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Are You Ready to Write a Novel in November?

Posted on October 13, 2015 by

by Bentley Clark

Every November, in addition to working my day job, shopping for the holidays and baking pies, cookies and other autumn goodies, I write a novel.

A fool’s errand? Perhaps, but I am only one fool amongst many. In November 2014, over 325,000 writers around the globe participated in National Novel Writing Month—NaNoWriMo to initiates. Over 58,000 participants successfully completed a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Now in its 17th year, NaNoWriMo offers writers of all genres of fiction the opportunity—and excuse—to write their contribution to the canon of great world literature. Or, at least, to write what Anne Lamott affectionately calls the “sh*tty first draft.”

For a successful NaNoWriMo experience, I have found the following to be indispensable:

Internet Access
Fifty thousand words in 30 days is a daunting task, so it is important to find a community of writers who are facing the same victories and setbacks. The NaNoWriMo community is an incomparable support system. NaNoWriMo.org is a gateway to boundless encouragement, to connecting with NaNo Buddies and to exploring forums with topics ranging from “Backing up your work: How do you do it?” to “Are elephants capable of taking over the world?” Internet access can also be useful for wasting valuable writing time researching specific elements and the varied nuances of elephant coups d’etat.

Writing Time
If I manage to find 3 hours in the day to write and I average about 556 words per hour, I’m golden and will cross the finish line by 11:59:59 pm on November 30. Manageable goals are the key to NaNoWriMo success. Typically, getting 556 words on the page in an hour is nigh impossible as we writers pull our hair out for hours to find the right 556 words. Fifty thousand words is the goal of NaNoWriMo, not necessarily good fiction. In fact, travesties of good writing are encouraged: words can be misspelled, poorly chosen, grammatically incorrect or sheer nonsense, so long as they total 50,000. Many WriMos find that in November, sentence structure goes out the window, pronouns become optional and characters get three or four middle names, all in the name of word count.

Mardi Gras Beads
Writing a novel is serious work for eleven months of the year. Not in November. To stave off the tendency to take novel writing too seriously and to remind himself to enjoy the insanity, NaNoWriMo founder, Chris Baty, dons a costume Viking hat while he writes. I drape myself in cheap Mardi Gras beads. A friend of mine wears a Halloween witch’s hat. In addition to adding a bit of levity to the task at hand, costume pieces can remind well-meaning family and friends that you are committed to your goal and that they should interrupt you only when they are bringing you Nutella and banana sandwiches or when the dog has caught on fire.

Notebook
It is no secret that notebooks are an essential tool for every writer. In addition to allowing you to jot down ideas and snippets of others’ conversation—in order to pad your word count—it can be interesting to document your emotional journey through November. There are days when 1,667 words fly from your fingers as though channeled from a higher power and there are days when putting together a single sentence seems impossible. November can have tremendous emotional peaks and valleys, all worth documenting.

In order to write a novel, you must silence your Inner Editor. Even more so in November. So, I also like to use my notebook to doodle portraits of my Inner Editor. Then I doodle a giant bear clad in clown regalia mauling him beyond recognition.

Stamina, Endurance and Resolve
It may be one of the shorter months of the year, but if you plan to write a novel in November, you must prepare yourself like a marathon runner. You must steel yourself mentally for the enormity of the task. You must recognize that there will be waxes and wanes of energy and enthusiasm. And you must learn to not look back because the goal is to cross the finish line, regardless of your state upon crossing it. And, most of all, you must have fun!

(Note: If this article was a piece of fiction and was written in November, I’d be 1.4% of the way there.)

To participate, sign up at www.nanowrimo.org.

BentleyClark125 Bentley Clark drinks far too much tea, cooks far too much food, watches far too many movies, owns far too many books, loves PBS beyond reason, and enjoys sleeping more than she’d like to admit.

This article was originally published in the October 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

The Hollywood Touch: Screenwriting Tricks for Novelists

Posted on October 8, 2015 by

by Chris Eboch

Authors dream of having their books made into movies. But even if your story never hits the big screen, you can make your work better by thinking like a scriptwriter. Apply these screenwriting tricks to writing your novel and breathe new life into your work.

Open Big

My brother, Doug Eboch, wrote the original screenplay for Sweet Home Alabama. He gave me this advice on a novel manuscript: “You need a big opening scene. Think of visuals, color and movement—maybe a big party.”

Begin your novel with action, not background, to grab the reader’s attention. “Start with something big and memorable,” says David Steinberg, who wrote the screenplay for Slackers and co-wrote American Pie 2. “And big isn’t as important as memorable. It doesn’t have to be a big explosion, but start off with something exciting, different, weird—something that makes the reader want to keep going.”

