Some Thoughts On Thoughts

One of the greatest advantages that print mediums like novels or comics have over many other story-telling methods is an unparalleled ability to get into the heads of characters, to hear their thoughts and understand their reasoning and their view of the world. In more visually oriented mediums such as film or video games, the most common method of sharing the thoughts of a character is by means of narration or voiceover, both of which can slow the pace of the story and detract from the action. In comics, on the other hand, thought bubbles can be given equal prominence with dialog bubbles; used sparingly, they can convey thoughts without slowing the story.

Moonstone from Thunderbolts gives us a an example of good use of the thought bubble.

But it is in prose that thoughts can really shine. In prose, the audience can spend the entire story in the mind of the perspective characters. Characters’ thoughts and emotions are readily available, often acting as a filter through which the entire story and its world are related.

We’ve already discussed how a perspective character’s personality, education, and background should influence how the story is told. But we haven’t really discussed thoughts—how should you format a phrase that the character thinks, but never voices?

Option 1: No Formatting

Your first option is not to format a thought any differently than anything else—simply set it apart with some variation of the phrase, “she thought.”

     “I’ve sketched out the runes properly, but I still can’t get the spell to work,” Santtu said. “Your spellbook must not have the spell right.”

     No, you’re just an inept and arrogant idiot, Pinja thought. Out loud, she said, “Well, let’s try it together, then.”

In this example, the thoughts are simply conveyed in the same manner as dialog, but without any quotation marks.

Option 2: Italics

Italics are my preferred method of formatting thoughts, as they help the lines stand out a bit more from the surrounding prose and dialog. I particularly recommend italics if you’re writing a very thought-heavy story. When you have long passages of internal monologs, it can be easy to lose track of where the thoughts begin and end if they’re not set apart by italics. Italics also make it easier to have lines of thought without tags:

     “I’ve sketched out the runes properly, but I still can’t get the spell to work,” Santtu said. “Your spellbook must not have the spell right.”

     No, you’re just an inept and arrogant idiot, Pinja thought. Out loud, she said, “Well, let’s try it together, then.”

     “I already told you, it doesn’t work.”

     Neither do you. Pinja knelt and began sketching out the runes.

Not An Option: Quotation Marks

I’ve seen quite a few people format lines of thought with quotation marks, just as they would dialog:

     “I’ve sketched out the runes properly, but I still can’t get the spell to work,” Santtu said. “Your spellbook must not have the spell right.”

     “No, you’re just an inept and arrogant idiot,” Pinja thought. Out loud, she said, “Well, let’s try it together, then.”

I strongly recommend against this practice, as it is needlessly confusing. You don’t want your character’s thoughts to get confused with what they’re actually saying to other characters.

Many people use both quotation marks and italics for thoughts:

     “I’ve sketched out the runes properly, but I still can’t get the spell to work,” Santtu said. “Your spellbook must not have the spell right.”

     “No, you’re just an inept and arrogant idiot,” Pinja thought. Out loud, she said, “Well, let’s try it together, then.”

This is less confusing, but it is also redundant. The italics already serve to set the line of thought apart from the rest of the prose, and they do a better job of it than the quotation marks, so don’t worry about using both.

The one exception to this that I’ve seen is if you have two or more characters who are capable of communicating telepathically. In this case, quotation marks can be useful to help set apart telepathic thoughts from normal ones.

The Unclear Character

Last time we discussed “the un-set scene”—when a scene is unclear because the author has failed to establish a minimum level of basic details about the setting. Today, we’ll cover a similar problem that can arise with characters: “the unclear character.”

Not all characters will require the same amount of description—sometimes a very basic, even vague, description will suffice, while other times a more thorough amount of detail will be necessary. Tolkien described most of his characters, such as Gandalf and the hobbits, with great precision. Dan Wells, on the other hand, has pointed out that he wrote several books starring his character John Wayne Cleaver without ever telling us what color John’s hair was.

An excellent example of these opposing situations can be found in Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. Her descriptions of her male lead and love interest, Edward, are extremely detailed, which is appropriate in a romance novel aimed at teenage girls. Her descriptions of her protagonist Bella, on the other hand, are generally vague; this allows readers to picture the details of Bella’s appearance however they like, which in turn allows Bella to serve as an audience self-insertion avatar, increasing readers’ involvement in the story and romance.

No matter how much or how little you choose to describe your characters, there are a few basic details that your audience will need to clearly picture your narrative:

Pictured: characters without these basic,
distinguishing characteristics.

Gender: Gender is one of the most basic elements that people use to categorize one another. Whether the gender of your characters is male, female, or something else, it will be helpful to your audience if they know where your characters fit along that spectrum. You don’t want your audience to be picturing a character of one gender only to discover later that they were completely wrong.

Age: Not everyone acts their age. Some children are unusually mature, while a disturbing amount of adults never quite seem to grow out teenage behavior. This is part of the reason that it is important to make clear what the ages of your characters are early on. I’ve read many stories where the protagonist’s behavior led me to believe that they were a child, only for me to discover later that they were supposed to be an adult.

Unusual aspects of appearance: I once read a story written in third-person limited perspective from the point of view of an old man. It was four pages before the author mentioned, out of nowhere, that the old man had a peg leg. That’s the sort of thing that would be a large part of a person’s life, don’t you think? It’s the sort of thing that should be apparent from very early on in the story. Don’t drop major details about a character’s appearance late in the story.

Species: This is basically the same as "unusual aspects of appearance," but it's worthy of extra note. If a character is not a human being, you should generally make that clear up front.

That’s pretty much it. You can give more detail, of course (and usually you should), but you shouldn’t generally give less than this.

