One thing I like about your channel is your writing advice isn't generic. You have nuanced opinions and you've clearly read widely. And in this video for example, you recognize that things like dialogue tags are often smaller shrubs in the vast task of writing a good story. A lot of other videos stress these minor, low-hanging fruit to gain clicks rather than touching on the deeper insights. Love your stuff!
Thank you for noticing that. And well said -- "smaller shrubs in the vast task." So true. Ticky-tack details are important, but in general, studying bigger picture stuff (characters, plot, etc) will pay bigger dividends to improving your craft.
@@Bookfox I studied mathematics and music composition in college, but I took a few writing classes. The fact that you use the word "craft" like my writing professor did again suggests to me that you have deeper knowledge in the field. It's interesting how the minor details in how we speak can be tells on how educated we are on a particular subject. But it's also true that people can have deep insights even if they aren't traditionally educated, so this comment is more of a minor point I wanted to note. :)
The best way I’ve seen to avoid nonsensical dialogue tags like “winked” is to put that as a separate sentence BEFORE the dialogue. “See you soon,” he winked. vs. He winked. “See you soon.”
@@LizzyMeyer-g1d "leaves crunching under his black boots." doesn't feel useful in this sentence. Why is the sound of the leaves important? Why is the color of the boots important? Why is the fact he's wearing boots important?
@ It was an example. The color of his boots and the sound of crunching leaves may or may not be important, but I don’t know because it isn’t part of my book, or anyone else’s. I came up with it on the spur of the moment, like I said, as an example. I mean I guess if you hadn’t mentioned the season yet but you want to the leaves could be a good indicator that it is autumn? Idk, like I said, doesn’t matter.
It feels like a lot of writers have been scared off using dialogue tags, to the point where you can't even tell who is speaking. It's frustrating to get halfway through a long exchange only to realise I had the conversation backwards, then scan back to the beginning to find out there was no indication of who spoke first. The writer just assumes that their readers are psychics.
In fairness, if the dialogue is well written, the voices and personalities of the characters should generally be distinct enough that you can tell them apart without tags on every line. But for sure the first line in a conversation should nearly always be tagged.
I saw elsewhere on the internet that the reason you shouldn't use "suddenly" or "all of a sudden" is because they are meant to indicate a shift that is often surprising, and marking that shift with either of those terms no longer makes it a surprise because they've been warned.
One of Terry Pratchett's novels starts with weather, describing a storm as it meanders over the landscape - but the Discworld is practically a character in itself, so he can get away with describing it at length, especially as he does so very amusingly!
No. 1 - generally no, unless weather is an important part of the setting. If this is a snowy night with strong winds and somebody is trying to get to the first house in the village right before they collapse - the weather should be there. Nothing against weather descriptions. No. 2 - yup, I agree - prologues have their places, depending on the genre, fantasy being one of them. I love Beauty and the Beast prologue (albeit it's a movie) and I think it sets the scene perfectly. No. 3&4 - What drives me crazy about dialogue is that it is generally said to be tagless. What if my character whispers the words? What if he growls? How do you know what they do with their voice - dialogue line will not tell you that. When my character changes their mood during the dialogue I will mark it with tags. There is nothing more than a dialogue when I don't know how am I suppose to read the utterances of characters - the same can be said neutrally, sarcastically, angrily - you name it. Dialogue tags for the win. No. 5. - I agree with this one. Too many exclamation marks diminish its power, not so much per the whole novel but per utterance. One is enough. As for the whole book - whenever it's needed, just don't make it into screaming contest or something. No. 6. - With suddenly - no, a sentence will not work without it - suddenly indicates that action is abrupt. For example: he was driving and suddenly took right turn vs. he was driving and took the right turn. Where is the unexpected turn right? There is none, the second sentence is a consecutive action. If not suddenly, then thesaurus is your friend. No. 7. For accent - sometimes you just can't convey it in speech. Good luck with conveying the "singing" sound of a Japanese dialect from Fukui prefecture, or prolonging of the syllables in Yorkshire dialect. It was actually described by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but the dialogue had a standard grammar. The so much dreaded description was the key. No. 8. Oh hell no! This is the reason why modern characters suck for me so much - they just are. I can't imagine how they look like because I fricking don't know. The example from The Twelve Long Months is cringy as fork. I only know she is a red head, and I see two comments about her that give me the vaguest idea of her. Ronald McDonald's daughter? She looks like a clown? He tried to be so witty with his short sentence, but damn, this description put me off the book faster than the speed of light. :/ I WANT to know how the character looks like - their hair, their skin, their face shape, their eyes, their height, their posture - everything. The description from The Twelve Long Months gives me shite. Why should I even care about this character, if I can't even place her looks? She's red-haired - wow, fantastic description. :/ No. 9. Descriptions - used to hate them as a kid but s a grown-up - give me! I read prologue to Pharaoh twice because the description of the geography of ancient Egypt was awesome. I loved descriptions in Three Musketeers - they allowed me to not only imagine characters but even place them in the area - what's not to love! As a kid I loved descriptions of moors - it made me want to see them someday live. Just balance it out - give it when it's necessary but don't make a minimalistic stage with one chair and a table for description of somebody's living room if they are supposed to be rich. :/ No 10. - What parts? Shouldn't you just write the book the way so the readers don't skip? I have an idea! I'll skip the whole book and just won't read it - how about that. Additionally - what i like to do with descriptions is bring them when I need them. Protagonist doesn't know the person? Bring on the looks, if they are to stay in the novel, or at least their behaviour. They visit other character's place? Bring on the description of the place, which will tell the protagonist something about this person. Situation-based description is what I find most convenient. If somebody has a span of protozoa and find reading descriptions or longer dialogues boring maybe they should choose another form of entertainment and not read books. Well, I am not going to implement any of Mr. Leonard's advise any time soon, thank you very much.
I just started my novel... with weather. "It was a dark and stormy night." Yep. It was kind of a joke, but we'll see. It actually get interesting very quickly.
Mine was originally narrated by a grandma years after the events took place, and her first chapter started off with "it was a dark and stormy night" because she has a corny sense of humor.
just here to say this is BY FAR the best writing advice channel on youtube. seriously. also I'd argue the point of "don't use suddenly" is that putting suddenly before an event in itself makes it not sudden. also also, "don't write the parts that readers tend to skip" is probably about keeping the book focused, if the reader can skip it without affecting the experience then it shouldn't be there at all. not gonna name names but I do remember skipping half a chapter at a time in the third part of a certain book of dreams that insisted on having pointless slice of life between the stuff actually wanted to read. and when I finished it I realized I should have started doing it in the second book e.e
"Don't go into great detail describing places and things" ... Describe it with the eyes of your POV character. John D McDonald's detective, Travis McGee, always evaluated places by where he could hide if shot at and how likely the owner was to be able to pay him. So a massive Italian leather sofa was both a good defensive position AND a sign of money.
I've noticed that modern books tend to keep description to a minimum, unlike older books, so the "rule" about description is set by fashion. Personally, I like having dollops description in what I read and I want the writer to take me there and give the detail that a movie can't. Especially in a genre where the setting is important, such as fantasy or historical, or where a certain detail needs to be hidden in plain sight, as in whodunnits - Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers were experts in slipping crucial clues into descriptions that the reader could have been tempted to skip; we learned not to. Can it be overdone? Yes - but how much is too much is subjective.
depends on the genra. I really like descriptions as well so it's also my bias speaking but for genre like sci fi, you absolutely need to describe almost everything.
He replies and responded and added are fine. Sometimes you want to break up straight dialogue. With something like added, it could be someone else entering the conversation. You've had a couple of back and forths, if you keep using said, it might blend or readers may start to notice it's only said. I like changing up the dialogue tags.
I agree, using replied / answered and sometimes added feels natural a lot of the time, and those are still words our brain processes quickly. There are also times when it conveys important information that a character, whispered, muttered or shouted something. What I think is important is to be careful using other tags than the most basic tags unless you have a good reason, especially when using words we process a bit slower as it can slow the pace down. I prefer to only specify who said something if it is needed, in a back and forth dialogue between two people it is usually obvious who is saying what, it only needs to be specified in cases of ambiguity, though I don't think you should go too long without specifying it. A trick I like to use is to have a character perform an action or describe something about them, and have the dialogue follow, since readers usually assume the last character mentioned is the one speaking, and it can be useful to give context to the dialogue before they start reading the quote.
Just wanted to say, sir, that your videos are well appreciated. I need to get back to my actual writing routine but I am watching your videos thoroughly to prepare.🙏
My favorite example of the first one is still Gibson's "The sky above the port..." line from Neuromancer because of how it changes the opening setting of the book depending on what generation you grew up in.
I've decided to have a prologue in my current project. It's short, around 400 words. But a major problem i had when writing is that the theme kind of changes from a more hard sci-fi into quite a lot more mythical and soft during the plot. So I felt like I needed something to establish the more mythical vibes early on. and basically adding the in world creation myth felt like a good way of doing it. It also does establish the general structure of society in which the story takes place, so we do get some exposition as well, or rather. the initial introduction in chapter one sounds slightly familiar.
Victor Appleton (various ghost writers) continue to write the stories of teenage inventor and adventurer Tom Swift. I read one of them, one in as old cover from 1911, Tom Swift and his Wireless Message, or, Castaways of Earthquake Island. But, to the subject there was a tendency in the novels to qualify "said" with an adverb. In the early 1960s (along with elephant jokes) there was a fad of satirizing this with Tom Swifties such as "I'll search the attic," said Tom loftily.
The Conrad quote is a beautiful example of using a long character description strategically and cleverly. The repetition of words that convey how ordinary and unremarkable the character appears sets up the ominous, "indefinable", discordant note that of course will become important later.
Of course, but today's audience can't spend a couple of seconds reading this, their attention span would be already depleted. I don't get why people even want to read, if it is such a nuisance. :/
Long character description is one crime I've committed a lot of times. For example, here's an excerpt of a character description from the current novel I'm writing: At the far end of the hideout, a man sat in one of the broken chairs. His slim body leaned sideways, hands clutching a mug of ale. His face, partially obscured by a thick beard streaked with both black and white, gave him a worn, weathered look. His hair was pushed back from his forehead, untamed and wild, as though he hadn’t bothered to comb it in days. He wore a long, tattered cloth that draped over him like a makeshift robe, its edges frayed and stained, its once-rich color long faded. A raven-shaped crest hung from his collar. It was the mark of a pastor, a symbol of someone who once commended respect, but now it felt out of place.
