Monthly Archives: February 2025

First Page Words of Wisdom

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There’s been a tremendous amount of writing wisdom shared over the years here at the Kill Zone, and I thought it would be a good idea to look at some wisdom offered as part of TKZ’s long-running First Page Critique series, especially since next time I will be giving my own inaugural first page critique on a recent fantasy submission.

First up today is Joe Moore’s advice on First-Person POV. Next PJ Parrish gives advice on sculpting a novel, prompted by her previous first page critique—alas, the link to that critique is no longer valid, but her advice in this post is still with us. Finally, Jordan Dane discusses how to make your inciting incident what it needs in order to give your novel a strong opening.

As always, the full posts are date-linked from their respective excerpts, and I hope you’ll weigh in with your own thoughts and comments.

Advantages of First POV:

1.) First person is easier to write (if you get the whole stream of consciousness thing going where you don’t filter yourself much) and it can help you flesh out the character – a good exercise even if you write in third POV.

2.) There is an immediate connection and intimacy to a first person POV voice. It is a blast to write. Even if you are writing in third and come across a bad writing day where nothing works, try writing your character’s diary and see what I mean. It can jumpstart your creativity.

3.) Writing in first person creates a clear perspective and a more linear plot involving the same character in every scene, but you better love that character—and make the reader love him/her too.

Challenges of First POV:

1.) If you choose to stay in first POV only, you must stick in the head of the character and plot the book from only things they can see. By doing this, you may give up some ability to manipulate your plot for mystery elements through secondary characters or foreshadow the workings of a villainous mind. Your character can only know what they have seen through your plot. This can be a limitation. I mix first with third POV to keep all my flexibility and tag the start of every scene where the main character is in first person so the reader can easily follow, but this method may not suit every author.

2.) The gender of the character can be a challenge if you do not identify your character, as the author did here with a name. He/she pronouns aren’t used, so you should find a way to indicate early on which gender is speaking before the reader gets too far along with an idea.

3.) The biggest challenge is not slipping into the “tell” mode, rather than the “show” mode in a first person narrative. This submission falls in that category where the lure of the narrator appeals for a while, but when nothing really happens in the critical first paragraphs, the reader’s mind may stray. Give the character something to do that will showcase his nature and attitude so the reader sees why he is a star in your story.

4.) Setting the scene can be a challenge in the first person. You have to “see” the surroundings and convey them through your character’s eyes, using the same attitude and flavor of their voice, without being obvious that you are “setting the stage” with an inventory or checklist.

Joe Moore–November 21, 2013

 

Writing a novel is a long series of questions and answers that you constantly ask yourself as you move through your story. As you do so, maybe it’s helpful to think about writing in terms of three-dimensional design. Consider…

Setting: Did I establish where my story takes place concretely enough so the reader feels transported to coastal Maine or does the setting feel like some generic Anywhereville? Am I wasting too many words describing this old insane asylum or do I need more to enhance the mood, to achieve what Poe called “the Unity of Effect”? If a setting is, indeed, like a character, is mine a quick line sketch or is it a well-rendered life-drawing? Or worse, is it not a character at all but just a sloppy caricature of Paris, Las Vegas, Miami…fill in the place with whatever postcard image you can come up with.

Backstory: How much do I reveal about Joe’s tortured past and do I deal with it in one long flashback scene or do I dribble it in slowly?  Am I boring my reader with all this family-tree data or do they need it to understand the dynamics between mother and daughter? And if you write a series — how much about a character’s past from previous books do you need to add?  Too much and you bore loyal fans; too little and you confuse new converts.  If you go back and read the submission I mentioned above, you’ll see that I asked the writer, even in her first 400 words, to include a few more tidbits about her characters to add intrigue.

Description: Do I tell the reader what my protag looks like or do I let it fall to their imagination? Have I successfully conjured up this police station so the reader feels the atmosphere or does it add nothing to the narrative? Have I exploited my description?  This is a subtle tool of fiction but important:  Do you make your descriptions mean something? Do they somehow enhance and reflect what is going on in your action?

