I Say/Exclaim/Pronounce!

"Let's talk about dialogue tags," he said.

"Let's talk about dialogue tags," he instructed.

Which sounds better? (Hint: it's the first one.)

I had a conversation with someone about dialogue tags recently. He favored tags like "asked," "exclaimed," and the like; I said that "said" was almost always the right choice. Look at these and see which one makes more sense and reads better:

"What do you think about dialogue tags?" he said.

"What do you think about dialogue tags?" he asked.

I think the first one sounds better and eliminates redundancy. Readers will know that the person asked something because there's a question mark at the end of the sentence. The writer doesn't need to reinforce that idea. The same is true for exclamation marks. "I love dialogue tags!" he exclaimed. That's just as redundant.

A few months ago, I downloaded a mystery/thriller for my Kindle and had to stop reading less than a quarter of the way in. Among the novel's distracting faults was that people hardly ever said anything. They "asked," "interjected," "opined," "interrrupted," etc. Sprinkling in a different dialogue tag is understandable. Using them all the time is terrible.

The worst dialogue tag in history, however, was one even the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used often. In Conan Doyle's more innocent times, writers could get away with it. The tag was "ejaculated," used as a synonym for "exclaimed." Dialogue between Watson and Holmes would go something like . . .

"Extraordinary!" I ejaculated.
"Elementary," said he.

I dare say that, in our less innocent age, the use of "ejaculated" as a dialogue tag certainly makes the scenes read differently. Of course, if Watson had to indulge Holmes his surliness and cocaine use, perhaps Holmes had to deal with Watson's peccadilloes as well.

"Happy writing," I said.

Celebration Day

My sister graduated from Dickinson over the weekend. Even though I'm pretty sure she doesn't read my little writing blog, let me say that I'm very proud of her. She graduated summa cum laude and got accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. On June 4, she starts a real job that pays a real wage. She has her life a lot more together than I did at her age.

Because I'm a wirter, the pomp and circumstance of graduation made me ponder some things. How would yuor favorite protagonists or characters (villains included) describe the ceremony? What would differ in their accounts? What details would one harp on while the other overlooked entirely? Would one snore thru the speeches while another sat in rapt attention? Which character would point out the perks of being in a college town during a warm weekend in May?

It's easy for us to go to something like a graduation and describe it to others after the fact. We're doing that thru our own filters. An interesting writing exercise is to take an event and describe it as one of your characters would. I have one protagonist who would no doubt focus on the plethora of pretty girls in short summer dresses. Another would think the whole thing a dog and pony show meant more for the school to pat itself on the back than for the graduates. Each of them would notice a lot (the second character would notice more) but report on different things in scenes written from their viewpoints.

What significant events (let's stick to positive ones) have taken place in your life recently? I'm sure you described them to your family and friends. Now go back and figure out how your favorite character would describe that same scene. The results might surprise you, but regardless, doing it is good practice for writing in that character's voice.

Congratulations and love to my sister, and happy writing.

Confessions of a Pantser

Apparently, I am the worst when it comes to updating my blog. That's something I'm going to need to get in the habit of doing more regularly.

I figured this would be a good time to check in on one of my writing goals for the year. As writers, it's important to set goals for a great many things. Whether you write full-time or in the stolen moments between the intrusions of life, setting goals and measuring your progress is vital. For reference, all the goals I listed earlier this year can be found in this post. Today, I want to talk about this one in particular:

"-Try to write a book, or at least most of a book, using an outline."

As I said when writing that goal, I've been a "pantser" up to this point. I get ideas, do research on them if necessary, jot down a couple notes about where I expect the story to go, and then write. Basically, I have an idea, a beginning, a desired ending, and then I make up everything in-between as I go along. It's worked for me so far. "The dark side" was doing an outline and I read other writers' blogs in which they extoled the virtues of outlining. "Oh, the creativity!" said I. "Surely you cannot be creative and spontaneous when you're committed to following an outline!"

"Au contraire," the outliners said. "This does not stifle creativity. And stop calling us Shirley."

Chastised, I sat down and did an outline. It's probably not the most super-detailed outline in the history of outlining, but it works for me. Basically, I laid out what I expected would happen in each chapter and dedicated 4-5 sentences to those events. That's my outline. It's a lot more than I used to do but manages not to feel rigid. I still have room to be creative and let the characters do the storytelling -- I've already written two scenes I didn't plan on initially. Those scenes integrated themselves into the outline and the story easily. As a pantser, that was my main concern going into the outline process.