Like John said, it's all about pacing. Say this description happened right in the middle of an action-focused chapter, I would probably raise an eyebrow. But in slower moments of setup, something like that is fine. BUT. You need to make sure this description pays off. This character description tells me that this is: 1. an important character to the story. 2. this character is broken and in need of some repair (character arc of some sort) As a reader, I see a promise here. If you skip over this character, I'll feel like you wasted my time.
And this is a really good description. I like it. I can even draw a dude. If he is one of the main characters - yes, I'm here for it. Or sprinkle it, as suggested below.
I hear so much about rules, techniques, what you HAVE to do and what you CAN'T do. I just don't know what to believe anymore. Writing is so incredibly subjective and there are so many different contradictory viewpoints that at the end of the day it all comes down to whether an agent/publisher likes your story based on their own personal bias.
Yeah, it's much more useful to say what the effect of doing things is. Usually you don't want to do that thing, but sometimes you might have an artistic intent
You need to filter all those rules. John wasn't wrong with his advice about a "banned word list". Personalize your own advice. Take what you find interesting and dig deeper. Every bit of advice can't be taken at face value; there's always a WHY behind every WHAT.
About the prologues, I remember that many of Kurt Vonnegut's books have very funny prologues that are not directly related to the subject of the book, but that add an extra layer of fun, understanding and a certain beauty to the book.
I do like his rules, and his books - which are very dialogue heavy. I'm writing my first play and it's an interesting exercise - and the rules help a bit. You have to write something that could be put on in a school or a park, different actors can play in different countries (hopefully), and it has to play to the cheap seats. So almost no description of character, except maybe rough age, and little description of location except maybe "Night. A train station". Then there's little else except dialogue, and minor stage directions such as "He sits" or "She stands". Things like "She smiles at him" will not play to the cheap seats. But "She hugs him" will. It's fun.
I tried to write a play once, I thought - hey, I love dialogue, it's gonna be easy! Well, was I wrong, the 13 years old me :D As for stage directions - some plays are heavy on them, which allows for better setting, some are very minimalistic - depends on play and their use. Depends on the type of the play also - some are minimalistic by design, some are just movies on the stage.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, I figure I'm not writing a book or a movie, where you can convey emotions from small gestures, or even character from their choice of art on their walls. I really feel dialogue is everything, and it is an interesting exercise. I want to then leave it up to the actors and director to interpret it their way.
I mean... IMO you actually do need "asked". You don't ask a statement and you don't say a question. No, technically speaking I can't find anything in the definition of "say" that precludes it, but it feels weird. Personally I'm not fussed about other dialogue tags as long as it doesn't get distracting, although I do take the fewer dialogue tags in general and when they're there use the boring ones approach for my own work, but there's a reason it's often phrased as "don't use dialogue tags other than said and asked." (Incidentally my grammar checker wants me to change "say" to "ask" in "say a question" although it has no problem with "ask a statement.")
Never use absolutes. That's my go-to phrase for many things in life, especially rules like these. There are always exceptions. I also like those self-referential or self-contradictory pieces of advice. I have a hard time writing a question using "said". You ask a question; you don't say it. If I use say, it's rhetorical. Though I usually leave dialogue tags out, since the paragraph someone is speaking in is always owned by that character. If there's anything there that points to the character, like any action or order of speaking, I leave the tag out. Otherwise I have a short list of tags I can use: say, ask, whisper, shout, and maybe a synonym of those if it's important. And I use adverbs if there's something unusual, like, "whispers loudly," since that comes across as a stage whisper that sounds like a whisper but everyone can hear. I use exclamation points if they're grammatical. Exclamations and orders should have them. For tone it depends more on the context. Descriptions, both for characters and places, are far more acceptable in fantasy and sci-fi, since those are often worlds we're not familiar with. We know what our world looks like, so we don't need to describe it as much, but if you're in a jungle with purple trees and waist-tall inhabitants living in miniature stone temples, we're gonna need some descriptions. Although personally I only go into heavy detail if the viewpoint character is actively looking at things. If a character makes an entrance that takes everyone's attention and they drop what they're doing just to look, then a long description is warranted.
A lot of this advice is ameliorated by reading a lot and reading widely, and not confining yourself to a single genre. You realize when you start reading more "out there" authors like Thomas Pynchon a lot of these "rules" are just total bullshit, as a lot of these guys are skilled enough that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. Writing is an art and like all art there's technique and "boundaries" you learn but are only there to get your sea legs before you're good enough to do whatever you want. We'd not have experimentation if any rules where set in stone. I don't really care what "publishing experts" say. Good art isn't some paint by numbers thing you can reproduce in a lab and while writing what sells might be what gets you paid, you'll be forgotten about very quickly, and maybe even before you're dead and not after when the world moves on. So no, you should take "DON'T DO XYZ" too seriously. Go read more books and see what other people do and get away with. And I only say this because it's a constant thorn in my side. I've been writing for 16 years now I think and I didn't get into this to be told I can't do "XYZ." That isn't how art works, and all the commercialization in the world isn't going to change that.
Magnificent comment. I've been writing for about ten years and I've come to the same conclusion. Commercial success and mainstream popularity are NOT reflections of quality or artistic merit. Some very successful authors out there are not good writers, they're good salesmen.
i can definitely agree with you on the matter of using "said". as part of a general principle of trying to make my prose less repetitive, (i've genuinely noticed that i use a fair few sequences of words over and over) i've tried to find good synonyms to use for my most-repeated ones (i use a browser calculator to find which ones are most common in a text sample) but essentially only correct that AFTER i'm done writing a whole big sequence to try to make it a bit more natural (and that's backfired on my a few times when i didn't put enough thought into it :P) and "said" naturally ended up as one of those one way i've gotten around it, personally, is to only imply it by using actions instead. basically, something like, ""I know that sound," he walked a bit further into the room. "Come out. I know you're in here." He listened carefully for the slightest noise, and heard something as quiet as a pin dropping. "There you are," he spun around." (...that was more menacing than i intended :P i couldn't find an actual sample from something i've written recently fast enough to justify searching harder just for a RUclips comment XDDDD)
An example where asked, replied and added are more useful than a continuous use of said would be a situation with multiple speakers (which is another thing writers get discouraged from pretty often). To say not to use asked because you have a question mark before is like forbid the use of say because you use quotation marks imho.
I remember a short story that started off with an intense description of a storm at sea. A few paragraphs in they finally described a yacht and the helpless young family trapped in inside while they were being tossed around like giants were playing handball (or something like that) on the vast ocean. I remember it being very harrowing and it started with the storm. Character descriptions I keep basic. I asked a few folks who read my book what they thought the main characters looked like. They all nailed the female main, but the male main was generally thought of as blond/blue eyed and he wasn't at the time. I changed it since the consensus. All because he has a sunny personality. Suddenly/All Hell is something I was doing a lot. I found when things happened in the blink of an eye to a character it was better to use abruptly, blink of an eye, in an instant. Everywhere else the suddenly was conveyed by the change in narrative.
How basic? Like: he was a boy and she was a girl? Or - as you hinted: He had a sunny personality and nothing else? That doesn't say much about how the character looks like in relation to other characters. Is he a blob? A kangaroo? An axolotl? :/ People sometimes like to do fanarts of their beloved book characters and what can they work with in your case? A sunny personality doesn't say a frick about the character, apart from the fact it's one of the most generic description of a positive person.
I really enjoy your videos and advice and usually learn a thing or two! What I mainly learned here is that Elmore Leonard needs to read some psychogeography, a bit of Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Bronte and Annie Proulx and get a sense of what descriptions of place can really do for a story in the hands of a good writer!
I think using multiple exclamation points in a row could convey increasing energy throughout a paragraph eg. maybe the character or narrator is overthinking and/or starting to panic, getting more worked up with each sentence. Represented by adding more exclamation points to each consecutive sentence until something breaks them out of it. Definitely something to use sparingly though
'The Martian' uses /so-and-so said/ almost everywhere. It's invisible until the last part of the book when the Ares gets back to Mars and everyone's saying one or two word sentences and half the page is just /so-and-so said/.
Andy Weir has a great mind for stories, but his dialogues are hard on the eyes. The Martian works so well, as the protagonist is alone with his thoughts for most of the novel.
I always love your videos but this one made me actually snort-laugh out loud with the never EVER to use dialogue tag 😂 that I just encountered in a book this week and made me gag a little bit! Also THANK YOU for your opinion on prologues, I was starting to doubt mine even though I KNOW I need it, so thank yoouuuu
I describe a house in detail because when the dragon shows up and burns the place down, I want the reader to feel like a really beautiful home was destroyed, not just any old home. And I start with the weather, then go right into the problem, aunt Kahlen is missing. "Guess I'm a rule breaker by nature," he gargled with a mouth full of cheap wine.
My writing is very much dialogue-moved, by which I mean I really on a lot of dialogue to move the story along. Readers complained that they couldn't keep track of who was talking. I tried using longer "she paused to brush her hair back" type of inserts, but it quickly became bulky. I found a good balance between those & dialogue tags. I was actually in a writing class where "said" was a banned word! My assignments were awkwardly colorful, with whispers, wheezing, shouting, crying, etc. on every line. XD Again, I found a good balance. And my favorite writing advice is from Mark Twain who said to replace very with d*mn. That way the editor would take it out & your writing would be better for it! I use a lot stronger & more thoughtful words because of this.
If my character shouts, they shout, they don't just say things. When they whisper, they whisper, they don't utter sentences in a normally audible voice. This modern way of writing with no descriptions and no dialogue tags because god forbid someone's 45 secs span might deplete is ridiculous.
I have this previously-unspoken rule of denying myself dialogue tags. I try my best not to use them. The scene should be clear enough for the reader to know who's speaking and the vibes. Is it tricky? Yeah, sometimes, but it can add so much more flavor to the scene - in my experience anyway. One time I challenged myself to write a whole chapter (3K-ish words) *without* dialogue tags and that's probably the most fun chapter I've ever written just for that alone, especially because my stories used to be mostly dialogue and none of my readers even noticed. It's a nice challenge I still try to apply to myself even if I'm not writing seriously at this time.