Note: These rules apply particularly to perspective characters. If we’re in a character’s head, we should know what they know, including details about themselves. If you want to hide details about a non-perspective character for later on, however, you can usually do so. 

Narrative Gaps: Vehicles and Movement

Remember narrative gaps? These are points in the story where something is left out—perhaps a character does something a second time that they never did a first time or a character remembers learning information that the author forgot to have them learn before. Narrative gaps are one of the primary reasons most authors have alpha and beta readers—because after you’ve gone through your own book a dozen times, it can be difficult to spot errors on your own.

There is one type of common narrative gap that you can look for on your own, however: gaps regarding vehicles.

For some reason, vehicles in stories attract narrative gaps like a shiny clean car attracts bird droppings. They usually go something like this:

     “I think this is the place,” Afonso said, pointing out the window to a ramshackle nightclub.

     Graciana slowed the car enough to make out the small sign over the door. “Gaspar’s Place? Are you sure?”

     Afonso shrugged. “It’s the only club we’ve seen in the area. We might as well check it out.”

     “I guess,” Graciana said. “Just don’t wander off and leave me alone in there, okay?”

     “Deal,” Afonso said as they headed inside.

See the problem? Graciana and Afonso are in a car; he points out the window, she slows the car down, and then suddenly they’re headed into the club. Unless they’re driving the car through the door, that means they had to have stopped the car and gotten out at some point—but that point was never shown.

This might not seem like a problem; your readers are certainly intelligent enough to figure out that the characters are no longer in the car if they’re going into the club, after all. But most people picture the scene they’re reading in their mind, and there are few things as jarring for readers as having their image of the scene they’re reading suddenly violated. It will knock most readers solidly out of the story.

This rule applies even to someone who can literally teleport to place to place; you still need to inform your readers when your scene changes.

Another vehicle-related error occurs when characters move in ways that they should not be able to, usually because the author added something in at some point and forgot the scene was taking place in a vehicle:

     Graciana slowed the car as they passed the store. “Can we stop and buy those shoes I wanted?”

     “We’re kind of in a hurry, dear,” Afonso said.

     “I’ll be quick, I promise. Please?”

     Afonso sighed. “Fine. Hurry.”

     “Thank you!” Graciana said with a laugh. She clapped, jumping up and down like a little girl.

Most people are much too large to jump up and down in a car, wouldn’t you say? Particularly when they’re driving.

The good thing about these errors is that they can be easier than most narrative gaps to track down. Simply look for any section of your story where your characters are in or on any sort of vehicle—from cars to bicycles to horses—and double-check for these errors. 

Note: These errors can occur with any sort of movement from one place to another or any sort of enclosed space. Don’t have your characters walking down the street and then suddenly have them talking to a shopkeeper in a store without having them first enter the store, and don't have your characters crouched in a three-foot high tunnel and then have someone start jumping.

Punctuation Problems: Hyphens and Compound Modifiers

One of the most common uses for the hyphen (-) is to connect compound modifiers. A compound modifier is a mix of two or more adjectives or adverbs that jointly modify the same word. So, for example:

     He is such a well-behaved boy.

The words well and behaved work in tandem to modify boy. Well clarifies the meaning of behaved, and together they carry a new descriptive meaning. They are acting together as though they were a single adjective. Here are some other examples:

     “You think she committed the murder? She’s a ninety-seven-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital takes a very patient-centered approach to healthcare.”

     “The creature had a 50-foot wingspan!”

Note that in compound modifiers that involve numbers, a hyphen is required whether you spell out the number or use numerals (so the last example could also be fifty-foot; but a hyphen is needed either way).

Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations. For example:

     “We met an American football player in the pub last night.”

Did the speakers meet someone who plays American football, or did they meet a football player who is also American? A hyphen can add clarification:

     “We met an American-football player in the pub last night.”

The hyphen lets us know that those two descriptors belong together; thus, the answer is that the speakers met someone who plays American football.

"Man eating plant" vs. "Man-eating plant."

Remember that you only hyphenate words that are working together as a single adjective. So the following usage would be incorrect:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out-and-over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Well-thought-out and over-detailed are two separate descriptions, so the example should instead read:

     “This might be the most well-thought-out and over-detailed plan I’ve ever seen.”

Exceptions:

Sadly, it can’t just be that simple. There are a few exceptions to the hyphenating-compound-modifiers rule.

First exception: If the first word in the compound modifier is an adverb that ends in -ly, it is extremely unusual to hyphenate the two words together.

     He is such a poorly behaved boy.

     Part of the reason for this rule is to avoid potentially confusing situations.

Second exception: This rule only applies to compound modifiers that appear before the word they modify. If they appear after, they should not be hyphenated. Here’s what some of our earlier examples would look like if the compound modifiers had appeared after the word they modified:

     “That boy is so well behaved.”

     “You think she committed the murder? That woman is ninety seven years old, for heaven’s sake!”

     “My hospital’s approach to healthcare is very patient centered.”

     “The creature had a wingspan of 50 feet!”

Pronoun Confusion, Part Three

Again with the pronouns. And again with the quick review:

Pronoun: a word that stands in for a noun or noun phrase. We’ve focused on proper pronouns such as he, she, it, we, and they as well as possessive pronouns such as his, her, its, our, or their.

Antecedent: the word that the pronoun replaces. Tamara could be the antecedent to she, for instance, or the magicians’ could be the antecedent to their.

We’ve discussed how important it is to ensure that it’sclear which noun is the antecedent to each pronoun you use. There are few things as confusing to a reader as not knowing which of your female cast members you’re referring to when you say she.

One of the most common causes of confusion in regards to pronouns and antecedents is an old, oft-ignored rule: a possessive noun cannot function as an antecedent. Here’s an example of this rule being broken:

     Violet’s eyes were always downcast because she was so afraid of confrontation.