Years ago, at Thrillerfest, I heard David Morrell talk about this brilliantly. He talked about how the novelist John Barth used a method call “triangulation.” (James Hall teaches this as well). When describing your setting, you take the sense of sight for granted, but then you add two other senses from among the remaining four. If your characters merely “see” everything, your writing will feel one-dimensional. So you “triangulate” and emphasize the other senses.

Tattoo this line from Morrell on your forehead: “The flaw of an amateur is to assume what’s in our head is what’s on the page.”

PJ Parrish—February 14, 2017

 

Before I give my feedback, I wanted to share my thoughts on where to start a novel. Since I am a thriller/crime fiction writer, I tend to start with a body or an act of violence or action that will change my protagonist’s life and tip it like a first domino colliding with others. An inciting incident disrupts the status quo and stirs things up in an intriguing way for the reader. It jump starts the story arcs and kicks off the plot to take its course.

An example of this is found in the first Hunger Games book where the inciting incident is a ‘district’ lottery drawing that forces Katniss into taking the place of her little sister in a fight to the death broadcast on a futuristic television show. That incident is a punch to the emotional gut of the reader who MUST turn the page to find out what happens.

But what if your inciting incident isn’t that dramatic? What can you do to strengthen your opener? 

Point of No Return – One benchmark for a solid inciting incident is that the protagonist can’t retreat once it starts. There should be a point of no return where the hero/heroine is forced to step out of his or her comfort zone and head into the abyss, to take a risk they hadn’t seen coming or that forces them into confronting their worst fears. It’s the author’s job to set the stage for the reader to discover why the hero or heroine deserves a starring role.

HERE is a link to a plotting method I’ve posted on my website under my FOR WRITERS section. It features the “W” plotting method and mentions the point of no return.

To Go Forward, You Sometimes have to Step Back – Ask yourself, what is my story about, the main thrust of the plot? Let’s call that a demarcation line. Now step back to a point where you find your protagonist, living in relative obscurity. What will drive him or her into stepping toward that demarcation line? What will stir, incite, or force them into making a move they might not otherwise? Then ask what would make that move a one-way trip? What is their point of no return, line in the sand moment? Picture a burned out mercenary, living as a hermit in the jungles of Venezuela, when a nun running an orphanage crosses his path. Their meeting may not be the point of no return, but when the villain in your story makes it his business to force the mercenary’s hand (threatening the children or the nun), the anti-hero takes action and can no longer live in obscurity. He’s forced to give up his life of anonymity and face his demons in order to do the right thing.

Questions to Ask About Your Inciting Incident to Make it Stronger:

1.) Review your current WIP for your inciting incident. Does it propel your protagonist (or even your antagonist) into your plot arcs?

2.) Is the inciting incident big enough to sustain a novel or propel it forward in a meaningful and realistic way? Are there enough building turning points to make it a journey?

3.) Are the stakes high enough to make the reader care?

4.) Does the inciting incident influence or jump start the main story question for your plot?

5.) Can your hero or heroine retreat from the inciting incident or is it significant enough to force a change into a new direction? In other words, do you have a legitimate point of no return where they are forced to cross that proverbial line in the sand?

Jordan Dane—October 19, 2017

***

  1. Have you written in first-person POV? If so, what was your experience?
  2. What do you think of Kris’s three-dimensional design approach to “sculpting a novel?” Have you triangulated in the fashion she discusses?
  3. What’s your approach to crafting a powerful inciting incident?
  4. Have you ever submitted a first page critique, either here, or at a conference or convention? If so, was it helpful?

Reader Friday-Life Happens

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Simple question this morning, TKZers. Or maybe not so simple…

Inquiring minds want to know…

 

Life happens, right?

In your Reading/Writing life, is there a particular event from your own life that crops up over and over in what you write or choose to read? What “happening” in your own sojourn on planet earth flavors your stories? Something sad, or happy, or chaotic? Something that lifted you to new heights, or threw you down and stomped on you?

Each character is colored by my life experiences. Yours?