Don Hewitt, who co-wrote the English-language screenplay for the Japanese animated film Spirited Away, agrees. But, he warns, don’t just make up any big scene for the sake of drama. “Start with an event that affects the character,” he says. Ideally, this event is a moment of change, where the character starts on a new path.

Establishing the protagonist’s role in the story is one of the most important functions of an opening, whether in films or novels. Let the reader know the character’s goals. “What does he want? What does he really need?” asks Steinberg. “What’s his external goal? And what’s his internal goal—what’s this person’s flaw, and how is he going to be a better person by the end?”

In addition, Doug says, “An opening scene should establish the genre. For comedy, I try to make a really funny opening.” If the opening is exciting, funny, sad or scary, the audience expects the entire movie—or book—to be the same. If the opening is boring, the reader assumes the rest is, too.

Scene by Scene

Set high expectations, then satisfy them. Consider each scene in your novel. How can you make it bigger, more dramatic? “Imagine the worst thing that could happen,” Hewitt says, “and force the issue.”

Doug stresses the effectiveness of “set pieces—the big, funny moment in a comedy, the big action scene in an action movie. The ‘wow’ moments that audiences remember later. Novelists can give readers those scenes they’ll remember when they put the book down.”

Yet even in big scenes, you must balance action and dialogue. Any long conversation where nothing happens is going to be boring. Steinberg says, “Movies are about people doing things, not about people talking about doing things.”

Even in comedies, he says, dialogue must be relevant to the plot. “Dialogue is funny because of the situation, not because it’s inherently funny.” The same goes for novels, too.

Long action scenes can be equally dull. “When you look at the page, it shouldn’t be blocky with action,” says Paul Guay, who co-wrote screenplays for Liar, Liar, The Little Rascals and Heartbreakers.

Adds Hewitt: “Try to be as economical as you can with the action, and as precise as you can. Break it up with specific dialogue to strengthen it.”

Get to the Point

Above all, screenwriters know the value of editing. Studios expect scripts to be within a certain length, generally 90 to 120 pages. Although some movies today run longer than that, any writer who turns in a 300-page script looks like an amateur.

“You should always be moving on to the next story point,” Guay says, “so you have almost no time to indulge in character flourishes or slow moments. If something is off-topic it has to go. Screenwriting teaches you to be ruthless.”

Doug says, “I’ll go back through every line and look for lazy writing, dialogue or description that doesn’t advance the character or plot, and see if there’s a better way to do that.”

As for description, keep it short. “A little detail is good in the beginning,” Steinberg claims, “but readers don’t care what things look like on page three, let alone on page fifty. Use description sparingly, and only if it’s really relevant.”

Novelists who focus on action over description are closer to making their books page-turners. However, novelists don’t have the luxury of visual aids, as screenwriters do. Just use short descriptions to advance the plot, not distract from it.

Novelists can learn from the movie world. Open big, increase the drama in each scene, balance action and dialogue, and edit ruthlessly. You’ll have a stronger story. And who knows? It may even increase the chances of your book being made into a movie.

Chris Eboch writes fiction and nonfiction for all ages. In Bandits Peak, a teenage boy meets strangers hiding on the mountains and gets drawn into their crimes, until he risks his life to expose them. The Eyes of Pharaoh is an action-packed mystery set in ancient Egypt. The Genie’s Gift is an Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy adventure. In The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan girl in ninth-century Guatemala rebels against the High Priest who sacrifices anyone challenging his power. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers and Advanced Plotting.

Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page, or check out her writing tips at her Write Like a Pro! blog. Sign up for her Workshop newsletter for classes and critique offers.

Chris also writes novels of suspense and romance for adults under the name Kris Bock; read excerpts at www.krisbock.com.

This article was originally published in the July 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Dialogue Compression: The Key to Realistic Dialogue

Posted on October 6, 2015 by

by Kirt Hickman

Realistic dialogue is one of the most important things to achieve in your writing. It’s also one of the most difficult. When people talk, they ramble, they pause, they repeat themselves—they say all sorts of unnecessary things. Written dialogue that includes all this stuff will be cumbersome. Your reader won’t have the patience for it. The objective of dialogue is to make it more efficient than normal speech yet still have it sound realistic. This is what makes dialogue a challenge.

The single most effective thing you can do to make your dialogue realistic is to compress it.

Wordiness

Cut any line of dialogue down to as few words as possible. Consider the following passage, excerpted from a critique submission with the author’s permission. The viewpoint character observes this exchange between a young woman in a tavern and a druid who has just walked in.

