This post first ran on February 12, 2009 and it's as relevant as ever! ~ Dani QUESTION: What is your take on internal monologue? How frequently should it be used and how should it be formatted? Contrast its usage as opposed to indirect thought exposure where summaries of what goes through a characters head are exposed but not the exact wording. Donald James Parker http://www.donaldjamesparker.com/ Angels of Interstate 29 ANSWER: Internal monologues -- sometimes thought of as stream of consciousness or internal dialogue -- is different for different types of novels. A literary novel may have pages and pages of stream of consciousness. James Joyce, anyone? But it takes a deft hand to pull that off and not lose the reader in a jumbled mass of disconnected thoughts. In most contemporary commercial fiction – which encompasses a wide variety of genres – internal monologues should be used sparingly. Readers come to mysteries and romances and westerns and science fiction mo...

This post first published on September 20, 2016. We hope it helps you with your #NaNoWriMo2017 novel revisions! ~ Dani G. Photo by Ron Bieber  © 2006   ( Flickr ) I used to find it difficult to move on to writing the next chapter of a book until I had the previous chapter down solid. I used to write a draft, read it, then revise. Then I’d read the revision, feel something was still missing, and revise again. Thus began an endless loop of revisions, pursuing the illusion of a perfect chapter but making little progress on the book. What’s an obsessive writer to do? I’ve always refused to start with an outline because it makes me feel inhibited. My characters are unruly, and after just a few pages we’re wildly off-track. So I started my current novel based on a synopsis and a list of “things that might happen,” which I believed was a smaller time investment. But when I began revising each chapter ad-nauseum, I knew I was not saving time at all. Then I learned...

Years ago, a dear friend read my MFA thesis, a novel titled, The Greyhound Chronicles . He told me how much he enjoyed seeing my use of line breaks throughout the story and how the breaks affected his read. My response? “Uh, thank you.” You see, I wasn’t consciously doing it as I wrote. I had no idea I was doing it. After my friend’s comment, I reread the book and saw the breaks and realized it was something I just did while writing, something I learned in studying fiction and poetry and the importance of the word and white space and how readers may be affected by not only what  we write, but also how  we write it. Lines breaks are not just for poetry. We writers of short stories, novels, novellas, articles, essays – we, too, can use line breaks to great effect. For this post, I’m going to use two examples, both from great reads you’ll find on the site  SNAPS 1000 Words , a site that publishes weekly stories of 1000 words that are inspired by photography...

This post was first published her on May 18, 2011. When I began writing, my crit partners would often return my pages with passages labeled "R.U.E." Anyone who's undertaken writing has heard "Show, Don’t Tell"—probably more times than they've wanted. This isn't a hard and fast rule, because often telling is more efficient than showing, and done well, gets the point across. But too much telling, especially when it comes across as author intrusion, can put the brakes on the pace of your story, doing exactly the opposite of what the author intended. For example, "Mary laughed so hard, she was afraid she'd pulled a stomach muscle. Susie had just told the funniest joke Mary had ever heard."   The second sentence isn't needed; it's explaining something the reader would be able to figure out in context. The goal of any fiction writer is to get readers to care about the characters. We want there to be an emotional connection, so we...

In yesterday's post , I talked about how good TV shows can help writers develop their story's beginning. Today, I'm concluding with a short talk on how those same TV shows can help writers develop their "commercial breaks" in fiction. What are fiction's commercial breaks? Chapter and scene endings. Just like TV writers need to hook viewers to keep them waiting through commercial breaks to see what happens next, fiction writers need to write riveting chapter and scene endings so that readers will want to flip the page to the next chapter or hurdle their eyes over white space to rush to the next scene. Make those commercial breaks count... In The TV Writer's Workbook: A Creative Approach to Television Scripts , writer Ellen Sandler states that a scene needs a narrative structure and that this structure contains three interconnected elements: the setup (beginning), the power switch or turning point (middle), and the arrow (end). The arrow is wha...

