Formatting Dialogue

    All right motherfuckers, I wrote pretty much this entire entry once already but blogspot didn't fucking save it, and because I go through a mild depressive episode whenever I lose 1,000+ words of progress on a thing, the way I'm choosing to deal with it is by angrily rewriting what was lost and punching the fuck out of the save button every paragraph or so.

     [SAVES AGGRESSIVELY]

     So basically the impetus for this post was born of me reading fanfiction and, more specifically, me being unable to finish fanfiction because the fucking dialogue isn't fucking formatted fucking properly.

     [SAVES AGGRESIVELY AND TAKES A SECOND TO BREATHE]

     Okay, I'm gonna try to chill here.  Just.  Give me a second.

     Okay.  Okay okay okay alright alright alright alright alright.  Allkay.  Look:  I get it.  The public school system failed me, too.  I had to learn everything I know about creative writing from copying what I read in books and looking up articles like this one on the internet.  And the things they DID teach me about writing--things like, indent two finger spaces before each paragraph, and use the "hamburger method" of essay writing, and make every paragraph exactly five sentence long--was pretty much entirely bullshit that doesn't get you anywhere after the fifth grade.

     (Even your middle school teachers won't accept an essay written on loose-leaf, wtf are they thinking, really??  I can open any book in the world and the chances that the first paragraph I poke at consists of exactly five sentences is so slim I can't even)

     SO.  BASICALLY.  Let me help you, young writers, because let me tell you, improperly formatted dialogue is a great way to scare off your audience.  Let's start with:

1.  New Speakers

     Every time a new character speaks, slap that enter button before you tickle those quotation marks.  Why, you ask?  Many reasons.  Reasons like avoiding confusion as to who's speaking when, keeping your text away from block form, and creating lots of juicy delicious white space for your beautiful gorgeous readers (like you guys <3 <3 <3)

     (I took a nap and ate some pizza, and because I am like unto a tiny cranky child I feel much more at peace with the world, and with yOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE.  HA!)

     See, when you have a bunch of characters involved in a conversation, and you're smattering in action tags every here and there, it gets hard to follow the train of thought--who's talking when?  To whom?  When does this person stop and the next person start?  This way we can also dispense with some of the dialogue tags that clutter up the walkway, leaving everything more streamlined and aerodynamic.

     Audiodynamic?  Visiodynamic?  Logodynamic?  Bibliodynamic?  Hmmmm.....

     Anyway, gigantic blocks of text also tend to happen when we get multiple speakers in a paragraph, which can cause problems for dyslexic readers, give people headaches, and makes people lose their place far more easily.

     We get enough block text from long descriptive and active paragraphs; when it comes to dialogue, we like to have a break from that, and allow our eyes to cascade smoooothly down the page.

2.  Character Monologues

     When a character goes off on a monologue that lasts more than one paragraph, there are a couple things you can do--literally, a couple.  Two.  Two things.

     You can insert an action tag at the end of the first paragraph or the beginning of the second, or you can press enter, indent, and add another starting quotation mark.

     Now to be clear:  The entire point to reusing opening quotation marks is to indicate that the same character is speaking, so if you cap the first paragraph with ending quotation marks, everyone is going to assume that that character has had their say and that another character has started speaking.  So don't do that (cough cough GINA *glares at friend*).

     Anyway, this is a pretty common mistake that gets made all the time because no one fucking teaches it, so if you haven't figured it out don't get down on yourself.  I only figured it out because I was a voracious reader in my younger days and I learn mostly via visual osmosis.

3.  Dialogue tags

     Dialogue tags, along with action tags, bookend spoken fragments of conversation within your narrative and give attribution to the text.  Specifically, dialogue tags are the ones that say something along the lines of "they said," "they mumbled," "they whined," etc.  They let you know who's talking, and sometimes how they're saying it.

     The tag usually goes at the end of dialogue these days ("I hate the way this runs," he said), but can just as easily go before (he said, "I hate the way this runs.").  That just depends on how you want the line to flow, and is up to personal taste.  You can also chose between "they said" and "said they."  "She said" is traditional, but there's a certain ring to "Said she" that isn't to everyone's tastes, but can really pack a whallop in the right time and place.

     Generally speaking, "said" is the dialogue tag you want to use about ninety percent of the time--it's nothing special, but it gets the job done.  Like water.  Or salt.  Or silica.  But not poisonous like silica.  Anyway, the more you use said, the more meaningful non-said dialogue tags will be.