In that example, she is the pronoun, and it is clear that the she being spoken of is Violet. The only problem is that the word Violet never appeared in the sentence—the word Violet’s did. Why does that matter? Well, because pronouns take the place of nouns, and Violet’s isn’t actually a noun. It’s an adjective describing eyes, the actual noun and subject of the sentence. So technically, the pronoun she is referring back to a noun that doesn’t exist. It’s a problem called a possessive antecedent.

Now, I called this a “problem,” but the fact of the matter is that this is extremely common in both written and spoken English. Everyone does this at some point or another, sometimes very frequently. The reason this error is so common is that it isn’t confusing—look back at that example sentence again. When you read it, were you ever confused about who she referred to? No. You knew that she meant “Violet.”

So while that sentence is technically grammatically incorrect, it’s not that big of a problem. If I were your editor, I would make you fix this sort of error, but many editors probably wouldn’t care about it. You can fix these if you want to go the extra mile.

However. There are two situations where the possessive antecedent should always be fixed. The first is when there is another possible antecedent in the sentence with it:

     Gregorii plunged the knife into Pavel’s leg, making him grunt.

This is similar to the problem we discussed in part one of this pronoun series—if there are two subjects in one sentence to whom the pronoun could refer, your readers can’t be positive which subject you meant. In the example above, it’s pretty clear that Pavel is the one grunting; but grammatically speaking, the only noun in the sentence is Gregorii. Try to avoid this situation. Here is a revised version:

     Gregorii plunged the knife into Pavel’s leg and twisted it viciously. Pavel merely grunted.

The second situation is when the possessive you're referring back to is describing a noun that could also be described by the pronoun. For instance:

     Terrel's son was happy and well-adjusted because he was such a great dad.

Who is he? Is Terrel's son happy because Terrel is a great dad? Because this sentence actually says that Terrel's son is happy because he is a great father to his own, unmentioned son (Terrel's grandson).

The sentence is so vague that it could imply either of these situations. Writers should be more precise than that.

If you wanted to convey that Terrel was the great dad, then you need to rephrase the sentence to something like this:

     Terrel was a great dad, so his son was happy and well-adjusted.

For more information on pronouns and the confusion they can cause, check out Part One and Part Two of this series.

Pronoun Confusion, Part Two

Earlier this week, we discussed pronouns and unclear antecedents. Today I’d like to show you another way that pronouns can cause trouble, a problem I like to call the “antecedent switch.”

Now, quick review—a pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun or noun phrase, such as he, she, they, or I. An antecedent is the noun or noun phrase that the pronoun replaces:

     Joseph knew all the answers to the test because he had studied.

(Antecedent)                                                      (Pronoun)

Pronouns are simple enough to use when you only have one character in a scene to whom each of them can apply. For instance, if your scene features one man and one woman and no other characters, then you’ll always know who the pronoun he refers to and who the pronoun she refers to. But if your scene features two women and two men, then it will suddenly become a little trickier to keep track of who is he and who is she.

You should probably hold off on your novelization of 12 Angry Men until you're absolutely certain that you've mastered your clear pronoun usage.

A good rule of thumb is that a pronoun will generally refer back to the last applicable antecedent. For example:

     Sophia hated the color green because she had spent years trying to get grass stains out clothing. Mary, on the other hand, loved the color green because she loved the outdoors.

In the first sentence, the pronoun she refers to Sophia. In the next sentence, however, the exact same pronoun refers to Mary instead. This is acceptable prose because Mary was the most recent possible antecedent in the second sentence.

There is a very strong exception to this rule, however: do not switch antecedents in the middle of the sentence. For example:

     Sophia finished reading. She handed the book to Mary so that she could read the passage too.

At the beginning of the second sentence, she referred to Sophia. Later in the same sentence, it referred to Mary. This is a no-no. Do not use the same pronoun twice (or more) in one sentence to refer to two (or more) different antecedents. If you want to use your pronoun in place of a new antecedent, then you should either begin a new sentence or re-word your original passage to remove one of the pronouns.

     Sophia finished reading and handed the book to Mary so that she could read the passage too.

Bam. No antecedent switch in the middle of the sentence; there is only one pronoun, and it is clear what its antecedent is.

So that’s a solid rule to help you keep your pronoun usage clear. Plus, while writing this post I came up with about three other pronoun problems that I’ll want to mention, so look out for plenty more on this topic in the future.

Pronoun Confusion, Part One

Let’s talk about pronouns; specifically, personal and possessive pronouns.

It’s nearly impossible to write a story without them. These are words that substitute for names or other proper nouns and for their possessive forms, respectively.

Personal pronouns. The person you’re talking about is one of these:

     Christopher, writers, readers, Korey, Belinda, the car, the Inklings

But the word you’re using is one of these:

     I, we, you, he, she, it, they

And here’s an example of a personal pronoun in use:

    Belinda loves to dance even though she isn’t very graceful.

Possessive pronouns. You’re talking about an object that could be described with one of these words:

     Christopher’s, writers’, the readers’, Korey’s, Belinda’s, the car’s, the Inklings’

But the word you’re using instead is one of these:

     My, our, your, his, her, its, their

And here’s an example of a personal pronoun in use:

     Korey has to pick up his sister from school today.

You can see how prose would get very tiring without any pronouns, right? It would get cluttered with proper names and placeholders and the like. Pronouns make language prettier. But they are also a cause of common mistakes. For example:

     Dan needed to talk to Hector before he went to the movie.

We know that he is a personal pronoun that stands in for someone’s name, but to whom does it refer in the above sentence? Does Dan need to talk to Hector before Dan goes to a movie, or does Dan need to talk to Hector before Hector goes to the movie?