Two things I almost always comment on when editing a client's manuscript are a story's beginning and chapter/scene endings. When I comment on these two story components, I tend to discuss TV shows and make the suggestion that we borrow what successful shows do and apply it to our novel writing. Today, I'll offer insight on how TV shows can help you develop your story's beginning. In the beginning... We all know how important a story's beginning is. Because a story has a beginning, middle, and an ending, some writers start their story at the very beginning, meaning, they use their first chapter to set us up with who the main characters are, where they live, and what they do. Toward the end of that first chapter, we might get a hint of conflict. Many times, especially in early drafts, we don't. When you consider the reader of said first chapter, that would be a problem. William Rabkin, in his book, Writing the Pilot , states that "what you're doi...

While editing, yes, be the "editor," but also be the "reader." What do you, as reader, think of the story? When I teach Writing for the Media, I talk a lot about audience. It's the first thing we talk about at the start of the semester, and as we move through our writing projects - traditional news stories, features, radio and TV commercial scripts, and mini advertising and public relations campaigns - I sprinkle audience across each project. From the pre-writing, research, legwork phases of their projects to the revising and editing, the students keep their focus on audience. Like I tell my students, we live in a fast-paced, technological society, and readers can go to any number of outlets - offline and online - to receive information. What are you going to do to make sure readers are reading you?  If the students aren't focused on their readers, those readers will definitely not be focused on them. Image by marin from FreeDigitalPhotos.net Fict...

This post first ran on Tuesday, November 15, 2011. Have you ever noticed the rhythm of an author's writing? There's something about the "rule of three" that seems ingrained in us as human beings, from the Three Little Pigs, the Three Stooges, to the Third Time's the Charm. (Did you notice the use of three examples?) When writing, giving three examples of things seems to make the narrative flow better. We'll often list three things a character does or says. Somehow, it doesn't feel as "right" with more or less. The three-act structure is the basis for plays and writing books. Repetition helps readers remember. Things presented in threes just seem to stick with us: Faith, Hope. and Charity. Winken, Blinken, and Nod. Blood, Sweat and Tears. Stop, Look and Listen. Stop, Drop and Roll. How many more can you name? Dozens I'm sure. Here are some examples of using the rule of three in writing fiction: He took off his boots, sank onto the ...

Sometimes we authors don't catch little mistakes in our books that can jerk a reader out of a story. That is one reason why books should really be professionally edited before being published, but sometimes even an editor does not catch everything.  For example, not too long ago I read the following in a published book, "He looked for the creak in his knees as he walked down the stairs." Hmmm. How do you look for a sound? Maybe it's just me and I'm too literal minded, but that stopped me when I read it. I know writing is a creative endeavor and we can be clever with some word usage, but maybe we should not be mixing up words and coming out with a tossed salad. Here are some other awkward or incorrect word usages that I hate to see in a finished book: Each one worse than the next. That should be each one worse than the last. (Think about it.) On accident. You can do something on purpose but not on accident. He did good vs. He did well - Little Johnny pla...

Are you a peacock or a weaver bird? Some writers - peacocks - flaunt their lovely words and beg us to admire them. Others are weaver birds, patiently building a structure that’s serviceable but dull. Some preen. Some delve. Or so I’ve discovered from three years of judging the Writers’ Village story competition. Who wins the prizes? Peacocks or weaver birds? Neither. The cash goes to those who combine both colour and craft, preening and delving - with flair. Here are three fast ways to blend colour and craft and write a best-selling story - or, at least, win a cash award in a story contest: 1. Draft it quickly You have a plot idea, right? A few dramatic events? A snatch or two of dialogue? Scribble it all down as fast as you can. Don’t wait for the ‘right’ words to come to you. Clichés, stagy incidents, clumsy expressions? Welcome them. They’re fine. Just get the tale written! Then throw it in a closet for a month. Pluck it out with a sniff, tone it down and tune each ...

HE SAID, SHE SAID Writing dialogue trips up the best of us, at one time or another. On the other hand, often comes the comment, “This author has a great ear for dialogue.” So how do we tame this beast and go from the former to the latter? A few tips will take us a long way here. 1. Formal and Stilted Dialogue, and everyone sounding the same. Often, without the tags, I cannot tell who’s talking, and I should be able to. For most new writers, this is almost a given, and I see all the time a variation of this: “My name is Bill. What is your name?” he asked. “My name is Theresa. Good to meet you, Bill,” she replied. Yep, this is an exaggerated example, and for comparison: “Name’s Bill,” he said, a grin spreading over his rugged face. “Yours?” “Theresa. I know you from somewhere?” I.e.—get something done in the dialogue with every spoken word as well. Dialogue should rarely be in complete sentences—we just don’t talk that way. Unless, of course,...

