Mini Lesson: Avoid Talking Heads

Today's mini lesson is all about the phenomenon called "talking heads." This term refers to a long stretch of dialogue with only speech verbs and no description of the physicality of the characters, or of the setting, aside from occasional movements above the neck. If you're only describing eyes, lips, eyebrows, and heads shaking/nodding/tilting, you have talking heads.

This is a problem for one very simple reason: novels aren't scripts.

When a playwright creates their script, they only include the dialogue, attribution (who's speaking), and rare scene directions. But a script is intended to become a performance. Its final form includes set design, costumes, and actors bringing the names on the pages to life with blocking (movement) and the characters' quirks or mannerisms. When we have only the dialogue and attribution, the experience of the story is incomplete.

The same goes for your novel, so you need to ensure all of those pieces are happening on the page the way they would on the "stage" of your story. It's up to you as the author to create the set, the costumes, the blocking, and the character mannerisms—plus internalization. If you only include dialogue and head-related movements, that's all the readers get to see, leaving your scene incomplete like a script.

The good news is that people are constantly moving. It's not practical or necessary to describe every time a character moves, but you want to ensure you're grounding your readers in the physicality of both the space (setting) and the characters themselves. How are they interacting with the furniture and items around them? How are they physically reacting to what is being said? 

Examples include: crossing their arms after being accused of something; fidgeting with whatever little items are within reach; jumping out of their seat at hearing exciting (or infuriating) news; and pulling a blanket over their head and hugging their knees to their chest for comfort.

Including the elements aside from the basic "script" of your conversations helps to build a sense of your world, to break up stretches of dialogue, and to humanize your characters. Adding internalization does the last two as well, but you want to make sure to balance building the internal and external worlds of your story. If all we have is dialogue and internal reactions to what's being said, we still aren't getting a complete picture of your world or your characters, who in almost all cases will have bodies in addition to heads.

So if the only movements being described within long stretches of conversation happen above the neck, as if the bodies have disappeared or been paralyzed—and that isn't the effect you're intentionally creating—take another pass at your draft to help readers see the full scene.

Do you have any special tips or tricks for fixing "talking heads" moments? Share in the comments!

Mini Lesson: Punctuating Action Beats in Dialogue

Dialogue is one of those funny things: when you see it in a book, you're so busy "hearing" a conversation that you don't pay attention to how it's formatted on the page. Many writers know instinctively, just from reading a lot, how to format basic dialogue with he said/she said tags. But there's a lot of confusion about how to format dialogue when it gets more complicated, like when you add interruptions or action beats. Anya explained how to punctuate interrupted dialogue in a previous post, and today I'm going to clarify the correct way to punctuate action beats in dialogue.

Basically, the easy way to think about it is:

• If there is no speech verb (like "said"), it needs to be its own sentence.
• If there is a speech verb, use a comma before the dialogue or to close the dialogue. If the dialogue comes first, followed by something like "he said" or "she whispered" (etc.), lowercase the word after the dialogue.

I find that the best way to demonstrate this is with examples. So let's envision a scene. Say we have two characters, Bob and Steve, meeting for the first time.

Wrong:

"I'm Steve," we shook hands.
I opened my office door, "Nice to meet you. How's your first day going?"
"Okay," he shrugged. "I'm told I'll get my first big project next week."

Right:

"I'm Steve," he said. We shook hands.
I opened my office door. "Nice to meet you. How's your first day going?"
"Okay." He shrugged. "I'm told I'll get my first big project next week."

Because "said" is a speech verb, we use a comma to close the dialogue. And because "opened" and "shrugged" are action verbs, not speech verbs, those sentences get set off separately.

In a similar vein, actions taken by other characters generally also need to be broken onto their own lines. This is because whenever we see actions in the same paragraph or on the same line as dialogue, we assume that the actions and dialogue belong to the same person.

Let's look at an example. In the following scene, we've got Stacey agonizing over a decision and Greg being her sympathetic listener.

Wrong: 

Stacey just didn't know what to do. She sighed.
"I guess everything happens for a reason, right?" Greg nodded. "So maybe I should just let it go."