    Contrary to what public school may or may not have bothered to instill in you, you don't necessarily need to use a dialogue tag--once the flow of a conversation has been established, you can drop it until something happens--like the arrival of a new character or a change in tone--that requires clarification.  You can also use


4.  Action tags

     Action tags, like dialogue tags, let you know who's speaking, but they elect not to add in any of those communication verbs like "asked" or "whispered."

Example:

      Henry held a hand over his stomach.  "I think I'm gonna puke."

      Action tags are simple lines of action that follow, precede, or interrupt dialogue.  They help you avoid Talking Head Syndrome, and if you're following the rule about slapping enter for every new speaker, it allows you to tell or remind your readers who's speaking.

     Just try to make it clear which character is the main focus of the action tag if you make mention of more than one:  "Jenny leaned against Martha and shook her head," makes it pretty clear that we're focused on Jenny.  "Jenny and Martha leaned against each other," is extremely vague, and while it makes for a good line of action, it wouldn't be doing its job if it called itself an action tag.

      Unless maybe both characters were speaking in tandem.  Then it'd be fine, as long as that was previously established. 
   

"I Could Care Less" and Other Pet Peeves

     I've talked about pet peeves of mine before, little grammar flubs and spelling flaws that send my inner editor into convulsive fits.  Well here are five more, comin' atchya hot, and I'll get those engines revving by starting with the most powerful and descending in random order therefrom!


1.  So didn't/So Can't I

     This first started bothering me in the fifth grade.  And when I say bothering, I mean annoying the piss out of me holy shit.  When the students did it, it was one thing; we were nine, ten, eleven at most.  Mistakes are to be expected from children.

     But the teacher.  Oh, woe be unto her, though blessed she be, because good lord when I heard the phrase "So didn't she" come out of her mouth during a lesson on Native American life, I wan.ted. to. puke.  And when I say puke, I mean projectile vomit on the entire class.

     This peeve is not my pet, it is the bane of my existence, it is the skunk living under my porch that eats all my cats' food and every once in a while decides to spritz down my dogs, and I hate it.

     If the phrase were used in proper context, it wouldn't be so bad.  If someone said, for instance, "I didn't like the movie," and someone agreed with, "So didn't I," that would be fine.  A creative, realistic piece of dialogue.

     But the way people use it is always as a form of capable agreement.  "I can paint a picture," "So can't I!"  "I went to the Hawaii over the summer" "So didn't I!"  "I'll go to the store tomorrow," "So won't I."

     iT MAKES NO SENSE!  It's ridiculous, it's preposterous, I expect grammar fuckups from students, but something this severe from my teachers, my god--and on multiple occasions, not just a one-time thing, and never a correction, never once a student saying something, as if everyone else was blind to the blatant abuse of the English language occurring before our very ears!

    Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use the phrase "So don't" to mean "So do."  They are antonyms.  ANTONYMS!


2.  I Could Care Less

    Okay, now that we've got some of my crazy out of the way; I could care less.  A phrase meant to convey how little one cares about the given situation.

     But it makes no goddamn sense.

     Because the actual phrase is "I couldn't care less."  It's meant to indicate that no fucks are left to be given.  You wouldn't say, "I could give a fuck," you say, "I couldn't give a fuck."  Saying you could care less indicates that you do care, because there's still less care in the world for you to feel, some cares left to give away.

     Unless that's what you mean, when you say "I could care less," you're fucking up, plain and simple.  If your character doesn't care at all, or wants to seem like they don't care at all, they want to say there are no fucks left in the bank.


3.   Affect/Effect

     So I had trouble with these for a very long time myself.  It's a difficult balance between the two, and grammatic education is going down the tubes, so a lot of people are in the same boat as me.

     The way I finally figured out how to differentiate between the two was essentially this;  Affect is a Verb, and Effect is a Noun.  See below:

     "The effects of the storm were horrible."

     "We were horribly affected by the storm."

     Next time you need to use one of these bad boys, take a second to ask yourself if the word you need is a verb or a noun--are you being Affected by it, or are you observing the Effects?


4.  Whining/Whinging

     So this one is included as a fuck you to yours truly, because for a long time I thought "whinging" was just people misspelling "whining" and it really pissed me off.  But it turns out "whinging" is a real word, meaning "To complain in an annoying way."  So it's basically the same thing as whining.

     It's very British (so British that my current spellcheck reads it as a misspelling of whining), which is why I never realized it was a real word.  I should make my peace with it.  It's a real word.  It's a valid word.

