Dialogue tags and verbs.

This is kind of a follow up post to my Commas and Dialogue post back in September 2014, although now I want to focus less on punctuation and more on diction, or word choice. We've all had the seventh grade English teacher who hands out a list of verbs we should use instead of go, walk, eat, etc. Maybe this is an editor thing, but I get a real thrill when I find just the right word to describe the situation: I didn't just run through the rainy woods, I slogged through them. Yes, I did eat on Thanksgiving, but how much more descriptive (and accurate, unfortunately) if I use the word "gorged."

The idea behind careful diction is not to sound intelligent or to change up what words you use, but rather to communicate what is happening to the reader more precisely. Interestingly, in dialogue, it may be better to not use a dialogue tag ("said so-and-so"), and when one is needed, use said or asked 90% of the time. But how, you may ask, can you tell the reader that your character is distraught or scared or ecstatic? And won't readers get tired of said, asked, and replied? Two words: body language.

“Are you serious?” The first man huffed impatiently.
No dialogue tag, but the reader clearly knows the first man said this, and he isn't happy. Notice the contrast with the next sentence.

“Are you serious?” Ms. Williams bent down and examined Nora's small, determined face.
Same dialogue, totally different feel. Now there is a concerned teacher trying to gauge a child's attitude.

In certain situations, it may be useful to use other dialogue verbs to communicate a scene, like shouted or muttered. But instead of right-clicking "said" and seeing what synonyms come up, consider leaving it, or taking out the dialogue tag altogether and adding in something else that the character who is speaking is doing, like raising his eyebrows or pouting or grinning.

And with that, she smiled at her reflection in the computer screen. "Job well done." She clicked the publish button and shared her post with her eight followers.

Up and coming.

I know it's been a while--life happens, am I right? I just wanted to mention some things I'm working on.

1) Enrico and I continue to work on his manuscript in tobacco and coffee shops. Very rewarding to work so closely with an author! I've been charged with researching presses to which we can submit the completed manuscript, so I'm looking forward to (and feel a little apprehensive about) that.

2) My laptop of six years just went kaput, complete with flickering screen and the smell of burning electronics. Now that I've put my massive 8 lb companion to rest, I get to research a lightweight, more portable option that will be easy on my editing eyes. Until we find a good deal, I get to use Brian's old laptop! Yay.

3) I've been feeling like my editing has plateaued lately--I'm not getting any worse, but I'm not getting any better. Certainly I am reminded of certain rules as I research them for my Zharmae books, but I want something a little more structured. I'm thinking an online class. This might not happen until we get to Portugal, but I'll be researching freelance and editing online classes, as well as books that will help improve my editing. I'll probably go back to my college book lists for those :)

4) Waiting to hear back on the results of a copy edit test I took for Lachesis, a press similar to Zharmae except way more established that will *hopefully* pay regularly. Fingers crossed.

Life is good, folks! Upcoming blog posts: transitions in dialogue, changing narrators (or points of view), and character development.

Ellipses...

   The past weeks have been full of editing! There was recently a change up in the managing editors at one of the presses I freelance for, and my goodness, I've edited four books in the last six weeks, in addition to working with my good friend Enrico on his manuscript! It's good to be busy.
   I'm not sure if a certain manuscript that has a repeated flaw makes me oversensitive, but I have a new editing pet peeve that I see everywhere: ellipses.
   Ellipses indicate something that is missing in writing. I remember learning about how to use them in quoted material: if you don't want to include a complete quote, use an ellipsis to indicate where you left words out. (That should not be done to change the meaning of the quote, of course.) However, despite not editing any technical or nonfiction lately, two genres more prone to having cited quotations that could include ellipses, I have been over run with ellipses.
   The following examples are in the first chapter of a book I recently edited (which was a really fantastic read).

  

The dragon-like jaws ripping into the car…the jaws of life…Amy! 

 But because it was wrong. It looked…hollow. Hungry.  

 Something familiar…Dark wooden beams divided the plaster of the low sloping ceiling on one side.   

 If I could just shake the feeling of, well, doom sounded a bit melodramatic but…

Breathe.

