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Dialogue Punctuation Basics

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by Dodici Azpadu

061957-firey-orange-jelly-icon-people-things-people-singing200You’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.”

TracesOfAWoman100

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.

WearingThePhantomOut100Her 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

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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.

TheCrimsonOrbWhat 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.

FortuneCupcakes2Tell 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.

KLWagoner150_2KL 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.



The Writing Life: Adapting Your Work

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by Sherri Burr

SherriBurr

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!

A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri 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

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by Olive Balla

Olive Balla245Just 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.

AnArmAndALeg72Olive 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.



10 Rules for Imitating Author Ken Bruen

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by Bentley Clark

Out of Ones Head1

In an effort to procrastinate writing this article, I did some research on the internet (read: randomly surfed the web for stuff) about my favorite author, Ken Bruen. Bruen is an Irish author of hard-boiled/noir fiction, and his Jack Taylor series is my weakness. In fact, I would sleep with the existing ten volumes under my pillow each night if it weren’t so uncomfortable and didn’t cause such violent dreams. When asked “What would be your advice to new writers?” Bruen responded: “[W]rite every day and read like a bastard. Imitate freely.”

The clouds parted and the writerly muses sang traditional gospel songs—I had found a reason to write about my favorite author. (Irrefutable evidence that procrastination works.)

I have heard the advice on more than one occasion—as have you—that imitating the writing of a highly stylized writer can be a great exercise to help an author get the hang of unique and distinctive rhythm, word use, grammar, punctuation, and storytelling. And that once you master the style of other writers, you are better able to define your own. In my experience as both a writer and a reader, Bruen is so outside the boundaries of conventional storytelling that his writing shouldn’t actually work. Instead, it is compelling and mesmerizing, yet peculiarly spare.

In case you’re interested in an imitation exercise, I put forth these 10 unlikely rules for imitating Bruen freely:

1. Write lists. Now, make them poetic. Use this passage as your guide:

He also put books aside, then later I’d get a parcel containing

poetry
philosophy
and the hook
American crime novels.

2. Use local accents and vernacular. If you nail the timbre and context, you may not even need to explain their precise meaning. E.g., “Arrah, go on our that. It takes a real man to carry flowers.”

3. Make chapter lengths arbitrary. Write only as much as is needed for a particular chapter. Forty words are plenty, but try to keep each chapter to six pages or fewer.

4. Give your protagonist one—maybe two— redeeming qualities. Make him remorseless in his treatment of his mother. Make him unreliable and inexcusably violent. Make him an alcoholic and an addict. Now, give him a soft spot for swans and the homeless. Then let him weep at the death of his favorite publican.

5. Keep your descriptions to a minimum. Let the reader fill in the blanks. Keep the locales of your novel’s most important happenings vague and let the action within them be your focus. For example: a major setting in Bruen’s The Guards is Grogan’s, “the oldest unchanged pub in Galway.” Want to know what it looks like? This will have to suffice: “…it remains true to the format of fifty or more years ago. Beyond basic. Spit and sawdust floor, hard seats, no-frills stock.… The bar is free of ornamentation. Two hurleys are crisscrossed over the blotched mirror. Above them is a triple frame. It shows a pope, St. Patrick, and John F. Kennedy. JFK is in the centre.”

6. Regularly switch point of view from first- to third-person and back again. Let your reader get inside your protagonist’s head, yet still be able to omnisciently follow the action.

7. Make innumerable local references. Do not explain them. Do not apologize for them.

8. Use little to no dialogue attributions. See how far you can take this. One page? Maybe two? To make this work: a) begin with a simple attribution at the outset of dialogue; b) keep sentences short and language clipped—most people don’t speak in full sentences, so why should your characters?; c) make sure that each character’s intention within the dialogue is so clear that there can be no question as to which character is speaking.

9. Create a compelling central plot. Ignore it. Draw your readers in with a mystery—a murder or a mutilation will do—then have your private investigator wander in and out of scenes that might move the mystery to a resolution. Try solving the mystery halfway through the novel; now, make the last half as un-put-down-able as the first.

10. Define your protagonist by his favorite books, movies and music. Send your readers off to read other writers, to watch movies they’ve never heard of and to populate their iPods with undiscovered music. Point them down a media rabbit hole. When they come out the other side, they will better understand your protagonist. Odds are, they will even re-read your novels to affirm this newfound understanding.

Good luck. And if you succeed at all of these, let me know, because I’m sure I will want to sleep with your book under my pillow, too.

BentleyClark125Bentley Clark just about had a heart attack when she thought her computer mercilessly murdered the final draft of this article. Share your most heart-stopping and gory story of writing loss in the comments below.

