Gethsemane

 

This post from April 3, 2017 reminds us that we are not alone in these uncertain times.

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As we get ready to enter Holy Week, I am reprinting a poem that I wrote many years ago. It isn’t great poetry, but it responds to the uncertainty I was going through at the time and that we all experience now and then.

Gethsemane

 I often wonder if God understands
When I feel deserted and all alone;
Then I remember three sleeping men
As Jesus knelt on the garden’s stone.
 
Or does God understand my anguish
When from life’s cares I want relief?
“Let this cup pass” were my Savior’s words
As He voiced His anguish and His grief.
 
Sometimes it’s hard to follow God’s will
When He asks for a sacrifice from me;
Yet Christ was giving so much more
When He followed God’s will to Calvary.
 
Whenever I wonder if God understands,
I remember Christ’s love for me;
How, because of that love, He has felt what I feel,
As He had His own Gethsemane.

 As Hebrews 5:17-18 says, “For we do not have a high priest [Jesus] who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (NIV)

Thanks be to God.

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The picture at the top of this post is “Agony in the Garden” by Giovanni Bellini.” It was painted sometime around 1465 and is in the public domain because of its age.

The poem is © 1974 by Kathryn Page Camp

Pop or Soda? Using Dialogue to Create Regional Characters

 

Following up on last week’s blog, today’s post gives more tips for using dialogue. This is a reprint of another article I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog. It was published there on June 22, 2016, and I have made a few minor modifications to the original post. Unfortunately, I also had to remove several links that no longer work.

Pop or Soda? Using Dialogue to Create Regional Characters

Writers often create characters who aren’t native to the story setting. Giving these individuals particular dialogue traits makes it easy for readers to identify them during a conversation, but it can also provide hazards for the writer. Then there are those stories where all the characters come from the same region but the region itself has a distinctive dialect.

We can create regional characters by using regional speech patterns. Those patterns contain three components: pronunciation, grammar, and word usage. All affect dialect.

And each component has its own pitfalls.

Pronunciation

Some writers (e.g., Mark Twain) portray dialect sounds very well, but most don’t. You’ve probably read at least one book where you had to stop and try to figure out what the character was saying. That takes the reader out of the story, which is a cardinal sin.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott ends her chapter on dialogue this way:

One last thing: dialogue that is written in dialect is very tiring to read. If you can do it brilliantly, fine. If other writers read your work and rave about your use of dialect, go for it. But be positive that you do it well, because otherwise it is a lot of work to read short stories or novels that are written in dialect. It makes our necks feel funny. We are, as you know, a tense people, and we have a lot of problems of our own without you adding to them.

But even doing it brilliantly is not enough. You also need to do it right.

Dialects have their own pronunciation rules, and if you choose to write a dialect as it sounds, you had better be aware of those rules. Take Bostonian English, which is considered “r-less.” According to linguist Natalie Schilling, Bostonians tend to drop final Rs and Rs that come between a vowel and a consonant, but they never drop initial Rs, Rs that follow a consonant, and those that are inserted between vowels. For example:

·       THIS: He missed the pa’ty because he blew a tire when driving around a pa’ked ca’ blocking the road.

·       BUT NOT THIS: He missed the pa’ty because he blew a ti’e when d’iving a’ound a pa’ked ca’ blocking the ‘oad.

If you ignore those rules, expect an onslaught of complaints from the Boston area.

So how can a writer indicate a character’s regional origins without risking the hazards of bad dialect usage? Try this:

Hearing a familiar Southern drawl, I froze. Had Candice returned from vacation already?

From now on, we can identify Candice as the speaker by throwing in an occasional “y’all” without attempting to replicate the rest of her speech patterns—if she is from Georgia. People from Kentucky have less of a drawl and are more likely to say “you all” than “y’all.” (See https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-tell-apart-the-different-Southern-accents and the Kentucky results from the Harvard Dialect Survey, mentioned below.)

Grammar

Pronunciation and grammar are the ends of a sliding scale. Is using “git” for “get” primarily pronunciation or primarily grammar? I’d argue that it can be easily identified as either, putting it in the middle of the scale.

Most people don’t consider the use of pa’ty as a grammatical issue, so it fits on the pronunciation end. Then there are those practices that come down clearly on the grammar side. Take a-prefixing in Appalachian English, which is the practice of adding “a” before an “ing” verb and dropping the “g” at the end—think “a-goin’ a-fishin’.” As with Bostonian r-lessness, however, a-prefixing also has rules. An a-prefix can be attached to “ing” verbs but not to gerunds, adjectives, or objects of prepositions, even if those words also end with “ing.” (See http://theweek.com/articles/461642/grammar-rules-behind-3-commonly-disparaged-dialects.)

So if you are going to use either pronunciation or grammar to create a regional character, make sure you know the rules. 

