Author Archive
The Guardian’s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But “said” is far less intrusive than “grumbled”, “gasped”, “cautioned”, “lied”. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary. (Elmore Leonard)
While Rowling’s use of the word ‘ejaculated’ as a dialogue tag is stretching the bounds of those tricky little buggers, I don’t think only using ’said’ is a route to take either.
People say the word ’said’ becomes invisible. For the most part, it does. Then you come across something like Raymond Carver’s ‘The Bath’/'A Small, Good Thing’ and the desire to light those saids on fire rises exponentially.
Not every piece of dialogue requires a tag. While I agree that the emotion should already be clear in the character’s words, sometimes a dialogue tag is needed for emphasis. Sometimes. I personally like to use motion. Correctly, I might add. Your characters can’t blink, smile, shuffle or twitch words no matter how hard you try. So replace that comma with a period and make the movement separate. But ’said’ is a good bridge to combine speech with motion. Your character said as he rolled a pencil between his fingers. Actions speak louder than words and all.
If it’s clear who’s speaking, and the tone of the conversation is evident (which it should be), then dialogue tags aren’t needed. Movement is, especially if the block of dialogue is too long, but tags are not.
Dialogue tags should be used sparingly, even ’said.’ While people say ’said’ becomes invisible, you go ahead and read a story where every single line of dialogue uses ’said’ as a tag and let me know if they’re still invisible (see above re: Raymond Carver). And when using them, keep them simple. A person only ejaculates from one part of their body and it’s certainly not their mouth. And just for anyone that’s curious:
asseverated – verb, to declare earnestly or solemnly; affirm positively
And I just realized I skipped number two on Elmore’s list. I’ll do that one next. Oops.
The Guardian has an excellent article (or two) about the 10 rules of writing as so stated by a slew of authors. I figured it’d be a good bet for me to go through them and give my two cents. Plus it actually gives me fodder for blogging. I think going one by one would be good. More stuff to write, you know? I’m not going to have set days for posting this. Just whenever I feel like it. This one I’ll combine two, both my Elmore Leonard.
Using adverbs is a mortal sin.
Mortal sin, huh? That’s pretty serious. While those heinous -ly words can be a major pain in the ass, like all things, I think they can be just fine in moderation. Sometimes, just sometimes, taking the lazy way out is okay. Sometimes it adds the flourish that may be just enough to bring the sentence home. Sometimes it’s just better than cutting it out completely or going off on a tangent in its place. So yes, I think they’re perfectly fine in moderation. But just like eating too many jelly beans, use them too much and you’ll end up with nothing but a pile of shit.
Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
Oi. Never is such a finite word. While mood-setting weather is a horribly dull way to open a book, if it’s a twister sending a Buick at the character’s face, I think it could work. And I don’t think it lies totally in description, either. The atmosphere can be active. See re: twister. But opening chapter one with a dew-covered meadow after a light summer shower will but me to sleep before chapter two. Unless there’s something about to traipse through that meadow ready, willing and able to crush the supposed glittering beauty, spare me. Just get me to something relevant, huh?
But again, it depends. 90% of the time it’s not the place to start. But if it’s done right, it can kick ass. Considering the odds, if you’re not a gambler, I’d recommend saving your money and not risk it.
First vampires get neutered and go back to high school. God knows why. You’d think they’d have better things to do with their immortality than sit through algebra and pine after jail bait. While the simpering pussy vampire isn’t new in the slightest (I remember being 11 and wanting to tell Louis to get a tan just to shut him the hell up), the market’s become saturated with whiny little bastards that somehow, by the graces of a rather sadistic set of gods, find something interesting having him pine after a chick 1/16 his age. That’s like a grown man falling in love with a sperm. Ew.
But now it’s seeped into zombies. How, I have no fucking idea. They’re not even sexually appealing. Vampires were stretching the necrophiliac in all of us. I mean, technically they were the UNDEAD, having already died and risen. Really creepy when you think about it. But zombies? Not only are they dead but they’re actually decomposing. How the shit can that be made into a romance?
I read Generation Dead expecting a hell of a lot more than what I got. Aside from the fact that it’s a total social commentary on how we treat people considered “different,” (I really don’t like being preached to), it was boring as hell. The “zombies” just kind of lumbered along as social activists without personalities and the MC started developing a crush on one. It’s a corpse. A reanimated corpse. That’s rotting. And may or may not have a craving for your brains. Nom nom nom?
And then we’re getting books like Never Slow Dance with a Zombie and I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It and I have to wonder where the hell the market went there. Yeah, it’s different but I thought SMeyer promoting unhealthy pedophile relationships was bad. Now girls (and guys?) are going to start hanging out at the morgue looking for dates.
I get the transition of vampires. I can see the evolution there. They’re supposed to be sexy so they can draw you in and eat you. But zombies? Why must we destroy zombies too? Why must they, too, get their testicles chopped off and handed to them? Why can’t we just keep them little more than brain-hungry puppets functioning on the basest of ferral instincts? Because that’s what they are.
So call me a zombist. I’d never date one. I don’t want to dance with one. I don’t want to kiss one. For the love of Christ. Can someone please give horror its nut sack back?