     But God do I hate it. 

(you don't have to tho)

5.  Peek vs. Peak

     Okay, just one more, not a pet peeve so much as just a word of warning.  A peak is the top of a mountain; a peek is something you do in people's windows.

     So it's pretty much like the affect/effect thing; if you want a verb, it's peek, and if you want the noun, it's peak.


     Happy writing all!

A Few Notes on Details

     Recently, I published a post on using specificity in your writing.  On that same note, here are a few scattered notes about how specificity can hurt or help you.

1.  Rough Estimates

     Rough estimates are a natural part of life--you look out at a crowd and you say, "Oh, that looks like about two hundred people."  Unless you're some kind of magic, or actually have the sales numbers in front of you, there's pretty much no way you could ken that at a glance.  That doesn't stop some characters from managing it, but excluding those, estimates are a necessary part of life and of writing.

     There does come a point, though, where estimates become unrealistic.  It takes me out of the story, for example, when someone says something like, "four or five people walked down the street."  For me, that's an automatic, "Wait, what?"  Maybe if the person's view is obstructed, or they're going by a sense other than sight, or the POV character has a problem with processing numbers or something I can understand it, but if you have a clear view of the street, the difference between four and five people should be easily told at a glance by most.

     It's difficult to say when numbers can be given over to estimation, and it does depend on the person, but I would be much more likely, myself, to accept an estimation of "five or six" than "four or five," but probably wouldn't estimate until at least "seven or eight."

     Every character, author, and reader is different, but be careful when estimating that it's realistic for someone to be confused over the number of something.  If someone flashed a picture at me, then burned it and asked me to tell them how many things were in it, I'd have a much harder time telling four from five than if I was sitting in detention with a bunch of stationary students.  I'd also have a much harder time telling four from five if it were dots I was meant to be counting, or even dogs--our brains block out information they don't see as important, which is one of the reasons estimation is necessary in the first place, so the smaller something is (and the less personable or important), the more difficult it becomes to count.

2.  Brands

     My specific grievance here is more of a pet peeve, I guess (or rather, my mother's pet peeve, which I am here to voice on her behalf) concerning clothing in particular, but it could apply just as well to other types of brands.

     One of the things my mother often complains about with books is being bombarded with descriptions of clothing using brand names like "Armani" and "Gucci" and "Leviathan All Hail, All Hail Leviathan."

     Being working class tomboys by birth, and for the most part having lifestyle tastes which match our income, the term "Gucci handbag" means nothing to us; I have a picture in my head of a leather purse.  But you could say "Armani handbag" or "Prada handbag" or some made up company, and it won't change anything; a handbag is a handbag unless you tell me what it actually looks like.  My entire thought process when you start throwing brand names around is "Clothes are happening.  This character has money."

     Most books aren't written for working class women with no taste in clothing, of course--unlike my mother, I have simply become accustomed to this reality.  Still, there's a lesson to be learned here; when you include brand names, will your audience know what you're talking about?  And more importantly, does your character?

     If your character is a rich woman who's never so much as been inside a laundry room, is she really likely to know the difference between Tide and All?  Pinesol and Spic And Span?  If your character is a twelve-year-old girl who spends most of her time biking around town and antagonizing bullies, is she likely to know the difference between a Periwinkle diamond, a Kay diamond, and a rhinestone?

     When you use a Brand Name in your work, take a moment to think about these things.  If your narrator/POV character would know what it is, and your target audience would know what it is, great!  You're all set!  If your character/narrator know what it is but your audience wouldn't, then think about what it is you want to convey with the use of the brand name.

     If you just want to show that the character is rich and has expensive tastes, "Gucci handbag" might be the way to go, but if this handbag is important, or is supposed to tell us something about the character, maybe throw in an adjective or two.  If your character is mopping the floor with Pinesol, is it because she likes the smell?  Does it mean something to her?  And if your rebellious preteen finds a handful of diamonds, does it matter what brand they are?  Or does it matter more what they look like, and whether or not they're real?

4 More Basic Formatting Tips

     I spoke before about some formatting pet peeves of mine.  These aren't pet peeves so much as they are just tips that are important that I see a lot of people (especially newbies) overlooking.  It's eleven o'clock at night after a very full day, irritating stuff is on my twitter, my classmates, God love them, don't understand standardized writing structures, and I have a headache, so prepare for callous, good-natured aggression.  Enjoy.