In this case, it's Stacey talking but Greg nodding. Confusing, right? Stacey's dialogue should go on the same line as her own action, but then Greg's action should go on its own line. It would get broken up like so:

Right:

Stacey just didn't know what to do. She sighed. "I guess everything happens for a reason, right?"
Greg nodded.
"So maybe I should just let it go."

Here, you can tell who's doing the talking and who's doing the nodding. Even though Stacey is the only one speaking, and even though Greg's action is in response to her dialogue, Greg's action should go on its own line.

So there you have it: how to punctuate action interspersed with dialogue. Let us know if you have any questions about this or if there are other dialogue scenarios you'd like us to clear up for you!

Mini Lesson: Subjective vs. Omniscient Narration

It's been a long time coming, but as promised, here's a mini lesson on the difference between subjective and omniscient narration!

I first wanted to address this because I keep seeing people call any subjective narration "first-person" narration. In case you missed it, I covered the definitions of first-person and third-person narration in another mini lesson. The bit to remember for today is that "first-person" simply means the use of first-person pronouns: I, we, us, etc.

Subjective narration is when a story is told through the lens of one character's experience at a time. There can be multiple narrators or just one, but each perspective is limited to what the narrating character sees, hears, feels, knows, etc. In fact, another term for subjective narration is limited narration. It places the reader into the body & mind of the narrator, so we experience the story unfolding along with them. This is the more common type of narration seen in fiction nowadays.

Omniscient narration, on the other hand, is when the story is told by an all-knowing narrator. This narrator can dip into different characters' minds and also share with the reader things the characters may not know at all. Everything we may need to know about the world, the characters, and the plot, this narrator knows. While less common nowadays, it is no less powerful a choice, and both types of narration have their strengths.

Both types of narration can be either first- or third-person. However, it's extremely rare to have a truly omniscient first-person narrator. Such narrators often turn out to be unreliable, meaning the reader can't necessarily trust what they're saying and may need to draw separate conclusions about conversations and events. An unreliable narrator might simply misconstrue events and other characters' words and actions, or they may intentionally conceal information from the reader, misrepresent events, and even lie outright. They may also be suffering from mental conditions which affect their perception of events. But an unreliable narrator may still present themselves as an omniscient (or even objective) one.

One last thing to note is that narrative tense—whether the story is told in the past, present, or even (and extremely rarely) future—is independent from whether the narration is in first- or third-person and whether it's subjective or omniscient. So there are many combinations with which you can experiment in your writing!

Mini Lesson: First-Person vs. Third-Person Narration

Mini lessons have been getting a bit long lately, but luckily this one is short & sweet!

I've been seeing far too many advice posts for writers that incorrectly define first-person and third-person narration. So I'd like to clear things up.

First-person narration is narration that—unsurprisingly—uses first-person pronouns, meaning the narrator refers to themselves as "I." So you'll be seeing words like "my," "we," "our," us," etc. in the narration. It's how, most often, you would speak to a friend about your life experiences:

• I went to the store.
• My backpack fell on the ground.

Third-person narration uses, appropriately, third-person pronouns, meaning the narration describes all characters (including the perspective character, if any) as "he," or "she," (or "ze," or other pronoun preferences) or by name. So you won't see words like "I" or "my" outside of direct thought and dialogue. For example:

• Alex went to the store.
• Her backpack fell on the ground.

So, where does the confusion come in? Well, I keep seeing people refer to subjective narration as "first-person." These are not the same thing! In fact:

• Both first- and third-person narration can be subjective (limited to the narrating character's point of view; also sometimes called "close" narration).
• Both can also be omniscient! (All-knowing, or unlimited.)
• The caveat here is that omniscient first-person narration is extremely rare. It is usually told in hindsight to explain how your narrator could know everything that happened and what other characters thought or felt. Often, the narrator turns out to be unreliable. 
• Look out for a future post on subjective vs. omniscient—and unreliable—narration!
• Some examples:
• Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann
• How I Met Your Mother (TV show)
• Both can be written in either past or present tense. 
• Or future, in theory, though I haven't seen that. If you have, please share an example in the comments!