When you've written your manuscript, you're still not done. Even though you may have written "The End" on the final page, it's not. At this point, you have to edit and rewrite. This needs to be done before you send it to an editor to work on. While you're waiting on the editor to do her magic on your book, you can map your manuscript. Primarily, this time of Mapping Your Manuscript is not editing. This is the time when you map out the plot, make notes about the characters, track the timeline. You can even list the names of places the characters visit, roads they drive, family members they mention. You're creating what is often called your book bible. By doing this, you find errors. Most small, but sometimes big ones. Jack goes to see his sister, Lucille, at her home in Toronto. Except, wait a minute. You check your notes and find this notation: Jack's sister, Lucille, died when she seven and was hit by a drunk driver . The governor is bald, but e...

I wonder if she thinks of me? Here again is another helpful post from our guest, Jodie Renner. How do you express thoughts and inner reactions in fiction? Thoughts, like dialogue, need to drive the story forward and sound natural and appropriate for both the thinker and the situation. For this article, I’ve purposely used the term thought-reactions, instead of just thoughts, because in fiction, in any given scene, we’re in someone’s point of view, so in their head, privy to their thoughts. In that sense, all the narration for that scene is, or should be, in their thoughts, written in ordinary font, with no special punctuation or thought tags. For example, in Sandra Brown’s Ricochet , we’re in Duncan’s point of view. We read: “Within seconds Jenny appeared. All six feet of her, most of it sleek, tanned legs that looked like they’d been airbrushed to perfection.” This is obviously Duncan’s viewpoint and his opinion/thoughts. No need to say “he thought.” Thought-reactions, on th...

Last week I introduced Louise Penny and all the awards she has won for her books, most notably, The Agatha. When I first started reading her latest, A Trick of the Light , it reminded me a bit of the great Agatha Christie. I loved the quaint little village of Three Pines and the assortment of people who live there; unique characters, made very real, much like Christie made her characters real. While that similarity is there, Penny takes her stories and her people to deeper places than Agatha Christie ever did. Consider this brief description of the story: “Hearts are broken,” Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. “Sweet relationships are dead.” But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and ...

First published Wednesday, March 24, 2010   Recently, I had the less-than-stellar experience of editing a manuscript for a first-time writer who believed her every word, every comma, every sentence contributed to her perfect book and under no circumstances should be changed. Emotions ran high, and reason ran out the door. Resistance became the word of the day, every day. A few years ago, I attended a seminar where we were told that our books are not our babies. However, books are birthed after months, sometimes years, of hard labor. That does suggest a kinship between the two b’s—babies and books. What happens when our baby gets sick? Do we take it to the doctor? Yes. When the doctor writes out a prescription, do we fill it? Of course. We even get well-baby checks and follow a schedule of immunizations to prevent measles, mumps, chickenpox, tetanus, hepatitis, and other diseases. Why? We want our baby to be healthy, the best it can be. What about our manuscripts? When they ...

HYPHENS, ELLIPSES, DASHES Ellipses vs. Dashes; Hyphen, Em Dash and En Dash  A.   Ellipsis (…) or Dash (—)? In fiction, An ellipsis (…) is used to show hesitation : “What I meant is…I don’t know how to begin…”  (Also indicates the omission of words in a quoted text.) A dash (—) , also called em dash, is used to show an interruption in speech: “But I—” “But nothing! I don’t want to hear your excuses!” or a sudden break in thought or sentence structure: “Will he—can he—find out the truth?” The dash is used for amplifying or explaining , for setting off information within a sentence, kind of like parentheses or commas can do: “My friends—I mean, my former friends—ganged up on me.” B.   Hyphen vs. En Dash vs. Em Dash: The en dash is longer than the hyphen but shorter than the em dash (the regular dash) A hyphen (-) is used within a word . It separates the parts of a compound word: bare-handed, close-up, die-hard, half-baked, jet-lagged, low-key, never-ending...