Three Ways To Do Dialogue Attributes Wrong

One of the first novels I wrote, 
when I was, ye gods, twelve or thirteen, I don’t remember (or I have 
thankfully blanked the memory from my brain) was Star Trek 
fanfic.

On the first draft, the dialogue looked something like this:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk.
“That is not logical, Captain,” said Spock.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” said Kirk.
“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” said Spock.
“That’s what puzzles me,” said Kirk.

And so on.

image: Marc Wathieu
Well, neophyte though I was, even I could tell that was 
terrible dialogue. (And it tended to go on for three pages). But why, WHY did it suck rocks? That’s what I needed to pin down. Probably 
because so much was wrong, I settled on the most obvious (to me) 
problem, the boring repetition of “said.”

So I re-wrote:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk suspiciously.
“That is not logical, Captain,” said Spock calmly.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” said Kirk insistently.
“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” said Spock
implacably.
“That’s what puzzles me,” said Kirk dubiously.

Again, this was plainly awful.

Probably I read in some How To Write 
Novels That Don’t Bite book I read that verbs are more powerful than 
adverbs.

Hence:

“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” Kirk suggested.
“That is not logical, Captain,” Spock objected.
“But he looked like a Klingon,” Kirk insisted.

“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” Spock pointed out.
“That’s what puzzles me,” admitted Kirk.

And so on for three more pages.

What’s the right answer? There is no singular answer, no exclusively perfect way to write the scene, except to mix it up, let it flow, don’t overdo any single convention, and read and try every writing “rule” there is until
you know the reason for the rule and know exactly how to stand it on its head.

At different points in my writing career I needed 
different advice. The editors who say things like, “Don’t overuse 
adverbs,” “Don’t use ‘said’ all the time,” AND “Don’t be afraid to 
use ‘said’ most of the time,” are
addressing writers such as my 
thirteen year old self, who made all of these mistakes.

Oh, believe me, once I discovered dialog beats, I became a dialog 
beat fiend. All dialog beats and nothing else would grow tiresome 
after a while too. It’s the mix of things that lets a novel flow. It’s a question of balance. And, past a certain level of 
proficiency, of personal taste.

I read a “How To Make A Bajillion and Win a Pulitzer” from an author 
who had, to my knowledge, done neither himself. He took a book which 
had won a century of acclaim, The Great Gatsby, and then edited the 
first chapter to point out how much better it would have been if 
every single adverb had been deleted. His argument went like this, 
”There’s no need to say, ‘She leaned forward eagerly,’ the fact that 
she leans forward shows she’s eager. The sentence should read, ‘She 
leans forward.'”

Uh huh. Whatever. I read the scene both ways, and I came to the 
conclusion that Scott Fitzgerald was a better author than this self-appointed editor.

My favorite example of an author deliberately flouting this “rule” is 
a sentence by Lois McMaster Bujold, in which she uses the tag line, 
”Miles shouted mildly.”

Obviously, such a sentence can only be used once, which is how often 
she uses it.

Writing for Boys — Take the Quiz!

I have a son who is learning to read. I want to write stories that will be of 
interest and value to him. I know the 
values that I believe are universal to sentient beings, but are there elements which are particularly attractive 
to the little boy goobers out there?

I have three of them, and I’ve gotta admit, they are vocal about what they like and don’t like. An awful lot of the time, that appears to be: cars, trains, robots, sharks, dinosaurs, soldiers, blowing things up, the color blue, and anything totally gross—boogers and farts.

But they also love: cute baby animals, mermaids, kittens, puppies, frogs, ants, science, paleontology, stories that “aren’t TOO scary”, bad guys who turn out to be good guys, singing and dancing, rainbows and anything with chocolate.

What about older boys? What do they like to read? Harry Potter, of course… remember how delighted everyone was at the thought that thanks to Harry Potter ten year old boys were actually reading books? One of the concerns of teachers is that it’s harder to get boys to read than girls throughout most of the academic ladder—including up to college.

What makes a book masculine-friendly? I asked my 
husband and he said BFGs and T&A. Thanks, sweetheart. 😉 Kids cartoons have everything color-coded quite maniacally. But young adult and adult books really aren’t much different. You can tell from the cover which demographic the book is aimed at.

The feminist in me always feels guilty if I “cave in” to gender stereotypes. It would be nice if stories could transcend that kind of straightjacket, wouldn’t it?

But what if by getting so obsessed with the trappings of the story,we’re actually making the same mistake of judging things by the outer appearance and not the inner essence of the story? A while ago, Lego came out with Lego Friends: super cute Lego girls and Legos that came in pink and lilac and aquamarine. (Squeeee!!!! They are so awesome!!!!!) Inevitably, some people came and chewed out Lego for being sexist.

The shiny things that attract that atavistic part of ourselves probably is different in girls than boys. I remember reading some mind-boggling study that said there may be a biological reason most girls like pink better than
most boys—most females have more red receptors in their eyes than most males.

Holy cow. Here I was, blaming Matel. I don’t know about you, but that blew my mind. It also made me think that well-intentioned feminist parents who won’t let their daughters wear pink princess dresses are really missing the point.

If there really is a biological base for the love of pink, then it isn’t much more sexist to have a dearth of pink Legos?