In many situations like this, it’s possible to figure out the meaning from context, from the things that were said in the sentences before and after this one. That’s not good enough—you don’t want your readers to have to waste time on figuring out what you’re saying when they should be busy trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.

Keep an eye out for sentences like that, where it is unclear to whom the pronoun refers (it's called an unclear antecedent, by the way). When you come across one, rewrite it so that the confusion is removed. Our example sentence above could be easily fixed:

     Dan wanted to get to the movie, but he needed to talk to Hector first.

     Hector was headed to the movies, but Dan needed to talk to him first.

See? Easy fix. Sometimes it won’t be so easy, but it will always be possible. You’re a writer—you have complete control over the story and the prose, so use it well.

There are other ways for personal and possessive pronouns to go wrong, so stay tuned for more tips on this in future posts.

Saying Things Twice

A common signifier of not-yet-professional writing is an author who consistently says things twice. This doesn’t mean that they repeat themselves verbatim; it means that they say something, and then they re-state it in a different manner. For example:

     Walking fast, she hurried to the door.

That’s rather redundant, isn’t it? We’re told that she’s “walking fast,” and then we’re told that she “hurried.” Those are basically the same thing. This sentence should just be shortened to “She hurried to the door.”

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know why redundancy isn’t a good trait for your writing to have. If you don’t know, here’s a link to the many posts that touch on redundancy and its negative effect on writing. To put it shortly: redundancy wastes your readers’ time and insults their intelligence.

This is a real line from an actual manuscript.

Here’s some more examples:

     “Turn in your badge and gun now,” I ordered, holding out my hand.

     Detective Mullens cursed under his breath. Reluctantly, he complied, handing me his badge and his gun.

See the repetition? First, we’re told that Mullens “complied.” Since we just read the order he was complying with, we know that this means that he handed over his badge and his gun. But then the writer goes ahead and tells us that’s what he did, anyway.

     “Okay, I’ll see you at noon tomorrow,” Julia said. She made a note of the meeting, writing it down in her planner.

Same situation—“made a note” and “wrote it down” mean the same thing. One of those phrases should be cut.

Now, you may remember the common writing advice “Show, don’t tell.” This novice writer’s habit of saying things twice often comes about because the author chooses to show and tell. Here’s an example that one of my teachers once pointed out in my own writing:

     For most people, the view from the lighthouse would have been very impressive. But Hero had seen far more than most people. He simply yawned and leaned against the railing.

First I told my readers that Hero had seen more than most people, and then I showed that through his actions. You are all smart enough to read between the lines if I simply show you:

     For most people, the view from the lighthouse would have been very impressive. Hero simply yawned and leaned against the railing.

Bam. Gone is the redundancy, leaving behind tighter, more efficient prose. All I needed to do was trust my readers to be smart enough to understand what I was showing them.

Another example:

     “Thank you for your help,” Jane said. She smiled, her expression happy.

Boooo. We all know that a smile is a happy expression, right? No need to re-state it.

Pictured: A Happy Expression

You all get the picture. Next time you’re editing, keep an eye out for any spots where you might have said something twice. When you find them, ruthlessly eliminate the redundancy.

Punctuation Problems: "While" and the Comma

A few months ago we discussed how a single comma can change the meaning of a sentence. But commas are more versatile than that; they can also change the meaning of specific words, simply by being placed nearby. For instance, the word while:

     We’ll go to the theatre while you watch the baby.

     I am a doctor of medicine, while you are simply a quack.

See that? In the first example, while meant “during the time that” and was not preceded by a comma. In the second example, it meant “whereas” and was preceded by a comma.

Now, it’s technically not the comma that changes the meaning of while. But that comma will pretty much always follow this pattern. If you’re using while to mean whereas, then it should be preceded by the comma; if you’re using it to mark a period of time, then there shouldn’t be a comma.

What I’m saying here is that editors don’t want to see this:

     He’s throwing a party, while his parents are out of town.

This happens all over the place, and it is incorrect. Resist the impulse to place a comma before a while that’s supposed to indicate a duration of time. Just don’t do it.

The problem with this error is that it still creates a grammatically valid sentence. A normal grammatical error just says something poorly, but at least it’s usually still what the writer meant to say. This error, on the other hand, completely changed the meaning of the sentence from this:

     He’s throwing a party during the period of time that his parents are out of town.

To this:

     He’s throwing a party; his parents, on the other hand, are out of town.

See the problem here? If you’re a writer, someone who makes a living (or wants to make a living) purely by the words you string together, then you need to know how to make those words say exactly what you intend them to. So remember:

Note: When while is being used to indicate a period of time, it is usually possible to switch the order of the sentence’s clauses like this:

     While his parents are out of town, he’s throwing a party.

In this case, you will need a comma between the two parts of the sentence, but not beside while.

Pitfalls of Multiple Viewpoints

Last time, we discussed some of the ways that including multiple perspective characters in your story can serve the needs of the narrative. Today, I'd like to highlight some of the difficulties and pitfalls that you should consider before you start breaking out new perspectives all over the place.

The audience can lose track of characters and plotlines

Generally speaking, the more perspective characters you have in a story, the more plotlines and side characters you will need to flesh out the narrative. This is a difficulty that can quickly spiral out of control. I recently read a manuscript which dropped fourteen viewpoint characters on me in the space of thirty chapters. That is a lot of viewpoints and characters to keep track of, especially when you only get an occasional chapter here and there with each character. I can tell you the names of about half of the viewpoint characters, the occupations of most of the others, and almost nothing about anyone else.