One of the girls suddenly stood and waved at the shrouded figure. “Hey, Cuddles, it’s Nancin! What are you doing here? Hey, this might just turn out to be some fun after all. We have to get together later on and catch up on old times. I haven’t seen you since that party at Sister Hillary’s Nunnery and Bawdy House back in ’65. Come on up to my room when we get through with this rah-rah what-ever-it-is that’s going on here and we’ll crack a bottle or three and talk about old times – and more. Hot Damn, Cuddles is back, WHEEE!!!”“Silence Woman! Hold your tongue. There is serious business afoot—and many unanswered questions. We will surely talk, later, and in private . . .”“Okay. I can wait for you to finish playing those ‘serious business’ games that you little boys insist on playing. Just don’t forget that you and I have more important things to do.” The soft purr of the reply held the promise of interesting times ahead.This passage can and should be greatly compressed. In the first paragraph, Nancin rambles for far too long. The druid, a man of some renown, would probably be embarrassed by Nancin’s outburst. He would likely stop her. The rest, I’d compress as much as possible without sacrificing the essential voice of each character:

One of the girls stood and waved at the shrouded figure. “Hey, Cuddles. What are you doing here? This might just turn out to be some fun after all —”“Silence, woman,” the druid said. “We’ll talk later.”“Okay,” came the soft purr of her reply. “Just don’t forget that you and I have more important things to do.”Decide for yourself which passage is more engaging.

Compression can make dialogue more crisp and realistic even in less extreme cases, as in this example from my science fiction novel, Worlds Asunder.

“Randy performed the preflight checks according to protocol.”“Randy did the preflight checks correctly.”Meaningless Words

Eliminate expressions that don’t carry meaning, such as:

“Well,” “Hey!” “Um,” “Aw, geez.” “Oh my gosh.” “Right?”Phrases like these make dialogue sound rambling and unimportant. They reduce tension. These types of expressions can be useful in making each character’s speech distinctive, but use only one per character and use it sparingly.

Sentence Fragments

Consider the following dialogue exchange:

“Have you had lunch?”“No, not yet.”“Do you want to go to Stufy’s?”“That sounds good.”People don’t generally speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences. Look for opportunities to use sentence fragments to emulate real speech patterns:

“Had lunch?”“Not yet.”“Stufy’s?”“Sounds good.”It not only makes your dialogue more natural, it makes it more crisp. It quickens the pace.

Contractions

Use contractions wherever possible. Otherwise your dialogue will sound clunky and mechanical:

“We will need results on this one,” Snider told Chase. “And we will need them fast.”Contractions make dialogue more natural:

“We’ll need results on this one,” Snider told Chase. “And we’ll need them fast.”Use these tips to compress your dialogue, to make it realistic, taut, and engaging.

Kirt Hickman is a technical writer turned fiction author. His books include three sci-fi thriller novels Worlds Asunder (2008), Venus Rain (2010) and Mercury Sun (2014), the high fantasy novel Fabler’s Legend (2011), and the writers’ how-to Revising Fiction: Making Sense of the Madness (2009).

This article was originally published in the April 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

About Character and Setting Development

Posted on October 1, 2015 by

By E.H. Hackney

Most books on writing advise us to construct complete, detailed descriptions of our major characters before we begin writing. This is worthwhile, but I believe it is easy to overdo. Yes, I put together character sketches in advance. The protagonist in my fantasy novel is a wizard and a dwarf, and I definitely needed to know that in advance. But my beginning character descriptions are not extensive. If I go into too much detail, they are often wrong and must be rewritten or, worse yet, they constrain my character and limit his behavior.

Consider a friend who wants to introduce you to someone, say a potential employee or even a blind date. They might start with a description of him—height, hair, eye color, build, where he is from. Do you know him? No. Well, suppose they expand on his resume—include his education, experience, what he does for a living. You still don’t know him. Your friend might even add that he is a great dancer and makes all of his own clothes. You know something about him but you still don’t know him.

It’s not until you meet the person and see how she walks and moves and uses her hands that you begin to get a sense of her. Do her eyes meet yours or keep sliding off to the side or to the floor? Does she continue to look around the room to find someone more interesting—or to see who is looking at her? Can she tell a joke? Can she get a joke? How does she treat the server? Now you begin to know the person.

The same is true with your characters. You can go into an extensive description but you, and your reader, don’t begin to know a character until you see him in action and relating to others and the setting. If you want to really see what your character is like, give him something to do. Better yet, give him some crap to deal with. Let us see the worn tips of his shoes kicking out from under the tattered hem of his wizard’s robe with each short, quick stride as he rushes to a house call. Then your readers, and you, will begin to know your character.

The same holds for setting. It has been argued, after all, that settings are really characters. You can build a detailed description of a region, or town, or living room, but you don’t really know it until you are there.

