​Today is all about some commonly mixed-up words: too and to.

To is a word that's used with locations AND with indirect objects, as well as infinitives.
Location: I went to the store. I drove to the park. I flew to Miami. You turned to face me.
Indirect objects: I gave the book to you. He brought the vase to his mother. She looked to her mother for permission.
Infinitives: You want to read this blog.

Too means also, as well; it can also be used as a modifier that indicates excessive, exceeding.
Are you coming too? I know him too!
I ate too many cookies. He drove too fast.
Typically, people know the difference between to and too, but sometimes run into trouble on the spelling. So here's your tip:
Too has too many OOs, just like its meaning of excess, too many.

​And just in case you ever mix it up with the number 2 (two), just remember: most numbers are spelled in ways that don't make phonetic sense in modern English.

Today we're going to give you a quick run-down on the basic types of perspective you can use when writing a story.
Perspective in grammar refers to who's telling the story. You've probably heard people talking about 1st person and 3rd person, and occasionally even 2nd person. These are all kinds of perspective. Often you'll see it abbreviated as POV: point of view.

1st person: Is always centered on the 1st person in the room. It's your main character. If you're having a conversation with someone else, you use 1st person to refer to yourself. (Unless you're Elmo. Please don't be like Elmo.) 1st person pronouns: I, me, my; we and us, if you're using 1st person plural.
3rd person: Imagine you're having a conversation with a friend, but you're talking about someone else; a third person who's not in the conversation. This is the most common POV for novels, with 1st pretty close behind. 3rd person pronouns: he, she, him, her, they/them (nonbinary); also they and them as plural.
2nd person: Imagine you're having a conversation with another person. The person you're talking to is addressed with 2nd person, because they're the second person in the room, after you. Writing in 2nd person is extraordinarily difficult to pull off, because you're telling a story as if the reader is the main character. For an excellent example of how this can be done well, try N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. And even there, not all chapters are in 2nd person, because it's a multi-POV series. 2nd person pronouns: you, y'all, ye, thy... (There are too many regional and dialect-based variations to list them all here.)

To figure out which point of view you're using, ask yourself a simple question:
Who's telling this story?
(No, the answer isn't you, the author.)
On the page, who's telling the story? Whose perspective are we seeing everything through?
Is the main character talking for themselves? Then it's 1st person.
Is someone else (a narrator) speaking for the characters? Then it's 3rd person.

Is one perspective better than the others? Not really. Some people have preferences, but the thing that matters most is that you use your chosen perspective well, to let your reader engage with the characters. And you can always change your perspective during edits if you decide it isn't working. It takes a lot of effort, but it's possible. Just remember that whichever perspective you choose, you still have to get deep inside your main character's head to understand what's going on and create a compelling story.

As we're wrapping up our summer workshop series on how to implement everyone's favorite writing advice (Show, don't tell), I thought it would be a good time for a companion tip:

DON'T tell, then show.

We see this in many manuscripts, and it's something I catch myself doing sometimes as well, especially in earlier drafts. That's what early drafts are for, though, so it's okay--as long as you catch it later and fix it!

Telling then showing can take on several different forms. One example is stating a character's emotional state and then showing it, like this:
She was sad. Tears poured down her face.
Do you see how stating it first minimized the emotional impact? Showing someone's feelings is almost always going to create more sympathy in the reader than straight up telling them about how the character feels. By stating it first, I lost that chance for the reader to connect with my character.

Tell then show can also look like telling the reader what's causing the character to react a certain way before showing the reaction. Like this:
Mary Sue looked so much like my long-lost sister, she and Jane could have been twins. She always made me think of Jane. Her hair shimmered like pollen-dusted sunflowers in the afternoon light, just like Jane's had. They both had a healthy dusting of freckles sprinkled across their cheekbones. And Mary Sue's nose crinkled up just like Jane's had when she smiled, with those two little wrinkles over the bridge like a pause symbol.
I paused. Maybe Mary Sue was Jane?
So in this case, I started with too big a hint at the conclusion the character was going to draw. You knew where that paragraph was going from the first sentence. And that kills any tension I might have been trying for. Just like in this next, shorter example:
A black cat ran across my path. I jumped back, startled.
See? You don't feel any anxiety on behalf of the startled character if you already know what's going on. In this case, the reader finds out before the character's (imaginary) brain has had a chance to process a sudden event. If I make even a simple switch here to:
I jumped back, startled, as a black cat ran across my path
the passage immediately has more tension. And tension is good.

