5. Start by looking for tense. Your story needs to be consistently in one tense. If you use past tense, you’ve got to stick to it. If you use present tense, fine, but you’ve got to stick to it.
6. Then look at sentences Does each sentence have a subject and a verb? Does it indicate tense? Do you have run on sentences? Comma splices? Do you know what these are? If not, come ask. Are sentences very long? Too long? Do they sound clumsy?
7. Check your punctuation When you ask a question, do you use a ? Does each sentence end in a full stop? Read through to carefully think about commas. Colons and semicolons – be careful here. If you don’t understand them, steer clear. Do look at the exercise on this though. Possessive apostrophe – have you used this correctly? Contractive apostrophe – have you used this correctly?
8. Dialogue When you write dialogue this has its own set of rules. Do you change lines with each new speaker? Do you ALWAYS have punctuation before closing speech marks (note, you MUST – if nothing else, put in a comma) Is your punctuation INSIDE the speech marks. .” not ”. Are there any other tricks that might trip you up? Have you looked for these?
9. After that. Look for the most literate classmate you can find. Get them to read through your story. Get them to read carefully. Make them highlight mistakes they find. Act on these. Talk about the story, and make changes.
10. Find Mr Edgecombe. Make him read one paragraph. He’ll look for mistakes.
11. The checklist you’ve been given is not exhaustive. What else do you need to carefully look over? Do this now.
