I’ve heard some of my yet-to-be-published colleagues complain when they read a new release, saying, “This is so poorly written because (insert critique cliche here, from show-don’t-tell to overuse of adverbs, or what have you), I can’t believe this person got published and I can’t.” But flawed bestsellers are nothing new, and not just in…
Tag: presence of malice
The Impolitic Vagueness of English
I was re-reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and toward the end I was struck by one line of dialog: “I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy.” It is generally accepted that Mr. Bennet is saying that Mr. Darcy is most worthy to marry Elizabeth. But, given everyone’s prior…
Dialects: To Phoneticize or Not To Phoneticize
When writing dialog for a character who speaks with an accent or dialect, the question always comes up – do you spell their quirks of speech phonetically (“Oy, ‘ow loverly that ‘oman be!”) or merely mention the accent and then go on to write their dialog in plain English? For myself, I don’t mind phonetically…
The Writing Dungeon
There isn’t a lot to do when you’re off-duty on a nuclear submarine. There was a perpetual Dungeons & Dragons game going on. Players came and went as watches changed, even the Dungeon Masters rotated, each picking up where the other left off. Most of the time it convened in the mess, which served as…
Cast Your Book
Writing can often become labor-intensive. We become so focused on rewrites and editing and tightening up the grammar and narrative and plotting and on and on and on… Sometimes it’s fun, for a break, to remind yourself why you’re writing this thing – at it’s most basic, because it’s fun to tell stories. One of…