This article was originally published as “On Imitation” in the August 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

Image “Out Of One’s Head, Relax The Brain” courtesy of thaikrit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



Characters in Conflict

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by Chris Eboch

AdvancedPlotting200

A strong story needs conflict. But conflict doesn’t just come from dramatic things happening. It comes from the character—what he or she needs and wants, and why he or she can’t get it easily.

Let’s start with a premise: a kid has a math test on Monday. Exciting? Not really. But ask two simple questions, and you can add conflict.

1. Why is it important to the character?

The stakes should be high. The longer the story or novel, the higher the stakes needed to sustain it. A short story character might want to win a contest; a novel character might need to save the world.

2. Why is it difficult for the character?

Difficulties can be divided into three general categories, traditionally called man versus man, man versus nature, and man versus himself. You can even have a combination of these. For example, someone may be trying to spy on some bank robbers (man versus man) during a dangerous storm (man versus nature) when he is afraid of lightning (man versus himself).

For our kid with the math test, here’s one example: It’s important because if he doesn’t pass, he’ll fail the class, have to go to summer school, and not get to go to football camp, when football is what he loves most. Assuming we create a character readers like, they’ll care about the outcome of this test and root for him to succeed.

Our football lover could have lots of challenges—he forgot his study book, he’s expected to baby-sit, a storm knocked out the power, he has ADHD, or he suffers test anxiety. But ideally we’ll relate the difficulty to the reason it’s important. So let’s say he has a game Sunday afternoon and is getting pressure from his coach and teammates to practice rather than study. Plus he’d rather play football anyway.

We now have a situation full of potential tension. Let the character struggle enough before he succeeds (or fails and learns a lesson), and you’ll have a story. And if these two questions can pump up a dull premise, just think what they can do with an exciting one!

Fears and Desires

As this exercise shows, conflict comes from the interaction between character and plot. You can create conflict by setting up situations which force a person to confront their fears. If someone is afraid of heights, make them go someplace high. If they’re afraid of taking responsibility, force them to be in charge.

You can also create conflict by setting up situations which oppose a person’s desires. If they crave safety, put them in danger. But if they crave danger, keep them out of it.

In my romantic suspense novel, Rattled (written as Kris Bock), Erin likes her adventures safely in books. But when she finds a clue to a century-old lost treasure, she’s thrust into a wilderness expedition full of dangers from wild animals, nasty humans, and even nature. In my Mayan historical novel The Well of Sacrifice, Eveningstar never dreams of being a leader or a rebel. But when her family, the government, and even the gods fail to stop the evil high priest, she’s forced to act. The reluctant hero is a staple of books and movies because it’s fun to watch someone forced into a heroic role when they don’t want it. (Think of Han Solo in Star Wars.)

Even with nonfiction, you can create tension by focusing on the challenges that make a person’s accomplishments more impressive. In Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker, I made this incredible athlete’s story more powerful by focusing on all the things he had to overcome—childhood health problems, poverty, a poor education. I showed his successes and his troubles, to help the reader understand what he achieved.

Some writers start with plot ideas and then develop the character who’ll face those challenges, while others start with a great character and then figure out what he or she does. Regardless, remember to work back and forth between plot and character, tying them together with conflict.

To Build Conflict:

What does your main character want? What does he need? Make these things different, and you’ll add tension. It can be as simple as our football player who wants to practice football, but needs to study. Or it could be more subtle, like someone who wants to be protected but needs to learn independence.

Even if your main problem is external (man versus man or man versus nature), consider giving the character an internal flaw (man versus himself) that contributes to the difficulty. Perhaps your character has a temper, is lazy, or refuses to ever admit she’s wrong. This helps set up your complications and as a bonus makes your character seem more real.

Before you start, test the idea. Change the character’s age, gender, or looks. Change the point of view. Change the setting. Change the internal conflict. What happens? Choose the combination that has the most dramatic potential.

BanditsPeak150Chris 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 June 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Taming the Beast: What to Do with That Frightful First Draft

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by Kirt Hickman

You’ve gotten your first draft onto paper, but it doesn’t look anything like the novel you envisioned. Somewhere along the way, it took on a life of its own. It became grotesque: overblown, disorganized, and rife with inconsistencies. Your writing is flat, your characters are boring, and your plot contains so many dead ends it resembles a maze for some masochistic lab rat. Somehow it got so out of control that you can’t imagine now how to rein it in.

While this article doesn’t address all of these problems, it will answer this question: What now? Before you examine the structure of your scenes or the tautness of your narrative style (see “Revising Fiction: Ten Tips To Tighten Your Narrative Style“), you’ve got to tame the monster you’ve created. You’ve got to trim the fat and organize the rest.

