You’re a mystic who runs a shop full of mysterious artifacts and potions and you’re sick of uninformed middle-aged suburban moms asking for energy crystals and herbal weight-loss mixtures while throwing around made-up terms.
When a middle-aged woman rolled into my shop and told me she
was looking for ichor, I didn’t think much of it at first.
You get all kinds in a shop like mine, and doubly so when
you put up the right signs on your door.
The signs that let certain kinds of people know they’re welcome, not
just the collectors or the curious or the new age mystics, looking for this
root or that crystal or wanting to gawk at a jar of old bones, but the less
innocuous individuals as well. The kind
who mean business when they come looking for their… less run-of-the-mill
specialities.
Thank you so much, anon! There are tons of guides online for dialogue punctuation (try here or here for full explanations), but here’s a quick refresher:
Bob said, “If your dialogue tag—’Bob said’ in this example—comes at the beginning, it should look like this.”
“If you’re using a dialogue tag at the end, end with a comma, and don’t capitalize your dialogue tag,” Bob said.
“If you split up the quoted sentence around the tag,” Bob said, “it should be punctuated like this.”
“Unless your quote is two separate sentences,” Bob said. “In that case, there is a period after the tag.”
“You can also leave out the dialogue tag completely, if you know for sure who’s talking.”
“What about question marks?” Bob said. “Shouldn’t we capitalize the tag after a question mark or exclamation point?”
“Nope!” said Bob. “You don’t need to unless the tag is naturally capitalized (as with I or a proper noun like a name like Bob).”
“Is it Bob said or said Bob?” asked Bob.
“It can be either,” Bob said, “but we don’t use ‘said she’ or ‘said I’ often anymore, so it is best to avoid those constructions with pronouns and use ‘I said’ and ‘they said’ unless you wish to sound archaic.”
Bob took a sip of coffee. “You can even include action, but as it is not a dialogue tag, put a period at the end of the action.”
“Really?” Bob leaned closer. “There are so many rules.”
I think that should cover most situations you might come across, but if you have anything specific I’m happy to help. Remember, you can always grab any fiction book off your shelves and find an example that’s a similar construction to what you’re writing. Or, just rewrite it to a construction you’re familiar with.
I see a lot of writing advice, particularly about giving characters flaws. The main advice is “everyone has flaws! make sure to give your character flaws or else it’s not realistic!” And after thinking about it… I would like to challenge this.
It essentially posits a view of human nature that there are good and bad traits, and that these traits can be neatly diagrammed into separate columns, one set of which can and should be eliminated. It tends to go along with a view that posits character development should be about scrubbing away of “flawed” traits until the character achieves more a higher level of goodness, or else the character doesn’t and falls into tragedy. This is not untrue, necessarily. There are definitely some “flaws” that are 100% bad and sometimes a good arc is about slowly losing them. However, I could call this advice incomplete.
Consider thinking about it this way. Characters have traits and often whether or not that trait is a flaw is purely circumstantial.
For instance, fairy tales I read as a child. In some, when an old beggar asked for money on the road, it was a secret test of character. The prince who gave the old man money or food would be rewarded. But in other folktales I read, the old beggar would be malevolent, and any prince who stooped to help him would be beaten, punished for letting his guard down. Now, in a story as well as in real life, either of these scenarios can occur–a stranger who asks for help can be benevolent or malevolent. So which is the flaw? Is it a “flaw” to be compassionate? or is it a “flaw” to be guarded?
Trick question–it’s purely conditional. Both traits are simultaneously a strength and a weakness. Either has an advantage, but either comes with a price as well. And whether the price is greater than the advantage depends on circumstance. The same can be said for most character traits, in fact!
An agreeable character who gets along with everyone will be pressured into agreeing with something atrocious because it’s a commonly held viewpoint. A character who’s principled and holds firm even under great pressure will take much, much longer to change their mind when they are actually in the wrong. A character who loves animals and loves to shower them with affection will get bitten if they try the same on every animal. As the circumstances change, flaws become strengths, and strengths become weaknesses. And even a trait that’s wholly virtuous, such as compassion, comes with a price and can be turned for the worst.
You don’t have to think about inserting flaws into your character. Your character, even the most perfect “Mary Sue,” is already flawed the moment you give her any traits at all. The problem with Mary Sue isn’t a lack of flaws, it’s a lack of circumstances to challenge her properly, to show her paying the natural price. Your job as an author is to create circumstances in the narrative that 1) justify why these traits exist in your character 2) show what your character gains from these traits and then 3) change the circumstances to challenge her.
Make your character pay the price for their traits, for their choices. And then, when challenged, you can make a hell of a story by showing us how they adapt, or why they stick to their guns anyway.
write a story about how you became the world’s most powerfull person… by accident.
You learn about the butterfly effect in school. The concept is interesting, but not so interesting that you don’t fall asleep partway through the movie. You hear something distantly about a butterfly beating its wings and hurricanes. You think it will never apply to you.
You know now (not then) that power comes through and from favors.
If you had known that then you would probably not have done so many.
(This is where it starts.)
One.
There is a strange creature crossing the road behind the lecture hall. You stop on your bike and frown at it. It looks a little like a turtle, but it’s limbs are longer than any turtle you’ve ever seen. It’s stretched out on the hot asphalt, long, pale limbs clawing forward towards the small stream that runs on the other side.
You hop off your bike and gently pick the creature up, hands under the belly of the shell like you learned from the internet.
Imagine your surprise when the shell slides off the creature instead, dropping a tiny woman onto the asphalt.
“Water,” she croaks, tiny eyes screwed shut. Her eyelids are the size of yours which means they’re huge on her. “Please.”
(You will not know until later what exactly please means to the fae.)
You feel yourself move through your shock. You pick her up and take her to the water’s edge. She slips under the surface, pale skin flashing like the scales of a fish, and she’s gone.
You’d wonder if your roommate slipped you something this morning if she wasn’t back a moment later, pushing a small rock into your hands.
“A boon,” she says. Her eyes are large and black, suited for her underwater world. “For a favor.” She smiles, showing teeth jagged and sharp like a piranha.
When you blink, she’s gone.
You stare at the rock in your left hand. It’s smooth and worn from years in water, an interesting swirl of granite and quartz. “I wish I knew,” you tell it.
The rock ices over so fast that you don’t have time to drop it. The frost swirls across your skin, burning you where it touches, and you watch in horror as your skin turns a mottled black and blue.
You fall to your knees from the pain and choke on a scream as the stone sinks into you, touching your bones and sending more ice through your marrow. It climbs up your arm and touches your eye, changing you vision so now that you’re see double, a strange, blue world juxtaposed next to the one you know and love.
willowfoot 