I still want to know how the characters speak and you can't make some utterances into certain tone without tags. "I'm so sorry" - can be said normally, exclaimed, whispered or said voicelessly, just by lips moving. I have yet to see someone being able to distinguish those just with a line: "I'm so sorry".
Okay, as for dialogue tags, I disagree with you on a fundamental level, and I am absolutely willing to go to war with you on this one. When you have a character say something like, "Have a nice day," she smiled, the reader already knows the speaker is saying something due to the written dialogue within quotations. The tag is a descriptor that is combining an expression with the dialogue. To say, "you can't smile speech,"...well, no s**t, Sherlock. That wasn't the point of the tag. The point of the tag was putting in a descriptor for HOW the speech is said without writing out the longer, "she said with a smile." Please don't insult the reader's intelligence by indicating they can't understand the difference. Remember, your personal preference is not a guide to how people should write. I, personally, don't like 1st person point of view, but there are a number of great books and stories written in 1st person POV, and I don't tell people they can't write in that point of view. If you've been gatekeeping books because of your personal preferences, then we have a problem. That is absolutely unacceptable. I agree with you most of the time, but I have to completely disagree with you on this one. I do, however, agree wholeheartedly with you in not using the word "ejaculated" as a dialogue tag.
@@incog.nyto. The reader knows the character is speaking due to the dialogue being in quotes. The smile is the action that describes the expression during the dialogue. It's as clear as day. If you write, "Have a nice day," she smiled, it's very clear she is speaking while smiling. Stating that the speaker is smiling words is insulting the reader's intelligence. I shouldn't have to explain this more than once. That is a personal preference in writing and not an error in writing.
So basically for the first one, don't open the book with JUST weather. But if the weather is the subject of an action or serves some other deep narrative purpose, it's not an issue.
So, about place descriptions. In the XIX century, there was a movement among the authors that their descriptions should be, you know, descriptive. That they need to inform further generations about how the author's contemporaries used to live if he (or so much rarely she) wrote a contemporary fiction. And in the case of Hugo and Notre Dame, it is even more relatable. Note that one of the main reason for Hugo to write Notre Dame was the fact that the city contemplated demolishing it. Yup, that's right - the same Notre Dame France went nuts to rebuild after the fire the recent may have been just broken for the stone. Much of the medieval Paris already was already raised to give place to the Paris of today. So, Hugo's lengthy description is basically putting a documentary inside of the fiction, and that with a very focused agenda of historical monument preservation. Today, however, history freaks like myself don't even need to leave home in order to get any amount of documentary on whatever theme we fall for, and so there is no real need put such description into your fiction - unless it is something really, really uncommon. For fantasy and sci-fi genre it will be a clear downer - why should I care of lengths and heights if id never existed anyway? George R.R. Martin in one of his interviews told that he once stood by the actual vertical wall at the bottom of a quarry that was like 200ft tall, realizing how impenetrable of an obstacle this is, regretted attributing an explicit 700ft hight to his wall.
It might be glib, but i always roll my eyes at the “don’t use action tags for dialogue tags” advice. It is a very literalist interpretation. You *are* correct, one cannot growl legible words. Not everything is literal, however. The reader knows what you mean. Using my example it is shorthand for a bass tone change with a gravely throat rumble that humans reserve for overtone threats of violence. Thats a long sentence to describe vocal timbre. I’ve started to ponder if this isn’t a tension between poetry and prose. Are you writing prose, poetry, or a naughty hybrid? I don’t have an answer! It does intrigue me though.
I think you can create amazing action with weather. Like people being caught in the middle of tsunami, earthquake, avalanche, tornado. Weather brings emotions and action and its universal no matter from which part of the world you are. We all felt it , saw it or have a slight sense how it may feel.
I think "rules for writing" and lists like this are helpful because they point out common problems and pitfalls and when you take them, as they are taken in this video, as illustrations of problems, rather than hard and fast prescriptions, they are useful. My general statement on writing is "you can do anything you want, if you can do it well." It's just that some things are a lot harder to do well. Regional dialects are a good example of this. It is really hard to do them well, and I don't trust myself to actually be able to pull it off, so I just don't use them. (meaning specifically using misspellings and the like)
I find it funny that I LOVE when authors use action words to replace "said". For me, it gives a more dynamic and playful reading experience. I think you're being too literal about it. Of course people don't beam words, but I can perfectly picture the intensity and delight in what the character is saying. Or I can feel how little interest the character have when they shrugged some words.
I found your channel recently and I really love the way you frame advice. I´m just currently not subscribed, because I realized I wanted to go through it all at once and I started to stress myself out with it😅 Too much of a good thing and all of that ... Oh, and for the lengthy description passages: Tolkien has a wonderful tendency to describe every tree and every blade of grass along the way and I actually love it! But I can completely see why someone might think the Lord of the Rings could do without that much landscape description. In all fairness it would probably cut the book in half (and also completely change the atmosphere of the text).
I appreciate your opinions and explanations, which are easy to apply to various genres of story. Helpful to me in the Historical Fiction camp. I've read a collection of Elmore Leonard's Western short stories from the early part of his career, including the original version of The 3:10 to Yuma. He does streamline his descriptions. What was significant to me, however, was that he spent years living in the areas he wrote about and knew them well, which allowed the brief outlines to resonate with authenticity. Things like using specific names of local plants and trees, and land features, like an arroyo (a dry wash). With dialects, I think newer writers should be especially careful of misspelled 'pidgin' type language unless they are very familiar with it. Mark Twain knew people who spoke as his characters did, and had studied their speech patterns. Modern readers are going to be less forgiving, methinks. Dialogue tags or related action tags should make clear who is speaking if the actual dialogue doesn't. I will often go back over pages of dialogue and edit out as many tags as possible. Your examples are a hoot.
For dialogue tags it's the "never use growled," and similar, that gets me, because you, "can't growl a sentence." Like, sure, maybe not a 10 word sentence, maybe not even a 5 word one. But 1 or 2 words? Batman's pretty good at that. And it conveys anger or refusal of showing vulnerability better than 'whispered' or 'said', which, while neutral, can become almost too neutral sometimes. Of course, this mostly refers to "don't use tags as an excuse for weak dialogue lines." You should be able to tell how they say something from the context more often than not. Though I'd say it's also genre dependent. Literary fiction? Maybe don't go around growling. Close persepctive fantasy? Maybe a little more leeway in the growling department, (especially if werebeasts are involved, even without romance elements). (This isn't exclusive to 'growling', but it's the one that tends to pop up most often as an example.) Action tags though? Yeah, no. (Ig unless it's like highly specific fantasy/sci-fi shenanigans going on where some creature does wink words🙃 Just to be that person) Either way, good video.
It's has nothing to do with grammar, since as long as it's a verb in the right form it's grammatically correct. Grammatically, you can even wink a question. Semantically, you can use either, though I'd use "asked".
I get lost easily during long dialogue strings w/o tags. Who's talking again? I have to go back and refer to the last time someone was mentioned. Although, some authors use that to their advantage. Hubert Selby for instance. There are paragraphs with multiple characters and I rarely feel abandoned. Personally, I tend to blend styles. Example: Sharon: "What time is good for you?" Becky, looks up: "Tuesday." Sharon: "It's Wednesday." Becky, back to her book: "I know." Sharon, sighs: "So, you're not going." Becky: "What tipped you off?" Sharon, into the hall: "Dad!" I walk around the corner: "What?" Sharon: "Becky is being rude." I lick extra cake batter off the spoon: "And?" Sharon pouts: "She needs to drive me tonight." Becky scoffs: "No I don't." I try to be civil: "Becky?" Becky shouts: "Why? She's the one who got arrested. Why do I get in trouble?" Sharon: "It wasn't my fault!" Becky: "Yes, it was!" I: "Can we discuss this later?" Paula opens the front door. Sharon: "Mom!!" Paula waves her away: "Whatever it is... no." Sharon: "But..." Paula, sternly: "No. Now both of you go get the groceries out of the car. Nanna will be here in a few hours. Ask me later. Hi, honey." I kiss my favorite lips: "Hi." Paula: "Busy day?" I grin: "Long story."
0:25 As a youth, I would challenge myself to write all my English assignments, including tests, with the longest sentences I could create, because my teacher said to keep our sentences short. LOL I think my best sentence, that got perfect grammatical marks, was 92 words long!
3:48 The dialog tag needs to agree with the action. As such, "asked", "replied", "exclaimed", etc are better than "said." NOTE: I'm intentionally being contrarian. "Said" is fine; I just like other words too, so I'm giving a reason one might use them. "Use the dialog tag that agrees with the action of the scene" is just as valid as "Only use a special tag when the tag gives the reader more information." I was also trying to figure out why older works use a variety of dialog tags; "they agree with the action of the scene" is the best explanation I could come up with.
you look like my surgeon. oh and also, i just wanted to thank you for your content. i've been writing since i was like maybe 10 years old, meaning ive been writing for almost 6 years now, but i never really looked into what made writing good. i always started a story, thought about a plot but never really put it down on paper, and id just abandon it. i tend to also be all over the place when it comes to writing, i cant seem to choose just one thing. your videos have been a great gateway into slowly but surely understanding what i can do to make my writing better. one question though. do you have any recommendations of stuff or templates i can use that are free? i cant yet afford paying for courses, but i wanted to see if you had any free alternatives that might not be as fleshed out, but i can still use to guide my writing. thanks again :)
My novel "Windwalkers" (plug) opens with weather because the blizzard in the novel is, in essence, a major character in the story. (I'm still a big Elmore Leonard fan, though.) As to the exclamation points, notice that they were all in dialogue. Exclamation points in narrative are lazy -- telling the reader something is exciting rather than just writing an exciting sentence. Long descriptions of characters CAN make sense if they are seen from the point of view of a character who has a reason to make note of how another character looks (i.e. someone looking at a character to whom they are highly attracted, or someone they find suspicious.) And the last piece... I worked with a writer who always put in what should have been left out. Rather than write, "Lisa left work and went home" he would detail her leaving the office, walking down the hall, getting into the elevator, walking out of the building, crossing the parking lot, getting into her car, putting on her seatbelt...etc. Yeah, there are DEFINITELY parts that should be left out.