In a previous life I interviewed for a job in Seattle, Washington. I did some research beforehand, of course. I knew something of the economy, climate and geography. I had heard all of the stories about the “constant” rain. But it wasn’t until I saw snow-capped Mt. Rainier reflected in Lake Washington that I knew I wanted to live there. And even after living there for years I was still discovering more of its temperament and personality.

So let your readers explore settings through your character’s eyes. They will discover the nature and disposition of the wharf as your character strides there to meet a friend for an ale or to treat an injured prostitute. Through your character they will hear the creak of the hulls rubbing their fenders against the dock, see the skeleton of the ship’s rigging through the fog, hear the call of gulls and the laughs and arguments coming from the taverns, taste the salt in the damp air and smell the tangy scent of tar and rotting fish.

Why is this so? Because I don’t want to expound my story from a lectern. I want to be, at most, a guide as the reader and I explore the tale together. Because writing fiction is not a process of invention but a venture of discovery.

E. H. “Hack” Hackney is a retired engineer turned fantasy writer who lives on the east slopes of the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico. His articles and essays have appeared in East Mountain Living magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine, East Mountain Telegraph, The Independent, and SouthWest Sage. He published his first novel By the Blood, Book One: Revelation in 2013 under the pen name Geoffrey Ganges. You can find Hack on his websites at EHHackney.com and GeoffreyGanges.com, and on Twitter at @ehhackney and Facebook at E. H. Hackney, writer.

This article was originally published in the May 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Image “Cracked Diamond” courtesy of George Hodan / PublicDomainPictures.net

The Genius of Alfred Hitchcock (and what writers can learn from him)

Posted on September 29, 2015 by

by Lorena Hughes

The other day an old college friend of mine invited me to the Hitchcock Film Festival in a downtown theater I thought had closed years ago. This art-deco building (circa 1927) has been presenting some of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous films every Friday night for the last two months.

The movie we watched was Rope (1948) with James Stewart. It’s already been three weeks since I saw it and I’m still thinking about it. Funny because that same weekend I watched Gravity—an expensive display of special effects that Hitchcock could have only dreamed about—and a story that values life above all (almost the exact opposite of Hitchcock’s film). Yet, the movie that keeps popping into my head is Rope, one of Hitchcock’s lesser-known films and produced over 65 years ago. Perhaps if I explain more, you’ll understand why this film impacted me.

Rope was inspired by a famous murder trial from the 1920s. Two affluent college students decide to kill one of their classmates for the simple thrill of killing. As followers of Nietzsche’s philosophy, they believe themselves to be intellectually superior to other mortals and, therefore, above the moral laws of “ordinary” men. They think they can plan and execute the perfect crime and, to make it more thrilling, they hide the corpse inside a chest of books and invite the victim’s friends and parents to a dinner party. In very Hitchcock fashion, they set the dinner buffet on top of the chest.

James Stewart plays the clever schoolmaster who inadvertently instilled this philosophy in the two murderers. Of course, one of the guys is terrified of getting caught, but the other one seems to almost want his former teacher to discover them so he can admire their “masterpiece” crime. The success of the film is in the juxtaposition of tension (anyone could open that chest since the hinge is broken), dark humor (not only in the party set up but also in the dialogue), the motive for the murder (I’ve never heard of something more original) and the Big Question of whether or not the guys will get caught.

But this film was fascinating in both content and form. The entire story develops in real time, in one single setting, and the cuts are nearly imperceptible—one continuous scene with very subtle transitions (Hitchcock focuses on a jacket or an ornament to make his cuts seamless.) It’s no surprise that the film was adapted from a play. In addition to this novelty, we have another element that struck me as original: the camera tells its own story.

Let me explain without ruining the film for those of you who’d like to watch it. Have you noticed how in children’s picture books sometimes there is the story the text tells you, but there are minor stories that you can only see in the illustrations? (this is where a very talented illustrator can thrive). Well, Hitchcock does something similar twice. While the characters are speaking, the camera is moving around them or is focused on another object, making the conversation inconsequential and the visual action what really matters. This is something I haven’t seen in contemporary film making. When dialogue is present in a film, it always supersedes anything that may be going on in a scene.

Because I have a tendency to write complex novels with abundant characters, I always admire writers and directors who can tell simple stories. The plot here is simple: will the guys be successful at hiding their crime?

So here are some of the lessons I learned (as a writer) from this film:

1. It’s okay to write a story that develops in a short amount of time (and how challenging that is!).

2. People can have the strangest motives for committing a murder (and the more original, the better).

3. Keeping the tension in a story is key.

4. Add humor whenever you can (even if it’s dark).

5. Plot twists and complicated storylines are not always required to write a gripping tale.

6. Build a complex backstory (even if you don’t mention all the details), and the story and characters will seem more realistic and believable.