Now, if I really buckled down and focused, I could probably remember most of the names of the other perspective characters. I could painstakingly map out each plotline in my head to be sure that I understood where things were going. But the trouble is that I just don't care enough to do so. The more work it is to follow a story, the more entertaining that story will have to be to pull readers along; and most of them just can't live up to it.

The audience will almost certainly end up disliking certain plotlines or viewpoint characters

Juxtaposition invites comparison.

Go ahead. Just try not to notice any differences.

If you place two portraits side by side, viewers will automatically begin to compare them. If you write a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, then readers will instinctively compare it to every other version of the story that they've experienced.

The same thing happens with multiple perspectives and plotlines in a story. If you jump from perspective to perspective, readers will begin to compare those perspectives and will almost always end up enjoying or disliking one more than the others. They will begin to resent having to leave their favorite plotline or character to spend time on one that they don't like as much or even actively dislike. In the manuscript I mentioned before, I encountered this problem. Of the fourteen viewpoints I'd been given, I was really engaged by only three or four of them. Perhaps eight or nine of the others felt merely adequate by comparison, and the remaining ones I actively dreaded returning to. If the amount of entertaining story is too severely overwhelmed by boring or unpleasant, many readers will simply set the book aside.

Lack of variety

Many viewpoint characters tend to be something of a blank slate, a "normal" person that the audience can relate to (or project themselves upon) in a sea of distinctive side characters. Harry Potter, for instance, can often come across this way. When compared to the intelligent and bossy Hermione, the sardonic and insecure Ron, the bombastic and friendly Hagrid, and so on, Harry is comparatively low-key. He is interesting mainly as a lens through whom we can view the world and as a vehicle to carry us through exciting adventures, but no so much for his unique or compelling personality. And this isn't a bad thing; a protagonist that your audience can easily relate to or project themselves upon can be a powerful tool.

However, if you have multiple perspective characters in a single story, it can be very easy for them all to fall into this same rut. If you have four viewpoint characters who all have this same, easy to relate to/project upon personality, the story will get boring very quickly. Characters need to interesting and distinct from one another, whether they're side characters or protagonists.

Character knowledge vs. audience knowledge

Unless your perspective characters are all getting together to share their experiences and knowledge every time you switch the viewpoint, you will almost certainly have some characters who know things that the others don't. Your readers and you the author, on the other hand, know everything that any of the characters have learned at any given point. I have read many stories where knowledge began to bleed from one character to another even though they had never had an opportunity to share information. You have to keep track of which character knows what and how they know it; don't just lazily let the audience's knowledge inform the characters.

This also includes keeping track of which characters are acquainted and which aren't. Just because your audience is already familiar with a character doesn't mean the other protagonists are.

Pacing Problems

Time is one of the most difficult problems of multiple-perspective stories. In the manuscript I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite plotlines was left with two characters in a rather dire situation. The narrative then followed five or so other characters through a variety of situations, including some plotlines that would have taken several days to play out. The narrative then returned to those two characters . . . mere moments after we'd last seen them. I was confused and irritated. If we were just going to come back to these characters in the same scene, the same minute where we'd last seen them, then why did we ever leave them? Days had passed for other characters while seconds had passed for these.

Even more difficult to write and to keep track of as a reader is concurrent action, when two plotlines are occurring at the same time. This can be very difficult to convey, which is why some of the best writers of multiple-perspective stories carefully craft the plot so that no concurrent action takes place. If you leave character A to spend five minutes with character B, then five or more minutes will have passed when you return to character A again.

There are two reasons why this is important. First, if readers get too confused, then they might get irritated with the story or simply set the book aside. Second, there are few things that feel as cheap and deceptive as leaving characters in a tricky situation only to have them get rescued by a character who logically should have been somewhere else. If you make too many mistakes with the time and pacing of your story, you run the risk of seeming dishonest and leaving your readers feeling cheated.


Now, none of this is to say that you shouldn't write multiple-perspective stories. Just keep in mind the difficulties before you start. Don't be afraid to set aside a more complex, multi-viewpointed story in favor of a simpler story with fewer viewpoints that is more within the realm of your skills. Then, once you've had some practice, come back to the more complicated story. Better to wait and do a good story justice than to botch it because you weren't ready.

Word Mix-Ups: "Looked Like" vs. "Appeared As"

“Appeared as” is not a synonym for “looked like.”

And there you have it. Have a nice day, folks!

I suppose I could elaborate a bit.

We all know how to use looked like—we do it every day. Here’s some examples:

     He looked like a construction worker.

     That cloud looks like a porcupine.

     My girlfriend’s uncle looked like an angry honey badger.

Pretty simple, right? Looked like is used to indicate that two objects have similar appearances. I’ve seen quite a few people try to use appeared as in the same way, but it just doesn’t work:

     He appeared as a construction worker.

In this sort of usage, appeared as seems to indicate that the person we’re discussing has the ability to alter their appearance at will and has chosen this form to appear to our characters. Like this:

     The angel appeared as a construction worker.

     God appeared to Moses as a burning bush.

The genie appeared as a bee. Because he literally changed his form and appeared out of nowhere.

Many an author has created unintentional hilarity through the misuse of appeared as. This can be particularly confusing if you’re writing speculative fiction of some sort—if your story is already full of magic or might-as-well-be-magic levels of technology, then your audience won’t always know just what you meant. For all they know, the dimension-hopping monster or planet-eating alien can actually appear as whatever they want.

    My girlfriend’s uncle appeared as an angry honey badger. He is a wizard, you see.

Now, there is a situation where looked like and appeared as can be interchanged a bit more freely. In all of the examples above, looked like was used to create similes—to imply visual similarity. But it can also be used to describe the literal nature of a person or object—to describe what something is. For example:

     The room was in shambles, furniture in pieces, window shattered, blood on the floor; it looked like a nasty fight happened there.