I started my novel with the word suddenly BC it's about a soilder at the frontline in ww1 waking up because of the silence caused by the armistice. I think it works, because it's really sudden and before this moment the drum fire was there the whole day
The dialog tag that will always stick with me is a bad example used by Damon Knight to emphasize the idiocy of the action tag: "Good morning," he pole-vaulted. Glad to see Pratchett mentioned, and a great example. Sir Terry also claimed that the use of multiple exclamation marks at the end of one sentence is a sign of insanity. Dialect: If you haven't read Percival Everett's "James," you must. It doesn't go where you think it will, almost from the beginning. (It helps a lot in the first part if you've read Huck Finn lately...)
I generally almost always stick with, "he said", or "she said" in dialogue tags.However, I'm glad to know that he or she whispered is appropriate, as sometimes it just really seems to work. I prefer to use dialog tags where I have more than two people speaking or where I want to be absolutely clear who is speaking because my dialogue shifts back and forth a lot.
There's nothing I hate more, when the dialogue is so generic I can't make out the tone of the dialogue and there are no dialogue tags, just to discover the paragraph under the dialogue they quarrelled. 🤬
I happily read entire books that are just descriptions of weather or places or things. It requires talent and a great prose style and some interesting insights that go beyond bland surface detail, but if done well it’s beautiful. But it’s probably not a good idea if you’re writing a hardboiled detective story.
Approaching this from the perspective of an avid reader rather than an aspiring writer, I enjoyed the video but have some additional thoughts. Mr. Fox addressed using regional dialects and deliberate misspelling as something that may make the work more difficult to understand. But I believe there is another issue that may be even more important; can the author - can YOU - actually "pull it off"? Well written regional dialogue may really set a character apart, giving him "his own unique voice". But poorly written regional dialect will frequently come across as condescending or just... goofy. Authors should be rigorously honest with themselves about their own strengths and weaknesses (while also striving to improve in areas they are weak) and adjust accordingly. If you HONESTLY believe you can write a really convincing brogue for your Scottish protagonist, go for it. But if you can't, you may be better off writing his dialect in "standard" English. I believe a similar caution applies to detailed descriptions, whether of characters, or settings, or events. Some people are better at this sort of writing than others (though all authors can and should attempt to improve). I have read battle descriptions that wonderfully conveyed the the exhilaration, the fear, the confusion, the despair, the ultimate triumph of the protagonist. And I have read descriptions that had all the liveliness of "... and then some other stuff happened...", even if that "other stuff" was described in (tedious) detail. Whether describing a beautiful women or a terrifying battle, can YOU, the author, describe it WELL? If yes, maybe a very detailed description is called for, If no, a more minimalist desription might serve the story better. Mr. Fox admonishes his viewers to "Know your audience." Excellent advice but borrowing from Sun Tzu, I would add "Know yourself."
Hemingway's third wife Martha Gellhorn used the phrase "Hell on Wheels" to describe them both. She was an accomplished author in her own right. Hell on Wheels is just as cliche as "All hell broke loose."
No respect for any person that "skips" anything when reading. If you 're not going to do it right, don't bother doing it at all. It's a complete waste of your time and leaves you never really knowing if what you think is accurate.
Before anyone criticises Leonard's rules, you should read one of his books. They're fast-moving, funny, full of fascinating characters and with great plots. He wrote these rules when asked to, and didn't take them that seriously himself. However, you'll find pretty good reasons for them. For example, using 'said': his point was that if you use anything other than this, it's the writer 'editorialising', i.e. telling the reader what to think. If you read his books you'll find that Leonard completely submerges himself in the character who's the focus of the particular scene - adding an adverb, or changing 'said' to 'whispered' or anything else pushes the writer into the scene and momentarily breaks the POV. Leonard wants to remove himself from the scene so that the reader can focus on the characters. This is one reason I can't stand JK Rowling's writing - she's constantly telling us how something is said and not letting the characters speak for themselves. Yes, she's immensely popular but face it - she wrote initially for kids, who might have needed some guidance. If you know anything about Leonard, it's that his dialogue is considered to be amongst the best ever written by a popular author, and that's partly because he lets the characters speak for themselves, and they do it so well. For the rest, I largely agree with John Fox, though Leonard remains in my top 3 thriller writers.
I wasn't aware that it was verboten to use dialogue descriptors like 'exclaimed', but that's just frankly ridiculous and would make dialogue-heavy scenes incredibly flat, banal and boring to exclude verbs that are onomatopoeic or bridge the gap between written word and vicarious sensoria. Just like a great comedian can read the phone book (if such things still exist) and make it funny, a great writer can break any of the rules - which like the Pirate's Code, are more like guidelines - and still come out on top.
Louis L'Amour used suddenly quite a bit. He was and is very readable. You can go too far with sparse descriptions. An Urban Horror series I enjoy had a character whose race was unguessable until it became a very minor plot point. Nine books into the series.
Description done well? Tolkien's books? In (high) fantasy I think you NEED more description. But you need to dose it properly. Don't infodump your world. Let your readers discover/see it together with your characters.
Saying that you can only use said is a horrible idea. I just listened to hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, which was phenomenal, but my brain was getting so tired of the word said. That word is in there so many times it was breaking the trance.
I agree with the rule to do away with prologues. To me it’s lazy. If it isn’t good enough to be a chapter it’s not good enough to be in the book. if it is good enough to be in the body of the story, do the work to put it in the body
personally, i've agonized a bit about worldbuilding (which i'd qualify as falling into the "over-describing places and things" point) for one of my works in particular, set in a world where humans and dinosaurs (and other fossil animals) coexist naturally--as in it's just always been that way in-universe, it's a totally self-contained planet and setting, not Earth, with no genetic engineering or time travel involved--since that would require a fair bit of description not only of the setting and its history but also of the animals and how they relate to in-universe culture. what i eventually decided was that, along with in-character explanations, (the "uninitiated" protagonist as an audience surrogate goes to a new place for the first time and is told about it by someone who's been there before, etc.) the story would be interrupted at regular intervals for one page, and JUST one page, of third-person descriptive worldbuilding about something that either just happened or will happen soon (such as explaining why a given clade of animals is called something, especially in a world where "dinosaur" has no cultural distinction from other animals since they're considered as ordinary as tigers or elephants in-universe such that the word "dinosaur" is meant to NEVER be used in the actual text)
10:22 Dude I was literally just thinking of this. The whole book gave me such white room syndrome that I hated it 😂 compare that with Gormenghast, which is a masterpiece in atmosphere and is one of my favorite books, yet breaks every description-based rule on this list 💀
Rule 9: Don’t go into great detail describing things. Moby-Dick: Ishmael describes whales for like 100 chapters and then Captain Ahab goes after one for like three.
Reading PD James' The Children of Men now and while the ideas and world-building are fascinating, it feels like a slog. Early in the book the protagonist Theo meets with a sort of "resistance" group and she drops full paragraph-length descriptions of each member in succession; collectively they're almost two pages. Absolutely hated it lol.
I remember really liking that book, but I did read it 10+ years ago, and do remember the pacing certainly being slower. Two pages of description sounds ... a bit much.
Go easy on the dialect and peculiar spelling and syntax? Shoulda told James Joyce while he was writing "Finnegans Wake," the ultimate hard-to-read book. OTOH the imaginary future English dialect works brilliantly in "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban. ...and "said" has often been called The Invisible Word, because all that matters in the speech tag is the identity of the speaker. ...which makes more exotic speech tag verbs stand out all the more--so they'd better be necessary (I expostulated).
The only rules revolve around coin, connections, crews, clout, computer code, control, corporate communities, and opulent opportunities. Without those, it doesn't matter what you write, what you know, nor how long you've been around. No exceptions.
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One thing I like about your channel is your writing advice isn't generic. You have nuanced opinions and you've clearly read widely. And in this video for example, you recognize that things like dialogue tags are often smaller shrubs in the vast task of writing a good story. A lot of other videos stress these minor, low-hanging fruit to gain clicks rather than touching on the deeper insights. Love your stuff!
Thank you for noticing that. And well said -- "smaller shrubs in the vast task." So true.
Ticky-tack details are important, but in general, studying bigger picture stuff (characters, plot, etc) will pay bigger dividends to improving your craft.
@@Bookfox I studied mathematics and music composition in college, but I took a few writing classes. The fact that you use the word "craft" like my writing professor did again suggests to me that you have deeper knowledge in the field. It's interesting how the minor details in how we speak can be tells on how educated we are on a particular subject. But it's also true that people can have deep insights even if they aren't traditionally educated, so this comment is more of a minor point I wanted to note. :)
Completely agree, bravo Bookfox!
The best way I’ve seen to avoid nonsensical dialogue tags like “winked” is to put that as a separate sentence BEFORE the dialogue.
“See you soon,” he winked.
vs.
He winked. “See you soon.”
Or like this: ‘“See you soon.” He winked, and then walked away, leaves crunching under his black boots.’ Or something along those lines.
@@LizzyMeyer-g1d "leaves crunching under his black boots." doesn't feel useful in this sentence. Why is the sound of the leaves important? Why is the color of the boots important? Why is the fact he's wearing boots important?
@ It was an example. The color of his boots and the sound of crunching leaves may or may not be important, but I don’t know because it isn’t part of my book, or anyone else’s. I came up with it on the spur of the moment, like I said, as an example. I mean I guess if you hadn’t mentioned the season yet but you want to the leaves could be a good indicator that it is autumn? Idk, like I said, doesn’t matter.
@@LizzyMeyer-g1d write with intent, even if it's in the spur of the moment
@ true. But I’d rather save my smarts and inspiration for the book I’m writing. I feel like I only get so much per day!
It feels like a lot of writers have been scared off using dialogue tags, to the point where you can't even tell who is speaking. It's frustrating to get halfway through a long exchange only to realise I had the conversation backwards, then scan back to the beginning to find out there was no indication of who spoke first. The writer just assumes that their readers are psychics.
Agreed! They're necessary, and you don't want to use them too frequently or too infrequently.