7. For your ending, keep your audience guessing until the last possible moment.

8. Suppress the desire to make your main characters a) always sympathetic and b) always safe. Let them make mistakes.

And here are some of the lessons I learned (as a human):

1. Life is extremely fragile and can end in an instant.

2. There are a lot of crazy people out there.

3. Never befriend someone who admires Nietzsche!

And just for fun (and because I like lists), some of the trivia I learned about this film:

1. James Stewart was not happy with this role.

2. Hitchcock originally wanted Cary Grant for Stewart’s role, but he declined.

3. The real-life case which inspired this film, Leopold and Loeb, was never discussed or acknowledged by Hitchcock to any of his writers or cast members.

4. The attorney who defended Leopold and Loeb, Clarence Darrow, delivered one of the most famous speeches there is against capital punishment—and saved their lives. Both got sentenced to life in prison (plus 99 years each for kidnaping).

5. According to several online reviewers and the scriptwriter himself, there is a homosexual undertone in the film between the main characters (Leopold and Loeb were allegedly a couple). This may have been the reason why the film didn’t do so well in the box office and why Stewart was not entirely happy with it.

6. This film is said to have been a reaction to WWII and Hitler’s belief in the superiority of one race (man) over another.

Are you a Hitchcock fan? Do you think there’s a contemporary director who compares with him?

LorenaHughes2 Lorena Hughes was born and raised in Ecuador. At age eighteen, she moved to the US to go to college and earned a degree in Fine Arts and Mass Communication & Journalism. She has worked in advertising, graphic design and illustration, but her biggest passion is storytelling. Her historical novel set in South America, The Black Letter, took first place in the 2011 Southwest Writers International Writing Contest (Historical Fiction category), an Honorable Mention at the 2012 Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and was a quarter-finalist for the 2014 Amazon Breakout Novel Award (ABNA). She is represented by Liza Fleissig of the Liza Royce Agency and is a freelance writer for What’s Up Weekly. You can find her on Twitter at twitter.com/SisterLorena.

This article was originally published on The Writing Sisterhood blog and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with Author Gale O’Brien

Posted on September 24, 2015 by

Gale O’Brien is a cancer survivor, motivational speaker, wellness advocate, and the award-winning author of Transformation: Creating an Exceptional Life in the Face of Cancer, available in both English and Spanish. She is also a Certified Professional Life Coach who empowers others to pursue a passionate, exceptional life after a serious illness or profound life event. Visit Gale at GaleObrien.com.

What is your elevator pitch for Transformation?
Transformation: Creating an Exceptional Life in the Face of Cancer is an honest, revealing, no holds barred description of my transformational journey to survival and how I finally gave myself permission to start living life fully engaged.

Tell us what inspired you to write it.
In talking with many cancer survivors, I discovered that some of them have no drive, ambition, or direction. They simply exist from one medical appointment to the next. They have allowed their cancer diagnosis to dominate their daily life and, in doing so, I believe they may be setting themselves up for reoccurrence. This is not an exceptional life to live. This is a doomed existence. I was inspired to write this book to encourage survivors to look outside the normal context of life and to create an openness toward what could lie ahead in their life after cancer. I wanted to encourage patients, survivors, caregivers and anyone encountering a serious illness to view disease as a phase to pass through with the hope of knowing that an exceptional life is waiting ahead.

In planning the book, what was the first hurdle you came across?
Deciding whether my book would be unique and necessary. I had to make sure that the book I was planning to write was not only unique compared to the other books on cancer recovery, but also necessary before adding one more title to the staggering number of books in print.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing Transformation?
When I was writing the book, I was totally immersed and living it in my head. When my book was finally published, it felt like I was being let out of a cell, so to speak. I felt alive again! Writing a book is an achievement. The most rewarding part is the number of readers who have responded positively and thanked me for writing the book.

Is there a book that has transformed your own life?
On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life by Arianna Huffington. Ms. Huffington wrote a quote that has stayed with me long after reading her book:

“When we know who we are, we can overcome our fears and insecurities. We surpass our smaller selves who suffer the slings and arrows of our conditioned reality, and we move to the unconditional truth of our larger selves. The answers to the questions of what to say, what to do, whom to let in, and whom to keep out become a clear and simple matter of listening to our hearts. That inner voice helps us align with our purpose, because each of us has a purpose, even if we judge it to be insignificant. The voice is there. We just need to listen to it. When we do that, we live in fearlessness.”

What do you want to be known for as an author?
Not just a purveyor of information and advice, no matter how useful those may be, but a writer. Someone who cares about, and crafts, words to bring people into the story; to take the reader on a journey. Personally, I want to be known for living my life in fearlessness. To have inspired a generation of cancer survivors to look beyond their diagnosis and to create an exceptional life afterwards.

