Making Your Vocal Piece Readable: 101

The first step to earning a penny on Vocal is the same as writing for anywhere: Shit's got to be readable.

It never hurts to revisit a few basics, so here we go:

Proofreading

I can proofread the crap out of something, and when I submit it, there's still an error I've missed! {Edit: this has literally just happened.}

I'm fairly good at catching mistakes, but I'm more likely to slip up if I don't have access to a computer, and I'm having to submit via my phone late in the evening.

Use a buddy

A second pair of eyes is probably the number one tool for catching gaffes.

Read aloud

Silent reading lets your brain skim over mistakes, because you know what it should say. This is even truer because you're too close to it.

Use (gasp!) AI

Writers have been using spellchecker for decades. Some use Grammarly or similar. (I don't. Does it show?) These aids can help, but they're just that: aids. Don't rely on them.

Leave it alone

Sleep on it, and revisit in the morning. Go for a walk, and revisit review when you get back. (I suck at this, especially since I've put pressure on myself to publish every day.)

Paragraphs

This isn't just for Vocal. Apparently, Readers like white space.

We see a big block of text and we get put off straight away. It sounds like basic stuff, I know, but I've seen even seasoned writers on here still open their piece with a behemoth of a paragraph.

Also remember: new speaker, new line.

Make your links clickable!

There's no point copy and pasting a link into the body of your text. Hardly anyone will visit it, sorry! It doesn't look good, either.

There are two decent alternatives:

1) Use a hyperlink

Highlight the text you want to be clickable. A little row of icons will appear just above it. Click the third icon from the left (it looks like a couple of chain links). Paste your link into the box and press enter. Voila! you have created a hyperlink. Have a cookie:

2) Embed the link

On Vocal, when you press Enter to go to a new line, you see a little plus sign, right? Click that, and then choose the middle option ("Embed link"). Paste your link into the box. Et voila! You have now embedded a link! Have another cookie:

Echo (echo echo echo)

Don't use the same word more than once. (Except for words things like "the" and "is".) The less common a word, the stronger this rule. Repetition should always be deliberate, never an oversight. That's how you make it pack a punch, instead of being boring.

Sentence structure

There's stuff readers like or dislike without even knowing realising it, or knowing why. One of those things is: sentences need to vary in length and structure. Just like paragraphs.

This is another benefit to reading aloud, even if you feel a bit of a tit when you do it. You can hear if it starts to sound a bit monotone, in a way you miss when you read inside your head.

General rule of thumb: we don't tax for full stops. [If you're American, it's "we don't tax for periods", but actually, period products are taxed, so we'll stick with the UK version.]

If you can make the sentence shorter, do. Cut extraneous words. Most adverbs can go, honestly. Modifiers like "just", "very", "slightly", they can usually go as well. Make it two shorter sentences. Then, when you've got a really long and juicy one (stop iiiiittt), you can go to town with it. You've earned it. It'll add to the symphony of a beautifully written story, instead of being another clunky line in a sea of the same.

Personal taste alert: I hate most as sentences. I rarely write them. They stick out like a sore thumb when I read them. He scratched his chin as he looked out of the window. Ugh. Heebs my writing jeebies.

I've written about this before. I don't know why they bug me. I've stopped reading a piece because it opened with an as-hole sentence. Do me a favour: try writing it another way. Does it sound better? Maybe not, but I bet it does at least some of the time. Please, At the very least, Definitely Don't layer one as on another. He scratched his chin as he looked out of the window. He listened for his wife's footsteps as he thought about the day ahead. Nobody needs to write two of those suckers in a row. (Yikes, two pronoun starters as well!)

Break the rules

Break 'em good and hard, but do it on purpose. For good reason. Do it because it adds to your writing, because it showcases your voice (or your character's voice).

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Thank you for reading!

Question time!

1. Any useful reminders for you here?
2. Do you have a proofreading buddy?
3. What else do you do to make your stuff eminently readable?