Scene Cards

To organize, create an index card for each scene. Give each scene a name and number and write it on the scene’s card. Then read through your manuscript and make the following notes on the cards:

1. Scene Purpose

Each scene must have a purpose; it must advance the plot or develop character (preferably both). Any scene that doesn’t is either a digression or it just conveys information. Delete it. Find another way to provide the necessary information. Make a note on the card of any scene you plan to move information to. Ideally, each scene that you keep should also show conflict between characters, create suspense, and show how the day-to-day life in your world is different from your reader’s life. Jot down ideas to enhance these characteristics of each scene.

2. Type of Scene

Is the scene an action scene? A romance scene? A dialogue scene? Something else? Write it on the card. Don’t string too many action scenes in a row. You want to excite your reader, not fatigue him. Similarly, don’t put several passive scenes together; you’ll risk boring your reader.

Color-code the title row of your scene cards with highlighter markers (pink for action scenes, yellow for passive, orange for others) and lay the cards out on a table with the highlighted title showing. This will give you a good visual display of the distribution of the action. Look for scenes that you can move to create a better balance.

3. Inconsistencies

As you wrote your first draft you may have made decisions that created inconsistencies in your characters or plot. If so, decide how best to resolve them, and in which scenes. Note any necessary changes on your scene cards.

4. Suspense Elements

A suspense element is any question you’ve raised in your reader’s mind, any loose end you need to tie up in another scene. On your scene cards, note the suspense elements you introduced or resolved in each scene.

Then go back through the cards. On a separate sheet of paper, list each suspense element. Next to it, write down the number of the scene in which you introduced it and the number of the scene in which you resolved it. Did you resolve them all? If not, tie up each loose end. Either find a scene in which to resolve it, or don’t bring it up in the first place. Make notes on the appropriate scene cards.

Rewrite Your Scenes

Before you rewrite your scenes, save your manuscript and begin working on a separate draft. If you decide later that you need something you’ve altered or deleted, you’ll be able to retrieve the original.

During this rewrite, you’ll throw whole scenes away, write new scenes, and revise some so extensively you’ll have to start them over from scratch. Every scene will need some form of revision. Don’t let this discourage you. You must trim the fat from your first draft and bolster the weak or missing elements. You already know what changes you need to make; you’ve noted them on your scene cards. Now rewrite each scene using these notes as your guide. When you’re done, review your notes to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Now your manuscript is ready for the more detailed editing required to clean up your scene structure, narrative style, and dialog. Those topics, however, I’ll leave for future articles.

WorldsAsunder125_2Kirt 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 March 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



An Interview with Author Elizabeth Ann Galligan

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Elizabeth Ann Galligan, Ph.D, is a poet and retired educator from Eastern New Mexico University who completed her first novel Secrets of the Plumed Saint (ABQ Press, 2012) at the age of 73. She has also co-authored the early childhood book Count on African Animals (2014), a precocious child’s introduction to counting and reading with photographs by Florence H. Kubota. Elizabeth’s poems and essays have appeared in Voices of New Mexico, Too (2013) and More Voices of New Mexico (2015, Rio Grande Books in collaboration with New Mexico Book Co-op), and in the Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology 2015. Visit her website at ElizabethAnnGalligan.com.

Secrets of the Plumed SaintWhat is your elevator pitch for Secrets of the Plumed Saint?
Secrets of the Plumed Saint is a cozy mystery, a tale of intrigue, set in a high mountain valley in a small village in northern New Mexico in the 1970s. When the 100-year-old hand-carved statue of the Santo Niño de Atocha disappears from their chapel, the villagers are so embarrassed they decide to hide the secret from the Church hierarchy and try to find the culprits and discover their motives themselves.

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
I hope readers gain respect for the people of northern New Mexico who honor their traditions and survive in a difficult environment through hard work, mutual support, wits, and religious faith. I wanted to explore the effects of major demographic changes that occurred in the 1970s which brought in outsiders who disturbed the equilibrium of the village.

What unique challenges did your first novel pose for you?
Never having the notion to write a novel, as well as not having time to devote to writing, I had to wait until I retired in 2007 to pursue various forms. I had always thought I might try to write about a holy man, a hermit, who lived in the area where Secrets of the Plumed Saint is set. I thought I could write a biography, perhaps, but certainly not a mystery. Once I decided to start writing, I found friends, family, and other authors who encouraged me. Incredible serendipitous events started. The right people came along just when I needed their expertise and help. I believe the Santo Niño de Atocha had a hand in it, too.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing Secrets of the Plumed Saint?
People often tell me they pass the book along to family and friends. They frequently buy multiple copies. One day a woman of 80 years bought 11 copies and sent them to all her family. She told me, “Your book gave me back my roots.” Her comment made all the effort, confusion, and insecurity about my first novel worthwhile.