Bonus: It's also possible to have second-person narration, addressing the reader directly using the second-person pronoun "you." This is rare, especially in longer forms like novels, but it does happen and can be quite powerful. Examples:

• You walk to the store.
• Your backpack falls to the ground.

So there you have a quick overview of pronoun options for your narration. Remember: the pronouns you choose do not affect whether your narration is subjective or omniscient, which is a separate choice you have to make for your story.

Still have questions? Ask in the comments!

Mini Lesson: Punctuating Interrupted Dialogue

I'll admit, today's mini lesson focuses on a pet peeve of mine: punctuating interrupted dialogue. I've seen so many different (incorrect) versions, and they do get quite inventive, but we definitely need to clear this one up.

As a foundation, I am assuming you all know how to punctuate basic dialogue—rules like using a comma in place of a period with a dialogue tag, not capitalizing the tag if it's after the dialogue, etc. For a simple example: "Hello," she said.

Today I want to focus specifically on what happens when something (or someone) interrupts a character who's speaking mid-sentence. There are three different ways to write this correctly:

1. Use a speech verb with a modifier. For example: "Look over there," she said, pointing to the corner, "over by the bookshelves."
• Because you're using a speech verb (said), you punctuate it like any other dialogue tag, with a comma before the closing quotation mark.
• In this case, the extra action (pointing to the corner) is added on following a comma because the modifier is subordinate to the main verb (still said).
• Because you're interrupting one sentence ("Look over there, over by the bookshelves."), a comma is also used to lead into the second half of the dialogue, and that second bit of dialogue is not capitalized.
• Keep in mind, the dialogue in this example could be two separate sentences: "Look over there. Over by the bookshelf." This is a different speech pattern, and if this is how you'd like your character to speak, then there would be a period after "corner," and the second bit of dialogue would be capitalized:
  
  "Look over there," she said, pointing to the corner. "Over by the bookshelves."
2. Use an em dash inside the quotation marks to cut off the character mid-dialogue, usually with either (A) another character speaking or (B) an external action.
• A: "Look over there—"
  "By the bookshelves," Jamie added before Sheila could clarify. 
• B: "Look over there—"
  A stack of boxes clattered to the ground.
• Including the em dash at the end of the line of dialogue signifies that your character wasn't finished speaking.
• Sometimes unfinished lines of dialogue end with an ellipsis. This is grammatically correct, but it signifies your character trailing off as if losing their train of thought or drifting off to sleep, not something or someone else interrupting their words.
• If you want to make a point of the speaking character's action interrupting their own dialogue, you could also use this punctuation, writing:
  
  "Look over there—" She snapped her mouth shut so she didn't give the secret away.
• Note that in most such instances a new sentence starts after the closing quotation mark, so of course the first word would need to be capitalized.
• If instead you're following the interrupted line with a dialogue tag, you would leave the tag lowercase, as usual. For example:
"Is everything—" she started to ask, but a sharp look cut her off.
3. Use em dashes outside the quotation marks to set off a bit of action without a speech verb. For example: "Look over there"—she pointed to the corner—"by the bookshelves."
• Do not merely use commas, because in such cases there is no speech verb, and therefore it isn't a dialogue tag and can't be punctuated like one.
• Wrong: "Look over there," she pointed to the corner, "by the bookshelves."
• Pointed isn't a speech verb, but this punctuation indicates that she is "pointing" her words to the corner. If we were to replace pointed with called, this punctuation would become correct, as in example #1 above.
• Do not put the em dashes inside the quotation marks if the line of dialogue continues after the interruption. 
• Wrong: "Look over there—" she pointed to the corner "—by the bookshelves."
• Also wrong? Putting em dashes half in and half out, or combining em dashes with commas. If you're segmenting a line of dialogue without using a speech verb, make sure to close the quotation marks after the first bit of dialogue, use two em dashes around the interruption, then open the quotation marks again for the second part.

