared to take on trying to edit this please let me know.

13 Britishisms That Have Invaded American English

It’s part of a phenomenon called “Anglocreep.”

By Caroline Bologna

Many words and phrases Americans use are traditionally associated with British English. 

Over the years, folks in the U.K. have lamented the American influence on British English. Paul McCartney’s father famously reacted to the lyrics “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” by asking his son, “Couldn’t you sing, ‘She loves you, yes, yes, yes?’ There’s enough of these Americanisms around.”

But what many Brits don’t seem to realize is that the opposite trend may be even more profound. It’s a phenomenon called “Anglocreep” ― the subtle flow of Britishisms into American English. Since 2011, Ben Yagoda, author of How to Not Write Bad, has been tracking Anglocreep on his blog, Not One-Off Britishisms.

Yagoda’s blog focuses on Britishisms appearing in American media, an occurrence he chalks up to the fact that writers tend to be voracious readers who are exposed to different many sorts of expressions. “There’s also a premium on expressing things in a fresh, clever or funny way,” he told HuffPost, adding that these “fresh” words or turns of phrase can come from sources like sports, rap music, finance, technology and of course ... British English. 

“Sometimes there’s an exact American equivalent, like saying ‘lift’ instead of ‘elevator’ or ‘flat’ instead of ‘apartment’ ― that just sounds weirdly pretentious,” Yagoda explained. “But there are others where there’s no exact equivalent.”

Lynne Murphy, a linguistics professor and author of The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English, coined the term “American Verbal Inferiority Complex” to describe the belief among many Americans that British English is superior to their own way of communicating. 

“sing British words, even slang, can make Americans feel or sound more sophisticated or cosmopolitan, because they’re marking themselves as people who see or know the world beyond the U.S.” Murphy told The New York Times in April. 

But you don’t have to be an Anglophile or member of the chattering classes to use Britishisms. In fact, many Americans are unaware that certain phrases and words they regularly say are of British origin. 

Here are 13 Britishisms that experts have observed “creeping” into American speech and writing. While some have caught on so much that they seem like an ordinary part of American English, others are just making their way into U.S. vernacular. 

Bespoke

“Bespoke is one that has really gone nuts,” Yagoda told HuffPost, noting that the British term has gained popularity in the U.S. “In the original British, it was referring specifically to tailor-made clothes like a bespoke overcoat or bespoke suit.” Though the word still often appears in the context of clothing, it can refer to other custom-made items. 

Dodgy

“I see ‘dodgy’ quite a bit where you might once have seen ‘fishy’ or ‘sketchy,’” Murphy told The New York Times.  

Gobsmacked

“Gobsmacked is very poetic and sounds kind of funny and nice,” said Yagoda. “There are other ways to just say you were really surprised, but gobsmacked serves a purpose.” Linguist Ben Zimmer credited Susan Boyle with introducing gobsmacked to a broader American audience after she used the word to describe how she felt when her “Britain’s Got Talent” audition went viral.  

Wonky

Although the traditionally American version of the word wonky or wonk refers to someone who is extra studious or knowledgeable about the mundane details of a specialized field (à la “policy wonk”), the British version is taking hold in the U.S. as well. In the latter case, wonky means awry, unsteady or off-kilter.

Amongst

“Many of my students used amongst in their writing, and I don’t think they even realized it’s a British thing,” said Yagoda, who previously worked as a professor at the University of Delaware. Other British forms of similar words show up in American English as well ― like amidst or whilst. 

Easy Peasy

“‘Easy peasy’ is a really common one in the U.S., and people say it came from a British ad for dish soap,” Yagoda explained. Indeed, many experts trace “easy peasy” back to Sqezy brand dish soap’s catchphrase, “Easy Peasy Lemon Sqezy.” Though the slogan may have popularized the shortened form “easy peasy,” the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it predates the ad and first appeared as a British colloquialism or children’s slang. Regardless, the phrase “easy peasy” has clearly taken hold in the U.S. (This reporter’s roommate from Long Island, New York, is notably fond of saying this.)

