I slogged through the entire novel, and it was tough. The action didn’t build like a well-written book is supposed to, the ending didn’t hit me as right.

When I finished reading the thing, I found that nearly every single thing I liked about novels was missing.

The book would have been a huge disappointment if I were reading for entertainment purposes. But, I wasn’t.

When I picked up the book to read it, I had committed myself to a single rule: read this book until you find a grammatical mistake.

At the end of the book, I sat back in my chair and let out a breath of air. The author had done it. I couldn’t find a grammatical mistake anywhere. It was a thing of beauty – something that would make my 10th grade English teacher beam with pride.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book was garbage, but I say that in the nicest way possible.

You see, my reading exercise had two purposes. The first thing I wanted to do was see if it was possible to write a story with no grammatical errors.

Check.

The second thing I was looking for was whether or not the book, through free of typos and other mistakes, followed the rules of storytelling.

That was a resounding “No.”

The author of this novel, while well-intentioned, had fallen into one of the most common traps I see when editing novels.

Time after time, writers fail to write a book that words before they start fixing minor errors.

It’s a completely natural thing to want to do.

The problem is that this is the wrong way to to do things.

I read another story recently, this time I read it because I wanted to have a good read. The book had mistakes in almost every chapter, but I kept reading.

The story was well plotted, and the action built the way it was supposed to. When I got to the end, I once again sat back in my chair and let out another breath of air.

When I see books with errors, I tend to get distracted. I think that’s natural for most people out there. But what I found with this second book, was that because it followed the essential elements of storytelling, I was actually able to forgive the author for the mistakes, because the story was compelling, and it worked wonderfully.

What I learned with this second book was that grammar mistakes are second to following the principles of storytelling.

This is the case every time.

You might have the cleanest, most grammatical book ever written. But if it doesn’t flow the way stories are meant to flow, the book will stink, and nobody, except your high school English teacher, is going to like it.

So, the next time you think you want to start proofreading your book, take a step back and look at your global story. If it doesn’t work, ignore the typos. Figure out why your story isn’t working.

Once you do that, then you can work on the grammar.

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