• Bonus: If we're tuning into someone's dialogue in the middle, you can absolutely open the dialogue with an em dash or an ellipsis, making sure not to capitalize the first word. For example:
  
  Sheila found Jason leaning against the wall. "—why we'll never go to Starbucks again," he was saying.
  (Or: "...why we'll never go to Starbucks again," he was saying.)
• This does not work if we're catching a full sentence, in other words if there would have been a period (or question mark, or exclamation point) had we "heard" what came before. In such a case, the narration or tag can clue us in to having missed part of the dialogue:
  
  "So that's why we'll never go to Starbucks again," Jason finished explaining.

As you can see, there are many ways to punctuate your dialogue. Each option affects the speech pattern of your character as well as the flow of your narration, so make sure your choices are intentional. Words matter, and so does punctuation!

Have questions? Would you like to suggest a Mini Lesson subject? Share in the comments!

Mini Lesson: Hyphenating Compound Adjectives

I've written before on the importance of syntax and the nuances conveyed by minor shifts in wording. But words on their own are insufficient, and there's a reason we've developed all sorts of extra marks to augment them. Using punctuation correctly is important not simply because "that's the rule," as some might believe. Rather, slight differences in how we use punctuation marks can significantly alter meaning, and therefore a reader's experience. Ensuring we can all understand the intended meaning is why the rules exist in the first place.

Today, I want to focus on the hyphen, specifically when it comes to compound adjectives. More and more, I see authors (and their editors and proofreaders) forgetting or misusing these hyphens.

I can hear you thinking, "What does it matter? Readers understand it either way!" While I could go on and on about the richer picture writers can create with a fuller toolbox, I'll try instead to illustrate the value of that one little line (-).

First up: what is a compound adjective? Generally speaking, it's an adjective—a descriptor—made up of more than one word. The first word usually modifies the second one, and combined they describe the noun that follows. For example, in "a six-page document," the compound adjective is "six-page," with six describing the (number of) pages, and the whole thing together describing the noun document.

So why do we need a hyphen? Because the words making up the compound adjective need to stay together to retain their meaning. Examples below will illustrate this more fully, but the basic rule you need to know is that compound adjectives before a noun should always be hyphenated.

With that out of the way, let's dive in. Picture if you will: a light brown table.

Got it?

Now picture a heavy brown table.

That's right, light in the first example refers most correctly to the table's weight. (In theory, it could also be a table for light, or made of light, but let's keep it simple for our purposes.) I would feel comfortable betting that at least half of you interpreted the first use of light as referring to the shade of brown. Why? Because we're becoming so used to people forgetting hyphens that we're conditioned to read combinations like "light brown" and "light-brown" as interchangeable, even though they aren't.

If we really want to stress that light is describing the sturdiness of the table, we'd often add weight, using a distinct adjective: a lightweight table. However, remember that this is just one example and we don't always have the option of adding a clarification like that so easily.

Now consider if instead you were talking about a light jacket. If your main character (MC) grabs a light blue jacket on their way out the door, we should reliably know that the jacket is blue and that it's only a little chilly outside—the jacket is lightweight. If, however, your MC grabs a light-blue jacket, all we know is the color of the jacket, not how warm it is. And if they're grabbing a light-blue jacket that is also lightweight, you could say it's a light pale-blue jacket (or a lightweight light-blue jacket—grammatically correct, though awkward).

Of course, you can also substitute pale-blue for a more specific color, but remember that if the color is two words, it also needs a hyphen when preceding a noun. For example: a sky-blue jacket; a royal-purple robe.

If your head is spinning a little bit, try this little trick: if you can't split up the words describing the noun without changing the meaning, you need a hyphen. Let's look at some examples:

1. Our original example was a light brown table. If we split up the adjectives, we would get a light table that is brown, or a brown table that is light. It's a little awkward, but the meaning is clear. And if that's the meaning we want, we wouldn't use a hyphen.
2. However, the table in #1 is brown. If you wanted its color to be lighter, then it would be a light-brown table (hyphenated).
3. How about a purple skinned fruit? Splitting these adjectives, we'd get a skinned fruit that is purple or a purple fruit that is skinned. Makes sense, as would a skinned purple fruit. 
4. But what if you wanted to describe specifically that the fruit's skin was purple? I think you know the answer: a purple-skinned fruit, meaning it can be any color inside but the skin is definitely purple.
5. If the compound isn't made of adjectives, the need for a hyphen is even clearer. A sky jacket that is blue is very different from a sky-blue jacket. And "a blue jacket that is sky" simply makes no sense.
• If you're asking yourself what a "sky jacket" is, you're not alone. But I could imagine characters who fly routinely, whether in the future or on a different planet, having a "sky jacket," the same way we have water shoes.