Which have you found to be the most challenging, writing or marketing?
Marketing has been more of a challenge. Learning to overcome my fears that the book might bore people; that the book might not sell; that I might freeze during an author event and forget what I was going to say to the audience. People underestimate the amount of continuous marketing that must be done in order to turn one’s book into a blockbuster. As authors, we must shamelessly promote our book at every opportunity that presents itself.

What are you working on now?
I’m currently writing an online course for cancer survivors available October 2015.

Do you have advice for discouraged writers?
Learn to reject rejection. Get used to the idea that there is going to be a lot of rejection along the way. The secret is to never give up. If one person tells you no, ask someone else. Someone, somewhere, sometime will say yes. Move on to the next person. Someone is waiting to say yes.

KLWagoner150_2 KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. She has a new speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.

Dialogue Punctuation Basics

Posted on September 22, 2015 by

by Dodici Azpadu

You’ve worked hard on several drafts of a writing project, and now you’re ready to review your dialogue punctuation.

End Punctuation

We know declarative sentences end with a period and interrogative sentences with a question mark, but how do the rules apply in dialogue? All punctuation marks go inside the quote marks, except colons and semi-colons; however, you are unlikely to use colons or semi-colons after quote marks, except in academic writing. Technically, you use a question mark outside of quotation marks if the entire sentence is a question, but this seldom applies to dialogue.

Do you know the expression “sleeping on a problem”?

In character dialogue, you can use a question mark with a structurally declarative sentence. “We’re going?” is allowable in context, especially if “aren’t we?” is implied.

Use a period if you or your characters are wondering or thinking about a question.

Bob wondered if he should attend the meeting? [Incorrect]
Bob wondered if he should attend the meeting. [Correct]

Use a period if you or your characters are reporting an indirect address. Notice that you don’t use quote marks with indirect address.

She said Bob didn’t know if he could get time off to attend the game. [Correct]

Avoid exclamations points!! Even one is often too many.

Dialogue Conventions and End Punctuation

Use quote marks for direct address. Commas, periods, question marks, and the rare exclamation point go inside the quote marks.

“Am I expected to climb that ladder”? she said. [Incorrect and ugly as well]
“Am I expected to climb that ladder?” she said. [Correct]

The question mark is not an end punctuation mark only. It can be used internally as part of a sentence, as in the correct example above. Also, you need not tag a question with he or she asked. The question mark makes asked redundant. However, you will occasionally want to emphasize the asking.

Single Quote Marks

Use single quote marks only if one of your characters is directly quoting another.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said. “Then he mumbled shyly, ‘So will you marry me?’”

If you have a scrupulous bent as I do, you might wonder about placing the single quote mark before the question mark. There is a perverse logic to doing so; however, resist the temptation. The convention is to add closing punctuation if the element warrants it, the single quote mark, and then the regular quote mark.

If a character speaks for more than one paragraph, start each paragraph with quote marks, but don’t close the quote in the previous paragraph until the speaker is finished speaking. In American genre fiction, it is rare for characters to speak for more than one paragraph or for more than a few sentences. In contemporary literary fiction longer character speeches are also losing popularity. Minimalist forms of technological communication are likely to exacerbate this trend.

More Dialogue Conventions

Each new speaker gets a new paragraph, even for a monosyllabic reply.

Generally, a character’s unspoken reaction to another character’s dialogue also starts a new paragraph. Decide if the reaction is worth a paragraph. Occasionally you can take liberties with reactions inside a single speaker’s dialogue when the reaction (or the absence of reaction, as in the example below) clarifies a character’s meaning or intention for the reader, but the reactions would be unnecessarily disruptive if formatted as paragraphs.

In the following example taken from my recent work, two brothers at dinner are discussing the care of their aging mother. Their conversation will continue after the section quoted below. Justine is the POV character.

“Momma doesn’t hint,” Carmello said. “She wants you to come around more often?”

“Not that.” Bernardo rolled his eyes. “It’s always that, but today she said I should call more because she could fall over dead and nobody would know until her body stank.”

Carmello grinned. “That’s the mother I know and love.”

“You don’t check in on her every few days?” Bernardo said.

Justine [Carmello’s wife] had been listening attentively to the brothers and now discovered them both looking at her. She swallowed the last bite of bluefish that suddenly tasted dry. “Are you sure you won’t have some salad, Bobo?” Bernardo declined. “Can I get you anything?” Carmello also declined.