 

 

Not to be too gloomy or bleak, for me it was losing my younger brother and sister five years apart. Those dark years, as sad as they were while living through them, have formed my characters into people who know what’s important. And they teach me.

So, how about you? What about your life feeds into your favorite characters, either written or read?

 

 

 

 

When The Moment Came, I Couldn’t Do It

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By John Gilstrap

Maybe I’m losing my edge. Maybe I’m just getting soft and doddering in my old age, but it’s not the kind of thing that happens to me. I let the character live.

Actually, it’s worse than that. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. I mean, he was supposed to die. The next chapters were going to work because Jason was dead. I’d made him a point of view character for a couple of chapters so readers would feel pain with his loss–we call that drama in my line of work–and I’d given him a fine, heroic final few moments.

But when the paragraph came that Jonathan Grave was supposed to witness him die, he instead discovered a pulse. Which is a real pain in my butt because instead of just walking away from the body and moving on with the story, Jonathan and his team have to figure out what to do with a critically wounded innocent.

Did I mention that Jason was fourteen years old? Okay, that played into my decision.

Here’s the thing, though: Actions have consequences. Not only have I stumbled into an unexpected twenty-page diversion and new plot point, but that plot point somehow has to pay off down the road as I race toward my April 15 deadline. That’s a lot more work.

And, now that I look back, that looming prospect of a lot more work might have been pushing me to lean more on the side of letting the kid die. Yes, it would have been dramatic, but it also would have felt like a bit of a betrayal of my brand. Fictional heroes save lives, they don’t walk away from corpses. Readers don’t buy my books with the anticipation that I’m going to take the easiest route for myself as an author, but rather with the anticipation that I’m going to squeeze as much drama and excitement out of as many scenes as I can create.

These past few weeks, I have been tired, conflicted, and way too busy. It’s been hard to concentrate on my writing–or anything else for that matter–for more than just an hour or two at a time. When that happens, it’s easy to become tempted by shortcuts. I know I’m preaching to the choir here because many of you have jobs and kids and a dozen simultaneous obligations that make your writing time difficult and fleeting.

When those times come, I urge you to remember to trust your creative gut and do the right thing.

I started this post by lamenting that maybe I had lost my edge, but now I know that’s not at all the case. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. I discovered that my edge is sharp enough to not let me make a mistake that I would regret later.

Yo! Muse!

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O Muses, O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!
— Dante, The Divine Comedy

By PJ Parrish

I am dipping a toe back in the fiction waters this week because I got an assignment to write a short story for an anthology. Man, my gears are rusty because I have officially retired from novel writing and without the daily routine, everything sort of freezes up.

Apologies to those of you who struggle with these demons every day. But shoot, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do this. Which means I am going to resort here to yet another metaphor.

Writing is like sailing in the ocean in the middle of a squall. I know because when I was young and living in Fort Lauderdale, I used to sail Hobie Cats competitively. The day is always sunny when you launch your Hobie from the beach and you’re all aglow with hardy-har-har-endorphins. So it is when you sit down and type CHAPTER ONE.

Then the storm hits and there you are, hanging onto a 16-foot piece of fiberglas and vinyl, hoping lightening doesn’t hit the mast and fry your ass. You are out there alone in the storm, out of sight of land, riding the waves and the troughs, hoping you can make it home. You might even throw up. This is usually around CHAPTER TWENTY for me.

End of metaphor.

I often wonder what keeps writers writing. Tyranny of the contract deadline? Blind faith? The idea that if you don’t you might have to do real physical labor for a living? All of those have worked for me in the past. But today, I am sitting here staring at my empty screen waiting for my muse to show up.

Now, let’s get one thing clear here. I don’t really believe in WAITING for a muse to show up. I get really impatient with writers who claim they can’t write until they feel inspired because frankly, 90 percent of this is writing DESPITE the fact your brain is as dry as Waffle House toast. Or as soggy, depending on which Waffle House you frequent. The last one I was in was off the Valdosta Ga. I-95 exit in 1995 and the toast was so dry it stands today as my singular metaphor for stagnant creativity.

