Four Large Bears and the Possessive Noun

Some of you may know what it's like to read a sentence that has an apostrophe error in it. That some of you may understand how it's so annoying to read a sentence that uses the possessive form of a noun or pronoun when there's no apostrophe needed.

Example: Martin was shocked to see four large bear's sitting at the table.

Bear's is possessive. An apostrophe is added to make the noun possessive. You could talk about a bear who owns an archive full of honey and say that it's the "bear's honey archive." Archive belongs to bear. You could talk about a den that belongs to a bear and call it the "bear's den." Den belongs to bear.

But did the author mean to use "bear's" as a possessive noun or the plural form of a noun?

Remember that a possessive noun is a noun showing ownership or relationship, and is often used as an adjective telling whose.

Martin was shocked to see four bears. In the example sentence above, "bear's" is not showing ownership or relationship. It is not being used as an adjective that tells whose. This is because there isn't any other noun or pronoun in the sentence that belongs to a single bear. There is no ownership or relationship between a bear and another noun or pronoun.

Bear's is supposed to be plural and have no apostrophe, because an apostrophe is not used to make the plural form of a noun.

So, the author (me) should have written "bears," since an "s" (or another small number of letters) is often added for the plural form of a noun.

So the sentence corrected is: Martin was shocked to see four large bears sitting at the table.

(Another note, if we were going to use bear's as a possessive noun, we would actually stick the apostrophe at the end [think Martin was shocked to see four large bears' mates sitting at the table].)

Typing Faster = Getting Wordcount Done Quickly

The writing tip for today is basically that typing correctly (without looking at the keyboard and having your fingers in the correct positions) can really help you in writing faster, especially with NaNoWriMo. Typing with two or three fingers will just make that seem much more slowly. I took typing lessons when I was only around ten years old.

For some of you, I'm sure you've learned already how to type right.

If you haven't already:

Find a reliable book with typing exercises, or look online for one. Regularly take an online typing test. It'll definitely help you with writing faster, and making capital letters faster and easier. And it will help you with NaNoWriMo.

Writing Wrace 4000: Who's Participating?

I'll be hosting an online writing even probably next month, and I want to know who is interested in participating.

Basically, it's a one-day even where everyone will have to write a 4000-word story. I'm still working out the details on what the exact competition type is, but I'll get more details out soon.

Are you interested? Let me know in comments!

Camp NaNoWriMo: Writing Fast?

In the past couple of days, my writing has slowed down to a little bit over 1,600 words per day, the regular average words-per-day for Camp NaNoWriMo. The reason being is that I have been writing all the planned parts of the story, the parts that I planned to happen, and I didn't know I'd get to the part where my main character ends up where the climax happens at only 20,000 out of 50,000 words, and I even began to get a bit tired of writing.

!!!!

What if this happens to you? What if your story is so fast-paced that you've gotten close the climax halfway through the novel? Do what I'm doing!

I'm making things up along the way. Creating a bit more suspense and tension. The next half of my novel, except probably the climax, will be a part that was never really written down. It'll be fun.

So, just a tip on what you can do.

An Overused "Then"

One of my earlier posts was on how you want to limit adverbs. For me, adverbs can be unavoidable.

Just very recently, in my Camp NaNoWriMo novel for this month, I felt like I was using "then" a lot. So I did a word search and found over 80 results. Over 80! I couldn't believe it! 80 of the words in my novel were "then!"

So I looked for each "then" and found that a lot of them were unnecessary. I spent a few minutes cutting back on them and managed to get them down to around 40.

This same problem, except with the adverb "suddenly," happened with my November 2011 NaNoWriMo novel.

Remember: Adverbs are okay to use in writing, but limit them. Also, you can use them in dialogue.

(Hey, why not play a fun game. Find all the adverb from this post and copy them into a comment.)

Writing Wrace 4000

Get the drumroll ready. For I have an exciting announcement.

Coming up August 20th is: WRITING WRACE 4000!!

It is the first writing contest/challenge that I'm making. I am will keep you up-to-date on this event by writing occasional posts. Eventually, I will give you full information on what's happening in the event. All I'm saying is that it's a writing challenge where people compete, and it will happen every so often.

Stay tuned.

Camp NaNoWriMo Begins TODAY!

Wooooohooooooo!

For all those people who are doing the writing challenge that starts today and ends on September 1st at 12:00 AM, I would like to wish you folks GOOD LUCK!

You can also share an excerpt or your synopsis of your Camp NaNoWriMo novel here.

Also, I have written two posts with Camp NaNoWriMo tips. Here are the links:

http://pickyaboutbooks329.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-few-tips-on-camp-nanowrimo-info-on-my.html
http://pickyaboutbooks329.blogspot.com/2012/06/camp-nanowrimo-survival.html

Here's the synopsis of my book, "The Most Wanted Boy in Moldy."

Matt lives in the city of Moldy, a big but grimy town created by people with no money. Matt, like a lot of the orphans living there, takes care of himself. And now at the age of thirteen years old, he is old enough to have a job.

So Matt takes a job as a cleaner at St. Du Mario Lance Hospital. But soon after he starts his work, he runs into a closet that leads him to a big room under the hospital containing what no citizen of Moldy has ever seen.

Suddenly, Matt is the most wanted man in the city of Moldy, as well as neighboring towns and cities too. And he must run away and get to safety. But what he has seen under St. Du Mario Lance Hospital is filling his dreams and thoughts, and he finds himself with a great question: Go to Moldy and save the town, or remain in hiding for the rest of his life.