Afteglow Book Reviews is having a Summer Giveaway Ends June 10th. Lots of great books.
Get over to Laurel's Leaves. 333 contest is awesome!! Ends May 31st. She knows her stuff.
Frankie from Frankie Writes will be helping out All 4 Alabama Relief. You must go and bid on her and you have a chance at winning a Query + 30 page MS critique by Frankie. Trust me, she's good. The bidding started on Monday and will be active for five days.
Book release: South of Charm by Elliot Grace. If you have not been to Elliot's blog, go and check it out. I mean it. It is amazing and I'm sure his book will not disappoint. You can purchase South of Charm here.
Now onto the dangling participle, my quick grammar lesson, if you will. I sometimes blush when I say these two words, yes, blush. It's either the 14 year old in me or I've been conversing with Simon too much. Hypothetically (sorry, inside joke). Anyway, this sort of goes along with my -ing post I did a while back.
So let's start with a definition--Per wikipedia.
A dangling modifier, a specific case of which is the dangling participle,[1] is an error in sentence structure whereby a grammatical modifier is associated with a word other than the one intended, or with no particular word at all. For example, a writer may have meant to modify the subject, but word order makes the modifier seem to modify an object instead. Such ambiguities can lead to unintentional humor or difficulty in understanding a sentence.
For example: Running down the street, the houses looked the same.
Now, the houses are not running so obviously we're missing something. I think it would sound better this way--Running down the street, I noticed the houses looked the same.
Another one--Sliding into second, the crowd cheered.
I think this one needs a little work. As I slid into second, the crowd cheered.
These little things tend to tempt our WiPs, allowing them to sneak in without being noticed. So, when you revise keep an eye out for these buggers. They may sweet talk you, or tempt you, but you know better than to let them seduce your WiP.
What do you think? Are these dangling participles tempting your story? (yes, I blushed and maybe giggled.)
Please feel free to add anything in the comments, or if you would like me to elaborate more on this topic, I can in a future post.
Have a great day!