But I do believe that sometimes — usually when your brain is preoccupied with other stuff — something creeps into the cortex and quietly hands you a gift. And these little gifts are what get you through.

There are nine muses in mythology — Calliope, Clio, Erato, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Urania, Euterpe, and Thalia. (who was Dobie Gillis’s unobtainable ideal woman, btw). The muses ruled over such things as dance, music, history, even astronomy. No muses for crime writers, unless you count Calliope for epic poetry but James Lee Burke has her on permanent retainer.

I don’t have just one muse. I’ve figured out I have a couple who specialize in particular parts of my writing.

First, there’s my dialogue muse. I call him J.J. because he sounds like Burt Lancaster’s gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success. Always chewing at my ear saying oily things like, “I’d hate to take a bite out of you, you’re a cookie full of arsenic.” J.J. makes my skin crawl but man, can this guy write dialogue.

Then there’s my narrative muse. I call her Cat Woman because she slips in on silent paws, sings in a fey whisper and visits just as morning has broken. I sleep with blackout drapes, a white-noise machine and the A/C turned so cold the bedroom is like a crypt. So as I wake, there is icy air swirling and a soft swoooshing sound. And Cat Woman, whispering a long segment of exposition. I have learned to lay there, very still, until she is done, because if I get up to write it down, she vanishes.

My third muse is Flo, named after the waitress who worked in Mel’s Diner on the old Alice sitcom. Her voice sounds like the door of a rusted Gremlin. Flo’s Greek name is Nike (the goddess of victory) and her slogan is “Just Do It.” Because whenever those other muses fail me, Flo is there. She is the muse who knows that the only way I am going to get anything written is through plain old hard work.

I’d be lost without her. Who, or what, keeps you going?

Let’s Talk Turkey #WriteTip

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I moved into my new place last week. Hence why you haven’t seen me in the comment section. It took two weeks to pack. I’m now unpacking. I found a cozy little abode on the New Hampshire seacoast, near the Massachusetts border. It’s the best of both worlds — two minutes from anything I might need, yet a quiet country setting with plenty of wildlife.

As I gazed out my kitchen window for the first time, five huge male turkeys stood sentinel in the yard. Soon, twenty-five more joined them to socialize, feast, and play. The original five Toms guard the property all day. There’s also an adorable opossum and three albino skunks — stunning all white fur — who come nightly to eat alongside the resident stray cat. All four share the same bowl.

Why can’t humans put aside their differences like animals can?

For my fellow crow lovers out there, a murder of crows arrived on day two. Or Poe and the gang followed me. Sure sounds like Poe’s voice, but I can’t be certain until I set up their feeding spot and take a closer look. My murder has white dots, each in different spots, which helps me tell them apart. Plus, Poe has one droopy wing.

As I watched the five Toms this morning, it reminded me of a post I’d written back in 2017 (time flies on TKZ, doesn’t it?). So, I thought I’d revamp that post a bit, and tweak for our pantser friends.

***

Clare’s recent post got me thinking about craft and how, as we write, the story inflates like a Tom turkey. If you think about it long enough and throw in a looming deadline, Tom Turkey and story structure have a lot in common.

Stay with me. I promise it’ll make sense, but I will ask you to take one small leap of faith — I need you to picture Tom Turkey as the sum of his parts, constructed by craft. And yes, this light bulb blazed on over the Thanksgiving holiday. We are now having spiral ham for Christmas dinner.

But I digress.

Story beats build Tom’s spine. Think of each milestone as vertebrae. Pantsers, let the story unfold as it flows. You can always check the beat placement after the drafting stage.

The ribs that extend from Tom’s spine liken to the equal parts that expand our beats and tell us how our characters should react before, during, and after the quest.

