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writingopedBe forewarned - this is a rant. It was brought about by responses to an excerpt of my book, Call Out, that I posted to page99test.com.
First, let me explain about page99test.com. It's a website where you can post page 99 of your book and receive feedback. Why page 99? Because 'they' say that page 99 is likely to be less polished than page 1 and can give readers a better idea of overall quality. Perhaps this is true.
Next, let me point out the obvious problem with using page 99 as a benchmark: because you're missing 98 pages of story, there is no way you're going to actually know what is going on during that one page of narrative or dialogue and therefore cannot accurately judge much of anything.
Now, on to the rant.
I have received seven ratings on my page on page99test.com. Six of those came with commentary (and one person apparently rated the page twice). Below is a listing of the things that the negative raters pointed out as problems with my page 99:
1. There should only be one space between sentences.
2. Don't mix narrative of one character with dialogue of another.
3. Too many ellipses.
4. Learn how to use ellipses.
5. Not well written enough to have any idea what is going on.
Really guys?
There can, technically speaking, be one or two spaces between sentences. Most mainstream-published books use two. I will always use two. The use of only one space stems from typesetting issues which are probably outdated at this point.
The narrative mix the rater refers to here is a direct result of the book being written in first-person. It's correct as written.
Too many ellipses is a personal preference. I can't say much about that. But as for learning how to use them? They are used correctly - to show hesitation in speech. Maybe the rater thought I needed to put a space and a capital after the end of each ellipsis? Style choice. I say 'no'.
As for not being well-written enough to know what's going on...well, see my main beef with the page 99 test. Perhaps it's not well-written enough for the reader to know what's going on, even in the context of the full story, but no one else has told me so. And truthfully, if you could tell what was going on in the story as a whole from that one page, I wouldn't be doing my job as a writer.
Has anyone else had any experience, good or bad, with the page 99 test? I'd be interested to hear about it!
This is my page 99, if you're interested.
http://www.page99test.com/read-my-page/1381
First, let me explain about page99test.com. It's a website where you can post page 99 of your book and receive feedback. Why page 99? Because 'they' say that page 99 is likely to be less polished than page 1 and can give readers a better idea of overall quality. Perhaps this is true.
Next, let me point out the obvious problem with using page 99 as a benchmark: because you're missing 98 pages of story, there is no way you're going to actually know what is going on during that one page of narrative or dialogue and therefore cannot accurately judge much of anything.
Now, on to the rant.
I have received seven ratings on my page on page99test.com. Six of those came with commentary (and one person apparently rated the page twice). Below is a listing of the things that the negative raters pointed out as problems with my page 99:
1. There should only be one space between sentences.
2. Don't mix narrative of one character with dialogue of another.
3. Too many ellipses.
4. Learn how to use ellipses.
5. Not well written enough to have any idea what is going on.
Really guys?
There can, technically speaking, be one or two spaces between sentences. Most mainstream-published books use two. I will always use two. The use of only one space stems from typesetting issues which are probably outdated at this point.
The narrative mix the rater refers to here is a direct result of the book being written in first-person. It's correct as written.
Too many ellipses is a personal preference. I can't say much about that. But as for learning how to use them? They are used correctly - to show hesitation in speech. Maybe the rater thought I needed to put a space and a capital after the end of each ellipsis? Style choice. I say 'no'.
As for not being well-written enough to know what's going on...well, see my main beef with the page 99 test. Perhaps it's not well-written enough for the reader to know what's going on, even in the context of the full story, but no one else has told me so. And truthfully, if you could tell what was going on in the story as a whole from that one page, I wouldn't be doing my job as a writer.
Has anyone else had any experience, good or bad, with the page 99 test? I'd be interested to hear about it!
This is my page 99, if you're interested.
http://www.page99test.com/read-my-page/1381
