vilakins | Writing rules

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Writing rules

Everyone's doing this, so I'll have my rather pedestrian go at it. I'm just not very self-analytical, I suppose, because I have no idea what my personal writing rules are. And you know, doing a commentary on one of my stories is something you'd have to pay me to do. A lot.

I am however planning on putting up some writing guidelines on my site, so I suppose I'd go for:

Know the mechanics (punctuation, how to write dialogue, when to start a new paragraph etc) and use them. It makes things a lot easier for the reader.
Do find out how to spell the names of characters and places. I have to look them up fairly often and for B7 find the Sevencyclopaedia and Liberation very good for that. Well, Liberation had to be worth its price somehow.
Don't be afraid of the little word 'said'. It's an almost unnoticeable way of telling the reader who's speaking (take a look at pro fiction). I do use words like 'shouted', 'whispered etc when I need to tell the reader how someone is speaking, but there's no excuse for 'returned', 'intoned', 'supplied' (I mean, supplied?) or my personal hate, 'pronounced', a verb which caused me to throw a Hollister Twins book across the room as a 10-year-old and swear off them forever.

If you really don't like 'said', you can always use 'beats', which have the character doing something. In fact they're a good way to break up dialogue and give readers some visual clues.
Don't be afraid of characters' names and avoid epithets like 'the curly-haired rebel' or 'the blonde pilot'. They should only be used if you're writing from the POV of someone who doesn't know the characters and would think of them that way.
Otherwise, I have no rules: everyone has a different style. In fact you can even throw a lot of #1 out depending on your narrator.

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Pronounced can be useful if someone is being very pompous, or is a speech teacher. :^)

Otherwise, I think of someone standing in a courtroom as sentence is pronounced.

I can't think of any reason I'd use it to say who's speaking though.

In orotund tones, the magistrate pronounced, "Thirty days without internet!" while the chastised blogger wept.

Yep, but that's a specific use: courtroom. Eh, I was scarred by that verb at a tender age.

And that's cruel and unusual punishment!

The more unusual attributions can work, if used *very* sparingly, and when you need to draw attention to the manner of speaking.

I tend to vary 'said' most often by simply omitting attributions.

The blogger was hauled away in tears."But my cat sits on my lap while I blog!"

I tend to vary 'said' most often by simply omitting attributions.

[nods] Me too, or beats. Occasionally when reading pro fic, I've had to count the lines when they've missed too many out, or say them out loud in different voices. :-P

"But my cat sits on my lap while I blog!"

Aww. So does Tessa.

Tara gets very happy about blog-sitting and drools on me. :^)

I like this. I'll try it out.
If you really don't like 'said', you can always use 'beats', which have the character doing something. In fact they're a good way to break up dialogue and give readers some visual clues.

Is there an better way of depicting inner dialogue when mixed with verbal dialogue and internal feelings etc.? I haven't really found a way I liked or worked better.

"Go for it!" Vilakins twirled round on her chair, pleased that people are actually reading her post. "And they make a talky scene less static."

Inner dialogue I put into italics--if it's direct thought and not reported. If it's indirect, I leave it plain. E.g.

What on earth was Avon doing with that thing? Vila approached, filled with curiosity and caution. "What's going on here?"

What on earth is Avon doing with that thing? Vila approached, filled with curiosity and caution. "What's going on here?"

Is that the sort of thing you meant?

Yes, that's exactly it. Thanks. I'll try the first one.

In terms of the second. That is what I am currently doing with internal dialogue. I do find it annoying that the spell/grammer checker always tries to capitalize anything after a question mark when it is meant to be inner dialogue.

Um... but it should still have capitals in all the right places!

Then should it be like this?

Why does no one ever listen to me? thought Vila.

Or like this?

Why does no one ever listen to me? Thought Vila.

These are all very helpful guidelines - it's fascinating to see what people come up with when they muse on the writing process.

They should only be used if you're writing from the POV of someone who doesn't know the characters

I don't think anyone, ever, thinks of other people that way. Even if I notice that the headmaster of my daughter's school is blond, I wouldn't think of him as "the blond headmaster". It just, I don't know, it conflates two categories of thinking about someone in a way that doesn't happen in real life. I might think of him as "That idiotic Brad Pitt wannabe" or "my disconcertingly handsome opponent" but it would definitely be thinking of him in personal terms, not as his job description + hair colour. Hmmm, I'm not sure if I've explained that very well. I'm a bit obsessed with how characters see other characters, so my stories are full of that sort of subjective, "idiotic Brad Pitt wannabe" epithet, and if they don't know each other's names, they'll usually invent some private nickname, like Mr Obnoxious, that they use instead of epithets when thinking about them.