Broken into four equal parts, 25% percent each, this is the dramatic arc. It’s a natural progression that many writers do instinctually. If you want to check your work after the drafting stage, pantsers, the dramatic arc should look like this…

  • Setup (Page 1 – 25% mark): Introduce protagonist, hook the reader, setup First Plot Point through foreshadowing, stakes, and establish empathy (not necessarily likability) for the MC.
  • Response (25% – 50% mark): The MC’s reaction to the new goal/stakes/obstacles revealed by the First Plot Point. MC doesn’t need to be heroic yet. They retreat, regroup, and have doomed attempts at reaching their goal. Also include a reminder of antagonistic forces at work.
  • Attack (50% – 75% mark): Midpoint information/awareness causes the MC to change course in how to approach the obstacles; the hero is now empowered with information on how to proceed, not merely reacting anymore.
  • Resolution (75% – The End): MC summons the courage, inner strength, and growth to find a solution to overcome inner obstacles and conquer the antagonistic force. All new information must have been referenced, foreshadowed, or already in play by 2nd Plot Point or we’re guilty of deus ex machina.

Tom Turkey is beginning to take shape.

Characterization adds meat to his bones, and conflict-driven sub-plots supply tendons and ligaments. When we layer in dramatic tension in the form of a need, goal, quest, and challenges to overcome, Tom’s skin forms and thickens.

With obstacle after obstacle, and inner and outer conflict, Tom strengthens enough to sprout feathers. At the micro-level, MRUs (Motivation-Reaction-Units) — for every action there’s a reaction — establish our story rhythm and pace. They also help heighten and maintain suspense. If you remember every action has a reaction, MRUs come naturally to many writers. Still good to check on the first read through.

MRUs fluff Tom Turkey’s feathers. He even grew a beak!

Providing a vicarious experience, our emotions splashed across the page, makes Tom fan his tail-feathers. The rising stakes add to Tom’s glee (he’s a sadist), and he prances for a potential mate. He believes he’s ready to score with the ladies. Tom may actually get lucky this year.

Then again, we know better. Don’t we, dear writers? Poor Tom is still missing a few crucial elements to close the deal.

By structuring our scenes — don’t groan, pantsers! — Tom grew an impressive snood. See it dangling over his beak? The wattle under his chin needs help, though. Hens are shallow creatures. 😉 Quick! We need a narrative structure.

Narrative structure refers to the way in which a story is organized and presented to the reader. It includes the plot, subplot, characters, setting, and theme, as well as techniques and devices used by the author to convey these elements.

Now, Tom looks sharp. What an impressive bird. Watch him prance, full and fluffy, head held high, tail feathers fanned in perfect formation.

Uh-oh. Joe Hunter sets Tom in his rifle scope. We can’t let him die before he finds a mate! But how can we save him? We’ve already given him all the tools he needs, right?

Well, not quite.

Did we choose the right point of view to tell our story? If we didn’t, Tom could wind up on a holiday table surrounded by drooling humans in bibs. We can’t let that happen! Nor can we afford to lose the reader before we get a chance to dazzle ’em.

Tom needs extra oomph — aka Voice. Without it, Joe Hunter will murder poor Tom.

Voice is an elusive beast for new writers because it develops over time. To quote JSB:

It comes from knowing each character intimately and writing with the “voice” that is a combo of character and author and craft on the page.

That added oomph makes your story special. No one can write like you. No one. Remember that when self-doubt or imposter syndrome creeps in.

If Tom hopes to escape Joe Hunter’s bullet, he needs wings in the form of context. Did we veer outside readers’ expectations for the genre we’re writing in? Did we give Tom a heart and soul by subtly infusing theme? Can we boil down the plot to its core story, Tom’s innards? What about dialogue? Does Tom gobble or quack?

Have we shown the three dimensions of character to add oxygen to Tom’s lungs? You wouldn’t want to be responsible for suffocating Tom to death, would you?

  • 1st Dimension of Character: The best version of who they are; the face the character shows to the world
  • 2nd Dimension of Character:  The person a character shows to friends and family
  • 3rd Dimension of Character:  The character’s true character. If a fire breaks out in a crowded theater, will they help others or elbow their way to the exit?