Twee

“‘[T]wee’ is a useful term, because there really is no direct American equivalent,” lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower told The New York Times in 2012. “It describes things that are often associated with Britishness, like Laura Ashley dresses or Park Slope baby names like Primrose or Harmony. But the word itself doesn’t scream of Britishness.”

Ginger

While “redhead” is arguably the more common word Americans use to describe those with red hair, Yagoda and Murphy have observed a rise in the use of the more traditionally British word “ginger.” Both credit the Weasley family from the Harry Potter universe ― as well as the famous “Ginger Kids” episode of “South Park” ― with helping the term gain traction in the U.S. 

Go Missing

“The one that people are really gobsmacked to hear is a British thing is “go missing,” said Yagoda, who observed a spike in the use of “went missing” in American media in the early 2000s, decades after the phrase had taken hold in the U.K.

“We used to say disappeared but that sounds like a magician’s trick,” he continued, noting that the rise in “went missing” seems to coincide with the disappearance of Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy. “My hypothesis was just that journalists got tired of saying ‘disappeared’ and ‘vanished.’ One of the first times it was used was in the New York Daily News, and it turns out that writer was in fact British.”

Kerfuffle

Chris Taylor, a British journalist based in California, wrote in Mashable that he almost never encountered the British word “kerfuffle” ― meaning “a commotion, a hubbub, a vague dispute” ― when he moved to the U.S. two decades ago. 

“I remember confusing an editor or two when I started at Time magazine by inserting it in my copy,” he noted. “But now, decades later, kerfuffle seems to be useful enough to Americans — who can never get enough words to describe kinds of conflict — that it can be heard in NBA press conferences.”

Vet

To vet, in the sense of thoroughly evaluating someone like a political candidate, was originally more of a British term. According to Yagoda, the word started taking off in the U.S. around 1990 and came to be roughly equally popular in both countries. 

Gutted

In her book, Murphy cited “gutted” in the sense of “emotionally devastated” as a newer U.K.-to-U.S. import, though she has noted that this can lead to some confusion, given the more literal American interpretation. Yagoda pointed to a tweet by American writer Ben Greenman following the 2016 presidential election as a “harbinger of a U.S. boom.”

Bestie

“Bestie is one that sounds American, but it’s actually British,” Yagoda explained. According to his blog, the OED describes the word as “originally and chiefly British” and cites a 1991 quote from The Observer about Princess Diana’s friends from school. 

I don't.

I do have someone editing one of my books and another person editing a second, but essentially, I do not have an editor I can send stories to. So if anyone who edits has read anything I have written (of course you will then see the need for your services), and you have the time to do it. Then get in touch. I can send documents in Word (basic) or possibly another word processor. I write in British English.

I just finished an e-book on my Kindle and noticed an acknowledgement of an editor and the editor's company, so I looked them up. the company is InvisibleInkEditing.com, which provides services (at a fee, of course) to prepare for electronic publishing from initial review of a draft to  proofreading and finally formatting for publication on one of the various sites, such as  Amazon.

For those authors wanting to move to the next stage, take a look.

Anyway, I'd like to canvass the crowd.  In my upcoming story, which'll probably begin airing in a week or so depending on the tides and trade winds, there is a bit of musical content.  I'm currently in negotiations with an editor who doesn't like how I've written something.  I, of course, am pretty sure I'm right.  He's pretty sure I'm not.

So I'd like to see a show of hands here.  Tell me what's right, or wrong, with the following sentence:

Why is the sound of the note f-sharp so dissonant when it intrudes on the melody of a piece that is written in the key of F-major?

Anyone, please.  What I'm looking for isn't a critique of the musical content.  I'm looking more at the English involved.

C

The story starts in America with an American protagonist, but it quickly moves to Australia. I'm happy to keep dialogue with the appropriate language (Americans using American English and Australians using Australian English), but I'm not sure what I should use for narration. Australian or American English?

The story will be written in third person and I'll be trying to make it as close as I can to third person limited. This means that my options as I see them are:

1. Write in American English, as that's the natural language of the story opening.

2. Write in Australian English, as that's the natural language for most of where the story is located.

3. Write the scenes from the American character's POV in American English and the scenes from the Australian characters' POV in Australian English.

