Not everyone who sits down to write a fantasy novel has an extensive educational background or a job that requires high-quality writing on a daily basis. I certainly didn’t when I got started, and anyone who read my stories would have been able to tell.

Your best practice will always be to have a friend, family member, or disinterested party proofread your novel before you publish anything. But if for whatever reason you don’t have someone you can ask to proofread, or you want to make sure your novel is at minimum free of noticeable, commonplace errors before sharing it even with a friend, this blog post will help you find tools that can help you and look for the common mistakes spellcheck might sometimes miss.

Tools for proofreading

I’ve already written a post on using AI in your writing, so refer back to that one for more in-depth info on the specific AI-based tools I’ll mention here. For starters, you can use ChatGPT or Claude. The way I use these is to simply paste my finished chapter into the chatbox in quotes and say “Act like a proofreader and point out any spelling or grammatical errors.”

Note that giving the chatbot a role as a proofreader tends to help it stick close to that role throughout the rest of the chat so it doesn’t “forget” what it’s doing and either do less or more than you asked for.

Some AI tools will point out mistakes that aren’t actually there or miss mistakes that are there, so they’re not completely reliable. The Hemingway App tends to be more accurate since it’s specifically intended for writers. It can act as a standard spell-checker and also give other suggestions for your writing.

Naturally Word and Google Docs have built in spell-check features, but the problem with them is they tend to miss certain mistakes I’ll talk about more later in this blog post. Basically, no technology is completely reliable when it comes to proofreading.

Mistakes to avoid

You are the first line of defense against obvious or embarrasing mistakes in your writing. For now, let’s just go over some of the most common errors that even somewhat more experienced writers may make from time to time.

1. Possessive vs. contraction – its/it’s, your/you’re

A possessive word is a word that indicates having/possessing something. For instance, the words “his,” “hers,” “its,” “yours,” and “theirs.” “His car is red;” in this phrase, his is the possessive and the car is the object he possesses.

Where the confusion comes in is between a possessive, like its and yours, and contractions, like it’s and you’re. A contraction is a shortened melding of two words, in this case a pronoun and a verb. It’s means the same as “it is,” not to be confused with “its,” which indicates possession, and you’re means the same as “you are,” not to be confused with “your.”

• Incorrect: “It’s form was smaller than expected. Its not going to change any time soon.”
• Correct: “Its form was smaller than expected. It’s not going to change any time soon.”
• Incorrect: “Your not doing it right. Clearly, it’s not you’re day.”
• Correct: “You’re not doing it right. Clearly, it’s not your day.”

Basically, just remember that with pronouns (words like hers, his, theirs, and its), possession doesn’t use an apostraphe. So if you see its, you know it’s possessive. If you see it’s, you can just expand it to “it is” in your mind to see if it fits correctly in the sentence. The same goes for your and and you’re.

2. There vs. their vs. they’re

Another example of a possessive pronoun and a contraction that often get confused is “their” (possessive) and “they’re” (contraction). You can expand “they’re” to “they are,” but in the case of these words, there’s a third word that comes in to add even more confusion. “There” can be used in different ways, but the important thing to remember is that they’re always means “they are” and “their” is always possessive. Any remaining uses should be spelled “there.”

• Incorrect: “There going to the party over their. They’re car isn’t working well.”
• Correct: “They’re going to the party over there. Their car isn’t working well.”
• Incorrect: “Their isn’t another option.”
• Correct: “There isn’t another option.”

3. Homophone mistakes

Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. There are way too many in the English language, and I can’t go over them all, so I’ll just focus on three examples.

1. Accept vs. except: Accept means to consent to receive something. Except means “not including.” “I can accept anything except for that.”
2. Effect vs. affect: Effect is a noun; it is the result or outcome of something. Affect is a verb and means to cause something. “The sun negatively affects my skin. The sun has a negative effect on my skin.”
3. Than vs. then: Than is used for comparison. Then is used to denote time or the next thing to occur. “If you think you’re taller than me, then let’s take actual measurements.”

I see each of these mistakes often, even in professionally written articles. I’ve made them plenty of times myself, and I’ve also learned to watch out for them and sometimes just do a quick search through each chapter to look specifically for these kinds of mistakes.