     The room was in shambles, furniture in pieces, window shattered, blood on the floor; it appeared as though a nasty fight happened there. (Appeared that would work even better, but I wanted to keep the as in the phrase.)

The distinction between visual simile and literal description of nature is important in these situations. Looked like can be used in either scenario, but appeared as cannot.

Organized Paragraphs and Missing Sentences

Last time, we discussed rogue sentences: lines that should, thematically, reside in a different paragraph than the one in which they’re found. But not all rogue sentences jump to the wrong paragraph. Sometimes, they don’t even get written. They are missing sentences.

Sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and even books themselves all serve to divide content up into easily-processed portions. A sentence is a single thought—when reading, we rarely focus on more than one sentence at a time. A paragraph collects sentences which need to be processed together, helping us to easily find the connection between a series of thoughts. And a series of thoughts can easily become a narrative—a small story in its own right. And no matter how short a story is, it is always jarring when it doesn’t come to an end:

You can find the missing panel here.

Just as you can tell when a panel has been left off of a comic strip, your readers will be able to tell when a sentence has been left off of a paragraph:

     Borya knelt on the carpet before his king. As a general, he was not required to press his forehead to the ground as others would in the presence of the monarch, but he would still be forced to wait for his audience to begin. That would not happen until the king’s small army of servants had finished grooming and pampering their corpulent ruler. Young women and girls darted about, straightening the king’s clothing, powdering his face, and buffing his nails. Borya tapped his fingers on his knees impatiently for several minutes before the women began to finish and withdraw.

     The king snapped his pudgy fingers and a young slave boy hurried to his side, bearing a heavy tray loaded with sweets. The boy winced as the king reached for the tray, ducking his head to the side as though he expected the massive hand to descend in a blow rather than to snatch one of the treats. The king picked up a chocolate-covered plum and bit into it, sending purple juices dribbling down his chins. He frowned down at the chocolate and then spat the mouthful into the boy’s face. As the boy blinked the mess from his eyes, the king swatted the tray from his hands, sending the sweets scattering across the carpet before Borya.

     “What is it, general?” the king said at last. Borya stood and approached the throne.

     “The Gorilam has arrived in the harbor, your majesty.”

Do you see were the thought is incomplete? We had an entire paragraph on that slave boy—his approach, his reactions to the king’s movements, and the unfortunate abuse he suffered. Then, the paragraph ends without completing the narrative. What happened to the boy?

Was he forced to crawl along the floor, gathering up the sweets, all while spit and chewed chocolate dripped down his face? Did he immediately dart from the room, leaving the sweets scattered over the floor? Is he still standing there between the king and Borya while they converse? All we need is that one missing sentence to tell us what happened.

To be fair, the boy’s story doesn’t need to be completed in that same paragraph. We could mention the boy’s movements during Borya and the king’s conversation, and use them for further character building. What is important is that we finish the narrative that we began—because the boy was such a prominent focus of the scene, the scene won’t feel complete until his little story has been finished in some manner. It doesn’t matter if the boy leaves or if he’s still there when Borya leaves, as long as his presence is consistently acknowledged or resolved.

The importance of finishing this sort of paragraph-sized narrative is proportional to the amount of focus and activity you’ve given it. Since the boy was the prominent focus of an entire paragraph, he deserves at least a sentence of resolution. If there had been a single sentence about servants with massive palm fronds fanning the king, they wouldn’t have required resolution—they are largely inactive, part of the scenery rather than the narrative.

Just as your readers would be irritated if you left a chapter off the end of the book or a paragraph off the end of the scene, so will they notice if you leave an important sentence off of the end of a paragraph. Every portion of the story will have its own narrative arc, even the smallest—don’t let missing sentences ruin even a part of your work.

Perspective and Parents' Names, Part Two

Last time, we discussed the subtle perspective error that can arise from calling your perspective character’s parents by their names in the prose—it creates a subtle implication of distance to the relationship. It’s a small problem, but one that writers should be aware of.

If you’re looking for ways of dealing with this problem (beyond simply calling the character “his mother” throughout the entire story), here’s a few tips and ideas:

Call the parents what you want, and make the relationship fit. There are a lot of reasons why a character might call their parents by name. You can easily work one of those into the relationship between your protagonist and their parent.

I’ve read plenty of stories where one of the central conflicts was between the protagonist and their disapproving/distant parent. If you’re going to have a conflict between the two of them anyway, why not ramp it up slightly? Perhaps your protagonist calls his father by name in order to upset his father. Perhaps he’s been so long estranged from his father that it feels odd to call him “dad” now, so he thinks of his father by name.

Perhaps your protagonist works with her mother, and her mother is concerned about potential accusations of nepotism. She might have the protagonist call her by name to avoid any appearance of favoritism. Perhaps there are other social circumstances behind the decision.

Or, barring external motivators, perhaps they’re simply the type of parents who prefer that their children call them by name.

Killing off the parents is always an option, too, though it can be a bit overdone. 

Call the parents by a different title. It often works surprisingly well to simply call the parent characters “Mom” and “Dad” without bothering to distinguish “my mom” or “so-and-so’s dad.” This only works if we’re very deep inside the perspective of the protagonist—usually because they are narrating in first-person perspective:

     I was ready to go, but mom was still loitering at the cash register, flirting with the perfume salesman. “Mom, we’re going to be late,” I called. She ignored me. Mom always got like that around cute guys.

This is particularly effective when your perspective character is a child (or an adult narrating their childhood).

Change the perspective. This is both the simplest and most time-consuming fix for the problem. Time-consuming, because if you’ve already written a significant portion of the story, it will require a bit of work to switch it to a new perspective. Simplest, because it fixes the problem without gimmicks or major adjustments to character relationships or plot.