1.  Indentations

     When you start a new paragraph, indent that bitch.
   
     Yeah, yeah, common sense, right?  Only it's not.  I see a lot of people overlooking this crucial step, or doing it wrong--my mother once told me that an indentation is five spaces on the space bar.  It's not; a proper indentation is one slap on the TAB button.

     But if you're on a website *coughcoughBlogspotcoughcough* that doesn't allow for tabing, five spaces will work fine.  In fact, online, indentation may not be necessary at all!  But it can help set each paragraph apart from the last.  However, if you're working on any MS you plan to submit to anyone, slap the tab button.  It'll save you a lot of reformatting later on.


2.  Apostrophes

     Apostrophes are used to denote possession (Mindy's cat) and missing characters ('ey kid!/you can't do this to me), and that's about it.  Often they're used to make a number or a shortening plural (ABC's/That 70's Show), which is a peeve of mine that I try not to let in the house--it's technically correct, at least in the sense that it's been used that way for decades if not centuries, and as a descriptivist it's my duty to bend with the tide of linguistic change.  Still, I try to show that such things are plural just by make the letters big and the "S" small (80s. ABCs).  I'll never change the world's mind, though, so if you do it the other way just keep doing what you're doing.

     Anyway, other than in these rare cases, an apostrophe is never, never to be used on a plural.

     If you're ever wondering whether an apostrophe fits or not, ask yourself if the sentence can be restructured to exclude the "S".  For example, "This house's the best!" can be restructured to, "This house is the best!" so the apostrophe fits.  "The house's door," can be restructured to "The door belonging to the house," so it fits.  But "The houses stood in a row" can't be restructured in any simple way that eliminates the "s" without eliminating the plural.  You'd have to change it to something silly, like, "The house and its compatriots stood in a row."  (and then you haven't eliminated the S, you've just moved it to the word "compatriots," though if there were only two you COULD say "the house and its compatriot stood in a row," but a row is usually more than two and now I'm just overthinking it oops)

     And speaking of "its," a pronoun--she, he, it, they--is the one exception to the "possession=apostrophe" rule.  The only time that a pronoun has an apostrophe is when it's part of a compound word--see the previous example, "it's," which can be broken into "it" and "is."

4.  Double space your shit

     Double-spacing is important, okay.  If you don't select "double" on your line spacing (or 1.5 at the BAREST minimum), it's going to be too cramped, your understanding of how long your work actually is will be thrown off, and your editor won't be happy.
   
     If you want to write it all in single-space and double-space after the fact, that's fine!  That's your prerogative!  But double-spacing needs to be done before you send it off for work--double-spacing helps you avoid massive text walls, makes people less likely to just skim your work, and allows anyone trying to edit or analyze the piece to make notes and corrections between lines, which is super important.

     Just ... double space, okay?  It's the standard submission convention, and single-spacing makes it difficult for others to take your work seriously, because it's one of the first things they teach (or should teach) in a high school English class.

5.  Twelve point TNR font

     Again, if you're looking to submit your work, you need to adhere to standard convention, and standard convention is twelve point Times New Roman font.  Create it in any font you want, but know that before you submit, 99% of the places you things off to are going to ask for 12pt TNR.

     Of course, some companies might prefer Arial or Verdana, or Courier New, or something else that's a little off-the-wall, so make sure you check the preferences of every agent/publishing company you submit to BEFORE you submit, and make any necessary revisions to format.

4 Conventions To Use Sparingly

     When writing, there are certain things you can use judiciously--such as the word "said" when adding dialogue tags--and things you should hardly ever use at all--such as the interrobang.  Most things fall somewhere in the middle, though.  This article concerns those things that fall toward the latter end of the spectrum, based primarily on observations I've made while perusing fanfiction over the years.  
     You can't really write a book without most of these things, but you do want to be careful when using...

1.  ALL-CAPS

     ALL-CAPS DENOTES TWO THINGS:  YELLING AND YELLING.