The fear is that it’s all a slippery slope. Once you admit that pink might be rooted in biology, then you’ve as good as tied an apron around your daughter’s waist and chained her in the kitchen.

Or… maybe we could consider another possibility. Just because some primitive parts of ourselves, the inner cave people, are sexist, doesn’t mean that the best and most cherished parts of our minds are as well. The values that men and women are most likely to share equally also happen to be the highest values of our humanity: friendship, loyalty, courage, intelligence, love….

Now for the quiz!

Can you guess whether the following stories are aimed at boys or girls? I’ll give you just a few clues.

STORY 1: Pink. Ponies. Designing hats.

STORY 2: Trucks. Killer robot. Wrist device shooting green slime.

STORY 3: MC promises wants to do something. Although friends offer to help, MC is too proud to accept help. Finally, after MC is literally stuck, accepts help from friends and realizes there’s no shame in it.

STORY 4: MC and group of friends decide to race. MC is so busy trying to win that begins to lose friendship. Then a friend gets hurt and MC realizes friends are more important than winning.

Have you written down your answers yet?

It probably wasn’t too hard to guess that Story 1 was aimed at girls, and Story 2 was aimed at boys. But what about Story 3 and Story 4? It wasn’t as obvious, was it?

Why is that?

The clues from Story 1 and Story 2 were all about the out trappings of the story: the colors, the creatures, the goo. The clues from Story 3 and Story 4 were about values. Unless you knew that Story 4 involved pink ponies and Story 3 involved blue trucks, you’d never know one was targeted at girls and the other at boys. In fact, you could reverse the plots but keep the color schemes, and superficially, the entire demographic of the story would change.

But what do you think? What makes a book more appealing to boys or girls? Do you think men and women are more or less open to reading omnivorously?

Guest Post: Are Indie Books Worth Reviewing?

Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), Six Historical Tales Vol 1, Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2 and 3 (mild horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes and Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).

Certain book blogs state categorically that they won’t review self-published books. I understand their motivation: They get inundated with submissions and are trying to keep the numbers down.

However, No Indies is as arbitrary as No Jews or No Women.

The reviewers aim to filter out low-quality works – but is the publishing method a valid quality filter?

It used to be. In the late 20th century, the established path to publication was author-agent-publisher-bookseller-reader. Each book had to pass three gates on its journey from author to reader, and each gate represented a quality test. Self-published books were inevitably those that had failed at the first two gates.

Times have changed. E-publishing makes it possible to reach the readers directly, and many authors choose the direct route instead of queuing at the gates.

Without gatekeepers barring entry, many poorly-written and under-revised books get published. A lot of indie (i.e. self-published) books are not as good as their authors think. Frankly, there’s a mass of indie dross – but there are also many indie gems.

The boundary between “good book” and “bad book” doesn’t happen to coincide with the frontier between indie-published and legacy-published books.

Consider the authors who use both publishing models: Amanda Hocking, John Locke and Michael Stackpole submit some of their works to legacy publishers and self-publish others. Are these authors’ legacy-published books better than their self-published ones?

Or how about the authors were successful with legacy-published books, but then decided to go indie? Consider Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, Kevin O. McLaughlin and Dean Wesley Smith. Have they lost their ability to write good books?

Then there are the authors who took their previously legacy-published out-of-print books and self-published them as ebooks – Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Piers Anthony, for instance. The books are the same, so how can they suddenly be less worthy?

Over three decades, I had twenty books published by several legacy publishers before choosing the indie route. Does this mean my old books are worth reviewing, and my new books are not – even though I have grown as a writer?

Not long ago, a book blogger approached me. She had enjoyed the stories in Six Scary Tales Vol 1 and asked for review copies of Vol 2 and 3, so she could review the series. Shortly after I sent the books, I received an email “Your books are self-published and therefore not worth reading or reviewing.”

Excuse me? When she assumed that the books were legacy-published, she liked the stories and wanted more. On discovery that they were indie-published, the same stories were suddenly not worth reading. What does this say about the reviewer’s judgement?

Most stories in the Six Scary Tales series were originally published the legacy way in magazines and anthologies. Did inclusion in the self-published collection damage their quality?

I appreciate that book bloggers decline to read certain books, e.g. No Erotica, No Horror or No Romance, because if a book isn’t to their taste, it would be tedious to read and difficult to review.

But to decline all indie-published books because they can’t possibly be good is like refusing to read books penned by women or by Jews because no woman or Jew could possibly write something worth reading.

So how can a book reviewer assess which books are worth reading? I think the answer is obvious: by looking at the book itself. Reading the first few pages will show the reviewer whether it’s their kind of book. Often, a quick glance at the first paragraph is enough to weed out the obvious dross. If reviewers can’t form their own opinion of what they’re reading, they shouldn’t be reviewing books.

Opportunities Lost

In April 1667, an  signed an agreement with Samuel Simmons, a London bookseller, to publish 1,500 copies of his book.

The author earned five pounds.

He later earned another five pounds for the sequel, which he sold in 1669.

After his death, the author’s wife granted the rights to both works, in perpetuity, to the publisher for a whooping… eight pounds.

The book?

Paradise Lost.

Lord of the Rings By Ponies

Guest Post: Writing Short Stories to Promote Your Novel