One of my hobbies is playing and judging the Magic: the Gathering card game. The head designer of Magic, Mark Rosewater, writes a weekly column for the game's official site. In one of his columns, he mentioned that limitations actually made creativity easier. I read that and thought it was a silly idea. Now that I'm writing with an outline, I see his point. I don't think the outline is a limitation; it's more of a framework that keeps me from coloring too far outside the lines. So far, it's working great and I think I'm going to use it for future books.

Getting a lot of ideas and walking thru the story up front benefits me as a writer. Maybe it could benefit you too.

Next time, I'll probably look back at some other 2012 goals, and I may finagle some ideas to write a new blog post each day for a week.

Happy writing.

First and Third

No, I'm not writing about baseball. Today, I'm going to look at first-person vs. third-person viewpoint.

I've written in each and I don't think I have a clear preference. Each has its perks and drawbacks. With third person, I like being able to shift the POV around. If the protagonist is in a tight spot, it's easy to build suspense by writing a few scenes from other characters' viewpoints, allow some more action to happen, and then come back to the protagonist. With first person, I like the limitation that my POV character has to be present in every scene, so the readers (and the protagonist) don't see anything happening "off camera." There are occasions I think it would be easier to mix in the occasional scene from another character's POV. I've read first-person novels that have used such a technique, usually italicizing the other character's segments. To me, it feels like a cop-out. Maybe if your novel involves a first-person narrator ending up in a coma and you want to fill that story time by using other perspectives, OK. It still feels kind of cheap to me, though.

I got to thinking about first-person vs. third-person because of something I started writing late last year. We were deep in crunch time for the wedding and I had a character pounding at the inside of my head, demanding to be put onto the screen. I got a few chapters finished, realized I had to do a lot of planning and plotting, and moved on to something else. I had sated that new character jones and could go back to it later. When I wrote those few chapters, I wrote them in the first-person POV. Looking back on it, I think third-person would be better. The nature of the character and the story means a lot can happen "off-screen" and I want to be able to write about that. Besides, I've been writing a lot of mysteries lately and they're first-person (as mysteries tend to be). Writing something in another perspective is good practice.

At some point this year, I think I'll sit down, do some planning and plotting for that new character's novel, and revise it to be in the third person (or just start it over). As writers, I think we have to flex these muscles from time to time. We have to step away from what we know or what we do frequently to try something different. It's all part of the process and the evolution.

Happy writing.

2012

We made it to 2012. Between you and me, I think we're making it to 2013 and beyond. The Mayans (and misinterpretations of their calendars) be damned.

Last year was a big year for me, writing-wise and otherwise. The biggest (and best) life change was my wedding in November. That followed moving several counties closer to DC, transferring my job to another location, renting out my condo, and a lot of packing, unpacking, moving, and assembling. I had a lot of upheaval this year but it was all the good kind. Having the ground shift beneath your feet, even on a tectonic level, can be a very good thing.

In the writing department, I finished a couple short stories and two mystery novels, and started a spy novel that I will revisit and finish later. (It would be the third in a series, and I did the same thing with the second.) I also started this blog.

What does 2012 hold? I haven't a clue. While I'm not the type to make New Year's resolutions, here are some things I'd like to accomplish in the coming year:

-Have at least one book published, conventionally or otherwise. (Having a contract for a book will count as a victory here, too.)

-Try to write a book, or at least most of a book, using an outline. Right now, I'm a "pantser." I write based off ideas, a little research, some notes about what I think will happen next, and the flow of the story (and the characters' roles in it). It's worked for me so far, but I want to see how the other half lives, so to speak.

-Publish (probably self-publish) a collection of short stories.

-Start and finish writing at least three novels of any genre.

-Sit down and do some work on the kids' book idea I had. Maybe I need to read a few kids' books to discover the best way of going about it.

-Explore the editing epiphany I had (more on that in a bit).

-Keep reading. I read a lot of books last year. No idea how many. I want to read at least 35 this year. Dry and boring IT books that I'll need to read for certification tests will, unfortunately, count toward this total.

-Update this blog more regularly. This will be easier to do if the rest of my goals and expectations fall into place.

-Non-writing related: run a half-marathon.