The “Parent Name Problem” is most prevalent in third-person limited perspective, when we’re inside the head of the protagonist. If you switch to first-person, you can easily use the “Mom and Dad” approach above. Or, you can switch to a third-person omniscient narrator, who can tell us what is going on in your protagonist’s head while still referring to them by name without it being a perspective error.

Perspective Errors: Parents' Names

 First-person perspective and third-person limited perspective are probably the two most commonly-used perspectives in fiction. First-person is narrated by a character in their own words, while third-person limited places the audience directly inside the mind of the perspective character. In both cases, the language of the prose and what the narrative focuses on should be filtered through that character, as we’ve discussed before. We’ve also discussed perspective in relation to the name placeholders that you use to refer to characters. Today, we’ll look at a specific name-related perspective problem that writers encounter again and again.

The problem is this: perspective characters often have parents. That’s a good thing—not every protagonist should be an orphan. 

"One would think that Fiction's entire collection of protagonists had been recruited solely from her orphan asylums. Which we know is not the case."

But parents create a rather unique problem when it comes to names and name placeholders. Take a look at this example:

     Teri crouched on the top of the tall brick wall, watching for danger. There was no movement on the grounds below or in the manor ahead, and the narrow street behind her was clear of people in her direction.

     From her left, she heard a soft whistle. “Johanna, Luis,” Alina called to Teri’s parents, “we’re all clear. Come on up.”

     Teri gave a thumbs-up to her parents, and they silently scuttled out of the shadows across the street and up the rough face of the wall. They crouched beside her; Johanna bore a long rope coiled over her shoulder, and Luis carried a bag of thieves’ tools on his back.

     “Good job, you two,” Johanna whispered. “If you see anyone headed our way, signal us in the usual way.”

     “If we’re not back in twenty minutes, head back to the hideout,” Luis added. “We’ll catch up to you there.”

     Teri nodded. “Be careful on the skylight, dad.”

     Luis ruffled her hair with a smile and climbed down into the manor gardens.

     “I love you, my little girl,” Johanna whispered, giving Teri a quick hug.

     “I love you too, mom,” Teri whispered back as Johanna followed after Luis.

Do you see the problem? This passage is written in third-person limited perspective, and we’re inside Teri’s head. Now, Teri calls her parents “mom” and “dad” when she speaks. It is therefore logical to assume that she thinks of them that way, too—most children do. Most people do, for that matter. No matter how old we get, most of us think of our parents as “mom” and “dad.”  But in the passage above, Teri’s parents are referred to by name in the prose, even though we’re in Teri’s head.

Now, this is a very common difficulty, especially if your protagonist’s parents are prominent characters in the story. It can be very awkward and clunky to refer to them as “so-and-so’s mother” over and over again in the prose. For example:

     Teri handed her mother the bag. Her mother began to dig through it, frowning. “I want the two of you to stay here until I get back,” she said.

     Teri and Alina glanced at one another. “But you’ll need spotters,” Alina said. “It’s too dangerous for you to go alone.”

     Teri’s mother shook her head. “No. The two of you aren’t ready for this kind of job. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

     Teri placed her hand over her mother’s where she was holding the bag open. “Mom, please. Let us help.”

     Her mother sighed and hung her head for a moment. “Not this time, little girl,” she said. When she looked up, Teri was shocked to see that there were tears in her eyes. She’d never seen her mother cry.

That gets a little awkward, doesn’t it? Besides “her mother” being a bit of a long name placeholder, we're forced to repeat it more than we would her name (to avoid confusion between all of the instances of she and her that get thrown around with three female characters in the scene). We’re also forced to repeat Teri’s name a little more than looks good (otherwise, we’d create situations where the her in her mother would seem to be referring to Alina and not Teri—hence we say “Teri’s mother” in the third paragraph instead of “her mother.).

This problem is kind of a Catch-22. There tend to be problems whichever way you go.

Referring to the parents as “her mother” and “her father” thoughout the prose will be more true to life. But the larger the parents’ parts are, the more difficult this will make the writing.

Choosing to refer to the perspective’s characters by their names in the prose is an acceptable option, even if it is technically a small perspective error. Plenty of authors have done this in the past—for instance, if you read the first chapter of The Eye of the World (the first book of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series), you will see that Robert Jordan chose this method of dealing with the problem. Even though the perspective is third-person limited from Rand’s viewpoint, Rand’s father is referred to by name (Tam) in the prose. Most people don’t even notice anything unusual about it—and those who do notice the perspective error will quickly get used to it.

The problem with this approach is that it can create a subtle, unconscious distance between the perspective character and their parent. In the case of Rand and Tam, for instance (minor spoilers ahead), I was completely unsurprised when it was revealed that Tam was not Rand’s biological father. Rand was completely shocked by the revelation, but for years I could not figure out why it didn’t surprise me. Eventually, I pinpointed this as the reason—it is not uncommon for children or grown adults to refer to their adopted parents or step-parents by name, for a variety of reasons. The fact that the prose referred to Rand’s father by his first name even though we were in Rand’s head caused me to unconsciously label their relationship as an adoptive one rather than a biological one.

(This is in no way meant to disparage the relationships between children and their adoptive parents, of course. It is simply an observation of common patterns of speech and the situations in which they tend to appear.)

Now, is that a minor problem? Yes, probably. However, it is a problem that you ought to consider when approaching the problem of how to refer to your perspective character’s parents in the prose. 

Next time, we’ll discuss a few tips and possible alternate solutions to this problem.

Punctuation Problems: Clarifying Information vs. Additional Information

Can you tell me the difference in meaning between these two sentences?