The abrupt silence is worse than screaming. I hang upside down…my arm dangles, useless…thoughts, slow and stupid. Smell of hot metal and burnt rubber. Metal taste on tongue. I start to turn…

   Chicago and I have a slight difference in opinion about ellipses in fiction. Chicago accepts ellipses (or suspension points, as they call them) in dialogue to indicate faltering or interrupted speech (13.39). This is physically painful for me to read, and this is coming from a girl who likes obeying rules (grammar rules and otherwise). But I feel like I have a good reason: ellipses in fiction do not communicate anything other than a pause. That's it. A reader sees an ellipses and they understand it as a pause in whatever was happening, whether it be speech, thought, or action.
   But writers! You can do so much better! That pause could be occurring for a million and a half reasons! Is your character out of breath and panting out an answer to questions? Or perhaps the character is thoughtful and is carefully choosing words. Maybe the character is boldly emphasizing his words, slowly and distinctly saying each one for a large crowd to hear. Is it a slight hitch in the conversation or a long, awkward pause? I challenge writers to bypass ellipses in favor of strong, intentional writing that communicates what a character is doing, thinking, feeling, instead of just pausing.
   I'll just leave you with my comment to the author on one more excerpt from the same manuscript as above. It's a good example of what can be done when you replace ellipses with character development.

Amy smiled back, almost reassured. “It looks cozy in here.” She gave my room a critical once over. “I thought with this dark little attic…and dad is so unreasonable…but it feels like home.”[OS1] 

---

 [OS1]Is she saying the first two phrases to herself, quieter? And then the last more loudly to reassure herself and Em that this is a good place for her? This is an example of when the reader may be confused by the ellipses--they don't communicate how Amy is talking, just that she pauses occasionally. Think about rewriting this part to communicate how Amy is saying this line.

My newest project.

     As I hesitantly pushed on the door’s curved wooden handle, a front of warm air deliciously curled around my face—a stark contrast to the zero degree dry air of that early Saturday morning. I glanced back at the man in the car, unsure of what this Enrico character I was supposed to be meeting looked like. When the car-man didn’t look back, I stepped resolutely into the first tobacco shop I’d ever set foot in.

     The Leaf and Bean in the Strip District, with it's rough red lettering announcing it's location, is constructed of dark wood and decorated haphazardly. A dead streetlight hangs from the ceiling near the entrance, ignoring the gently swaying disco ball a few feet behind it. Across from a semi-oval bar protruding from the left wall is a white door with nine glass panes that leads to their outdoor area. A small indoor roof as been constructed over the door, complete with brightly painted wooden pillars to hold it up. The well-used tables and mismatched chairs have come from as many sets as there are pieces of furniture. But it’s dark and warm and smells significantly less of smoke than I’d expected.

     Turning at the sound of the door is an older gentleman with a long, handknit red scarf drooped around his argyle-sweatered shoulders. His white mustache is stained light brown near his mouth from what I can only assume is too many evenings (and apparently mornings) at the Leaf and Bean. His rectangle glasses have almost no rim and are studded with tiny diamonds over the bridge of his nose and at the far corners of his eyes. This is Enrico.

     I want to say he’s the classic Italian with his hospitable insistence that I smoke a cigar, have an espresso, or at the very least let him buy me some orange juice. I finally accept the juice. Truth is, though, I don’t know any Italians, so I’m not sure if Enrico fits the stereotypes or not. He certainly likes his coffee and cigars, the latter of which remind me of sturdy dead leaves that have been rolled into a cigar shape and produce an alarming amount of thick, white smoke. He smokes three of them over the next two hours as we labor through the manuscript he’s written over the past four years—on his phone. There are no discernible paragraphs and lines don't reach across even quarter of the page, making sentences look more like stanzas in a poem, but there is a clear organization, and I get very excited thinking about turning this into a beautiful manuscript that we can both feel proud of. Occasionally our language barrier prevents clear communication on some of the finer points of grammar, but eventually we come to a consensus on most points.