In fairness, if the dialogue is well written, the voices and personalities of the characters should generally be distinct enough that you can tell them apart without tags on every line. But for sure the first line in a conversation should nearly always be tagged.
He finished the last line of the pentagram and spoke the words to open the portal. Suddenly, all hell broke loose.
All of a sudden, he suddenly laughed at the sudden appearance of “loinfiringly”, he confessed.
I saw elsewhere on the internet that the reason you shouldn't use "suddenly" or "all of a sudden" is because they are meant to indicate a shift that is often surprising, and marking that shift with either of those terms no longer makes it a surprise because they've been warned.
The number one rule every author should follow: "There are no rules, only recommendations based on one's past experiences... even this one."
One of Terry Pratchett's novels starts with weather, describing a storm as it meanders over the landscape - but the Discworld is practically a character in itself, so he can get away with describing it at length, especially as he does so very amusingly!
I can remember the quote, it's perfect, I love it ❤
Omg, the "loinfiringly" made me laugh out loud. Too funny!!
totally stealing that word!
Same here. :-D
No. 1 - generally no, unless weather is an important part of the setting. If this is a snowy night with strong winds and somebody is trying to get to the first house in the village right before they collapse - the weather should be there. Nothing against weather descriptions.
No. 2 - yup, I agree - prologues have their places, depending on the genre, fantasy being one of them. I love Beauty and the Beast prologue (albeit it's a movie) and I think it sets the scene perfectly.
No. 3&4 - What drives me crazy about dialogue is that it is generally said to be tagless. What if my character whispers the words? What if he growls? How do you know what they do with their voice - dialogue line will not tell you that. When my character changes their mood during the dialogue I will mark it with tags. There is nothing more than a dialogue when I don't know how am I suppose to read the utterances of characters - the same can be said neutrally, sarcastically, angrily - you name it. Dialogue tags for the win.
No. 5. - I agree with this one. Too many exclamation marks diminish its power, not so much per the whole novel but per utterance. One is enough. As for the whole book - whenever it's needed, just don't make it into screaming contest or something.
No. 6. - With suddenly - no, a sentence will not work without it - suddenly indicates that action is abrupt. For example: he was driving and suddenly took right turn vs. he was driving and took the right turn. Where is the unexpected turn right? There is none, the second sentence is a consecutive action. If not suddenly, then thesaurus is your friend.
No. 7. For accent - sometimes you just can't convey it in speech. Good luck with conveying the "singing" sound of a Japanese dialect from Fukui prefecture, or prolonging of the syllables in Yorkshire dialect. It was actually described by Frances Hodgson Burnett, but the dialogue had a standard grammar. The so much dreaded description was the key.
No. 8. Oh hell no! This is the reason why modern characters suck for me so much - they just are. I can't imagine how they look like because I fricking don't know. The example from The Twelve Long Months is cringy as fork. I only know she is a red head, and I see two comments about her that give me the vaguest idea of her. Ronald McDonald's daughter? She looks like a clown? He tried to be so witty with his short sentence, but damn, this description put me off the book faster than the speed of light. :/ I WANT to know how the character looks like - their hair, their skin, their face shape, their eyes, their height, their posture - everything. The description from The Twelve Long Months gives me shite. Why should I even care about this character, if I can't even place her looks? She's red-haired - wow, fantastic description. :/
No. 9. Descriptions - used to hate them as a kid but s a grown-up - give me! I read prologue to Pharaoh twice because the description of the geography of ancient Egypt was awesome. I loved descriptions in Three Musketeers - they allowed me to not only imagine characters but even place them in the area - what's not to love! As a kid I loved descriptions of moors - it made me want to see them someday live. Just balance it out - give it when it's necessary but don't make a minimalistic stage with one chair and a table for description of somebody's living room if they are supposed to be rich. :/
No 10. - What parts? Shouldn't you just write the book the way so the readers don't skip? I have an idea! I'll skip the whole book and just won't read it - how about that. Additionally - what i like to do with descriptions is bring them when I need them. Protagonist doesn't know the person? Bring on the looks, if they are to stay in the novel, or at least their behaviour. They visit other character's place? Bring on the description of the place, which will tell the protagonist something about this person. Situation-based description is what I find most convenient. If somebody has a span of protozoa and find reading descriptions or longer dialogues boring maybe they should choose another form of entertainment and not read books.
Well, I am not going to implement any of Mr. Leonard's advise any time soon, thank you very much.
I just started my novel... with weather. "It was a dark and stormy night." Yep. It was kind of a joke, but we'll see. It actually get interesting very quickly.
Mine was originally narrated by a grandma years after the events took place, and her first chapter started off with "it was a dark and stormy night" because she has a corny sense of humor.
I start with a weather event that the main characters have to survive, the story is in large part about the weather...
I love dialogue tags; they can be poetic if used correctly. Honestly, it's when authors use 'said' a million times that pulls me out of a conversation
just here to say this is BY FAR the best writing advice channel on youtube. seriously.
also I'd argue the point of "don't use suddenly" is that putting suddenly before an event in itself makes it not sudden.
also also, "don't write the parts that readers tend to skip" is probably about keeping the book focused, if the reader can skip it without affecting the experience then it shouldn't be there at all.
not gonna name names but I do remember skipping half a chapter at a time in the third part of a certain book of dreams that insisted on having pointless slice of life between the stuff actually wanted to read. and when I finished it I realized I should have started doing it in the second book e.e
"Don't go into great detail describing places and things" ... Describe it with the eyes of your POV character. John D McDonald's detective, Travis McGee, always evaluated places by where he could hide if shot at and how likely the owner was to be able to pay him. So a massive Italian leather sofa was both a good defensive position AND a sign of money.
"It's a factorial!" the mathematician whispered.
Lol, good one!
4:26 it will now be my life mission to write a book where everyone is doing exactly that when speaking
I've noticed that modern books tend to keep description to a minimum, unlike older books, so the "rule" about description is set by fashion. Personally, I like having dollops description in what I read and I want the writer to take me there and give the detail that a movie can't. Especially in a genre where the setting is important, such as fantasy or historical, or where a certain detail needs to be hidden in plain sight, as in whodunnits - Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers were experts in slipping crucial clues into descriptions that the reader could have been tempted to skip; we learned not to. Can it be overdone? Yes - but how much is too much is subjective.
Totally agree.
depends on the genra.
I really like descriptions as well so it's also my bias speaking but for genre like sci fi, you absolutely need to describe almost everything.
He replies and responded and added are fine. Sometimes you want to break up straight dialogue. With something like added, it could be someone else entering the conversation. You've had a couple of back and forths, if you keep using said, it might blend or readers may start to notice it's only said. I like changing up the dialogue tags.
I agree, using replied / answered and sometimes added feels natural a lot of the time, and those are still words our brain processes quickly. There are also times when it conveys important information that a character, whispered, muttered or shouted something.
What I think is important is to be careful using other tags than the most basic tags unless you have a good reason, especially when using words we process a bit slower as it can slow the pace down.
I prefer to only specify who said something if it is needed, in a back and forth dialogue between two people it is usually obvious who is saying what, it only needs to be specified in cases of ambiguity, though I don't think you should go too long without specifying it.
A trick I like to use is to have a character perform an action or describe something about them, and have the dialogue follow, since readers usually assume the last character mentioned is the one speaking, and it can be useful to give context to the dialogue before they start reading the quote.
Just wanted to say, sir, that your videos are well appreciated. I need to get back to my actual writing routine but I am watching your videos thoroughly to prepare.🙏
You can do it! Thank you for the comment.
My favorite example of the first one is still Gibson's "The sky above the port..." line from Neuromancer because of how it changes the opening setting of the book depending on what generation you grew up in.
I've decided to have a prologue in my current project. It's short, around 400 words. But a major problem i had when writing is that the theme kind of changes from a more hard sci-fi into quite a lot more mythical and soft during the plot. So I felt like I needed something to establish the more mythical vibes early on. and basically adding the in world creation myth felt like a good way of doing it. It also does establish the general structure of society in which the story takes place, so we do get some exposition as well, or rather. the initial introduction in chapter one sounds slightly familiar.
Awesome advice! I went through my novel and cut most instances of "suddenly." :) I think those parts improved. Thank you!
Victor Appleton (various ghost writers) continue to write the stories of teenage inventor and adventurer Tom Swift. I read one of them, one in as old cover from 1911, Tom Swift and his Wireless Message, or, Castaways of Earthquake Island. But, to the subject there was a tendency in the novels to qualify "said" with an adverb.
In the early 1960s (along with elephant jokes) there was a fad of satirizing this with Tom Swifties such as "I'll search the attic," said Tom loftily.
"The thermostat is set too high," said Tom heatedly.
"Oh NO! The taxidermist mounted the wrong end of the tiger." Said Tom catastrophically.
I wondered where that joke came from!
The Conrad quote is a beautiful example of using a long character description strategically and cleverly. The repetition of words that convey how ordinary and unremarkable the character appears sets up the ominous, "indefinable", discordant note that of course will become important later.
Of course, but today's audience can't spend a couple of seconds reading this, their attention span would be already depleted. I don't get why people even want to read, if it is such a nuisance. :/
Long character description is one crime I've committed a lot of times. For example, here's an excerpt of a character description from the current novel I'm writing:
At the far end of the hideout, a man sat in one of the broken chairs. His slim body leaned sideways, hands clutching a mug of ale. His face, partially obscured by a thick beard streaked with both black and white, gave him a worn, weathered look. His hair was pushed back from his forehead, untamed and wild, as though he hadn’t bothered to comb it in days.
He wore a long, tattered cloth that draped over him like a makeshift robe, its edges frayed and stained, its once-rich color long faded. A raven-shaped crest hung from his collar. It was the mark of a pastor, a symbol of someone who once commended respect, but now it felt out of place.
You could still get all that detail in by spreading it out. It doesn't have to be lost.
@@johnhughes2653 Yeah, I am in the process of fixing issues like these in the revision; it will still take a while before I get the hang of it.
Like John said, it's all about pacing. Say this description happened right in the middle of an action-focused chapter, I would probably raise an eyebrow. But in slower moments of setup, something like that is fine.
BUT.
You need to make sure this description pays off. This character description tells me that this is: 1. an important character to the story. 2. this character is broken and in need of some repair (character arc of some sort)
As a reader, I see a promise here. If you skip over this character, I'll feel like you wasted my time.
