Tip #5:It may just be my psychotic views, but nothing annoys me more than DOUBLE WORDS. Nothing. At all. That, to me, is the most aggravating, distracting, horrible thing I can do while writing.
Example: "His face was red. He wiped the tears off his face."
DID YOU CATCH THAT?!?! DID YOU?!?! I can't STAND it. Just writing it made me feel dirty. I mean, that is just so distracting. When you are reading something, and you come across something like that, BAM. Everything stops. And you go, "whaaaaaa?"
So. This brings about the evil Had-Hadder.
The Had-Hadder is a "sometimes necessary" grammatical combination of 'had' and 'had'.
Example: "Harry had had to dissect a frog in fourth grade."
...Okay, not my best example, but you get the meaning. I know it's "sometimes necessary", but every time I read "had had" in a book (it was in Eragon several times), it totally throws me off. I have to stop and read it three times to make sure I'm not hallucinating.
My advice: If you ever (or if you now) realize that you are a Had-Hadder, then I suggest you find a new way to word the Had-Hadder sentence. You may argue that it is "grammatically correct", but for the sake of your book, I'd cut them out. It's just not worth ruining your reader's attention on the story to stop and wonder if that "had had" was a typo or what. You following me?
Okay. Whoo. Glad I got that off my chest.
A :D (happy) Anastasia Cross bids you good day, readers!
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