What do you struggle with most in your writing? What are your strong points?
I write a lot of words just to get my ideas down. Some call it wordiness—not a good trait, especially in mysteries. The trick is to go back and force myself to be more concise and make better word choices. I try not to use the first trite phrase that comes easily. We all develop habits in our writing that include certain patterns which we must overcome. Two of my bad habits are using too many adjectives and too many commas. I count finishing the Plumed Saint manuscript at age 73 as one of my best achievements. During the process, I learned I could write dialogue and poetic prose. Since I love New Mexico, I have a strong sense of place which I try to evoke in my writing. Plotting the story and sequence are still challenges.

Has writing nonfiction helped you write better fiction?
In academic or expository prose accuracy matters, so I learned how to research topics. But academic writing is often dry and of interest to only a few scholars. The pickiness of academic writing now annoys me. Writers of either persuasion have to overcome the ingrained editorial angel (devil?) that sits on their shoulder and says their writing is not good enough.

How has your work as a poet influenced your fiction writing? What can other writers learn from poetry?
Just because I had written poetry, I did not assume I knew how to write fiction. My own style in the Plumed Saint tends toward the use of metaphors and similes tied to the setting of the story. Fast-moving stories are not for me. I like to meander through the words. Luckily, so do some readers. Most poetry emphasizes concise language forms. In that sense, other writers can learn from poets to make careful word choices. Poetry also invites symbolic language and encompasses suggestions of the mystical and other-worldly realms. In short, any writer can benefit from reading good poetry.

What are you working on now?
A historical novel is in progress, again set in northern New Mexico, a sequel to Secrets of the Plumed Saint. I also intend to write the fictionalized account of a portion of the life of holy man and preacher Giovanni Maria di Agostini, the Hermit of Hermit’s Peak in northern New Mexico. It will be based partially on recent scholarship from the Brazilian scholar Dr. Alexandre Karsburg who made the link between the “holy monk,” as he was known in Brazil, and “our” New Mexican sojourner. Some amazing new research by David G. Thomas adds depth to Dr. Karsburg’s research. My book in progress (working title Holy Enigma) is a novelization of the effects of the Hermit on the people of the time who came in contact with the itinerant Italian preacher. Memories and stories passed on orally (some documented) indicate the holy man’s impact in the northern New Mexico Territory around Las Vegas and in the southern part near Mesilla. The Hermit inhabited a cave near Dripping Springs in the foothills of the Organ Mountains from about 1867 until his murder in 1869. Who killed him and why remains a mystery to this day.

What advice do you have for other writers?
Just begin. Trust yourself and your words. Forget many of the things you learned about “rules.” As Mark David Gerson suggests in The Voice of the Muse, there are 13 rules. The first is: There are no rules. The story exists and you are the vehicle which carries it. However, your publisher will have rules you need to follow.

KLWagoner150_2KL 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.



Grammatically Correct: Mixed Constructions Make No Sense

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by Dodici Azpadu

061957-firey-orange-jelly-icon-people-things-people-singing200Sentence parts that do not fit together grammatically or logically result in a mixed construction. Although readers will see and hear the logical error first, the cause of the error is often mechanical. Writers force parts of speech to take on grammatical functions for which they are not designed. The example below shows both errors.

For athletes who play contact sports have increased risk of arthritis later in their lives.

The first part of the sentence goes off track between the words sports and have. Most readers hear and see the error immediately. The long prepositional phrase For athletes who play contact sports is in a subject position. By rule, a prepositional phrase cannot be a subject of a sentence. It can only function as a modifier.

Writers can start a sentence with a prepositional phrase by way of introduction, but then they need to add a proper subject and verb in an independent clause, as in the example below.

For athletes who play contact sports, arthritis is a risk later in their lives.

The same problem occurs with adverbial clauses in the subject position. And the same solution is available.

When students are late is very distracting to other students.

The adverbial phrase When students are late cannot be the subject of a sentence. Like prepositional phrases, the function of adverbial phrases is to modify.

When students are late, they distract other students.

But another revision is also possible. Change the adverbial phrase into a gerund phrase. The gerund phrase can be the subject of a sentence.

Being late to class is very distracting.

Or revise the sentence based on who or what is the actor/subject of the sentence.

Students who are late to class are very distracting.