This may sound like a fine detail question, but I think American readers will get annoyed with a story that appears initially to be set in the USA that's using Australian English (eg. colour, realised) and not American English (color, realized). However, it equally feels odd to me to have a story that's largely set in Australia using American English. It feels even weirder to mix the two languages in a single story...

Help?

Name: Peter

Age: Old

Sex: Yes Orientation: Gay

Skill level: Decent editor with no identifiable talent writing fiction; passionate and somewhat articulate when oversharing my views. I have written a very few short and plotless porn stories, sufficient to get my (creative) juices flowing, and the Nifty Archivist was kind enough to post them.

Hobby: Editing Wikipedia articles.

Frustration: Finding errors on web pages that are not wikis.

Editing skills: An innate (but not infallible) sense of when a word looks right, and when it seems to be misspelled. A shallow knowledge about a huge number of things, and the inclination to look up things that I don't know. Average ability to see when something in a story doesn't seem true to life.

Editing style: I track my changes, using the Review feature of MS Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice Writer, so that the author can see each proposed change and decide which to accept. I add comments to explain, point out ambiguities, etc., and sometimes to link to web articles that explain a grammatical concept. I hope the process will help the author learn, as it does me, and I am very gratified if I see these changes reflected in chapters that are sent to me subsequently.

Favorite fora forums here: Writers' Workshop and Editor's Desk. (Hmmm—are there several writers and only one editor? See Frustration, supra above.)

Goals: Improve my writing and especially editing skills. Learn when and how to relax the rigid punctuation and grammar rules that I learned in my youth, without feeling as if I am completely selling out to the barbarians. Improve my ability to write dialogue like what people actually say.

Non-goal: Becoming a good enough fiction writer to create something that would be good enough for AD. I am in awe when I read wonderful stories by Chris James, Altimexis, Mihangel Hwntw, and many others here, and I gratefully celebrate the ability of those writers to create them.

Grammar preference: Prescriptive. However, I like to remind myself why the Appendix Probi, a late Roman list of correct and incorrect versions of words, is still important to students of Romance languages: all of the "incorrect" ones evolved into words that are now valiantly defended by royal language academies. Language changes.

Oxford comma: Usually, unless it creates ambiguity.

Punctuation inside quotation marks? Only if it is part of the quotation. That's a hard rule for me to follow, with American grammarians on the web still advising that periods and commas should always go inside, but the British (and the Wikipedia style guide) have this one right.

Subjunctive mood: Yes, please. Even the least educated speaker of Spanish knows how to use it correctly in that language. I lament that it is disappearing from English.

Singular "they": Ugh! If "he or she" is too awkward, the sentence can usely be recast without resorting to "they". But I know I'm on the losing side of this one, too.

I say "YES! It's about time!" for the wonderful number-agnostic gender-agnostic pronoun 'they'.

Take that, grammar pedants in academia!

Colin

There are a few items that I would normally respond to the editors, in relation to their comments or questions, which I will do here:

a) The phrase "working my butt off" is a moderately common one in Australia. Replacing "butt" with the alternatives would sound stilted.

b) The body of water in question was envisaged as a tidal lake or river, not the ocean. As such, the water can be fairly still, enabling a young boy to be able to wade out confidently, and to be able to see things under the water without difficulty.

c) I deliberately left the sexes of the two adults ambigious. While one is clearly the "breadwinner" and the other the "homemaker", there is nothing to indicate which is male, which is female, or indeed whether or not they are both the same sex.

d) The age of Adam would be in the four to six bracket. As the father of two boys in this age range, I never cease to be amazed at the way their imagination works.

e) The phrase "Once again, he had been thwarted at the last minute." was deliberately used to indicate that there is a history, as suspected. For a short story, I couldn't provide a complete life picture, so little statements like this have bene used to try to illuminate some of the background without giving details.

f) Depression descended on me as I realised no one really liked my phrase "Depression descended". The life of a would-be poetic prose writer....

Thanks again to all the editors. I have found this a very useful, as well as interesting, experience. I have some more comments to make, but I'll wait until I see what other people say first

Graeme

A good summary.

Sometimes think my stories are important. I try to write from reality.

I was just going to submit this story but figured that I would ask for editing help first.