Lastly, Tom needs a way to wow the ladies. Better make sure our prose sings. If we don’t, Tom might die of loneliness. Do we really want to be responsible for that? To be safe, let’s review our word choices, sentence variations, paragraphing, white space, grammar, and how we string words together to ensure Tom lives a full and fruitful life.

Don’t forget to rewrite and edit. If readers love Tom, he and his new mate may bring chicks (sequels or prequels) into the world, and we, as Tom’s creator, have the honor of helping them flourish into full-fledged turkeys.

Aww… Tom’s story has a happy ending now. Good job, writers!

For fun, choose a name for Tom’s mate. Winner gets bragging rights.

How Chandler Overcame “Plot Constipation”

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Raymond Chandler

I’m having fun reading the selected letters of Raymond Chandler. He’s as entertaining in his correspondence as in his fiction. Plenty of opinions, yet also aware of his own foibles.

In 1945 he was under contract to Paramount (he had just written the classic screenplay for Double Indemnity, which was ironic as he loathed James M. Cain’s writing. “Everything he touches smells like a billygoat.”) The money was good, but the demand for original stories plagued him. That’s because Chandler was never one to grind stories out of “the sausage machine.” He believed that style and voice were more essential than plot, precisely the opposite of what Hollywood wanted.

But to keep a paycheck he needed to produce, and did, with mixed results.

A letter from this period talks about a method of writing Chandler happened upon out of necessity:

In less than two weeks I wrote an original story of 90 pages like this: All dictated and never looked at until finished. It was an experiment and for a guy subject from early childhood to plot-constipation, it was rather a revelation. Some of the stuff is good, some very much not. But I don’t see why the method could not be adapted to novel writing, at least by me. Improvise the story as well as you can, in as much detail or as little as the mood seems to suggest, write dialogue or leave it out, but cover the movement, the characters and bring the thing to life. I begin to realize the great number of stories that are lost by us rather meticulous boys simply because we permit our minds to freeze on the faults rather than let them work for a while without the critical overseer sniping at everything that is not perfect.

Here at TKZ we’ve talked a lot about the tyranny of the “inner editor.” The writer, whether plotter or pantser, needs to get that first draft finished to truly know the story trying to emerge. Only then do you get to the “fixing” of it. In another letter Chandler wrote: “[Y]ou never quite know where your story is until you have written the first draft of it. So I always regard the first draft as raw material.”

I’ve told my students to write a first draft “as fast as you comfortably can.” Do a quick edit of the previous day’s work, then move on.

That broke through the “plot-constipation” for Chandler (although there’s no record of what became of that story; likely it went to the story department for an assessment and never got the interest of a producer).

In the same letter, however, Chandler identified a potential weakness:

I can see where a special vice might also come out of this kind of writing; in fact two: the strange delusion that something on paper has a meaning because it is written…Also, the tendency to worship production for its own sake. (Gardner suffers badly from this…grinding the stuff out of the sausage machine.)

Chandler nailed it. Just because you write something doesn’t make it good. And publishing junk over and over doesn’t make a career (it does make a persistent and rather annoying hobby). He believed that style (the writer’s “individual mark”) makes all the difference. Style (or voice) is a “projection of personality” but “you have to have a personality before you can project it.” Thus, if you’re cranking things out of the machine, or using a machine to crank things out for you, you may create something with, in Chandler’s words, “an immediate impact of competence,” but it will be “hollow underneath.”

Two lessons to draw from this:

  1. Write fast first drafts

When you get to a point of constipa…er, when you get stuck, jump ahead to another scene. You can go back to this spot later. Get to know your story first.

  1. Concentrate on voice as you write

Voice is not something you can fake. Neither can AI. I wrote a book about ways you can pan for the gold of your own voice. Put that on the page. It’s what will set you apart in this sea of conformity.

It’s also why we still read Raymond Chandler today.

Comments welcome.

Don’t Use Exclamation Points, Ethyl Cried!