Word Usage

When we talk about dialect, we usually mean pronunciation and sometimes grammar, but word usage is also important. Do you say “pop” or “soda?” If your character grew up in Michigan and calls it “soda,” be prepared for another onslaught of complaints from all those Michiganders who know better.

Using data from the Harvard Dialect Survey, the graphic at the head of this post shows word differences between people from Illinois or Michigan (on the left side) and people from Pennsylvania (on the right side). I didn’t include Indiana because those of us who live in the northern part of the state talk more like people from Illinois or Michigan than like people from the rest of Indiana.*

It’s usually easy to get our own region’s dialogue right because we know it when we hear it, but other regions can be filled with booby-traps. So where can a writer go to keep from making regional errors? Here are some resources:

• Use this link to the Harvard Dialect Survey to discover usages in the various states: dialect.redlog.net. The pages are static but the links work within the site.

• And here is a link to the Dictionary of American Regional English: http://dare.wisc.edu/

Finally, and just for fun, take the Harvard Dialect Survey to see how well your speech reflects your roots. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0

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* Southern Illinois might align more with southern Indiana, but the Illinois figures are heavily influenced by the Chicago results.

Who Said That?

 

Lately I’ve read several stories by authors don’t know how to handle dialogue. Either I can’t figure out who is speaking, or the dialogue attributions sound contrived. So this week I am reprinting an article I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium and published on it’s blog on June 8, 2016. I have made a few minor modifications to the original post.

Who Said That?

Dialogue can be tricky. First, there is the problem of how much or how little to use, which may depend on genre. An action novel usually has less dialogue than a love story. But in neither case should the conversation be true-to-life. The reader doesn’t want to hear the small talk that occurs around the breakfast table—unless it reveals the protagonist’s anxiety or has some other link to the story. The same is true for the uhs and ahs of normal conversation—leave them out unless they show the speaker’s hesitancy to answer a key question.

But this blog post isn’t about those issues. Instead, it will concentrate on the question that troubles most writers much of the time: How do I make sure my readers know who is talking without interrupting the story’s flow?

Most writers default to using dialogue tags. Some writers are horrified at the very idea. Oh no, never! In their view, dialogue tags were created by the devil. But if you read their own works, you’ll be surprised at the number of dialogue tags that creep in. Still, since dialogue tags should be the last resort, I’ll address them at the end.

Action

Action can be a good way to show who is speaking, although that should never be its sole purpose. When used correctly, action has the added benefit of providing information about the speaker or the setting. Consider these two examples:

Bob slammed his fist on the table. “He’s a liar.” (Showing that Bob is angry as well as attributing the statement to him.)

“I can’t lend you any money.” Mavis flung her mink stole across a Chippendale chair, barely missing the Ming vase on the stand next to it. “I’ll be going to the poor house soon, myself.” (Showing that Mavis lives a life contrary to her words.)—Okay, that one is probably over the top, but you get the picture.

The action must fit, however. Characters can only drink so many cups of coffee during a five-minute conversation, and even one may be too many. I’m guilty of this, but at least I know it. Some writers seem to think that any action is fine as long as the speaker is doing it. For example:

Tom buttered his toast. “I got fired from my job yesterday.”

If the only reason for inserting an action is to identify the speaker, it will sound contrived. Find another way to show who is speaking.

Using Names

The use of names in dialogue can identify the speaker by process of elimination. If John and Mary meet on the street, which character is talking here?

“How did the meeting go, John?”

Obviously, Mary must be speaking. But this technique can be misused, too. In real life, we seldom say another person’s name when talking directly to them. Once she had John’s attention, Mary would simply ask, “How did the meeting go?” So don’t use the name of the person being addressed unless it sounds natural.

Two-People Conversations

If you have only two people in a conversation, you may not need attributions once you have identified the first speaker. Consider this:

Mary took Dan’s coat and hung it in the closet. “How was your day?”

“Boring, as usual. I wish I could quit, but we need the money.”

“Well, dinner should cheer you up. I made your favorite meal.”

“Spaghetti?”

“Yes.”

This conversation is as boring as Dan’s job, but at least the reader can follow it. If it went on for any longer, however, we would need an occasional attribution to remind readers who is speaking. Action works well for attribution here because it also adds more life to the scene. (In this particular example, you might also want to ask whether you need the conversation at all, but it gets my point across.)

Unique Voices

Sometimes you can tell who is speaking just by how they speak or what they say. Teenagers talk differently than their parents, so in a three-way conversation you may only need to include attributions for the parents. Or if Karl has recently emigrated from Germany, we know that he is the one talking when we hear this:

“I can the question not answer.”

No attribution is necessary.

