Webnovel.Forum

QueenCL Emojis are annoying. FIx up the grammar.

Yucinco

"a guy"
"a guy"
"a guy"
"a guy"
"a girl"
"a girl"

Bruh, did you not see the other dude's comment about not using the same words in a paragraph?
Also, guy is a sh*t noun. Is this a comedy or slice of life?

Alright guys, I am going to clarify just what this post was meant for.
It is mainly meant for the answering of peoples questions about grammar, English, story ideas and other such stuff. I don't care if people are willing to review or judge novels here because I have done it a couple times myself.
However, please keep in mind this is a novel discussion chat, not a review swap chat.

WorstNameEver
I'm an English speaker and I agree about the terrible grammar I see in the more popular original novels. It's really hard to read, but I doubt I'm doing much better. At the very least, I go back to previous chapters and check for errors before publishing while I try not to repeat words too much (This means I actually dish out a thesaurus). If you're still taking offers, I would like your opinion about my novel. A comment about grammar would do far more than a single review.(It's easy to miss errors if I'm the only one reading)

Link: https://m.webnovel.com/book/12688690205611705

One of the best discussions I’ve seen here! I really wanted to get this off my chest and I’m glad to find this thread. I don’t say that I’m great at writing but I’ve been dropping books from my library just because I get a headache reading bad English. The story line is good, but it is impossible to decipher what they are trying to relate! And there are some popular original books here with a lot of potential that are in need of serious editing. With a little bit of editing and proof reading they’ll catapult into the limelight!

Oh, wow. This was a worthwhile read. You’ve addressed the issue that I’ve been struggling with on this website. Admittedly, I am also guilty for a few things listed in the Bad and the Fugly (ouch, my face burns), but I’ve also read enough books to notice the mistakes. I’d love to support the original novels but most of them have such terrible English that I just can’t stand them. I get quite peeved when I spot grammatical mistakes (especially in my own works). It makes me unable to concentrate on the story much less care about them. I’ve even written a couple of pretty harsh reviews on those novels (particularly about their grammar), and one of the authors had blocked my review... oof.

ihateyounot A bit of advice for everyone. The way I write is (lots of copy-pastes btw):

First in Microsoft Word (with multiple read-overs and edits; maybe have an English competent friend help out)

Then copy-paste into Webnovel or whatever website it is going to.

Read over, edit and format (some sites like qidian prefer certain ways to space. I personally have everything but speech only 1 sentence paragraphs to make it easy for mobile readers. They complained about my walls of text though).

I have Grammarly, it helps a lot. Just ignore dumb word corrections. e.g. One time it wanted to make the word "soul" become "soil" in a sentence about soul cultivation in my Eastern Fantasy lol. Use this or something similar for corrections.

Copy-paste back to a new Word document (I actually have a base version and Webnovel version of every uploaded chapter of my story in different folders) and use the auto-correct for the finer things (Word has a better correction for certain things compared to Grammarly).

Copy-paste back to webnovel or whatever (after deleting the current text in there beforehand of course), then Grammarly it one more time before adding an author's note (Grammarly that too, don't Word it cos no one cares with Author's notes).

If you really can't be bothered, then no need to send it back to Word the second time, but atleast save the end result on a NEW Word document since it is nice to see the differences in your writing before and after correction.
Don't forget to re=read any edit (usually from the start of that paragraph or half-way through previous one. Basically go back 3 sentences and start reading again to check sentence flow).

That is my advice.

Hilarious read :D

Well, I have to agree with the OP and the posts related to the original topic thereafter.

While non-standard English is a problem -- problem embodying itself as illegibility, that's paradoxally not a major one. In terms of software development; if the code doesn't compile you don't have a problem. Analogous, for a story, if I can't comprehend what I'm reading I have to drop it immediately.

A major problem, however, is when you can understand the text, but small details like PoV and tenses are all over the place. I'd argue that this kind of poor writing pops up just as often on other sites. Wattpad and RRL comes to mind.

After that comes the classic teenaged Gandalf. "Hey, I'm fifteen hundred years old, and all over the story you can read how wise and clever I am. It's a pity I still act and react like the fourteen year old author who wrote this."

The next one is more a matter of preferences. Pacing. (Btw, did you notice the non-standard English I deliberately used there?) Old coots like me don't feel scammed when there isn't a pay-off each and every chapter. In fact, when you're used to reading the old school novels; you know, the funny crap made of paper, then you also get used to the story developing at a more sedate pace. It's still a matter of preferences, so I'd be hard pressed to argue that slow paced is better or worse than pacing suitable for a rat high on adrenalin.

Lastly, and this is a bit off-topic, but this is MY pet peeve -- reviews. If you review a genre you dislike, don't bloody hammer it because of the genre! Show the author the courtesy of writing a review within the scope of the explicitly stated genre. If you dislike harem stories, which I do, just state that you won't comment on that aspect of the story and get on with the rest of the review.

The fifteen cents from someone for whom English is a foreign language.

yu_ba_bu_neng Also I think it is important to write in simple English so that most people understand what you've written, otherwise you might not gain audience...