     Nobody likes being yelled at, so cool it with the all-caps sentences.  They're great for flavor now and again, but if you find yourself making frequent use of them, go over your work and ask yourself if it's really necessary.  Most of the time your audience can already tell a character is excited, either from context clues, or written cues, or the content of the conversation they're having; there's no need to patronize them.  
     Personally, I try not to use capslock at all, but I do find it slipping in every now and again, which again, is fine: all things in moderation is basically the thesis statement of this listicle.  Personally, I find caps to be most appropriate,
 a) When a character is really, really SUPER angry, and needs to scream his little lungs out,
 b) When a character off-stage is talking to a character on-stage, and vice-versa (ie, yelling downstairs to Mom or out the window to Best Friend)
 c) When you need to emphasize a word but italics and bold type don't seem to give it the right sort of oomph (see a)
 and d), When viewing a written work that is in all caps, such as the name of a store, or if a character has chosen to use it in some type of correspondence (letter, chatlog, twitter, etc.) either because it's simply in their character to do so, or because of something tied more to the plot--a secret code, maybe, or bad handwriting, or she forgot to check to see if caps was on, etc.
     (I bet you can guess which is my favorite)

2.  ¡¡¡¡¡¡Eclamation!!!!!! ¡¡¡¡¡¡Points!!!!!!!

     I see!!!!!  That you're!!!!!  Excited!!!!  And that's good!!!!! But we got it!!! The first time!!!! 

     Exclamation points are really handy for telling us very quickly that there's some oomph to what's been said--especially useful are the upside-down exclamation marks that people of the Spanish tongue use, but if you're in American, unless you're using them in the Spanish language or for a special effect at a certain part of your novel (see above), I would resist the urge to sprinkle your manuscript with them, as they are nonstandard punctuation and would likely never make it into print.
     So yes, exclamation points are really useful, and help us do away with a lot of clunky adverbs and replacements for "said," but littering every other sentence with a slew of them ultimately results in their devaluation; it appears amateur, childish, and over-enthusiastic but under-practiced.  
     Some would say not to use exclamation points in narration at all, but personally I would say to use them sparsely in your narrative, and to choose carefully where they're placed.  Make sure also, when writing dialogue, to keep in mind the type of character you're using--would the grumperpuss who mops the floor really use that exclamation point right there?  Or would he be more likely to putz and putter around with periods or dashes or ellipses?  
     I'd also suggest that--except in cases of character correspondence--you avoid the use of multiple exclamation points in a row.  Overdoing it can be just as dangerous--if not more so--than underdoing it.

3.  Question???? Marks?????

     I??? Think????? My personality????? has been consumed????? by???? uptalk???????

     Much like the above, the overuse of question marks in your writing appears childish and inattentive, and overdoing it makes you seem incapable of moderation, has the reader wondering if your keyboard is broken, and, when use in dialogue, can make your characters seem indecisive, over-excited, and, at times, very valley-girl-esque.
     That being said, like always, there are exceptions--namely correspondence, but--and perhaps it's a matter of taste--an extra question mark slipped in here or there never killed anybody.  Question marks have a lot less zest than exclamation points, and you can probably get away with a second or a third in dialogue with a particularly excitable character, which could help you avoid the awkward union of exclamation point and question mark (that could be so easily done away with if only the interrobang were considered proper punctuation *heavy sigh*).  
     Which brings us to--

4.  "'"'Punctuation Combos!?,.:;"'"'

     "And then they were like, "You're skipping the example line!?'..."

     Punctuation combos can be both necessary and difficult.  What do you do when a quote ends with a period, but is posed as a question, for example?  Or if your etc. is the end of the sentence, or if it needs a comma afterward, what do you do when you really need to show that this question is a loud, excited, and astonished one, what if what if what if.
     Yes, combos are completely necessary!  But they can also be confusing.  You could always try using nonstandard punctuation, but again, it's unlikely to get past your editors, and some of it is still copyrighted.  Basically, your best course of action is to be careful and keep a watchful eye.  Do your best to minimize the need for combos, structure your sentences in such a way that they're obliterated.
     As suggested above, you could use a double question mark to denote excitement, or put a sentence IN ALL CAPS?  Which produces a different effect!?  But might be the one you're looking for!!  
     And if worst comes to worst, you can always ask a fellow writer friend if they think it looks right, or if it's too confusing.  Not confusing the reader is the entire reason we have grammar, after all.

     If the reader is irritated with our story, we want it to be because the bad guy is winning or because the hero did something stupid, not because the structural components have been overdone.  I've honestly walked away from decent storylines before because the writer didn't know when to shut off the capslock, or how many exclamation points to cap it at--a lot of these flubs go hand-in-hand, and are usually drawn in a sleigh of bad grammar in general.  
     Keep an eye on such things.  The characters and plotline are tantamount, surely, but most people won't stick around to learn about either if they feel that the structure is getting in the way.  (No one wants to look at the scaffolding, we just want to see the house.)