Picking the Perfect Thoughts to Italicize

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Italicized thoughts can be a powerful tool to draw attention to what a character is thinking, but it's easy to over do it.

Before I dive in, I'm guest posting over at Writers in the Storm today, with Writing from Within: Crafting Internal Narratives. Which ties in well with today's post on formatting internal thoughts. Come on over when you're done here and check it out.

Italicized thoughts are one of those things you either like or can't stand. Some writers love them (I'm in that camp), and others don't use them at all. Like so many things in writing, there is no hard and fast rule here, because personal taste plays a role. 

A general guideline for italics in all forms is to use them sparingly. If you emphasize everything, then nothing stands out anymore. They're an accent, a spotlight.

I've found italics work best when you want to draw attention to a particular thought, but they're also useful when you want to show an internal thought directly "heard" from the character rather than a line in the narrative.

Let's take a look at some options. 

The Importance of Commas, Meter, and Reading Aloud for the Fiction Writer

By Dario Ciriello, @Dario_Ciriello 

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: How your writing sounds is just as important as how it reads. Dario Ciriello discusses how rhythm and meter work to create memorable writing.

I recently completed an edit for a client, Cordia Pearson¹, whom I’d gently persuaded to let me introduce Oxford commas into her list phrases. The reasoning for this is that using the Oxford (aka serial) comma never does any harm, and can prevent serious confusion. Consider the sentence,

My parents, Jesus, and Lady Gaga taught me all I know.

If you remove the serial comma after Jesus, the meaning changes, and not for the better.

How to Punctuate Dialogue

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

How we punctuate dialogue tells our readers how to read that dialogue. We can show pauses, questions, interruptions, who’s speaking and how they’re doing it. It’s a useful tool for telling our stories.

If it’s been a while since you were in a classroom, or you’re new to writing and still figuring out the rules of dialogue, let’s look at some common questions for punctuating dialogue in a story.

6 Common Punctuation Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

By Laurisa White Reyes, @lwreyes

Part of the Indie Authors Series

Good punctuation skills are vital to writers no matter which publishing path they take, but are especially so for those traveling the indie path. Indie authors don't have the benefit of a stable of copy editors and proofreaders and must ensure their novels are in tip-top shape all on their own. First-timers to self publishing (and those with tight budgets) can't always afford a proofreader or editor to review their manuscripts, so it's up to them to get it to a professional level on their own. Please help me welcome Laurisa White Reyes to the lecture hall today, to help us with some pesky punctuation rules.

Laurisa holds a Master’s degree in English, is the Senior Editor at Skyrocket Press, and is the Editor-in-Chief of Middle Shelf Magazine. She is also the author of several fiction and non-fiction books, including The Celestine Chronicles and The Crystal Keeper series, The Storytellers, and Teaching Kids to Write Well: 6 Secrets Every Grown-Up Should Know. Her debut young adult novel, Contact, is set to be released in 2016 with Evernight Teen Publishing.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Indie Bound

Take it away Laurisa...

Unnatural Pairings—Avoiding Comma Splices

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

When we’re writing and the words are flowing, it’s not uncommon to start smooshing sentences together that don’t actually go together. In our heads we pause, but not stop, so it feels like a comma belongs in that space.

And then we end up with a comma splice.

As you can probably guess from that intro, a comma splice is when we have two independent clauses or complete sentences separated by a comma that shouldn’t be there. This leads to awkward and run-on sentences, and drives poor copy editors crazy.

Making an Em Dash for it: How Do You Actually Use Them?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There's nothing like a dramatic pause to crank up the tension or surprise a reader, and there's nothing better to do that with than an em dash.

What the heck is an em dash you might ask?

It's that extra long dash that sets off a particular phrase in a sentence. It gets its name because it's the width of your standard M. (two regular hyphens) The em dash functions like a comma, colon or semi-colon, and in many cases these elements can be interchangeable. There are all kinds of grammatical rules, but let's focus on the fictional uses today.

How to Make An (Exclamation) Point

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

OMG!!! You can't ever use exclamation points!!! Ever!!!

Exclamation points are a troublesome beast. Like adverbs, we get lots of advice to cut them out of our books. But like so many nevers, it's more about proper usage than the exclamation point itself. They do have uses and are valuable tools to show emphasis. But too many become visually distracting. If readers are yanked away from the story by punctuation, that's a problem.

She was so lost! She couldn't believe how stupid she was, leaving her compass in the tent! What an idiot! A total idiot! Arrgghhh!

Multiple exclamation points like this dilute the exclamation. Did you keep reading the sentences as exclamations, or did you just read them all the same intensity after the first few? If everything being said is exclaimed--and thus emphasized--then nothing stands out. If nothing stands out, what's the point of the exclamation point in the first place? Periods would achieve the same result.