Dialogue Tags

Although writers should avoid dialogue tags when we can, sometimes we do need them. Even so, they shouldn’t be too obvious. “Karen articulated,” “David exclaimed,” and “she cautioned” all make the reader stumble over the story. With rare exceptions, stick to “said” and “asked,” which tend to disappear on the page.

The rare exception I recognize is where a particular dialogue tag is the most effective way of conveying a message, such as using “she whispered” to show that the character doesn’t want to be heard. Even so, it is better to have your character simply gasp than to have her gasp out her words. And if your character is lying, let the reader figure it out from the context rather than using “she lied” as a dialogue tag.

Experiment with different ways to attribute dialogue to your characters. But if nothing else feels natural, there is nothing wrong with “said” and “asked.” Even the best writers use those words at times.

Just count them up.

Reading Out Loud

 

Over the years, I’ve heard many authors claim that writers should read every manuscript out loud. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the need to follow that advice.

Not until recently.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m a fanatical supporter of the Oxford comma. Other than that, however, my style is to use commas only where a speaker would naturally pause or when necessary to avoid confusion. That natural pause is easier to hear when the words are read out loud.

What really convinced me, however, was reading my material at the Highland Writers Group’s critique meetings (currently held via Zoom). As I read to the group, I notice passages that don’t sound quite right and nuances I didn’t pick up on when reading the manuscript in my head.

I can’t just rely on reading a manuscript to my critique group, however. Although that helps, they don’t hear the final draft. And I am only reading part of my current manuscript. So I still need to read it out loud before doing the final polish and sending it to my copy editor.

Cliché as it may be, sometimes even old dogs can learn new tricks.

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The image at the head of the page is one of the original illustrations from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. According to the credits in the book, it was “designed by Frank T. Merrill, drawn, engraved, and printed under the supervision of George T. Andrew.” The drawing is in the public domain because of its age.

The Oxford Comma: A Matter of Clarity

 

I’ve been preparing a manuscript for editing, and it has gotten me thinking about commas. Normally, I only use them where a speaker would naturally pause or when necessary to avoid confusion.

But I’m a fanatical supporter of the Oxford comma.

For those of you who don’t know what the Oxford comma is, it’s the comma that comes before the conjunction that introduces the last item or phrase in a series. For example, this sentence uses an Oxford comma: The American flag is red, white, and blue. This one doesn’t: The American flag is red, white and blue. It’s called the Oxford comma because Oxford University’s stylebook says to put it in. (It’s also called the Harvard comma, for a similar reason, or the serial comma.)

Technically, the Oxford comma is optional. But it grates on me when it is left out. So why do I believe it is so important?

The first rule of writing is clarity, and there are many times when a sentence is clear without the Oxford comma. “The American flag is red, white and blue” is an example. On the other hand, it is easy to write a sentence where the absence of the Oxford comma creates ambiguity. If that’s intentional, fine, but it usually isn’t.

Consider the sentences in the graphic at the head of this post. “Betty went camping with her sisters, Debbie and Carol” could mean that there were at least five people on the camping trip: Betty, two or more of her sisters, Debbie, and Carol. Or it could mean that there were three people: Betty and her two sisters, whose names are Debbie and Carol. If you consistently use the Oxford comma, the reader will know which you mean.

Of course, it is possible to rearrange the sentence to clarify its meaning without using the Oxford comma. If there were five people on the camping trip, you can say,” Betty went camping with Debbie, Carol and Betty’s sisters. But why go to the trouble of rearranging the sentence if you can clarify it by simply adding that last comma?

Or consider this sentence: “My favorite ice cream flavors are caramel, white chocolate and orange and cream.” The use of the extra “and” indicates that one of the flavors has two parts to its name, but is it white chocolate and orange or orange and cream? The use of the Oxford comma clarifies the sentence, making clear that the flavors are either “caramel, white chocolate and orange, and cream” or “caramel, white chocolate, and orange and cream.”

Then there’s the third example. “Still half asleep, Jeff got dressed, made toast and put on deodorant.” Did Jeff put the deodorant on himself or the toast? Grammatically, there is only one way to read the sentence since there wouldn’t be any reason to put a comma after “dressed” unless it were a series of three phrases. So, read correctly, the sentence means that Jeff put the deodorant on himself. But someone who is reading quickly might miss that nicety and read the last two items in the series as one. After all, who knows what Jeff might do when he is half asleep? An Oxford comma before the last phrase in the series slows the reader down and makes the meaning clear.

Although clarity is the first rule of writing, consistency is also important, especially since knowing how someone writes helps the reader find clarity in the writer’s sentences. And because there are times when I need the Oxford comma for clarity, I choose to use it all the time for consistency.

Still, the Oxford comma is technically optional. If you choose not to use it, I won’t unfriend you.

But I will let you know when your sentences are unclear.

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This is a revision of a January 12, 2015 post.