Recently, I had an editing epiphany of sorts. If you watch House, you're used to the "epiphany face," where a random conversation with Wilson or Chase about the pooping habits of Saharan space donkeys gives House the clue to the Patient of the Week's illness. I had no such random conversation (thank goodness), and I don't yet know the conclusion, if you will, to this little epiphany. Here's how my editing process works: I finish a novel (yay!), then I put it away for about a month so that I can have a more detached perspective on it. It sits on the back e-burner, collecting e-dust on my hard drive. During that time, I read a lot, work on some smaller projects, do a little research, etc. Then, after that month is up, I print out the novel, sit down with a red pen, and go thru it line by line. When that's finished, I go back into the file and input my changes. It doesn't take too long (two weeks or so), though it sounds more time-consuming than it is. The problem is, it means I'm spending at least six weeks not doing anything on a new book. I might write a story, but I'm not making meaningful progress on a new novel. I've been loath to start one, knowing I'd be interrupting it for a couple weeks of editing. And if I plowed ahead with writing that next novel, I'd be effectively editing two books behind. That doesn't sound like a good solution.

This year, I might try a quicker turnaround on the editing. I like the added perspective that taking a month off gives me -- it's hard to murder your darlings if you're still invested in them, after all -- but perhaps my writing process will be better if I start sooner. And the process is, after all, a big part of what we do.

How quickly do you start your editing? Do you work on it while writing something new?

Happy writing, and happy 2012.

The End of November

November is over, and another National Novel Writing Month is in the rearview mirror.

If you participated, I hope you won, by whatever standards you're using to determine that. If your novel isn't finished, don't let the end of November mean the end of your progress. Everyone's schedule gets more crowded this time of year, but use the time you have to finish what you started in November.

I'll share my own story of NaNo amidst a crowded November. On November 11th, I married the love of my life in a fabulous ceremony in Baltimore. We spent the weeks leading up to the wedding planning, preparing, purchasing, and pulling our hair out (these are The Four P's of wedding planning, in case you didn't know). Admittedly, she did more than I did because she had a clear vision for the ceremony. Even so, my free time got seriously curbed in October and November. I used NaNo to try and finish my current work in progress (the fourth in my series of mystery novels) with a goal of 30,000 words. My secondary goal was not to get the hairy eyeball from my then-fiancee too often.

The hairy eyeball goal ended up as a mixed bag, but I hit the other one, finishing November at just over 30K words. Some more work early this month allowed me to finish the novel. Now I'll set it aside for a few weeks, work on some edits, then go back and slash it apart.

I'm not writing this to brag about what I was able to accomplish in November (OK, maybe a little), but to show you that you CAN hit your writing goals even when the rest of your life is crowded. Just make them realistic and work every day. Writing is the important thing. A number is nice, but a realistic goal is better.

NaNoWriMo is over. Your writing and editing shouldn't be. Mine isn't.

As NaNoWriMo Dawns...

Novemvber is National Novel Writing Month. Their website will tell you as much, and I suspect most readers of this blog already know what's in store for them next month. You may already be hip-deep in research, plotting, outlining, or even a holy-crap-what-am-I-going-to-write bender.

This will be my seventh year of doing NaNo. I've "won" the past three years, with word counts around 52k, 68k, and 51k. Winning three years in a row isn't an impressive streak in the grand scheme of things, but it's one I'd like to keep intact. There's just one thing that might keep me from it.

I'm getting married.

And going on a honeymoon.

I guess that was two things.

While I love writing, I love my soon-to-be wife even more. I'm still going to write when I can--which will probably include a lot of lunch breaks at work--but I don't know if 50k is in the cards for me this month. I'm going to try my best, and maybe risk a glare from the wife here and there, but my winning streak may stop at three.

And you know what? I'm OK with that.

We all want to win NaNo. We all want to submit a verified word count over 50k, turn our bars purple, and get a "Winner" label. But the real point of NaNo is to spur creativity, to drive you forward in your quest to complete a serious creative endeavor. It's supposed to teach people that they CAN write a book by just plugging away every day for a month (or more). The spirit of NaNo is in the creativity, the community with your fellow writers who are sparking the creative fires just like you are. I'm still going to be a part of that. I just might not hit 50,000 words by the end of the month.

If you're doing NaNo, good luck. I hope you hit your goals, whatever they may be. And at the end of the writing and editing processes (you ARE going to edit the book you write, aren't you?), I hope you have a novel you're proud of. Regardless of what Charlie Sheen might have said, that is winning.

Happy writing.