Monthly Archives December 2013

OK, I admit it: saying there’s an imbalance between narrative and dialogue in a piece of writing is like saying there’s an imbalance between the ice cream and the banana in a banana split. For some people’s tastes, it’s not possible to have too much ice cream. Or too much banana.

But for most of us, there’s a sweet spot—pun fully intended—around which a little bit more ice cream or banana, or a little bit less, would still be OK.

The same is true of the balance between narrative and dialogue. Except that the range is wider. Much wider.

It’s possible to write and publish a story that has no dialogue whatsoever. I’ve done it...

Contradictions are the stuff of conflict. Contradictions between

• characters’ words and actions,
• what characters say to different people and/or at different times,
• what characters do at different times or in different circumstances, or
• the responses of different characters to the same stimulus

all increase a reader’s tension and interest in the story.

At least so long as the contradictions are intentional on the author’s part.

If they’re not, that could be a problem. Or an unintended or unexpected opportunity. Your job as a reviewer is to not only spot the contradictions, but to evaluate them for effect, motivation, and intent.

Intentional or Unintentional

The first thing you need to assess...

Let’s get this out of the way right up front. This post is about the “f-bomb” and various other phrases and four- through fourteen-letter words that are generally not used in polite company: swear words, curse words, obscenities, vulgarities, the whole lot, and the words we sometimes substitute for them. As a matter of convenience, I’ll call everything swearing.

I know you’ve all heard the usual advice to writers and their reviewers: if swear words are natural parts of a character’s way of speaking, don’t be shy about using them, even if that’s not the way you speak.

But that’s not really enough advice for a writer, nor is it enough for a critiquer trying to determine if such language is being used as it should. That’s what I want to get into now.

Use...

Authors can and do go wrong with their word choices, or use words the wrong way. This isn’t just a case of not understanding Mark Twain’s definition of the difference between the right word and the almost-right word: the lightning versus the lightning bug. It is that, but it’s much more.

There are at least half a dozen ways an author can mess things up for herself and her readers when it comes to word choice. They are: using words that are wrong for

• The story, usually in narrative;
• The character, usually in dialogue; or
• The reader, in either one.

Authors can also simply use the wrong word when they don’t know the difference between two or more words or what a word actually means...