     We get through the first chapter, and he pleads with me to keep his work a secret. I assure him that I make it a point to not discuss unpublished manuscripts that I've edited, and I will honor that commitment here to the strictest degree. He holds his work so close—“I’m very jealous,” he says—that instead of emailing me what he has (all 200+ pages), we will meet every Saturday and work through the complexities of his work until it is completed.

     And with that, here’s to a new editing journey, tobacco shops and all. Clink.

How much is too much?

The warm flow of fraternal affection cascading across the table between the two couples was obvious to see, and the Saturday evening dinner at Tassey’s Pier was coming to an end. Dr. Mike Hodges and Dr. Ronny Noble, both surgeons, had met in astronaut training. Both men had made the cut as medical officers to train to fly in America’s first interstellar spaceship, The Galactic Explorer. Ronny was scheduled for the maiden voyage and Mike the second.  While in training, Ronny had married his fellow astronaut, Janet Wilson. The pair would not be the first husband and wife team in space, but they would be the first husband and wife crewmembers in interstellar space.
At a natural lull in the conversation, Mike’s wife, Leigh Anne, raised her wine glass, still half full with a Piesporter Riesling, and announced, “An after dinner toast to Mr. and Mrs. Astronaut. Or, should I say to Dr. and Dr. Noble? Nonetheless, congratulations, you two.”
Ronny and Janet lifted their wine glasses, both nodded their appreciation of their friend’s accolades and each said, “Thank you.”
Mike raised his wine glass full of water to add to the toast—he was the designated driver for the evening. “A toast to the first husband and wife astronaut team to fly in the Galactic Explorer.”
Again, Ronny and Janet each issued a “Thank you.”
Janet quickly changed the subject and asked, “Mike, how did you ever find this place?”

---

Above is an excerpt from a manuscript I just finished editing. It's the beginning of the second chapter, so you know about as much as I do about the characters and storyline at this point. How would you go about editing it?

More than with any other manuscript, I wanted to rewrite every sentence. The author had an interesting story line (think Interstellar meets Gravity) but it was hard for the reader to get invested when the dialogue felt awkward and the characters seemed superficial. Normally, if a sentence seems awkward to me, I highlite it and make a comment saying why it sounds awkward and providing a rewrite option. For this manuscript, I would have wanted to highlite every sentence. I ended up with 142 comments in 400 pages, many of which were me telling the author of an over arching problem that I would proceed to correct throughout the manuscript instead of commenting and telling him to correct it. It was a long, arduous process--the first fifty pages took me six hours, an unfortunate new record. 

As a result, a lot of the manuscript looks like this:

As I was typing up a summary of my edits for the managing editor of the press, I felt awful for the author who was about to get this manuscript of his hard work just ripped apart! I tried to be patient in my explanations and gentle in my edits, but I also want this author to be successful and to publish the best book he can! That might involve learning how to transition from calm to excited in dialogue using written body language, and not repeating information that the other characters already know.  So I just did it for him...

At the end of the day, I substantively edited the manuscript and copy edited the manuscript. It really shouldn't have come to me in the state it was in; it needed a broader look first and then I could go in and be nit-picky about commas and capitalization. But I cringe scrolling through it and seeing red everywhere. Of course the author can delete my changes, but I don't want to be the editor who changes everything to sound good in her own head. I love the voice of the author and one of my biggest goals as an author is to preserve that voice as I edit.

 What do you think--did I overstep my bounds as an editor? Should I have let the author rewrite the problem areas, guided just by my comments?

Ethical dilemmas.

It's been way too long, which means I'm not doing so well at keeping one of my resolutions to blog once a week. In my defense, I haven't had any editing work--it's much easier to write about editing when I am currently editing!

Then last week I received a manuscript that was a whopping 487 pages, but the last few books I had edited for this press had been really good, and I hadn't edited for over a month, so I was excited to start. The excitement quickly faded as I realized I might need to return the manuscript unfinished. It wasn't the timeline--I had to edit 500 pages in ten days, meaning two read-throughs, meaning about 100 pages a day, which is at least three hours a day on top of my full-time job. I don't like to edit that fast because I don't feel I do my best work, but I can do it every once in awhile. No, the timeline wasn't the problem; it was the content. It was like the author had thought of every cruel, violent, tortuous possibility and made it a reality to a small town in the South. I got through a couple hundred pages, most of which was setting up the normal life of the town and the family of protagonists, and then it started getting bloodier and bloodier, and I found myself reading a page and then watching a lighthearted YouTube video to distract and soothe myself. I felt extremely uncomfortable, to the point I dreaded even thinking about editing (red flag!).

