<\/a><\/p>\nSo I re-wrote:<\/p>\n
“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk suspiciously.
\n“That is not logical, Captain,” said Spock calmly.
\n“But he looked like a Klingon,” said Kirk insistently.
\n“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” said Spock
\nimplacably.
\n“That’s what puzzles me,” said Kirk dubiously.<\/p>\n
Again, this was plainly awful.<\/p>\n
Probably I read in some How To Write \u2028Novels That Don’t Bite book I read that verbs are more powerful than \u2028adverbs.<\/p>\n
Hence:<\/p>\n
“Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” Kirk suggested.
\n“That is not logical, Captain,” Spock objected.
\n“But he looked like a Klingon,” Kirk insisted.<\/p>\n
“But then he turned into a furry white snow monster,” Spock pointed out.
\n“That’s what puzzles me,” admitted Kirk.<\/p>\n
And so on for three more pages.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s 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\u2019t overdo any single convention, and read and try every writing \u201crule\u201d there is until
\nyou know the reason for the rule and know exactly how to stand it on its head.<\/p>\n
At different points in my writing career I needed \u2028different advice. The editors who say things like, “Don’t overuse \u2028adverbs,” “Don’t use ‘said’ all the time,” AND “Don’t be afraid to \u2028use ‘said’ most of the time,” are
\naddressing writers such as my \u2028thirteen year old self, who made all of these mistakes.<\/p>\n
Oh, believe me, once I discovered dialog beats, I became a dialog \u2028beat fiend. All dialog beats and nothing else would grow tiresome \u2028after 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 \u2028proficiency, of personal taste.<\/p>\n
I read a “How To Make A Bajillion and Win a Pulitzer” from an author \u2028who had, to my knowledge, done neither himself. He took a book which \u2028had won a century of acclaim, The Great Gatsby, and then edited the \u2028first chapter to point out how much better it would have been if \u2028every single adverb had been deleted. His argument went like this, \u2028”There’s no need to say, ‘She leaned forward eagerly,’ the fact that \u2028she leans forward shows she’s eager. The sentence should read, ‘She \u2028leans forward.'”<\/p>\n
Uh huh. Whatever. I read the scene both ways, and I came to the \u2028conclusion that Scott Fitzgerald was a better author than this self-appointed editor.<\/p>\n
My favorite example of an author deliberately flouting this “rule” is \u2028a sentence by Lois McMaster Bujold, in which she uses the tag line, \u2028”Miles shouted mildly.”<\/p>\n
Obviously, such a sentence can only be used once, which is how often \u2028she uses it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the first novels I wrote, \u2028when I was, ye gods, twelve or thirteen, I don’t remember (or I have \u2028thankfully blanked the memory from my brain) was Star Trek \u2028fanfic. On the first draft, the dialogue looked something like this: “Maybe the attacker was a Klingon,” said Kirk. “That is not logical, Captain,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,421,577,582],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dialogue","category-realistic-dialogue","category-writing","category-writing-novels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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