Friday, April 07, 2006

A Simple Writers Guide or a Guide for Simple Writers!

Part One - The Board of Keys.

The keyboard is the long thing that sits below your screen and has a number of letters of which the only legible spelling is Qwerty. You will have to figure out your own rules for spelling but I will attempt to explain the functions of some of the other keys.

. - small dot that allows the reader to take life-giving breath. A row of full stops indicates that the writer has forgotten what they were saying.

' - enables faster writing by allowing letters to be missed out, best to pop them in where you fancy.

; - don't worry about this one, the computer will take over and do this one for you whether you want it or not.

! - denotes a raise in the eyebrow department when reading.

( { [ - containers to stop words from escaping.

@ - indicates where a person is should you wish to contact them e.g. @home

? - an ear sign showing that the reader should take particular notice as this may be vital to the plot.

" - shhh, someone is talking.

* - denotes a gap in the time/space continuum of a piece of writing.

& - in antiquated handwriting this apparently meant 'and'.

Arrow keys - allows for hopping backwards and forwards to any words that you really like.

Shift - Capitals in manual mode, often mistaken for key below.

Caps Lock - a nuisance device.

Ctrl/Alt/Del - a lethal combination that can fuck up a piece of work.

Esc - see above.

F keys - probably best left alone.

3 comments:

Maxine Clarke said...

Hello again, I liked this post so I sent the link to Frank Wilson at Books, Inq. He has linked to it on his site. Frank is a really great guy who has a well-visited blog.
http://booksinq.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-you-want-to-be-writer.html

all best
Maxine.

Anonymous said...

Excellent! I do the "row of full stops" thing a lot so obviously forget what I'm saying on a regular basis. Sounds reasonable enough :-)

Unknown said...

Thank you both, I have loads more writing tips. I spent years writing them for myself when I dried up in the novel department. Glad that they are finding a new home and providing the odd snigger!