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We all talk. Some of us too much, but good writers understand cadence and pacing in dialogue and you can tell because the conversation is smooth and familiar. I’ve judged a number of contests over the years, and below you’ll find a couple of my pet peeves. One pet peeve I have is the idiom, pet peeve, so let’s move on.

“Jack, I think we need to take over this train! The engineer’s dead! If you don’t, we’ll crash into the some stalled train in front of us, or maybe the end of the line where there’s a lot of concrete and maybe a big steel thingy that will crush this tin can!”

“What makes you think I can stop this train, Ethyl?”

“I don’t know, Jack, but you’re a man and all men think they can fly airplanes, so why not a train!!!???”

“Of course I can, but Ethyl, why don’t you do it?” Jack asked without shouting like his partner.

Ethyl exclaimed. “Oh, Jack! My role is to stand aside while you fight the Bad Guys and look frightened! Maybe I can cover my mouth with one hand, too, while you decide between blue and red wires.”

“Good lord! Pay attention, Ethyl. Wires are only an issue when a bomb is about to go off,” he hissed.

“This train is a rolling bomb!”she shouted, fearfully, “but I’m beginning to think you’re a dud. Pretty soon people are going to think we hijacked this train –––.”

“Hi yourself, Ethyl, but this isn’t the time for pleasantries. As we race down this track they’ll soon call some alphabet group to stop us.”

“I’m confused, Jack.

“So am I, Ethyl, but at least we know who’s talking!”

I distilled this from an entry and changed enough of the story for you to get the idea. Writers should imitate the way people speak in real life.

For one thing, we don’t use a person’s name in every sentence when we’re talking. I think the original author watches too many movies or sitcoms, where scriptwriters repeat names to excess in order for the audience to keep up. It doesn’t work in print.

At the same time, , we don’t need tags and attributions like “hissed” in this sentence, because are no sibilants, and for crying out loud, avoid exclamation marks! And if you do use one, there’s no reason to explain that he or she exclaimed or shouted!!!

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.” Either Mark Twain or F. Scott Fitzgerald said that, and there’s some question about which one, but it’s a true statement.

That’s something I’ve seen when I judged humor writing in newspapers many years ago. The exclamation point comes up way too often in the punch line, or as emphasis at the end of a story. One example is so bad it makes my teeth ache, but it was the last line in what I figured was supposed to be a joke…I think.

“And I looked up that day as the storm approached and saw a squirrel laying flat and holding onto the tree limb. I kept going, but gave him a word of advice. ‘Hold on tight, Mr. Bushytail, it’s a good thing you’re in a pecan tree, because this is gonna be nuts!’”

Maybe he read too much Swiss Family Robinson (1812) when he was younger! It looks like he caught some of Johann Wyss’ bad habits! This except from Wyss is a good bad example of what to avoid.

The setup. A ship sinks, the family survives and winds up on a beach to salvage what they could.

“Well done, Franz!” I cried; “these fishhooks, which you, the youngest, have found, may contribute more than anything else in the ship to save our lives by procuring food for us.”

“All these things are excellent indeed,” said I; “but my friend Jack here has presented me with a couple of huge, hungry, useless dogs who will eat more than any of us.”

“Oh, papa! They will be of use! Why, they will help us to hunt when we get on shore!” (No tag here for some reason.)

“No doubt they will, if ever we do get on shore, Jack; but I must say I don’t know how it is to be done.”

“Oh, look here, father!” cried Jack, drawing a little spyglass joyfully out of his pocket.

All right. I know this was written two hundred years ago, and the issues I’ve highlighted are more for tongue-in-cheek fun than anything else, but I’ve seen examples that are just as bad in contest entries, and the sad part is they’ve been published.

You can dissect and rewrite the scene above in a million different ways, but avoiding all those literary death traps of attributions, the overuse of the exclamation point, and for the love of god…semicolons, is step one.

So let’s review.

Don’t overuse names in dialogue.

Write dialogue as real people would speak.

No exclamation points!

Fewer tags (and I know this steps on toes). Instead, give your character something to do.

Cut as many adverbs as possible.

Learn to drive trains and diffuse bombs, just in case.