Oh, I see that you mean! The first one's right but looks odd because it's a question. I'm not sure I'd do it that way, as the italics already show he's thinking. You could use a beat instead.

Why does no one ever listen to me? Vila slumped in his chair.

Well, I described the rude old bitch I encountered today as 'the white-haired one with the hump' (and more than one kind it appeared) to a colleague. I imagine that troopers watching Vila and Avon cracking a safe might do that too. "You get the dark-haired one and I'll go for the other one."

But yeah, 'rebel' and 'pilot' are very unlikely, yet they're used far too often in B7 fanfic. Vila gets called a thief when he's not even thinking about nicking something. :-P

'the white-haired one with the hump'

Exactly! And not as "the white-haired customer" (or whatever she was).

Vila gets called a thief when he's not even thinking about nicking something.

Hm, maybe this is getting closer to the heart of the problem. It's identifying him by one of the social roles he plays, in a context where that particular role isn't salient.

If I may jump in with my own two cents... The former is correct, but that particular construction can often feel quite stilted, especially if it's used over and over. If you're writing in omniscient POV and jumping around from one character's head to another -- which is difficult to pull off, IMHO, but perfectly acceptable if done right -- it might be necessary to explicitly specify to the reader who's doing the thinking. But if you've been writing Vila-POV for six chapters, you can probably reasonably assume that people will know whose internal thoughts those are and just leave off the "thought Vila" bit. Unless Vila's become telepathic or something. :)

I'll also add something I've noticed in my own writing and which I wonder whether other people do. When I'm writing a very tight-third POV, where most of my focus is on what's going on in the character's head and I'm detailing every thought and feeling they have, I'm much more likely to go with the "reported thought" sort of thing in

vilakins' first example. If my POV is a little more detached, I'm more likely, I think, to use direct-thought-in-italics. I think it's because, in a more detached POV, slipping into the character's thoughts feels like it should stand out more, whereas if I'm writing down every half-formed impression that crosses their mind, anyway, switching to first-person and italicizing seems... extraneous.

Yes, and it happens all the time in old B7 fanfic. I don't know whether you've read much of it. I bought up a lot of old zines five years ago when I became a fan, and these epithets are so common, I wondered if they were a convention which was required in order to have one's story accepted. The most common were:
- the little thief (although Vila is about the same size as Avon)
- the [dark-haired] comptech
- the blonde (or curly-haired} pilot
- the burly (or once again curly-haired} rebel
- the slender telepath
ect ect as Molesworth would sa.

I remember someone saying that they read a satirical story in which someone, probably Avon, said he desired 'the burly rebel' and ended up with Gan.

... and then there's the joke about the curly-haired rebel (Blake), the curly-haired rebel (Gan), the curly-haired rebel (Cally) and the curly-haired rebel (Tarrant)...

Thanks. Some useful things to think about there. I wasn't sure at first what you meant by "beats", but I think I've worked it out from the subsequent discussion.

And three of them natural!

I read the term in a book on writing a while back. It's basically having a character do something rather than just telling the reader they spoke. Beats don't just attribute speech by implication, they're also very useful for adding pauses and timing, hence the name I assume.

I think the term is used differently in script-writing but I'm not sure about that.

Thanks for the clarification.

Heh. I have just used "pronounced" in a ficlet. But it was in a context of the character pompously offering a judgment, so I thought it was appropriate. I hope it didn't cause anyone to throw their computer across the room. *grins*

A laptop, maybe. Just kidding!

That may be fine, but it wasn't appropriate for a five-year-old girl called Flossie, whose name just made it worse*. The author used an appalling variety of verbs for attribution and that one happened to be the last straw. Flossie wasn't pronouncing; she was just saying something. I don't actually see it much these days--'intoned' and 'supplied' annoy me much more regularly. That one just stuck in my mind.

I suppose I could have talked about names and appearance and how not to hit the reader with a sledgehammer about your characters' characters, but I've never seen anyone do it in fanfic--yay for us! Those damned twins consisted of: Nan and Bert, older, with straight dark hair and boring sensible attitudes; and the young, blonde fluffy-haired and -headed Freddie and Flossie. I objected to the unsubtlety of this, and also to the sets of twins looking so alike despite being different sexes. Yeah, I was a nitpicker at 10. :-P

Avon, said he desired 'the burly rebel' and ended up with Gan.

Bwahaha! A fate worse than death!

I have to say the most important rule I have found so far is number 11 on whatho''s list (http://whatho.livejournal.com/)

"11. Close LJ"

Ha! But I actually use an flist refresh as a small break when I'm a bit stuck.

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