And this is a really good description. I like it. I can even draw a dude. If he is one of the main characters - yes, I'm here for it. Or sprinkle it, as suggested below.
I hear so much about rules, techniques, what you HAVE to do and what you CAN'T do. I just don't know what to believe anymore. Writing is so incredibly subjective and there are so many different contradictory viewpoints that at the end of the day it all comes down to whether an agent/publisher likes your story based on their own personal bias.
Yeah, it's much more useful to say what the effect of doing things is. Usually you don't want to do that thing, but sometimes you might have an artistic intent
You need to filter all those rules. John wasn't wrong with his advice about a "banned word list". Personalize your own advice. Take what you find interesting and dig deeper. Every bit of advice can't be taken at face value; there's always a WHY behind every WHAT.
Might be a good idea to not start with "it was a dark and stormy night"
The Ronald Macdonald was a hilarious dialogue tag
About the prologues, I remember that many of Kurt Vonnegut's books have very funny prologues that are not directly related to the subject of the book, but that add an extra layer of fun, understanding and a certain beauty to the book.
I do like his rules, and his books - which are very dialogue heavy. I'm writing my first play and it's an interesting exercise - and the rules help a bit. You have to write something that could be put on in a school or a park, different actors can play in different countries (hopefully), and it has to play to the cheap seats. So almost no description of character, except maybe rough age, and little description of location except maybe "Night. A train station". Then there's little else except dialogue, and minor stage directions such as "He sits" or "She stands". Things like "She smiles at him" will not play to the cheap seats. But "She hugs him" will. It's fun.
I tried to write a play once, I thought - hey, I love dialogue, it's gonna be easy! Well, was I wrong, the 13 years old me :D As for stage directions - some plays are heavy on them, which allows for better setting, some are very minimalistic - depends on play and their use. Depends on the type of the play also - some are minimalistic by design, some are just movies on the stage.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Yeah, I figure I'm not writing a book or a movie, where you can convey emotions from small gestures, or even character from their choice of art on their walls. I really feel dialogue is everything, and it is an interesting exercise. I want to then leave it up to the actors and director to interpret it their way.
I'd like to see you do more debunking. A lot of the advice you summarise from other sources makes me immediately think of valid exceptions.
I mean... IMO you actually do need "asked". You don't ask a statement and you don't say a question. No, technically speaking I can't find anything in the definition of "say" that precludes it, but it feels weird. Personally I'm not fussed about other dialogue tags as long as it doesn't get distracting, although I do take the fewer dialogue tags in general and when they're there use the boring ones approach for my own work, but there's a reason it's often phrased as "don't use dialogue tags other than said and asked."
(Incidentally my grammar checker wants me to change "say" to "ask" in "say a question" although it has no problem with "ask a statement.")
Never use absolutes.
That's my go-to phrase for many things in life, especially rules like these. There are always exceptions. I also like those self-referential or self-contradictory pieces of advice.
I have a hard time writing a question using "said". You ask a question; you don't say it. If I use say, it's rhetorical. Though I usually leave dialogue tags out, since the paragraph someone is speaking in is always owned by that character. If there's anything there that points to the character, like any action or order of speaking, I leave the tag out. Otherwise I have a short list of tags I can use: say, ask, whisper, shout, and maybe a synonym of those if it's important. And I use adverbs if there's something unusual, like, "whispers loudly," since that comes across as a stage whisper that sounds like a whisper but everyone can hear.
I use exclamation points if they're grammatical. Exclamations and orders should have them. For tone it depends more on the context.
Descriptions, both for characters and places, are far more acceptable in fantasy and sci-fi, since those are often worlds we're not familiar with. We know what our world looks like, so we don't need to describe it as much, but if you're in a jungle with purple trees and waist-tall inhabitants living in miniature stone temples, we're gonna need some descriptions. Although personally I only go into heavy detail if the viewpoint character is actively looking at things. If a character makes an entrance that takes everyone's attention and they drop what they're doing just to look, then a long description is warranted.
A lot of this advice is ameliorated by reading a lot and reading widely, and not confining yourself to a single genre. You realize when you start reading more "out there" authors like Thomas Pynchon a lot of these "rules" are just total bullshit, as a lot of these guys are skilled enough that they can do whatever they want and get away with it.
Writing is an art and like all art there's technique and "boundaries" you learn but are only there to get your sea legs before you're good enough to do whatever you want. We'd not have experimentation if any rules where set in stone. I don't really care what "publishing experts" say. Good art isn't some paint by numbers thing you can reproduce in a lab and while writing what sells might be what gets you paid, you'll be forgotten about very quickly, and maybe even before you're dead and not after when the world moves on.
So no, you should take "DON'T DO XYZ" too seriously. Go read more books and see what other people do and get away with. And I only say this because it's a constant thorn in my side. I've been writing for 16 years now I think and I didn't get into this to be told I can't do "XYZ." That isn't how art works, and all the commercialization in the world isn't going to change that.
Magnificent comment. I've been writing for about ten years and I've come to the same conclusion. Commercial success and mainstream popularity are NOT reflections of quality or artistic merit. Some very successful authors out there are not good writers, they're good salesmen.
i can definitely agree with you on the matter of using "said". as part of a general principle of trying to make my prose less repetitive, (i've genuinely noticed that i use a fair few sequences of words over and over) i've tried to find good synonyms to use for my most-repeated ones (i use a browser calculator to find which ones are most common in a text sample) but essentially only correct that AFTER i'm done writing a whole big sequence to try to make it a bit more natural (and that's backfired on my a few times when i didn't put enough thought into it :P) and "said" naturally ended up as one of those
one way i've gotten around it, personally, is to only imply it by using actions instead. basically, something like, ""I know that sound," he walked a bit further into the room. "Come out. I know you're in here." He listened carefully for the slightest noise, and heard something as quiet as a pin dropping. "There you are," he spun around."
(...that was more menacing than i intended :P i couldn't find an actual sample from something i've written recently fast enough to justify searching harder just for a RUclips comment XDDDD)
Dude thank you for this, i always thought those rules were absolutely ridiculous. So i'm glad i'm not the only one who thought so!
An example where asked, replied and added are more useful than a continuous use of said would be a situation with multiple speakers (which is another thing writers get discouraged from pretty often).
To say not to use asked because you have a question mark before is like forbid the use of say because you use quotation marks imho.
I remember a short story that started off with an intense description of a storm at sea. A few paragraphs in they finally described a yacht and the helpless young family trapped in inside while they were being tossed around like giants were playing handball (or something like that) on the vast ocean. I remember it being very harrowing and it started with the storm.
Character descriptions I keep basic. I asked a few folks who read my book what they thought the main characters looked like. They all nailed the female main, but the male main was generally thought of as blond/blue eyed and he wasn't at the time. I changed it since the consensus. All because he has a sunny personality.
Suddenly/All Hell is something I was doing a lot. I found when things happened in the blink of an eye to a character it was better to use abruptly, blink of an eye, in an instant. Everywhere else the suddenly was conveyed by the change in narrative.
How basic? Like: he was a boy and she was a girl? Or - as you hinted: He had a sunny personality and nothing else? That doesn't say much about how the character looks like in relation to other characters. Is he a blob? A kangaroo? An axolotl? :/ People sometimes like to do fanarts of their beloved book characters and what can they work with in your case? A sunny personality doesn't say a frick about the character, apart from the fact it's one of the most generic description of a positive person.
I spit coffee on my keyboard at 4:27. Thanks. LOL.
I really enjoy your videos and advice and usually learn a thing or two! What I mainly learned here is that Elmore Leonard needs to read some psychogeography, a bit of Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Bronte and Annie Proulx and get a sense of what descriptions of place can really do for a story in the hands of a good writer!
I think using multiple exclamation points in a row could convey increasing energy throughout a paragraph eg. maybe the character or narrator is overthinking and/or starting to panic, getting more worked up with each sentence. Represented by adding more exclamation points to each consecutive sentence until something breaks them out of it. Definitely something to use sparingly though
'The Martian' uses /so-and-so said/ almost everywhere. It's invisible until the last part of the book when the Ares gets back to Mars and everyone's saying one or two word sentences and half the page is just /so-and-so said/.
Andy Weir has a great mind for stories, but his dialogues are hard on the eyes. The Martian works so well, as the protagonist is alone with his thoughts for most of the novel.
I always love your videos but this one made me actually snort-laugh out loud with the never EVER to use dialogue tag 😂 that I just encountered in a book this week and made me gag a little bit!
Also THANK YOU for your opinion on prologues, I was starting to doubt mine even though I KNOW I need it, so thank yoouuuu
Ah, you saw an ejaculated sighting in the wild! Oh so memorable and also gag inducing. :)
I don't love prologues but "The Way of Kings" by Brandon sanderson is my favorite book and it essentially has 3. Nothing is off limits if done well.
Yep, absolutely, break any rule if you can pull it off!
I describe a house in detail because when the dragon shows up and burns the place down, I want the reader to feel like a really beautiful home was destroyed, not just any old home. And I start with the weather, then go right into the problem, aunt Kahlen is missing. "Guess I'm a rule breaker by nature," he gargled with a mouth full of cheap wine.
My writing is very much dialogue-moved, by which I mean I really on a lot of dialogue to move the story along. Readers complained that they couldn't keep track of who was talking. I tried using longer "she paused to brush her hair back" type of inserts, but it quickly became bulky. I found a good balance between those & dialogue tags. I was actually in a writing class where "said" was a banned word! My assignments were awkwardly colorful, with whispers, wheezing, shouting, crying, etc. on every line. XD Again, I found a good balance.
And my favorite writing advice is from Mark Twain who said to replace very with d*mn. That way the editor would take it out & your writing would be better for it! I use a lot stronger & more thoughtful words because of this.
If my character shouts, they shout, they don't just say things. When they whisper, they whisper, they don't utter sentences in a normally audible voice. This modern way of writing with no descriptions and no dialogue tags because god forbid someone's 45 secs span might deplete is ridiculous.
Is the goals video still on the docket? Anxiously awaiting it over here. 😁
Yes, I've shot it and it will be coming out in late December.