I made an effort to tame and compartmentalize scenes involving sex but I consider them to be essential to the plot. The set and setting is Southern California around, 1990.

12 chapters, 20kwords. I can submit it using most Open Office or Word, docs.

Preface to, The Androgyno, (The Boy That Wasn't)

Probably for most, the main character in this story is not exactly boyfriend material. Josey may reflect aspects of yourself and if you are ill at ease or at ease with the character may influence whether or not you will be drawn into the story.

The main character is physiological a boy but a girl in many other ways. Some boys, through no fault of their own become obviously feminine as they grow into puberty. This can be a big problem, even a life threatening problem. What was it like? How do they pull through?

The premise of the story was that many men like androgynous boys just the way they are. This was my point of view and this was the story I wanted to write. The story fizzled for almost a year. I cannot write about sex change because it is not in my experience. If I try to fake it and get it wrong, the entire story loses credibility, so relax. At best, I only approached it.

Josey's eventual boyfriend, Clark, was all male who carried a gun. He was a tough guy and Josey's total opposite. Although he thought of Josey as a girl and treated him like a girl, he used him like a woman. As it turns out, it suited Josey just fine. There is something special about this affair.

If the main character opts for a gender change, would Clark maintain the same interest in her/him? There is the risk that he'd look for another androgyno. There are times in this story when gender pronouns float or change from one sex to another. This is not done as an affectation but as a natural liberation occurring only at special times. In other words, Josey could go either way but that will be saved for the epilogue.

The end can be left up to the reader.

As much to see if you think it worth submission, as well general edit.

Problem is the Dude wants the finished product by 24 October.

I also have another non Halloween story about 7000 words, centred around a boy and a cat. If anyone would be kind enough to volunteer to look at it please. There are a couple of points that I know I need a second opinion, as well as anything else you find.

Thanks

Pedro

2) I have worked with two editors in the past. The first had to stop because of health reasons, and I imagine that the second one disappeared for similar reasons. I love my editors and I try my best to respect their time and effort on my behalf. I am also human, and I make mistakes. I hope that anyone who responds will understand that and tell me if I've rubbed them the wrong way, and I will treat you the way you want to be treated.

3) I need proofreading and some plot help. I like it when my editors question my work and challenge me when they think I'm off the rails.

4) I suppose that I expect proofreading and plot help. My work is generally pretty smooth, but I want my stories to be the best they can be, and I'll listen to what you have to say.

5) I'm currently working on several novels and a couple of short stories. I'm constantly writing, but I will match whatever load an editor is willing to take on.

6) I work with Microsoft word.

7) I've worked with all sorts of different edits. Whether you do it in the margins or in the line, i don't mind.

Thank you for everyone who took the time to read this. Hopefully one of you will be able to help me out, but if not, thank you all the same.

Cynus

So I started a WW1 Christmas story. I'm 3,300 words in over the last day and I expect to have a 5000 word first draft complete by

tomorrow.

Trouble is I need editorial help. I've stopped writing because I hit the relationship climax before the rest of the story climax and I'm wondering if it might actually hurt the story to continue.

Plus I want to submit the story to Awesomedude for this Xmas, so I need a timely editing for either version of the story anyway.

Anyone in a position to help me?

1. Read the first 3300 and offer an opinion about going forward.

2. Read the full ~5000 words if I add my other stuff in.

With so many authors out there with stories in raw form, I don't feel redoing a story is the best use of my editing skills, unless it is as superb a story as Thirty Two Faces.

Should I stop the editing offer now, should I wait until this story is finished and not do-over another uploaded story -- that is wait for an original, or should I ignore the fact that the story has already been published? The author, from what I've read, is good.

A good writer can capture a reader in a story, a good editor enables the reader to read the story.

That is so true!

I'm working on my first novel (!), for a local contest.

It's an urban fantasy with a caribbean flavor. I'm in the middle of chapter 2 right now.

Since the first chapter is so important in a novel, I'm hoping to get some immediate feedback so I can make sure I don't paint myself into a corner with bad choices.

Anyone interested in taking a look at the first chapter?

Also, if anyone likes that first chapter enough, they're welcome to stick around to help with the rest.