Hello!

Grammar. Huh-

If you haven’t read ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ by Lynn Truss – you really should. I didn’t think I would find myself laughing out loud at a grammar book, but I did.

I find that without any formal training I am having to do a lot of digging on my own. My big grammar issue now is punctuation for dialogue. Technical writing courses (the classes I took) do not involve a lot of witty banter.

I think my problem with punctuation is that when I read, everything disappears except the story. Even when I was trying to look specifically at different books to see the punctuation I would get caught up in reading and miss how it was being punctuated.

Like this gem- when your quotation goes on for more than one paragraph – you don’t place quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph (which I knew), but you do place quotation marks at the beginning of the next paragraph to indicate that the quotation continues. I had no idea.  I think I noticed it one time and just thought that someone had dropped a quotation mark.

Sad how one can be very educated in one field and completely ignorant in another. I’ve got a road ahead of me.

Time to go edit dialogue.  What is your worst grammar stumbling block?

I’ve been thinking a lot about believable character motivations and emotions lately. I read a book recently that reinforced what I had been working on in my own writing.

It was a fun book- really cute idea and character voice. My issue was this: there was a really cute boy that the main character (MC) was drawn to. Problem = he was a jerk. Not just a ‘one time, maybe he was having a bad day’ kind of jerk but a serious jerk. -Including a humiliating bet-

But of course, within the space of a few pages he went from ‘Hot Jerk’  to ‘Hot Boyfriend’. Whaaat?

I didn’t buy it (or the step-sister’s turn-around) and the rest of the book I was in disbelief. I didn’t understand her motivation to trust him. I didn’t feel like she reacted like a real person.

In my own writing I had run into something similar. My MC was thrust into a situation completly different from everything she knew. Now I knew she was safe, and I knew the people who were there were nice so I had her responding slightly suspicious but accepting the explanations easily.

The editor that looked at it asked me a question that changed my approach. “Is this how a seventeen-year old girl would really react in this situtation?”

Woah. She didn’t know she was safe. That requires a different reaction entirely. Now it rings more true as a ‘real’ emotional response. The funny thing was, that as soon as I saw the question I realized if it had been someone else’s book I would of totaly responded with a ‘No way she would be doing that!’.

So, now for a question. How do we make sure that our character’s emotions and motivations are realistic? And if they aren’t what you would think of as the ‘normal’ response, how do we set it up so that is is believable to a reader?

I changed my ending.

I was never really fond of the original ending. But I thought it was necessary because it was the way that my MC (male) would have responded due to his background and childhood. So it sat. And I still didn’t like it much.

I was struck as I went through the revision with a realization.  It may have been how He would have thought it should end, but not my MC (female). The first ending had her respond the way she would have at the beginning of the story, before she had gone through everything and grown.

So, my new ending is how the new She would respond.

I like it better 🙂

I had put away my story. It had been months since I even looked at it. Not that I haven’t thought about it, it is always bouncing around in my skull. I just hadn’t a chance to dive into it.  Well, yesterday I opened it up again and wrote. And wrote. For more than four hours I was lost again in my world. It was fun!  I’m excited about polishing it and moving on to the next step – an agent.

Of course, waking up this morning to get the kids to school after falling asleep at almost 3:00 in the morning – not so fun.