The fact that the brothers each decline Justine’s attention-shifting offer of food is not worth a paragraph or two paragraphs in this case. The reactions are important to what Justine says and to the assumption the two brothers make about actual care of their mother. The passage also illustrates the customary placement of punctuation marks inside the quote marks before a tag is added with its end punctuation. Notice the use of the question mark in a structurally declarative sentence to show a characteristic way of speaking: “She wants you to come around more often?” Also notice the indirect address in the second paragraph. “It’s always that, but today she said I should call more because she could fall over dead. . . .”

One last point: If a tag interrupts a sentence of dialogue, you should continue the sentence mechanics.

“Will you,” he said, “go to the meeting with me?”

“I’m finished,” she said. “Do the rest yourself.”

Dodici Azpadu, MFA, PhD is a novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her fiction publications include: Saturday Night in the Prime of Life and Goat Song (Aunt Lute/Spinsters Ink) and subsequently Onlywoman (London, England). Living Room (2010) and Traces of a Woman (2014), both by Neuma Books, are available as ebooks. She’s currently at work on a novel, tentatively titled Living Lies.

Her poetry publications include Wearing the Phantom Out (2013) and Rumi’s Falcon from Neuma Books. Individual poems have appeared in Malpais Review, Adobe Walls, ContraACultura (online), Parnassus, Sinister Wisdom, Latuca, The Rag, and The Burning Bush. Her work has also been anthologized in Centos: A Collage of Poems and Hey Pasean!

Dodici teaches “The Joy of Poetry” and “Craft of Creating Writing” classes through University of New Mexico’s Osher Lifelong Learning.

This article was originally published in the September 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

An Interview with Author Joyce Hertzoff, Part 1

Posted on September 18, 2015 by

Joyce Hertzoff retired from a profession grounded in fact and science and now uses the power of the pen to write mystery and fantasy stories. Her first novel The Crimson Orb was published in 2014 by Phantasm Books, an imprint of Assent Publishing. Under Two Moons, her second in the series, is forthcoming. Read a complete list of Joyce’s published work on her SWW Author Page. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter, and visit her at FantasyByJoyceHertzoff.com and HertzoffJo.blogspot.com.

What is the elevator pitch for your fantasy novel The Crimson Orb?
Searching for her mysteriously missing magic teacher, teenage Nissa’s adventures reveal how little she knows about her world, and how resourceful she can be.

Who is your favorite character in the book?
It has to be Nissa, because she’s the one who grows the most from her experiences. I particularly love the fact that she achieves her dream of learning to sword fight, but also learns that the lessons she disdained—cooking and sewing—could be useful skills as well. In the second book, Under Two Moons, her sewing skills become even more important.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing journey, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
One of the things I learned is to stay in the same point of view, at least throughout a chapter. Related to that, I tend to write in first person. There are both advantages and disadvantages to that. The disadvantage is you can’t show anything your first-person protagonist hasn’t experienced themselves. Sometimes someone else has to tell them about it. But the advantage is the writer can take the reader into the thoughts of their protagonist; I don’t always use this as well as I should, especially when it comes to showing emotions and reactions.

You write in both the fantasy and mystery genres for adults and young adults. Which genre presents the most challenges?
The challenges are different. For fantasies, I have to develop a clearly defined new world, while for murder mysteries, I have to decide “whodunit” and find ways to throw suspicion on many of the other characters. And each audience has its expectations that I have to meet. That’s not always easy. The language/words I pick when writing for adults is slightly different for young adults, too.

Tell us about some of the marketing tie-ins you used for The Crimson Orb. Did you plan these or were they more of an afterthought?
All of my marketing tie-ins were afterthoughts. The fortune cupcakes in the book were created in response to an online prompt. When I looked for a place to launch my book, though, the obvious choice was a bakery that agreed to make fortune cupcakes for me. I also want to fill my book website with more than the usual book synopses and articles about writing. I found photos online that are similar to how I picture my characters, so I added those with brief bios for each. And I have a couple of recipes for some of the strange foods Nissa and her friends found in their travels. I hope to add more in the future.

What is your writing process like?
When I get an idea, I sometimes outline the first few chapters, but once I start writing, and especially after the characters and world are developed, I let my characters lead me where they want. I might do some minor revision as I’m writing, especially if I’m submitting chapters to others to critique, but most of my editing is done after I’ve typed “THE END.” I’ve taken many writing classes in the past few years, including ones on craft, and I apply what I learned as I edit.

What part do beta readers or critique partners play in perfecting your manuscripts?
I love having beta readers and critique partners. Most give me a readers perspective so I know if what I intended is how the story actually comes out. It is important, of course, to know the abilities of the readers and critiquers. Some provide more insight than others.

