Lay, lie...
You LIE down, but you LAY something on the bed. You're LYING on the bed, but you found him LAYING on the bed...
OK
Written with CAPITAL letters....
If you write it 'ok', it sounds like what an orangutan might say, and then it's spelled 'ook'...
Take/Bring
You take a friend on a trip with you, but you bring your pet to the vet.
Naming characters
In a scene with only two persons, there's usually no need to name them more than once.
This is particularly true if they are man/woman...
Try naming them early, and using descriptions afterwards.
Its, it's
Never confuse the two. It's is a contraction of 'it is'.
We usually use the contracted version, except in 'formal speech'...
(Royalty would use 'it is' :-)
Punctuation in a sentence containing speech...
"This is a typical sentence," said the teacher.
Note the ',' at the end of the spoken part, and that the sentence continues with lowecase letters. Note that you might also use stated, replied, abswered, spoke(or is that spake?)
"This is stupid!" exclaimed the high-school dropout.
The same rule applies to exclamation marks, but please note that you don't say or state but exclaim, shout or even cry out.
"What's this?" asked the idiot.
You still don't get it? lowercase!
Continuing the speech...
"They're in school," the man replies, "but if you'll come with me..."
In this sentence the two spoken parts are logically parts of the same sentence, therefore we use ',' and lowercase.
A sentence containing 'however' shouldn't end with 'though'...
(It's redundant)
Though my body may shake, my voice can only quiver.
That should explain the usage of shake and quiver...
Multi-part sentences
A sentence made of several parts is stitched together like this:
Whatever, whatever, more whatever and who cares.
All parts are separated with commas, except for the last which is AND'ed...
Redundancy...
While it's not uncommon for people to repeat themselves or othervise use redundancies when speaking, it's VERY clumsy to do it outside of the 'spoken' sentences...
Mistakes I usually don't do myself, but is quite common...
Were, where
Those were the days, but where is the soap?
Get the difference?
We're, were
Somehow, people keep confusing these with each other....
We're is a contraction of we are (present tense, plural), while were is past tense, plural.
Role, roll
Life is a stage, and we are but actors playing a role.
Roll on the other hand, can be a 'breadroll', 'bedroll', to 'roll over', a 'roll of the dices'... You get my drift?
If that doesn't help, remember Yahoo Serious playing the role of Albert einstein, playing the song 'Roll over bethowen' in the film 'Young Einstein'...
Watch your tenses!
This can't be repeated too often!
Never change your tense in a story.
there is only two exceptions to this rule:
Spoken dialogue doesn't have to be the same tense as the rest of the piece.
The reason I could do this in the diaries is because they are more like a conversation with a friend than anything else.