Manuscript bloopers. Aren’t they a gas? I sometimes look forward to that first read-through after I’ve finished a novel, just to see the funny things I accidentally typed.
What’s even better is when I completely read over them and send the novel out to beta. Boy do my beta-partners get a blast out of that!
Here’s J.K. Ford to talk about some of her bloopers.
If you write at all, you’ve had your share of manuscript bloopers, whether it’s a novel, term paper, short story or newspaper article. Manuscript bloopers come in the form of misspelled words, incorrect words in wrong places, nouns doing odd things they can’t do, misplacement of words and dangling participles. Here are five examples of manuscript bloopers from my own writings. Go ahead. Laugh. I did. After I bonked myself on the head.
Marci laughed as Jason hip-bumped around the room, signing an old Aerosmith tune.
(Really? He signed a tune? Interesting.)
David shuffled to the bathroom and let out a long yarn.
(The imagery here is too comical for me. Poor David.)
Standing at the window, Eric’s hands rested on the sill.
(Don’t you hate it when hands can’t decide to stand or rest?)
Lily laid back and sighed as her eyes following her father around the room.
(I’d do a bit more than sigh if my eyes were out of their sockets and following someone)
“Where is that blasted hat at?”
(I NEVER place participles at the end of a sentence. Ever. It’s like a huge pet peeve for me, and yet I found one!! Agghhh. To tell you the truth, I think my son snuck in and added it when I wasn’t looking just to make me cringe and turn 10 shades of red. And yes, he would do that.)
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What are some of your manuscript bloopers?
About J.K. Ford:
As a young Army brat, Reader’s Choice award winner J. (Jenny) Keller Ford, traveled the world and wandered the halls of some of Germany’s most extraordinary castles hoping to find the dragons, knights and magic that haunted her imagination. Though she never found them, she continues to keep their legends alive. Her story, The Amulet of Ormisez, is available as part of the MAKE BELIEVE anthology. Dragon Flight, is part of the One More Day anthology. When not at her keyboard breathing new life into fantasy worlds, Jenny spends time collecting seashells, bowling, swimming, riding roller coasters and reading. She works as a paralegal by day and lives on the west coast of Florida with her family, three dogs, and a pretentious orange cat who must have been a dragon in his previous life.
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Jennifer M Eaton 
As long as I catch them before a final work goes out, I get some great laughs from my bloopers. 🙂 Such as:
“If you want to be a typical grad student, you shave imported beer, not domestic.”
and
He pulled back to take her head and caress her wet cheeks.
I tend to overdo the bodily violence to my characters. 😉
Where was he going to take her head? 🙂 That’s too funny. And how do you shave beer? That would be fun to see. 🙂 We writers are a silly bunch, aren’t we?
“Chapter FIVEteen” Missed by four sets of eyes. Then there was my latest Scrivener mess-up where I wanted to replace the word “da” with “father” but didn’t know I had to tell Scrivener to replace only the full word. It found every instance of “da” and replaced it so I ended up with words like “fatherncing” “fatherrkness” and everyone’s favorite, “banfatherdges”. *head, desk*
LOL!!! Oh my.
Thanks for having me today, Jennifer!!! I can’t wait to see what blunders other writers have made. They can be quite funny.