@ fanfic writers: “throws” is a verb, and “throw” is synonymous with “toss” or “pitch”. “THROES” is a noun, and means a painful spasm or difficult struggle. “In the throes” is NOT synonymous with “in the midst”, and they should not be used interchangeably.
especially not in a scene meant to be sexy; “the way he gets in the throws of sex” sounds painful (quite apart from the word misuse) and possibly like something that either needs to be checked out by a doctor or needs a safeword.
bbcbecausebenedictcumberbatch:
don’t say you’re a writer if you just write fanfiction for your entertainment. you’re only a writer if you kill a bear with a typewriter to appease the spirit of hemingway and slather yourself in ink in tribute to shakespeare, the one true over-penis of literature.
I almost got mad but then I was amused
a double issue of Writer’s Corner With Mica tonight, because in the same goddamn fic, I just came across this:
“He sighed regrettably.”
[muffled scream of agony]
…okay let’s be clear here, even if you DID mean ‘regrettably’ instead of ‘regretfully’ (which is obviously not the case), it’s still wrong, because it would be “Regrettably, he sighed.” I don’t know why his sigh would be regrettable, though. Maybe there was a trapdoor only activated by sighs, and he’s just been dropped into a pit of spikes (…and scorpions. and maybe some poison ivy). That would, I admit, be regrettable.
tonight on writer’s corner with mica, we have TWO examples of misusing the same word (in different ways! that takes dedication and talent!) from a single fic.
—
“I’ve got no one else to lash myself at,” he said.”
“Try not to lash yourself at him, [name].”
—
[John Adams voice] incredible. ftr, lashing oneself at someone is physically AND grammatically impossible. You can lash out at someone/thing, you can lash someone with something (such as, well… a lash), but you cannot lash yourself at anything.
In the first example, you COULD work ‘lash’ in there if you really wanted to (e.g. “There’s no one in there for me to lash out at except myself”), but since ‘lash out’ implies behavior directed outwards, it’s pretty much never used reflexively, because the end result is inescapably awkward and there are many better ways to say the same thing (“I’ve got no one but myself to hurt”, “I’ve got no one else to attack in there”, etc etc)
…aaaand in the second one, the idiom intended there was clearly ‘THROW yourself at him’; ‘lash’ is just plain wrong.
tonight on writer’s corner with mica, we have a fun word mixup– ADVERSE vs AVERSE:
what’s wrong with this picture?
“I am rather adverse to the idea of giving up the pastime entirely, as I am sure you know.”
you guessed it! that should be averse, not adverse. ‘Adverse’ is something negative that HAPPENS whereas ‘averse’ is something a person can BE.
an easy way to remember it is if you can substitute “bad” in your sentence, you mean “adverse” (“examine the experiment’s adverse effects”/“examine the experiment’s bad effects”), but if you can substitute “opposed”, you mean “averse” (“she was averse to the idea of hunting”/“she was opposed to the idea of hunting”).
….actually tbh although ‘adverse’ is great and useful, ‘averse’ sounds awkward in almost any sentence, even used perfectly (unless it’s used in its weird hyphenated form (“risk-averse” is the most common usage)). Normally I’m all for promoting English’s less commonplace words but…. imo skip averse unless you’re doing a period piece. And even then use sparingly.
tonight’s writing tip: using “deign”
what NOT to do (courtesy of an otherwise decent fanfic):
“He must have come home, but I had yet to be deigned with his presence.”
a person (subject) deigns (condescends), but a person (object) cannot BE deigned, and deign takes the preposition “to” (never “with”)
our example, when corrected, becomes the much more graceful:
“He must have come home, but as yet had not deigned to grace me with his presence.”
Ok I have confirmed the phrase “tipping the velvet” existed as far back as 1725 and the definition has not changed you’re all welcome
Go write some Turn smut ya nasty kids
@ writers: for the LAST TIME, repelled means either ‘being disgusted to the point of recoiling’ or ‘what magnets do when they come into contact with a matching pole’, rappelled means lowering oneself (or being lowered) down a rope.
you cannot, I repeat, CANNOT repel down the side of a building ….well, unless you’re Magneto, that is.
idiom mixup of the day: it’s “bring to BEAR” not “bring to BARE”.
‘Bear’ here is in the sense of ‘bearing down’ (exerting pressure upon); e.g. you bring [pressure] to bear [down upon] the subject.
“bring to bare” would mean you brought something with you to be exposed, such as a stripper, which is probably not the meaning you were going for
English language fuckery of the day: “he shucked on his jeans.”
The verb ‘to shuck’ means ‘to remove an outer covering, in particular the husk from an ear of corn or the shell from an oyster’ and is used figuratively to refer to removing other outer wrappings/clothing/etc. Therefore, you can shuck OFF something, but can never ever shuck anything ON. (I mean, have you ever tried putting the husk back on a corncob? Doesn’t work so well, now does it?)
A Pretty Taste for Paradox 