Hopefully it's clear now why it's important to make intentional choices in your writing, even when it comes to something as small as a hyphen. But there's one more compound adjective type I'd like to touch on briefly: multiple colors. 

In some cases, one color modifies the other: a blue-green scarf. For many, it would be a no-brainer to use a hyphen if that read "bluish-green," but "blue-green" is correct as well. What color is this scarf? A bluish green.

Remember, hyphens are required when the compound adjective precedes the noun. If you're saying, "the scarf is a bluish green," no hyphen is necessary.

What if instead you wrote "a blue-and-green scarf"? Then we'd know the scarf is both blue and green (maybe striped, maybe polka-dotted, etc.). Note that the order of the colors is interchangeable, so we could write "green-and-blue scarf" and retain the same meaning.

So why can't you write "a blue and green scarf"? Let's go back to our tip of splitting the adjectives: "a blue scarf that is green" doesn't make sense.

Furthermore, what if we had more than one scarf? Imagine a store, selling scarves. What color are they?

• Blue and green scarves: some scarves are green; some are blue. 
• Another way to say this is that the store sells blue scarves and green scarves. Like before, if you can split the adjectives this way and keep your intended meaning, you don't need a hyphen.
• Blue-and-green scarves: all of the scarves are both blue and green.
• Note that it's correct (and necessary) to hyphenate multiple words in a row like this, even if it looks a little weird at first. A pet peeve of mine is seeing errors such as "black and white photos." If you have black photos and white photos, you might need a better camera, so make sure to add those hyphens!

It may seem pedantic, but words and punctuation are your tools for communicating with readers, for creating a vibrant world they can picture, and for drawing them into the story you mean to tell. The more dextrous you are in wielding those tools, the more nuance and impact your writing will have. Hopefully today we've sharpened one of the tools in your collection!

Questions? Suggestions for future "Mini Lessons"? Post them in the comments!

Mini Lesson: Syntax Matters

Why does your editor nitpick where in a sentence you put each word? Because in English, syntax—the order in which words are put together to form phrases & clauses (sentences)—affects meaning.

Syntax wasn't quite as important in Latin, for example, where there was more fluidity in word placement because of the complicated structure of conjugation and declension—word endings helped convey precise meaning. But in English, moving a word around in a sentence can drastically change the meaning, or make a phrase entirely nonsensical.

In other words: syntax matters.

Let's take a look at an example of a lyric taken from the song "Payphone" by Maroon 5:

"Even the sun sets in paradise." (Emphasis mine.)

Because this lyric says even the sun sets, it means that in paradise, everything sets—including the sun. Now, given the rest of the lyrics and the general idea of the song, we know that the intended meaning was to say "all good things come to an end." In other words, the sun sets everywhere, including in paradise. So this lyric should read:

"The sun sets even in paradise."

By moving the word even, we can drastically change the meaning of the other five words. And by misplacing it, the lyrics imply almost the exact opposite of their intended meaning.

For another example, let's look at a great sentence that's been making the rounds online:

She told him that she loved him.

Now, place the word only somewhere in the sentence. Got it? Now move it somewhere else. Did you see how the meaning changed?

In fact, by adding the word only, we can get 7 different meanings from the same words:

1. Only she told him that she loved him.
2. She only told him that she loved him.
3. She told only him that she loved him.
4. She told him only that she loved him.
5. She told him that only she loved him.
6. She told him that she only loved him.
7. She told him that she loved only him.

Notice how, when reading, you automatically stress different words based on the placement of just that one. Because (say it with me): syntax matters. You don't want to end up with sentence #7 when you mean sentence #2.

So if you're going to be lax with syntax—e.g. to play with the speech mannerisms of your characters—be aware of how moving those words around will affect your meaning. And if you do want to break the rules, make sure you have a good reason to do so.