We watch Mike Holmes from time to time, my fiance and I, and the episode of Holmes on Homes that is on as I write this entry included the spectacular idiocy of a contractor who notched floor joists and ran pipes through the notches, then reinforced said floor joists with plywood on either side of each joist. In case you were wondering, that’s not a good idea. You actually aren’t supposed to notch floor joists because it ruins the integrity of the beam, making it more likely to break. You can drill holes through the middle of the joists, but the top and the bottom have to be sound. They work together  to support your weight when you walk on the floor. The top is compressed and the bottom is pulled; the middle doesn’t really do much. If you cut a notch in the wood, the part that is left will break under pressure, because it doesn’t have the other half to hold it together.

The same can be said of our writing. We must have a handle on the foundations of writing before we can expect what we write to be worthwhile. My monthly newsletters try to shed some light on these foundations. I’m going to briefly outline some of the necessities now.

1. Spelling. Yeah, sure, there’s spell check, but it doesn’t catch everything, and the English language is full of oddities. In addition to which, you need different spelling if you are writing for a US audience vs a Canadian or British audience. (I’m sure there are other countries that use British spelling besides Canada and Britain.)
2. Grammar. If spelling makes it so people know what the words are, grammar makes it so people know what the meaning is. How we order our words is incredibly important when it comes to meaning.
3. Punctuation. So few people know how to use the semicolon and the colon properly. It seems that even fewer understand periods and commas. An incorrectly placed comma can do more to destroy the integrity of a sentence than mis-ordered words.
4. Facts. You need to get your facts straight. You might make up a lot of things (e.g., We’ll Write You an Opera You Can’t Refuse is about the Italian musicians’ mob and is set in the Italian district of Halifax – I have no idea if there’s an Italian district of Halifax, and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a musicians’ mob), but you need to get some facts straight in order to preserve realism (e.g., the same story talks about real historical people and events and mentions pieces of music that would actually be performed by an orchestra or an opera company).
5. Plot. Okay, if you aren’t writing fiction you have a theme, but the concept still applies: you need to have a reason to write the piece, a flow to what you’re writing, and something to hold it all together. I wrote an essay in university about the use of the name John in Jane Eyre. That sentence just told you what held the paper together.

These five elements constitute your foundation, your floor joists. If you neglect any one of these, your work will be less. It will be weaker, and it won’t hold up under pressure.

This is where outside editors come in. I like to have other people read my work and let me know where I fell down, where things could be stronger. It’s similar to having Mike and his crew come in to fix up a house that an idiot contractor screwed up, but when it comes to my writing, I’m the one who has to do the work to “make it right.”