A mixed construction also occurs when writers use a coordinating conjunction to separate a dependent clause from an independent clause. Review the FANBOYS acronym (from my article “Grammatically Correct: Fixing Run-on Sentences”) to remember coordinating conjunctions: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.

Although celebrities live charmed lives, yet they can have serious drug problems.

Either although or yet needs to be deleted.

Celebrities live charmed lives, yet they can have serious drug problems.
Although celebrities live charmed lives, they can have serious drug problems.

Sometimes artists draw with their non-dominant hand to bring attention to how their drawing tools affect their creative execution. A way for writers to bring heightened attention to their creative expression is to concentrate on their grammar tools. As a rule, writers do not want to impede the flow of words to page, especially in early stages of a draft. As an exercise, however, noticing subject choices and the verbs connected to them helps writers see where weaknesses in sentence construction occur.

TracesOfAWoman100

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.

WearingThePhantomOut100Her 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 May 2011 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



Whack-a-Mole Writing

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by Olive Balla

Olive Balla245Telling stories is great fun. But writing those stories in a way that will attract readers is a whole different stratum of the art. It’s a bit like the old arcade game Whack-a-Mole. The mole pops up and invitingly taunts the player. But just as the player takes aim, the mole disappears and the player’s mallet smacks air. It’s the same with writing. Just as the writer thinks he has a lock on what the reader wants, the reader moves on.

What can a writer do to set his work apart from that of the hundreds of thousands of other wannabes striving for recognition? What strategies, what tricks make one story shine brighter than the tales of all the rest of those yearning to become well-paid, or even moderately-paid authors? The problem of capturing the attention of today’s reader is a tough one, and the blame may not rest solely with the writer’s commitment and level of skill. It may boil down, in part, to recognizing and capitalizing on the continual metamorphosis of today’s reader.

Only since about 1840 has public education as we know it been available to the children of the poor as well as to the scions of the wealthy. As a result, the skills of reading and writing have become common to not only society’s scribes, but to the hoi polloi. And that’s a tremendous thing. It enhances the quality of life no end. But it doesn’t end there.

Thanks to the explosion of technology, thousands of storytellers are investing in laptops, blogging their pithy reflections on life, Facebooking, Tweeting, and working through their choices of hundreds of social networking sites. Tens of thousands of Baby Boomers are clacking out memoirs and novels of every description and genre. Websites dedicated solely to the preparation and presentation of self-published works are blossoming like my mom’s lilacs in May. We’re witnessing a supernova in the numbers of storytellers demanding our attention. So why is it that such a statistically few of us make it to press?

The answer to that question isn’t merely a matter of the writer’s aptitude for showing rather than telling, or his ability to resist the urge to explain everything, or his deft crafting of supercharged, vibrant dialogue. Nor is it a matter of simply offering a great three-arc plot and tightly-edited, attention-grabbing first five pages (thank you, Kirt Hickman). Of course, those are important precursors to publication. But today’s writer must do more—he must appeal to two generations of children raised on television shows of the Sesame Street ilk. And he must find a path to the growing numbers of readers with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Today’s reader is more sophisticated, more world wise than her seventeenth or eighteenth century counterpart. And as a result of the growing numbers afflicted with ADD and ADHD, the same reader has a short attention span.

But beyond the increasing ADD and ADHD phenomenon, the research literature indicates the passive act of watching television actually rewires the brain, especially of those under 5 years of age. Since Sesame Street’s first showing in November of 1969, countless millions of children-now-adults have spent hours each day passively watching television. And that means there are tens of millions of folks with altered thinking processes out there trying to find something interesting to read.

A suggestion: Spend a day at Barnes & Noble scanning the bestsellers in various genres. Take a pad and pencil, and jot down your reactions to what’s hot in today’s market. Read the first two or three chapters. Open the book to the middle and read a couple of chapters there, and then read the last two. What immediately catches your attention? How many paragraphs must you read before action kicks in? Is the dialogue always grammatically correct? Is word usage up to par with your high school English teacher’s expectations, or does the author douse the pages with artistic license? How long do the sentences tend to be? Are there lots of words longer than two syllables, or few to none? How much backstory do you see in one place?

Although the answers to those questions depend entirely upon the author and his genre, paying attention to these details might help zero in on a few techniques to grab the target reader.

I’ve heard more than one published author intone the benefits of never giving up. But I’ve heard just as many admit that success is a mixture of hard work, persistence, and dumb luck. The latter is kismet, but the former two are up to the writer.

According to Andy Griffith, “Ain’t nothing easy.” Hang in there.

AnArmAndALeg72Olive 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 March 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.



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