4. Sentence fragments

A sentence fragment is basically when you end a sentence in the middle. A proper sentence is made up of either an independent clause, meaning a phrase that can stand on its own like “Tom stole a dragon,” or an independent clause plus at least one dependent clause.

A dependent clause is a phrase that can’t stand on its own. For example, “Since she had completed her plans, she decided to write the letter immediately.” The phrase “Since she had completed her plans” is a dependent clause. It doesn’t work by itself, and it is not a complete sentence, so if you put a period after it, you have a sentence fragment.

Sentence fragments aren’t always a mistake. Sometimes, they’re used for emphasis or as a literary device. For example, let’s say someone is reminiscing over the past, and you write their words as follows: “It was a beautiful summer day, and I was running. Running up a grassy hill without a care in the world. Until the soldiers came.” The first sentence is a complete sentence made up of two independent clauses; both “it was a beautiful summer day” and “I was running” can be sentences on their own. The second and third sentences are sentence fragments, but they add emphasis by slowing down the reader to make the phrase “until the soldiers came” more impactful.

Here’s an example of a sentence fragment that is incorrect: “The dragon’s scales shimmered with an emerald hue, reflecting the sunlight. With eyes that held the wisdom of centuries.” The phrase “with eyes that held the wisdom of centuries” is not a complete sentence. Similarly, you can’t start proper sentences with conjunctions like “and,” “but,” or “or.” Generally, you want to avoid sentence fragments outside of dialogue.

5. Run-on sentences

I think run-on sentences are even more common than sentence fragments. While many people think of a run-on sentence as just a sentence that is too long, it’s often an actual grammatical mistake in which multiple indpenend clauses are put together incorrectly.

An example of a run-on sentence is: “The sun set behind the mountains the sky turned dark and the stars began to glow overhead.”

“The sun set behind the mountains” is an independent clause, so it needs a period or a comma before introducing the next clause. To correct this sentence, you would either add a period or a comma after “The sun set behind the mountains.”

As another example, “She loves to read books she spends hours at the library every weekend” should be “She loves to read books. She spends hours at the library every weekend.” Alternatively, you can replace the first period with a semicolon: “She loves to read books; she spends hours at the library every weekend” or with the word “and”: “She loves to read books, and she spends hours at the library every weekend.”

Some more tips

This post turned out to be a lot more complicated and in-depth than I intended, so if you skipped to the end, here are a few simpler pieces of advice you can follow to improve your novel:

1. Proofread more than once. You won’t catch all the mistakes the first time.
2. Take a step back before a final proofread. I have a tendency to become blind to my own mistakes after about third time reading a chapter. A break will usually clear my head and let me look at the chapter with fresh eyes.
3. Look for repeated words or multiple sentences or paragraphs in a row that start with the same word/name. I do this often in sections with a lot of dialogue. I find myself starting each paragraph with the speaker’s name, which quickly becomes repetitive, and if you’re just skimming, can be somewhat annoying. I also find myself using similar words and phrases in the same chapter. This can be hard for me to pick out on my own, so I sometimes ask ChatGPT for help pointing out overly repetitive words or phrases.
4. Research constantly. I would suggest to any writers who hope to publish their writing to constantly look up how to use hyphens, commas, and various parts of speech. You should become familiar with the rules of grammar and spelling and word usage.

Keep in mind, even if writing is a hobby for you at the moment, if there is any possibility you may want to write professionally one day, you want good writing samples that demonstrate your improvement over time. What you don’t want is a lot of content online that is under your name or internet profile and could make a potential publisher or agent think twice about taking you on.

Final thoughts

Writing fiction is a science just as much as it is an art, and there are certain rules you should follow if you want to demonstrate your skills over time. There’s always more to learn, and your work will never be perfect, but you can at least avoid the obvious mistakes that might distract readers.

What are some other common mistakes that you’ve noticed when reading or writing? Or what are some other tips for catching errors in your writing? Comment below to let me know, and in the meantime, like and subscribe to get updated when my next post on worldbuilding tips that helped me when writing my own novel, Loyalty Fallen.

While you’re at it, head over to read the first chapters of the novel and let me know what you think!