Loinfiringly is totally going into my scifi book! Might name a ship after it! Thanks!
Tony Hillerman 's first novel begins with a 500 plus word description of the landscape and weather. I was hooked from then on!
I have this previously-unspoken rule of denying myself dialogue tags. I try my best not to use them. The scene should be clear enough for the reader to know who's speaking and the vibes. Is it tricky? Yeah, sometimes, but it can add so much more flavor to the scene - in my experience anyway.
One time I challenged myself to write a whole chapter (3K-ish words) *without* dialogue tags and that's probably the most fun chapter I've ever written just for that alone, especially because my stories used to be mostly dialogue and none of my readers even noticed. It's a nice challenge I still try to apply to myself even if I'm not writing seriously at this time.
I still want to know how the characters speak and you can't make some utterances into certain tone without tags. "I'm so sorry" - can be said normally, exclaimed, whispered or said voicelessly, just by lips moving. I have yet to see someone being able to distinguish those just with a line: "I'm so sorry".
Okay, as for dialogue tags, I disagree with you on a fundamental level, and I am absolutely willing to go to war with you on this one. When you have a character say something like, "Have a nice day," she smiled, the reader already knows the speaker is saying something due to the written dialogue within quotations. The tag is a descriptor that is combining an expression with the dialogue. To say, "you can't smile speech,"...well, no s**t, Sherlock. That wasn't the point of the tag. The point of the tag was putting in a descriptor for HOW the speech is said without writing out the longer, "she said with a smile." Please don't insult the reader's intelligence by indicating they can't understand the difference. Remember, your personal preference is not a guide to how people should write. I, personally, don't like 1st person point of view, but there are a number of great books and stories written in 1st person POV, and I don't tell people they can't write in that point of view. If you've been gatekeeping books because of your personal preferences, then we have a problem. That is absolutely unacceptable. I agree with you most of the time, but I have to completely disagree with you on this one. I do, however, agree wholeheartedly with you in not using the word "ejaculated" as a dialogue tag.
I love descriptor tags that combine expression with dialogue. It reads poetically at times, so satisfying.
She smiled. "Have a nice day."
There you go. Now your character doesn't smile words anymore
You can also just get rid of the comma, as is common when adding action after dialogue.
"Have a nice day." She smiled.
@@incog.nyto. The reader knows the character is speaking due to the dialogue being in quotes. The smile is the action that describes the expression during the dialogue. It's as clear as day. If you write, "Have a nice day," she smiled, it's very clear she is speaking while smiling. Stating that the speaker is smiling words is insulting the reader's intelligence. I shouldn't have to explain this more than once. That is a personal preference in writing and not an error in writing.
Thank you, you saved me from writing this exact same comment.
So basically for the first one, don't open the book with JUST weather. But if the weather is the subject of an action or serves some other deep narrative purpose, it's not an issue.
So, about place descriptions. In the XIX century, there was a movement among the authors that their descriptions should be, you know, descriptive. That they need to inform further generations about how the author's contemporaries used to live if he (or so much rarely she) wrote a contemporary fiction.
And in the case of Hugo and Notre Dame, it is even more relatable. Note that one of the main reason for Hugo to write Notre Dame was the fact that the city contemplated demolishing it. Yup, that's right - the same Notre Dame France went nuts to rebuild after the fire the recent may have been just broken for the stone. Much of the medieval Paris already was already raised to give place to the Paris of today.
So, Hugo's lengthy description is basically putting a documentary inside of the fiction, and that with a very focused agenda of historical monument preservation.
Today, however, history freaks like myself don't even need to leave home in order to get any amount of documentary on whatever theme we fall for, and so there is no real need put such description into your fiction - unless it is something really, really uncommon. For fantasy and sci-fi genre it will be a clear downer - why should I care of lengths and heights if id never existed anyway? George R.R. Martin in one of his interviews told that he once stood by the actual vertical wall at the bottom of a quarry that was like 200ft tall, realizing how impenetrable of an obstacle this is, regretted attributing an explicit 700ft hight to his wall.
It might be glib, but i always roll my eyes at the “don’t use action tags for dialogue tags” advice. It is a very literalist interpretation. You *are* correct, one cannot growl legible words. Not everything is literal, however. The reader knows what you mean. Using my example it is shorthand for a bass tone change with a gravely throat rumble that humans reserve for overtone threats of violence. Thats a long sentence to describe vocal timbre.
I’ve started to ponder if this isn’t a tension between poetry and prose.
Are you writing prose, poetry, or a naughty hybrid?
I don’t have an answer! It does intrigue me though.
I have a prologue. I hope it is done well.
I think you can create amazing action with weather. Like people being caught in the middle of tsunami, earthquake, avalanche, tornado. Weather brings emotions and action and its universal no matter from which part of the world you are. We all felt it , saw it or have a slight sense how it may feel.
I think "rules for writing" and lists like this are helpful because they point out common problems and pitfalls and when you take them, as they are taken in this video, as illustrations of problems, rather than hard and fast prescriptions, they are useful. My general statement on writing is "you can do anything you want, if you can do it well." It's just that some things are a lot harder to do well.
Regional dialects are a good example of this. It is really hard to do them well, and I don't trust myself to actually be able to pull it off, so I just don't use them. (meaning specifically using misspellings and the like)
I find it funny that I LOVE when authors use action words to replace "said". For me, it gives a more dynamic and playful reading experience.
I think you're being too literal about it. Of course people don't beam words, but I can perfectly picture the intensity and delight in what the character is saying. Or I can feel how little interest the character have when they shrugged some words.
I found your channel recently and I really love the way you frame advice. I´m just currently not subscribed, because I realized I wanted to go through it all at once and I started to stress myself out with it😅 Too much of a good thing and all of that ...
Oh, and for the lengthy description passages: Tolkien has a wonderful tendency to describe every tree and every blade of grass along the way and I actually love it! But I can completely see why someone might think the Lord of the Rings could do without that much landscape description. In all fairness it would probably cut the book in half (and also completely change the atmosphere of the text).
Glad I could help you out! And hope you subscribe in the future.
I appreciate your opinions and explanations, which are easy to apply to various genres of story. Helpful to me in the Historical Fiction camp. I've read a collection of Elmore Leonard's Western short stories from the early part of his career, including the original version of The 3:10 to Yuma. He does streamline his descriptions. What was significant to me, however, was that he spent years living in the areas he wrote about and knew them well, which allowed the brief outlines to resonate with authenticity. Things like using specific names of local plants and trees, and land features, like an arroyo (a dry wash). With dialects, I think newer writers should be especially careful of misspelled 'pidgin' type language unless they are very familiar with it. Mark Twain knew people who spoke as his characters did, and had studied their speech patterns. Modern readers are going to be less forgiving, methinks. Dialogue tags or related action tags should make clear who is speaking if the actual dialogue doesn't. I will often go back over pages of dialogue and edit out as many tags as possible. Your examples are a hoot.
For dialogue tags it's the "never use growled," and similar, that gets me, because you, "can't growl a sentence."
Like, sure, maybe not a 10 word sentence, maybe not even a 5 word one. But 1 or 2 words? Batman's pretty good at that.
And it conveys anger or refusal of showing vulnerability better than 'whispered' or 'said', which, while neutral, can become almost too neutral sometimes.
Of course, this mostly refers to "don't use tags as an excuse for weak dialogue lines." You should be able to tell how they say something from the context more often than not.
Though I'd say it's also genre dependent. Literary fiction? Maybe don't go around growling.
Close persepctive fantasy? Maybe a little more leeway in the growling department, (especially if werebeasts are involved, even without romance elements).
(This isn't exclusive to 'growling', but it's the one that tends to pop up most often as an example.)
Action tags though? Yeah, no. (Ig unless it's like highly specific fantasy/sci-fi shenanigans going on where some creature does wink words🙃 Just to be that person)
Either way, good video.
3:45, I was told that putting the tag 'said' instead of 'asked' after a question would be grammatically incorrect. Is that not true?
It's has nothing to do with grammar, since as long as it's a verb in the right form it's grammatically correct. Grammatically, you can even wink a question. Semantically, you can use either, though I'd use "asked".
I feel like these famous authors try to limit there competition with these advice
elmore leanards rules work. for him.
I'll crack on writing what I like.
I get lost easily during long dialogue strings w/o tags. Who's talking again? I have to go back and refer to the last time someone was mentioned. Although, some authors use that to their advantage. Hubert Selby for instance. There are paragraphs with multiple characters and I rarely feel abandoned.
Personally, I tend to blend styles. Example:
Sharon: "What time is good for you?"
Becky, looks up: "Tuesday."
Sharon: "It's Wednesday."
Becky, back to her book: "I know."
Sharon, sighs: "So, you're not going."
Becky: "What tipped you off?"
Sharon, into the hall: "Dad!"
I walk around the corner: "What?"
Sharon: "Becky is being rude."
I lick extra cake batter off the spoon: "And?"
Sharon pouts: "She needs to drive me tonight."
Becky scoffs: "No I don't."
I try to be civil: "Becky?"
Becky shouts: "Why? She's the one who got arrested. Why do I get in trouble?"
Sharon: "It wasn't my fault!"
Becky: "Yes, it was!"
I: "Can we discuss this later?"
Paula opens the front door.
Sharon: "Mom!!"
Paula waves her away: "Whatever it is... no."
Sharon: "But..."
Paula, sternly: "No. Now both of you go get the groceries out of the car. Nanna will be here in a few hours. Ask me later. Hi, honey."
I kiss my favorite lips: "Hi."
Paula: "Busy day?"
I grin: "Long story."
0:25 As a youth, I would challenge myself to write all my English assignments, including tests, with the longest sentences I could create, because my teacher said to keep our sentences short. LOL I think my best sentence, that got perfect grammatical marks, was 92 words long!
3:48 The dialog tag needs to agree with the action. As such, "asked", "replied", "exclaimed", etc are better than "said."
NOTE: I'm intentionally being contrarian. "Said" is fine; I just like other words too, so I'm giving a reason one might use them. "Use the dialog tag that agrees with the action of the scene" is just as valid as "Only use a special tag when the tag gives the reader more information."
I was also trying to figure out why older works use a variety of dialog tags; "they agree with the action of the scene" is the best explanation I could come up with.