What advice do you have for writers who are still striving for publication?
Don’t give up. Find publishers who’ve issued books similar to yours. Develop a great query to send them, one that will get their interest enough that they’ll even read your submission. Create a first page that grabs them.

For Part 2 of this interview, published on KL Wagoner’s website, click here.

The Writing Life: Adapting Your Work

Posted on September 15, 2015 by

by Sherri Burr

I was fortunate to conduct one of the last television interviews with the late Navajo artist R.C. Gorman in 2004. I asked him about his propensity to exploit his copyrights by turning a single oil painting into lithographs, posters, greeting cards, mugs, calendars and so forth. Gorman’s response was, “Why limit?”

Writers should adopt Gorman’s approach and explore the many ways that the written word can be adapted into other forms. Take for example Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple. Ms. Walker licensed the movie rights to the book in the 1980s and Stephen Spielberg produced a haunting film starring Whoopie Goldberg as Celie and featuring Oprah Winfrey as Sophia in her film debut.

Oprah acquired musical theatrical rights and co-produced The Color Purple: A New Musical, which opened on Broadway on December 1, 2005 and was nominated for several Tony awards (but lost for Best Musical to Spring Awakening). The latter was adapted from a play by Frank Wedekind. I saw both musicals in early January 2008 on a trip to New York and was amazed at the power of authors to address the significant emotional issues encountered by human beings, including adoption, abortion, suicide, and emotional abuse.

In the version of The Color Purple that I saw, the role of Celie was played by Fantasia, an American Idol winner. Thus, a Reality TV participant teamed up with television talk show host Winfrey to present a variation of a book that won both the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award.

Your work doesn’t have to win major awards to be worthy of adaptation. Section 106(2) of the U.S. Copyright Act specifies that all authors of copyrighted works have the right “to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work.”

Poems become songs (think of rap music as poetry spoken to a beat). Songs become films (remember Roy Orbison’s song that became the inspiration for the film Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts). Many a New Yorker article has become a feature film. The point is to think expansively about your works. Be open to deriving other works based on your original works.

Take a page from R.C. Gorman’s legacy: don’t limit!

Sherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.

This article was originally published in the February 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Louis L’Amour Saved My Life

Posted on September 10, 2015 by

by Olive Balla

Just to dispel any misunderstanding up front, I never actually met Louis L’Amour. He never reached out his hand to pluck my struggling body from a rain swollen river. He never yanked me out of the path of a careering city bus. But what he did do was just as vital to my survival—he wrote fiction.

When I was twenty-one, married with three children and trying to survive a spiritual, emotional, mental, and financial train wreck, I discovered Louis L’Amour’s Sitka. That phenomenal piece of literature bore me on a magic carpet of woven words, away from the turmoil that was my life, and into flights of escape. The harsh expanse of Alaska, the tough men and often tougher women, the struggle to not only survive, but thrive against overwhelming odds, those all spoke to my depressed, lonely, fearful spirit.

After that, I haunted the local public library in search of more L’Amour titles. I grew to crave the sensation of being ferried into the past while watching from the safe distance of the present. I thrilled in the knowledge that everything would turn out okay for the men and women with whom I found myself identifying. I read everything Louis L’Amour wrote, and his words comforted me. They gave me hope.

Over the next few years I branched out into other areas of fiction. I reveled in the excitement of spy novels written by Helen MacInnes, feasted on the haunted offerings of Stephen King, and devoured the cerebral musings of Isaac Asimov.

My world changed and expanded. Eventually, the idea that I myself could change took root. At the age of twenty-nine I went to college, where I learned how to teach others to read and write.

Thirty years later, I still look forward to those quiet times when I can burrow into my pile of pillows, a cup of hot tea at my elbow and a compelling story in my hands. I still thrill at being escorted into other realms, other dimensions, other realities.

Some people believe that every person has a unique niche in this world, a slot molded in her image and into which she alone will fit. I don’t know if that’s so. But I do know that writers hold a special place in the human experience, some even to the point of sparking world change.

So, thanks to those of you who answer the call to write in whatever genre beckons. Thanks for meeting deadlines, for struggling with agents, for doing hours of research, for rewriting innumerable times and not giving up. Thanks for following the tugging of your muse. And thank you Louis L’Amour, for saving my life.

Olive Balla, author of suspense novel An Arm and a Leg, is mother of 3, grandmother to 13, great-grandmother of 4, a retired educator, and part-time professional musician. Having been everything from secretary at a used car dealership, a university student, and a high school Spanish teacher, Balla states her characters are, in part, amalgamations of people she’s met. Living with her husband Victor in the Albuquerque area, she spends her spare time in a small woodworking shop designing and building everything from breadboxes and wine racks, to a porch bench. Visit her website at omballa.com.

This article was originally published in the October 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.