Punctuation Pitfalls – The Comma, Part 1a
When I taught school, no punctuation mark gave students more trouble than the comma. I saw the same tendency in my first critique group, but I also learned one reason why the little squiggle mark posses such a problem—no one follows the same rules. Well, “no one” is an exaggeration, but the fact is, there is a variety of style books, and they don’t always agree. For starters, fiction generally uses the Chicago Manual of Style, but journalists follow the AP Stylebook, and educators adheres to the MLA Style Manual. In those three alone, there is significant disagreement. While I edit both fiction and non-fiction, I

Who Are These People – Making Characters Come Alive, Part 4
A corollary to creating characters with objectives or desires is making those characters take action to accomplish those goals. This past week, agent Rachelle Gardner wrote an excellent article on this subject, “Is Your MC Proactive or Reactive?” Rachelle stated her key point succinctly: Your MC [main character] must be proactive and make the story happen. Surprisingly, some of the commenters seemed to miss that bottom line, camping instead on the issue of passive characters versus strong, type-A take-charge ones. I

Who Are These People? – Making Characters Come Alive, Part 3
The site for the Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction includes novel evaluation standards, one section dealing specifically with characters. The first one is this: Does the main character have clear internal and external goals? Any number of writing instructors emphasize the need for characters to have objectives. I tend to think the presence or absence of goals is a key factor in whether or not a reader identifies with the protagonist. Identifies in the sense that he cheers for the character or pulls for him emotionally. It’s hard to hope for a character&#

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Who Are These People? – Making Characters Come Alive, Part 2
What else besides proper motivation makes a fictitious character seem real? One important element is dialogue. Any number of writing instruction books deal with the basics of dialogue, from speaker attribution to subtexting. And as important as those aspects of writing dialogue are, they do not insure that the characters will come alive. I think there are two key ingredients that turn dialogue into a tool which helps form realistic characters. The first is to avoid wooden speech. In the same way that a person doesn’t talk the way he writes, a character’s dialogue shouldn’t read the same as narrative. Elastic speech is a product of severa