Telling before showing is like telling someone the punchline to a joke first. It throws off the pacing, and loses the audience's interest. It's boring. So trust your reader to be smart enough to understand your "showing" prose. They usually are. And if you're worried they won't get it, that's what beta readers, critique partners, and editors are for--helping you find the perfect balance between telling and showing.
So remember:
Sometimes you need to show, and sometimes you need to tell, but you almost never need to do both.

Here's an example of how this could be written, with the backstory in red and weaved in to the action.
​
​

"Another double vodka, Mel?"
I smiled, leaning my elbows on the beer-soaked bar and knowing exactly why he wanted to get me another drink. Idiot. 
With the forced grin fixed firmly on my face, I fought back the images of my vomit-soaked WHITE dress, the pole-dancing induced lump on my forehead, and the blurred sea of legs circling me as I collapsed on the dancefloor, and met Tim's eyes, the tinsel dangling from his Santa hat like massive glittering eyebrows. 
The droning, new-fangled dance beat pounded through my head, reminding me of how old I was, and how another Christmas party like that disaster last year was not going to be repeated. I was no longer at rock bottom after all. 
And, there was no doubt he was still fuming about why he hadn't been one of the four I'd tried it on with. Jealous idiot. 
Becky snickered behind me, and my smile grew even wider. I internally sighed and shook my head. "Thanks, Tim, but I'll buy my own drinks this year." 
​
​

So, what you have here is a lot of the same information, the odd detail left out that might not be essential right now, but perhaps a few more visuals, more setting thrown in among the back story, which itself is passed on to the reader more as momentary memories as opposed to a longer recount of the event. The voice is still there but the subtlety is magnified, and still the same information can easily be gleaned about what went down at that Christmas party. 
​

It's time to talk about passive voice! But what is passive voice, exactly?
In English, we have two "voices" for our verbs: Active and Passive. Don't get too hung up on the terminology though, because it isn't as complicated as it sounds.

Active voice is when the subject of the sentence is doing the action. Like this:
I (the subject) ate (the action) the cookies (the object of the verb).
They (subject) were (action) delicious.
(Why yes, I'm craving sugar right now, how could you tell?)

Passive voice is when the subject is being passive like a doormat--they're being acted upon by someone else. Like this:
The cookies (subject) were baked (action) by me (the person really doing the action).
In this case, the cookies didn't have to do any work; they just sit around and wait, passively, for me to bake them.
Passive voice will usually have a subject later in the sentence that's doing the action.

So why is this bad when writing? Well, for starters, instead of saying "The cookies were baked by me" I could use half as many words and make it active: "I baked cookies." And because the sentence is shorter and to the point, it's also more straightforward to read.
Another benefit of Active voice is that it puts the focus of the sentence on what's usually important: the actors and their actions. It allows you to pick stronger verbs.

Think about that passive example again. Can you see how "The cookies were baked by me" is probably putting the emphasis on the wrong part of the sentence? Even if someone had asked who made the cookies, it would still be simpler to reply "I did," or "I baked them." Because my action is what is interesting about the situation.

Now, do you have to eliminate every single instance of passive voice? Probably not. There are rare situations where passive voice works better, particularly if you want to emphasize that the subject of the sentence was passive in whatever happened. But you should look for any instances of passive voice and examine them carefully to see if active voice is stronger.

There's a quick tip someone came up with on how to identify passive voice. Multiple sources cite Rebecca Johnson, a professor of culture and ethics at USMC, as the genius behind this tip.
If you can add "by zombies" to the end of your sentence and it works, you're using passive voice.
Like this: I ate the cookies by zombies. (Doesn't make sense, so not passive.)
​Or: The cookies were delicious by zombies. (Also not passive.)
But: The cookies were baked by zombies IS passive. Since there was already a "by so-and-so" clause in there, you replace that one with "by zombies."

And I don't know about you, but I don't want to eat any cookies that might have been made by zombies. That seems sketchy to me. So go edit those pesky zombies out of your manuscripts, along with instances of the passive voice!