I am a famous comma masher. Once I’m in the groove, I tend to put commas where my head stops and let my gerunds run wild like mustangs on the plains, resulting in images like one my mother once blurted out: I saw an eagle driving down the road. I teased her mercilessly for years, not anymore. My challenge is ensuring commas are where they need to be and not where they’re not. So, I use Microsoft Editor and/or Grammarly to keep me on the straight and narrow (or arrow, as a friend believed, an image unto itself).

For fun, I ran two draft paragraphs through Grammarly and Microsoft Editor. One thing is clear; they rely on different stylebooks with commas and semi-colons coming and going between them.

ME vs. GRAMMAR CHECKERS – The apps’ suggestions are in parenthesis after my text; Grammarly (G), Editor(E),both(GE).

“You,” Cora called, “Despite the signs set out earlier, our water is for the boarders (borders GE) here. It is not public. And we have sick in this house (, G) so I cannot attest to the water’s cleanliness.”

One man backed; the others stood their ground. “Can’t be both, (; G) either its good water for your boarders (borders G) or it’s bad,” one of the two said.

And another . . .

A skinny body in faded tweed pants ran up the street (, G) calling her name. Cora waited until Tommy Newsom reached her, flushed from his run, his plain face sweating under a ragged straw hat, dust (, E) and dirt billowing behind him.

“Miss Countryman, please,” he pulled on the sleeve of her dress. “Please, I just come from the undertaker’s, ma’am. Two men brung (brought GE) Mr. Kanady in there, (; G) now he’s layin’ all white like the rest of them (the GE) dead bodies. He don’t (doesn’t GE) belong in (delete in, G) there, not with them. He’d rise if he could. No matter if’n he was dead or not.”

COMMENTS and OBSERVATIONS

My observation is that in its drive to be the go-to grammar app for business, Grammarly has become a swampy bog for storytellers. I miss the early versions of Grammarly when you could check grammar, spelling, or punctuation one at a time. Not anymore, now it gloms onto your file and drills through your text relentlessly totaling up the error count while reconstructing sentences, seeking improvements such as the house’s door instead of the door to the house. There is, in my head, a place for both. But then, it is my head, which may or may not be a safe or sane place.

It used to be easy to add a word to Grammarly’s dictionary. It isn’t now or I just can’t figure it out.. So, Grammarly endlessly corrects perfectly correct words (boarders) and colloquialisms every blooming time they appear. Unlike Microsoft Editor which learns boarders is a word after the first correction, much appreciated since one of my main characters runs a boarding house with boarders.

And, charmingly, Grammarly offers irrelevant word options such as president, chairperson, or head as an alternative for a chair (he sat on the president) to freshen up your text. Or, as it did two paragraphs above, suggests the text read: the house’s door instead of the entrance to the house. Microsoft Editor does no such thing. But is Editor as good as Grammarly at catching what needs caught? Know this — Editor is not as intrusive or overwhelming. Grammarly will happily inform you that you have 2,400 errors in 80,000-words when most are repetitive or irrelevant, as above. My immediate response is the desire to slit my wrists followed by the resolve to drill down through the text — days— to find the nuggets which, in all fairness, are there.

GRAMMARLY or EDITOR

I leave it up to you to decide which is best or whether you even want to bother with either. As for me, I reckon until the next best thing comes along, a quick run through Editor or a slog through Grammarly is better than ending up with an eagle driving down the road.

Last month, I wrote about the tools of the trade that I use to create my fiction. That got me thinking. What tools do my fictional characters use?

When I was writing Kindred Crimes, the first in my series featuring Oakland private eye Jeri Howard, I wasn’t using a cell phone, and neither was Jeri. I was using a computer, a clunky dual disk drive model, and I thought it was a major step up from the electric typewriter.

Jeri and I have made our way into the 21^st century. She uses her cell phone for everything from directions to looking up information, and for talking with people, of course. As for computers, like many real-life private investigators, she uses them for research. In addition to news archives, there are many paid databases that one can access by purchasing a subscription. Jeri also uses government records that are available online.

For example, in the book I’m writing now, The Things We Keep, Jeri goes onto the California Department of Justice website to check the missing persons database. I did this myself, so I could describe it accurately. And it certainly gives flavor to the narrative.