     1. Olya entered the chapel and approached the altar where Dima knelt with his wife.

     2. Olya entered the chapel and approached the altar, where Dima knelt with his wife.

The only difference is the comma—what does that little comma do? It separates the sentence into two portions, which serves to inform the reader that the second portion of the sentence is adding some extra information. The comma, in essence, informs the reader that the second part of the sentence is not necessary to understand the first part.

Without the comma, the sentence implies that that last portion of the sentence (“where Dima knelt with his wife”) is clarifying the first part, that the sentence wouldn’t be complete without it. If that last portion of the sentence is necessary, then that implies that the “altar” that was mentioned needs to be distinguished from some other altar in the area.

In other words, here is what each of our example sentences above is really saying:

     1. Olya entered the chapel. There were several altars, and she approached the one where Dima knelt with his wife.

     2. Olya entered the chapel and approached the only altar. Dima knelt beside the altar with his wife.

See the difference? Without the comma, the implication is that the second portion of the sentence is necessary to clarify the first portion. With the comma, the implication is that the second portion of the sentence is extra information which isn’t needed to understand the first portion.

Imagine that you and a friend are headed to the movies, when you get a call that you need to stop and meet a secret agent to receive a package related to your next secret agent mission. (We’re all imagining that you have a very interesting life.) You tell your friend that you have to stop to meet this agent at the park.

Now, how you phrase this statement would depend on how many parks are in the area, right? If there were only one park in the whole town, then you might simply say:

     “We have to stop at the park.”

Since there’s only one park in the area, your friend would know what you mean. However, if there were several parks in the area, you would need to add additional information to clarify which park you meant:

     “We have to stop at the park where you met my sister.”

See how it works? The phrase “where you met my sister” serves as clarification—without that information, it would not be clear which park you meant. Since the information is necessary, it should not be separated from the noun it clarifies (park) by a comma. If you did so, the sentence would read strangely:

     “We have to stop at the park, where you met my sister.”

Placing a comma here implies that you are adding extra information, which in this case seems rather nonsensical. Why would you mention, apropos of nothing, that your friend met your sister in the park? Your friend would know that. With the comma, the sentence essentially means this:

     “We have to stop at the park. By the way, you met my sister at this park.”

That just reads like particularly awkward maid-and-butler dialog. Imagine your friend looking at you in confusion, and saying, “Yeah, I know that. Why are you telling me?”

Remember: clarifying information should usually not be separated from the word it clarifies by a comma.

     

How to Use the Passive Voice

In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King highlighted what he considered the two hallmarks of poor writing: adverbs (which we’ve already discussed here) and the passive voice, which we will discuss today.

What is the passive voice? It is a manner of writing that takes the direct object of the sentence (whoever or whatever is having something done to them) and makes them the subject of the sentence (the person or thing who is doing something.) So a normal, active-voice sentence would read like this:

       Gretta    painted      a picture.

     (Subject)   (verb)  (direct object)

And a sentence in the passive voice reads like this:

     The picture         was             painted               by Gretta.

     (New subject)  (form of    (past participle   (Original subject,

                             “to be”)     form of verb)     now an indirect object)

Now, as usual, you don’t need to remember all of the grammatical terms that I’ve listed above. All you need to remember is that a passive sentence is a sentence written backwards. The passive voice generally weakens your writing, making it boring and difficult to read.

I could dig much more deeply into what constitutes the passive voice and how to identify it, but I’ll be honest—I don’t think I need to. Perhaps it is because writers and English teachers have taken Mr. King’s complaints to heart, but the passive voice doesn’t seem to be much of a problem anymore. Just as I mentioned with adverbs, people seem to have learned that the passive voice is a convention that should be shunned and are generally doing a good job of it (at least in the manuscripts I’ve edited).

So instead of railing any further on the passive voice, I’m going to give you some advice on when the passive voice is permissible:

When you want to emphasize the object of the sentence over the subject. It’s not a common situation, but every now and then, the object of the sentence needs greater focus than anything else.

     All five keys were needed to open the door.

This could be written as, “The door needed all five keys to open,” but that would place greater emphasis on the door. In this case, the keys are clearly more important.

When the subject of the sentence is unknown. Sometimes, your characters might not know who performed an action. For instance:

     The painting had been stolen.

While this could be phrased, “Someone had stolen the painting,” the passive voice can be used to place emphasis on what is known and to avoid the useless “someone.” We know someone stole the painting whether or not you actually use the word, so this is one of those rare cases where the passive voice can actually be stronger, less redundant, and more focused than the active voice.

When it’s not important who performed the action. Your readers don’t need to know every little bit of extraneous information. For instance, you might have a paragraph like this in a story:

     Nils and Gretta hurried to the hospital and arrived with only minutes to spare. The baby was delivered before Gretta could even don a hospital gown.

In this case, it’s really not important who delivered the baby—that’s not central to the story. While we could say, “Doctor Bosch delivered the baby,” we don’t need to; plus, that would just add another random name to the story for readers to remember. If the name isn’t going to be important to the story, then it’s probably better not to mention it.

In scientific documents. I don’t mean that you should use the passive voice if you are personally writing a scientific document—I mean that you can use the passive voice for the text of a scientific document that appears in your story. For better or worse, the passive voice can be quite common in lab reports or scientific articles, as many people feel that it establishes an “objective tone.” (That is, it avoids use of the first person.) While scientific documents can be written objectively without slipping into passive voice, they may feel more genuine to your readers if you use the passive. The same can be said for legal or business documents.

In dialog. Sometimes, people speak in the passive voice, and you might want to reflect that in your dialog. Perhaps you have a slimy businessperson or politician who is constantly trying to evade responsibility for any of the consequences that their actions have wrought—they might speak in the passive voice with irritating frequency. Try to use this one sparingly, though.