So what do I do? I'm a lowly copy editor only kept on by how well and fast I edit--my job is on the line. By returning the manuscript five days into the ten day timeline, I'm slowing the process for the book's publication. On the other hand, I cannot read the manuscript! I wouldn't be able to edit very well when I only skim the words, trying not to think about them.

Returning the manuscript to the managing editor was a huge relief. I haven't heard back from her yet about her reaction to me returning it early and unfinished, but regardless of the outcome, I know it was the right decision.

While you wouldn't normally think of copy editors facing ethical dilemmas, they totally do! Each editor has to decide for himself or herself what is and is not acceptable to edit. Some editors may feel comfortable with everything. If I could have my pick, I would always edit child or young adult fiction because it's much more likely to be clean (morally, not gramatically). Decide now where your line is so that when your new managing editor gives you a manuscript, you will be able to tell very quickly if you'll be able to do your best work.

I love editing, but I wouldn't love it if I felt obligated to edit everything sent to me. Respect yourself as an editor and only edit what you feel comfortable with. Editing will be much more enjoyable if you do.

Capitalizing military titles.

I'm a big advocate of lifelong learning, and I love how even editing fiction books can teach me about topics outside my day-to-day scope of experiences. I've recently edited several books that either detail military ops or include the military in some way, and acknowledging my ignorance, I've had to do some research. Spending the time to research as an editor increased my respect for authors who have to do their own extensive research to make sure what they're writing is credible.

The rule I want to introduce involves when to capitalize ranks in the military. There are three instances when rank is used: to replace a name, article/adjective/pronoun+rank to replace a name, and as a title before someone's name. Examples:

To replace a name: Let's say Tom is a lieutenant. "Come here, Tom" would more likely be written as "Come here, Lieutenant." Similar to how Mother and Father are capitalized when they replace the parents' names, if the title is used in place of the soldier's name, it is capitalized. This happens most often in dialogue.

art/adj/pro+rank replace a name: Tom is still a lieutenant. If the text reads "Tom gathered firewood as commanded," it could also read, "The lieutenant gathered firewood as commanded." Because the article the is present, lieutenant is not capitalized. It would make no sense to read, "The Tom gathered firewood." The presence of an article, adjective, pronoun--anything that introduces a noun--means that the rank is not capitalized regardless of the situation: a captain, those sergeants, angry generals.

As a title: This is probably the most intuitive. Although there are exceptions, if a title precedes someone's name, it is capitalized: Lieutenant Tom, General Stonewall, Commander-in-Chief Obama.

These rules aren't that complicated, but because ranks aren't always either capitalized or not, it's easy to mix up when I'm in the middle of editing. I'm already looking out for punctuation and spelling and sentence flow; it's hard to add in how a rank is being used in order to determine if it needs to be capitalized. Often I'll be twenty pages (or more) into a book and I'll realize that the author is always capitalizing ranks, and I'll have to go back and change it. Often I'll ctrl+f each rank mentioned in the manuscript and just make sure I've capitalized them correctly according to context.

The following excerpt is pulled from a manuscript I edited about two brothers--twins--who are fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War. Sel is fighting for the North and he is just meeting his commanding officer. This was the passage when I realized I hadn't been paying attention to rank capitalization.

“Did they tell you anything about this assignment, Private Danner?” called the lieutenant over the clatter of hooves on cobblestones. There had been no snow in Baltimore as there had been in Frederick and Washington.

“No, sir,” replied Sel.

“Well, Private, you are qualified for this mission due to one important accomplishment.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“You were born in Frederick.”

“It’s good to know I’ve done something worthwhile,” said Sel. He could feel Lieutenant Dorsey watch him as they rode toward the outskirts of the city.

The rank capitalization rules I've outlined here apply in many capitalization instances. Think about it!