You and I are synpatico, Book Fox. 👍🏽😎👍🏽
you look like my surgeon. oh and also, i just wanted to thank you for your content. i've been writing since i was like maybe 10 years old, meaning ive been writing for almost 6 years now, but i never really looked into what made writing good. i always started a story, thought about a plot but never really put it down on paper, and id just abandon it. i tend to also be all over the place when it comes to writing, i cant seem to choose just one thing. your videos have been a great gateway into slowly but surely understanding what i can do to make my writing better. one question though. do you have any recommendations of stuff or templates i can use that are free? i cant yet afford paying for courses, but i wanted to see if you had any free alternatives that might not be as fleshed out, but i can still use to guide my writing. thanks again :)
My novel "Windwalkers" (plug) opens with weather because the blizzard in the novel is, in essence, a major character in the story. (I'm still a big Elmore Leonard fan, though.)
As to the exclamation points, notice that they were all in dialogue. Exclamation points in narrative are lazy -- telling the reader something is exciting rather than just writing an exciting sentence.
Long descriptions of characters CAN make sense if they are seen from the point of view of a character who has a reason to make note of how another character looks (i.e. someone looking at a character to whom they are highly attracted, or someone they find suspicious.)
And the last piece... I worked with a writer who always put in what should have been left out. Rather than write, "Lisa left work and went home" he would detail her leaving the office, walking down the hall, getting into the elevator, walking out of the building, crossing the parking lot, getting into her car, putting on her seatbelt...etc. Yeah, there are DEFINITELY parts that should be left out.
"Don't be boring." That is, simultaneously, the best and worst writing advice I've ever heard.
I started my novel with the word suddenly BC it's about a soilder at the frontline in ww1 waking up because of the silence caused by the armistice. I think it works, because it's really sudden and before this moment the drum fire was there the whole day
Thanks for the tips, Shazam!
The dialog tag that will always stick with me is a bad example used by Damon Knight to emphasize the idiocy of the action tag: "Good morning," he pole-vaulted.
Glad to see Pratchett mentioned, and a great example. Sir Terry also claimed that the use of multiple exclamation marks at the end of one sentence is a sign of insanity.
Dialect: If you haven't read Percival Everett's "James," you must. It doesn't go where you think it will, almost from the beginning. (It helps a lot in the first part if you've read Huck Finn lately...)
6:04 How often can we use an interrobang‽ ;-)
I generally almost always stick with, "he said", or "she said" in dialogue tags.However, I'm glad to know that he or she whispered is appropriate, as sometimes it just really seems to work. I prefer to use dialog tags where I have more than two people speaking or where I want to be absolutely clear who is speaking because my dialogue shifts back and forth a lot.
There's nothing I hate more, when the dialogue is so generic I can't make out the tone of the dialogue and there are no dialogue tags, just to discover the paragraph under the dialogue they quarrelled. 🤬
Prized author's novel that broke all rules ever and was an _event_ in my reading life? Beckett's The Unnamable. Simples as that.
I happily read entire books that are just descriptions of weather or places or things. It requires talent and a great prose style and some interesting insights that go beyond bland surface detail, but if done well it’s beautiful. But it’s probably not a good idea if you’re writing a hardboiled detective story.
Approaching this from the perspective of an avid reader rather than an aspiring writer, I enjoyed the video but have some additional thoughts. Mr. Fox addressed using regional dialects and deliberate misspelling as something that may make the work more difficult to understand. But I believe there is another issue that may be even more important; can the author - can YOU - actually "pull it off"? Well written regional dialogue may really set a character apart, giving him "his own unique voice". But poorly written regional dialect will frequently come across as condescending or just... goofy. Authors should be rigorously honest with themselves about their own strengths and weaknesses (while also striving to improve in areas they are weak) and adjust accordingly. If you HONESTLY believe you can write a really convincing brogue for your Scottish protagonist, go for it. But if you can't, you may be better off writing his dialect in "standard" English.
I believe a similar caution applies to detailed descriptions, whether of characters, or settings, or events. Some people are better at this sort of writing than others (though all authors can and should attempt to improve). I have read battle descriptions that wonderfully conveyed the the exhilaration, the fear, the confusion, the despair, the ultimate triumph of the protagonist. And I have read descriptions that had all the liveliness of "... and then some other stuff happened...", even if that "other stuff" was described in (tedious) detail. Whether describing a beautiful women or a terrifying battle, can YOU, the author, describe it WELL? If yes, maybe a very detailed description is called for, If no, a more minimalist desription might serve the story better.
Mr. Fox admonishes his viewers to "Know your audience." Excellent advice but borrowing from Sun Tzu, I would add "Know yourself."
super helpful, thanks
Hemingway's third wife Martha Gellhorn used the phrase "Hell on Wheels" to describe them both. She was an accomplished author in her own right. Hell on Wheels is just as cliche as "All hell broke loose."
I love Elmore’s Rules!
No, you don't.
Im writing a book where an ancient Egyptian pharaoh is brought to modern times and Im doing all his lines in hieroglyphics.
Uh... good luck. Keep it brief. Like, super-brief. Weird stunts like that are like strong spices in cooking: a little goes a looooong way.
Thank You again. 😊
No respect for any person that "skips" anything when reading. If you 're not going to do it right, don't bother doing it at all. It's a complete waste of your time and leaves you never really knowing if what you think is accurate.
Before anyone criticises Leonard's rules, you should read one of his books. They're fast-moving, funny, full of fascinating characters and with great plots. He wrote these rules when asked to, and didn't take them that seriously himself. However, you'll find pretty good reasons for them. For example, using 'said': his point was that if you use anything other than this, it's the writer 'editorialising', i.e. telling the reader what to think. If you read his books you'll find that Leonard completely submerges himself in the character who's the focus of the particular scene - adding an adverb, or changing 'said' to 'whispered' or anything else pushes the writer into the scene and momentarily breaks the POV. Leonard wants to remove himself from the scene so that the reader can focus on the characters. This is one reason I can't stand JK Rowling's writing - she's constantly telling us how something is said and not letting the characters speak for themselves. Yes, she's immensely popular but face it - she wrote initially for kids, who might have needed some guidance. If you know anything about Leonard, it's that his dialogue is considered to be amongst the best ever written by a popular author, and that's partly because he lets the characters speak for themselves, and they do it so well. For the rest, I largely agree with John Fox, though Leonard remains in my top 3 thriller writers.
I wasn't aware that it was verboten to use dialogue descriptors like 'exclaimed', but that's just frankly ridiculous and would make dialogue-heavy scenes incredibly flat, banal and boring to exclude verbs that are onomatopoeic or bridge the gap between written word and vicarious sensoria. Just like a great comedian can read the phone book (if such things still exist) and make it funny, a great writer can break any of the rules - which like the Pirate's Code, are more like guidelines - and still come out on top.
Louis L'Amour used suddenly quite a bit. He was and is very readable.
You can go too far with sparse descriptions. An Urban Horror series I enjoy had a character whose race was unguessable until it became a very minor plot point. Nine books into the series.
6:28, Pratchett is a great writer
Description done well? Tolkien's books? In (high) fantasy I think you NEED more description. But you need to dose it properly. Don't infodump your world. Let your readers discover/see it together with your characters.
Saying that you can only use said is a horrible idea. I just listened to hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, which was phenomenal, but my brain was getting so tired of the word said. That word is in there so many times it was breaking the trance.
I agree with the rule to do away with prologues. To me it’s lazy. If it isn’t good enough to be a chapter it’s not good enough to be in the book.
if it is good enough to be in the body of the story, do the work to put it in the body
personally, i've agonized a bit about worldbuilding (which i'd qualify as falling into the "over-describing places and things" point) for one of my works in particular, set in a world where humans and dinosaurs (and other fossil animals) coexist naturally--as in it's just always been that way in-universe, it's a totally self-contained planet and setting, not Earth, with no genetic engineering or time travel involved--since that would require a fair bit of description not only of the setting and its history but also of the animals and how they relate to in-universe culture. what i eventually decided was that, along with in-character explanations, (the "uninitiated" protagonist as an audience surrogate goes to a new place for the first time and is told about it by someone who's been there before, etc.) the story would be interrupted at regular intervals for one page, and JUST one page, of third-person descriptive worldbuilding about something that either just happened or will happen soon (such as explaining why a given clade of animals is called something, especially in a world where "dinosaur" has no cultural distinction from other animals since they're considered as ordinary as tigers or elephants in-universe such that the word "dinosaur" is meant to NEVER be used in the actual text)
Q. Do you have any advice on telling a story from a villain's perspective?
10:22 Dude I was literally just thinking of this. The whole book gave me such white room syndrome that I hated it 😂 compare that with Gormenghast, which is a masterpiece in atmosphere and is one of my favorite books, yet breaks every description-based rule on this list 💀
Rule 9: Don’t go into great detail describing things.
Moby-Dick: Ishmael describes whales for like 100 chapters and then Captain Ahab goes after one for like three.
Reading PD James' The Children of Men now and while the ideas and world-building are fascinating, it feels like a slog. Early in the book the protagonist Theo meets with a sort of "resistance" group and she drops full paragraph-length descriptions of each member in succession; collectively they're almost two pages. Absolutely hated it lol.
I remember really liking that book, but I did read it 10+ years ago, and do remember the pacing certainly being slower. Two pages of description sounds ... a bit much.
@@Bookfox lol it's a bit much for sure. she's a great writer so i'm powering through but your vid made me think of it.
As a fun exercise try describing something without using the word "is".
Go easy on the dialect and peculiar spelling and syntax? Shoulda told James Joyce while he was writing "Finnegans Wake," the ultimate hard-to-read book. OTOH the imaginary future English dialect works brilliantly in "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban.
...and "said" has often been called The Invisible Word, because all that matters in the speech tag is the identity of the speaker. ...which makes more exotic speech tag verbs stand out all the more--so they'd better be necessary (I expostulated).
And he is notoriously hard to translate, and he is famous for.. his book being difficult to read. :D
The only rules revolve around coin, connections, crews, clout, computer code, control, corporate communities, and opulent opportunities. Without those, it doesn't matter what you write, what you know, nor how long you've been around. No exceptions.
Haven't you heard? Avoid alliteration. Always. :P