Hello, this is Greg Van Arsdale. First, let me thank the men and women who wrote many guest blogs for me. They were insightful and detailed—and in some cases, quite flattering. Having never written a blog myself, they showed me how simple it was set up and administer. For that, I am grateful. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did.
This blog will be less formal than its predecessors. Although I still advocate adherence to the Chicago Manual of Style whenever possible, there are times when writing fiction one needs to break the rules in order to get the point across effectively. Take, for example, two men arguing. John is the employee, Russ is his boss, and you need to convey that John is very angry. You could write something like this:
“I don’t care,” John said. “Just get off my back!”
Okay, we have a sentence that ends in an exclamation mark. That in itself should get John’s feelings across to the reader, right? The sentence is technically correct. No problem with Chicago here. However, it does lack a certain kind of punch. There’s no life to the sentence, no pizzazz. Let’s try spicing it up a little bit with some action:
“I don’t care,” John said, coming out of his chair. “Just get off my back!”
This is better. It has John doing something while he’s talking. Describing what the person does while they talk is usually a good thing. The above take is still technically accurate, but it could be better.
“I don’t care,” John said, coming out of his chair. He took a menacing step toward Russ. “Just get off my back!”
Almost there. First, you have to ask yourself what a “menacing step” is. You could go into the look on his face, veins throbbing in his neck, the glare in his eyes, and so forth. But this would detract from the tension you’re trying to build up with too much description. Long narrative descriptions are your enemy when trying to build tension. What you need are short, staccato sentences. Long sentences detract from the story. Short sentences, on the other hand, build up tension. It’s a process that goes on in the reader’s mind.
“I don’t care!” John shouted as he came out of his chair, his face flushed. He stood up to Russ. A stiff finger to the chest punctuated each word. “Just. Get. Off. My. Back.”
Now we have introduced inflection into John’s voice without having to clutter the sentence with excessive narrative. The above paragraph is wrong at many points, but it’s the right way to write it. Other ways are just as good. Experiment. More importantly, read! You should read at least five times as many books as you write. Not only does this give fresh perspective on how other authors approach the situation, it lets you know how free you can be. You don’t have to be chained to the Chicago Manual of Style. Use it, to be sure for it is the industry standard. But you don’t have to be limited by it. Explore your boundaries. When you write, write to please yourself. You are your own audience. Don’t try to copy another person’s style. Create your own style, your own way of doing things.
Dare to be rare, my friends. Dare to be rare.