NewBook has acquired impulsion (in horses, the compressed desire to go forward…the horse is “between legs and hand” or “on the bit”.)\u00a0 It’s pushing me now to write more , a very good sign, even if, in the end, it means dumping a lot already written.\u00a0\u00a0 Sunday the 29th, it was at 52,500+ a bit words.\u00a0 Right now (2 pm April 1, 2020) it’s 56,600+ words.\u00a0 That’s not up to my normal writing speed back in the day, but it’s a jump to a more normal level (over 1000 words\/day) and if it keeps up and stays “alive” and also interesting for my alpha reader, then I may be able to say the concussion’s effect on my writing is pretty much gone.\u00a0\u00a0 (The proof will be not only the finishing of this book, but equivalent progress on one after that.\u00a0 Yes, I’m growing ambitious.\u00a0 Ambition in the Time of Pandemic…but there will be no description of enemas in this or any other book I write.\u00a0 Just sayin’.)<\/p>\n
A mildly technical point of writing (since I feel confident writing this won’t take away from the book’s energy), and that is punctuation rules vs. fiction.\u00a0 You all, being sensitive and intelligent readers, know that rules of grammar can be violated in dialogue.\u00a0\u00a0 If a character needs to speak ungrammatically, the character should speak ungrammatically.\u00a0 How characters speak is part of characterization; it informs readers (without infodump) that this person’s background is a particular social class, a particular culture, a particular mix of background and experience.\u00a0 How much flexibility characters show in their speech also reveals character–do they have more than one register or not?\u00a0\u00a0 And do they readily shift registers to make conversation more comfortable for the person being talked with, or do they stick to one (when they could<\/em> change) because they don’t want<\/em> to make it more comfortable?\u00a0\u00a0 Most of us have experienced conversational partners that were willing and able to converse on our level, and ones who insisted on using theirs and making the difference between us ever more distinct.<\/p>\n But punctuation is a tool in the writer’s box that functions to enhance a reader’s grasp of character in a different way–it stands in for the rate and rhythm of speech, not just the vocabulary chosen and the grammatical construction.\u00a0 Punctuation can help readers understand what the character sounds<\/em> like.\u00a0 To do that, however, the writer must use punctuation in ways most formal guides to it consider wrong.\u00a0 The writer must use dialogue punctuation consistently–establish a code readers can count on, scene to scene and book to book.\u00a0 It may well be different from the code other writers establish, but for it to work, readers must know what the major marks (other than period, which is always full stop) mean.<\/p>\n The writer has available the comma, semi-colon, colon, dash, ellipsis, inner quotation marks, and parentheses.\u00a0\u00a0 Within dialogue, the comma need not indicate grammatical units (restricted and unrestricted clauses, for instance) but can function as a pause indicator that serves for a breath, but with the intent of going on in speech.\u00a0 (Churchill wrote this way for his speeches; that’s where I got the idea that the grammatical comma and the expressive comma could be used differently.\u00a0 They were used differently in the 19th and early 20th c. by many.)\u00a0 It can set off groups of words in an utterance that do not conform to grammatical rules.\u00a0 It can suggest state if mind in repetition\u00a0 “I was wondering, you know, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but…”\u00a0 in a character who typically runs thoughts (or partial thoughts) together.<\/p>\n The semi-colon in dialogue can indicate a certain formality or didactic character quality, a lecture-intent character.\u00a0 This person doesn’t want to be interrupted, and thus won’t signal a longer pause (the arrival of a connection like “thus, so, on the other hand, etc.” where the other character might get a word in.) \u00a0 The topic will usually be abstract and complex and the grammatical forms will reinforce that. \u00a0 “Strict adherence to experimental protocols is essential; anything less risks the reputation of the entire university, Mr. Jones.”\u00a0 If read aloud, that will sound different from the two sentences ending in periods, which has a different prosody and a longer pause in the middle. \u00a0 In dialogue the two sentence version might be part of a lecture to a class; it could be purely informational, without any emotional bias towards those in the audience.\u00a0 The semi-colon version is clearly a stinging rebuke (and possibly the prelude to expulsion or being fired.)<\/p>\n The colon is regaining some of its former uses now, but it is particularly handy in dialogue for maintaining forward impulsion…not just a pause but a full stop that isn’t going to stop the speaker.\u00a0 “I’ve told you a hundred times, Jay: if you do that, you’re through.”\u00a0 “They were there, and then they weren’t:\u00a0 simply gone, no one knew where.” \u00a0 It’s like a stumble and recovery on a steep staircase.\u00a0 It’s a more abrupt full stop than the period.\u00a0 It’s a yank on the reins, and then a kick in the ribs.\u00a0 The voice does not drop to stop the utterance, as it does with a period.\u00a0\u00a0 The period rounds out the prosody of the utterance; it’s\u00a0 halt ridden with tact.<\/p>\n Dash and ellipsis are related, but quite different, as they signal rate of speech, with appropriate changes in prosody.\u00a0 A dash in dialogue is a sudden break, but a definite pause before a topic change, an emotional outburst, and (in paired dashes) a completion of the idea.\u00a0 “I was wondering–damn! I spilled the coffee!–if you knew what happened at the meeting.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An ellipsis is a break that suggests indecision, timidity, uncertainty of any kind, exhaustion.\u00a0\u00a0 “I don’t know, Sandra…I just thought…maybe…we could arrange something.”\u00a0\u00a0 “I’m just…finding…it hard…to breathe…in this smoke…”\u00a0\u00a0 The ellipsis finishing an utterance intensifies the sense of uncertainty and internal struggle to express something.\u00a0 When not at the end of a sentence, it expresses internal struggle of the preceding thought fragment.<\/p>\n Internal quotation marks tell the reader that the words inside them were spoken by a different character than the one speaking in the text, and so that character will probably *say* them differently.\u00a0\u00a0 “I can only tell you what Bob told me.\u00a0 He said, ‘I am sure that Craig is the embezzler, and I can prove it if you’ll let me put up a hidden camera.’ I know what you think of both of them, but those were his words, and you needed to hear them.”<\/p>\n One way to work with punctuation for maximum effect is to read all your dialogue aloud and mentally (or actually) punctuate it differently until you hear the effect you want.\u00a0\u00a0 “You scum!\u00a0 You think you’ll get what you want?”\u00a0 (angry and fast, hot anger),\u00a0 “You scum. You think you’ll get what you want: think again.”\u00a0\u00a0 (angry and slow, cold anger, threat)\u00a0\u00a0 “Carla said Benny was going to be there by nine and she would meet him.” (excited, running thoughts together.)\u00a0 “Carla said Benny was going to be there by nine.\u00a0 She said she’d meet him.”\u00a0 (thoughtful.\u00a0 No pressure of emotion.)<\/p>\n And be ready to tell certain kinds of copy editors to STET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NewBook has acquired impulsion (in horses, the compressed desire to go forward…the horse is “between legs and hand” or “on the bit”.)\u00a0 It’s pushing me now to write more , a very good sign, even if, in the end, it means dumping a lot already written.\u00a0\u00a0 Sunday the 29th, it was at 52,500+ a bit Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,25],"tags":[7,26,6],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","category-writers-toolkit","tag-the-writing-life","tag-tools-for-writing","tag-vatta-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}