But it isn’t all Jeri at the keyboard, looking at the screen, or Jeri on the phone, interviewing someone. That would be boring for the reader and the writer. At one point in Water Signs, Jeri says:

I could just as easily interview Rachel Leverson over the phone, but whenever possible, I prefer to do so in person. That allows me to gauge reactions, facial expressions and body language. It also gets me out of the office.

Interviewing people face-to-face gives Jeri more information than pixels on a screen. In the world of my fictional private eye, there’s no substitute for shoe leather. But it really does help that Jeri can make a call without looking for a phone booth.

Kay Dexter is the protagonist of my novel The Sacrificial Daughter. She is a geriatric care manager and has access to all the tools that software and the Internet can provide. Her clients are mostly elderly people and their families.

Once again, there is no substitute for face-to-face contact. A client might be minimizing problems or feelings and Kay might not pick up on that over the phone, but she can usually read people when she’s with them. As for those online tools, there’s a scene in the book when Kay is doing research in the library at the local historical museum. She’s looking at files and photocopies, because not all the information the museum has is digitized. Those online records frequently go back only so far.

Kay uses her powers of observation as well. Some valuable items have gone missing from a client’s home. While doing an errand for another client, she visits a local antique mall:

I turned and glanced at the glass display case on the booth’s back wall. What was that? I moved closer to the case. On the top shelf, I saw a sterling silver sugar and creamer. They looked exactly like the ones I’d seen in the china cabinet at Betty’s house, right down to the floral detail on the handles.

I also write a series of historical mysteries set in the early 1950s, featuring Zephyrette Jill McLeod. Computers? Not happening there. For Jill to solve mysteries onboard the train, and off, it’s strictly person-to-person sleuthing. Jill’s job, when she’s aboard the California Zephyr, is to observe the passengers and help with their needs. Jill notices things and she files them away in her mind, ready to access the information. Along with her ability to talk with people and tease out information, these are her biggest assets as a detective.

And that’s gumshoeing, on the ever-changing streets of the Bay Area where Jeri sleuths, to the fictional mountain town where Kay oversees clients, to Jill’s shiny train as it streaks across the west.

In my far-off youth and for as long as I can remember, lurked inside me the heart of a comedy writer. I wanted nothing more than to be writing funny quips for people, like Woody Allen did for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows, back in the fifties. I wasn’t around then, but I’ve seen most of the kinescopes interviews with Allen and Caesar and was mesmerized. Just to make it clear, I wasn’t nearly as impressed by Allen’s foré into his own comedy shows, record albums, movies and even less impressed with his romantic encounters. What got me where I lived was him writing words for performers that made an audience laugh. I couldn’t imagine a greater existence.

One of my very first jobs as a writer in New York City was for No Soap Radio. As the name implies, we wrote funny ads and commercials for radio, had a ball and got paid a weekly salary! Does it get any better than that? Of course, the weekly stipend was so little I often had to decide if I would pay my rent or the phone bill, but by golly, I was a comedy writer. It was a short-lived chapter of my life, maybe a little more than a year, but the things I learned from that group of comedy writers have held fast for the rest of my writing life.

The art of comedy is serious business and you’d better know your business. You’d better know timing, delivery, and what the funny words are. By funny words – and most people don’t think about this – these are words that automatically cause people to smile or chortle. For instance:

Orange? Not so funny. Kumquat. Funny.

Move? Not so funny. Jiggle. Funnier.

Glasses? Not so funny. Spectacles. Funny. Or maybe more funny. Testicles? Whoa. Never mind. But in comedy, expect the unexpected. It often gets a laugh.

But back to words, if you don’t have the words in the right order, with the right rhythm and cadence, it’s probably not going to work. I’ve known comics to work on a one-line joke for weeks until they get it right.

Speaking of comics, have you noticed they often talk in violent or military terms? “I slaughtered ‘em last night” “Man, that audience was murder” “Go out and kill ‘em, pal,” phrases like that. There’s a reason for it. If you don’t get that laugh, you might as well be dead. Comics are very serious about their laughs.

Same with authors who write a funny mystery series. That corpse better be laughing when he hits the ground. Otherwise, I don’t sleep so good at night.