No, I’m not a PETA nut. I’m not even a crazy animal rights activist. I’m just morally opposed to zoos and any places where animals are harbored purely for our entertainment. Like Seaworld. Killer whales were not put on this earth to smack balls into baskets with their fins for us. Bears aren’t supposed to ride tricycles. Horses aren’t supposed to high dive. And so on and so forth.
Zoos and animal sanctuaries can have their merit. I’m not opposed to helping endangered animals thrive by breeding and caring for them in captivity, nurturing them back to healthy numbers, and then releasing them back into the wild. But do they really need to be put on display? Every zoo I’ve been to, the animals look downtrodden and melancholy. Some of them even look drugged for how sluggish and unresponsive they are. Ooooo, yay! I can see a tiger! I’d much rather pay for a safari on the Serengeti and put myself in the cage while the animals run around their homes as they should. Animals are much more majestic when they’re free to live.
So really, should we be all that surprised that a tiger jumped out of its compound at the San Francisco Zoo and mauled a kid to death after the dumbass kept pelting it with rocks? And the police shot the tiger to death. As if it was expected to be a little calico kitty. Or what about when a full-grown chimp going, pardon the pun, ape shit on someone, literally ripping her face off, after being made to perform for most of its life, not to mention slapped on human mood stabilizers? Really? And again, the chimp died.
And now we got a killer whale (uh, hello?) that lived up to its name and started to eat its trainer during a live show down in Seaworld. If my life were reduced to a performing monkey act, I’d probably want to eat my trainer too.
And let’s not forget Roy’s unfortunate run in with his own Siberian tiger at his show. But the tiger was in good spirits before the show, they say! Guys, it’s a fucking tiger. Let’s get real here, okay?
Let me put it this way: the only reason dogs don’t eat our faces in the night is because they’ve been domesticated for 10,000 years. And even then they still maintain that instinct that allows them to flip out on people for no apparent reason or provocation. These performing animals? They’re, what, two, maybe three generations born in captivity? Do you really think you’ve bred the wild out of them in that short of a time span? Please tell me people can’t be that stupid.
Go ahead and think I’m a heartless bitch for not really caring that yet another trainer got his ass eaten by a performance animal. That’s the risk they take, isn’t it? You had Steve Erwin doing all sorts of inappropriate things to exceptionally wild animals. He put himself in that danger so the law of numbers would dictate that the probability he’d die by one of those ferocious animals would increase dramatically. Not a shock that he ended up going out that way. And the Grizzly Man living his life with wild grizzly bears. Are we really that surprised that he was mauled to death by one? Duh?
It’s like being surprised that a race car driver dies racing his car. You’d think it’d almost be inevitable considering the risk involved in doing something like that. You put yourself in that risk. So don’t be surprised if you die by it. These aren’t kittens and puppies and cute little teddy bears. They. Are. Wild. Animals. Period. They function on pure instinct. Just because you’ve trained it to toss a ball in a basket doesn’t mean it isn’t plotting your death.
Over at Cornell Deville, he’s running a type of workshop thing for showing versus telling that I decided to join. Why not, right? After I finished writing my little blurb, I looked at what I wrote and my jaw dropped. Have you ever had one of those moments when you’re writing (or after you’ve written something) where you’re truly, amazingly proud of what you’ve put on paper? And I’m not talking about just liking what you’ve written but a level of “OMFG I just wrote that! I rock!” That’s how I felt and still feel about this little blurb. It’s a definite ‘holy shit’ for me. Now if I could just maintain, I’d be golden.
But the deal for this little exercise was it had to be no more than 250 words and contain the following information: 1) Your main character is 12 years old. 2) She has long hair and we need to know the color. 3) She’s wearing white shorts, a tank top and flip flops. 4) It’s a late summer evening. 5) Her parents are out, and she thinks she’s alone in the house. 6) Something is making her believe otherwise.
Simple enough. We just couldn’t spell out the obvious. He gave a good example using other prompts of showing versus telling that you all should check out. I know I’ve practiced my own SvT on here. But here’s what I came up with for my bit to the action. Can you spot everything I needed to include in my less-than-250-words?
Slick foam rubber smacks against the soles of Maia’s feet to the tune of the aging grandfather clock in the living room. Tick flop. Flip tock.
She hurries past a black window where two luminescent eyes flicker unevenly at her from the other side. In the dead of August days, Maia’s hair burns just as brightly as those flickering bugs. Now it’s just knotted on top of her head to keep from smothering her neck. What was once flowing and smooth was now a nest of uncontrollable frizz.
Stark white shorts hidden behind smears of summer fwap against the wall as she grabs a pair of jeans. The dead duds on the floor came home in a bag from Mom’s hand, not hers. But the spaghetti straps are a must. She would have preferred a tube top but Mom didn’t allow those. Yet.
Just one more night until ‘teen’ officially enters Maia’s life. The kids at school won’t be able to call her a baby anymore.
The porch’s screen door slams and Maia jumps at the call. She frowns and walks to the window where an empty, velvet driveway waves back up at her. The screen slams again and she looks to the trees just out of reach. Their leaves hang heavy in the thick, humid air. A stair creaks and Maia’s heart starts racing the tocking of the grandfather clock.
First one to morning wins.
