Writers of short fiction may want to look into a notable online magazine, Narrative.
Category Archives: Writing
And you may “quote” me
Quotation marks, like pretty much every element of punctuation and orthography, are a subject of much contention and fun-poking nowadays. (There’s even a blog devoted to unnecessary Q.M.s.)
When I became the editor of the Journal of the Georg Sverdrup Society, it was patiently explained to me by our president (who is an educator) that I’d been using quotation marks wrong all these years. I’d been putting closing quotation marks before punctuation marks in the case of partial quotations—for instance:
He used to talk about pancakes, which he called “flapjacks”.
That just seemed right to me. And our president told me that would actually work in England, but not in America. In America we write:
He used to talk about pancakes, which he called “flapjacks.”
The English also indicate “quotes within quotes” (were those unnecessary quotation marks? Suddenly I’m all insecure about it) differently. In America, we start with double quotes and then switch to single quotes, while in England, it’s the opposite. Thus:
American: John said, “My father used to say, ‘Never trust anybody from Chattanooga.’”
English: John said, ‘My father used to say, “Never listen to anyone from Minneapolis.”’
Some countries don’t even use quotation marks. In French (at least when I studied it in college) they indicated quotations with a tilde at the beginning of the sentence.
Il dit, ~ Je ne comprends pa.
I’ve also read some Norwegian texts that used that form, though I don’t think it’s very popular over there anymore.
And then there’s the Spanish with their upside-down exclamation points: “¡” which just weird me out. That has nothing to do with quotation marks, but I’m groping for a way to end this post, and that seems as good as any.
50 Writing Resources
Hone your writing skills with one or more of these websites. I’ve used Ask Oxford in the past, and I’ve needed help with my headlines for a long time. Do you use any of these resources? Do you dislike any of them?
My campaign of misinformation
Ori, in a customarily generous comment on my previous post, spoke of the “Edutainment” value of my Viking novels, that people learn history from them. I like to think there’s some truth in that. But it got me thinking about the historical errors that I nevertheless do promulgate in my books. A few historical errors that come to mind follow:
1. In my books, Erling’s father Skjalg dies about the year 994, very close to the beginning of the story. In real life, according to the sagas, Skjalg was killed in a slave rebellion while Erling was still a young boy. How I got it wrong: This particular part of Erling’s story is not found in Heimskringla, my primary source. It comes from a reference in another saga, which I’d never heard of when I wrote Erling’s Word. I covered my tracks in The Year of the Warrior by referring to the slave rebellion, but having Skjalg survive it.
2. The traditional dates for King Olaf Trygvesson’s reign are 995 to 1000 A.D. But if you read The Year of the Warrior and pay close attention, you’ll see that only four years are reported, rather than five. How I got it wrong: I had no use for another year, so I ignored it. This is the sort of thing you can get away with in a novel, most of the time.
3. Erling tells Father Aillil that, although his father was a heathen, he himself was converted to Christianity after a raid in Ireland. In fact, historians believe that Jaeder (Erling’s original area of influence) was Christianized as far back as the reign of Haakon the Good. Heathen graves in the area disappear around that time, according to archaeologists. In all likelihood, the real Skjalg was a Christian. How I got it wrong: This was something else I didn’t learn until Erling’s Word had been published. I paper it over by mentioning that Christianity has become popular in Jaeder, and the heathen are feeling threatened. And frankly, it’s more dramatic to make Erling a rebel against his father’s religion. I might have chosen to do it that way even if I had known.
4. I speak of King Harald Finehair and his family as coming from eastern Norway, and of Olaf Trygvesson as being Harald’s descendent. Both those contentions are based on Heimskringla, and both are questioned by historians today. Historians from western Norway have been fighting hard in the last few years for the idea that Harald (traditionally the first king of a united Norway) came from the west, and that later saga writers, in order to legitimize the reigning dynasty, made him an easterner. (Apparently they’ve been having trouble with that, though, and a compromise is being hammered out.) It does seem clear that Olaf Trygvesson (and the later St. Olaf Haraldsson) were not descendants of Harald. How I got it wrong: Again, I didn’t know about these things when I wrote. But you know, I’m dealing with a national epic here. Trying to be too meticulous wouldn’t buy me much. And ten years down the road, historians will probably have changed their minds again anyway.
Listening In Without Asking for Repetition
Loren Eaton points out a writing exercise suggested by N.D. Wilson, whose blog I’m going to add to the sidebar. “Go to a public place (restaurant, bus-stop, coffee-shop, etc.). Take a notebook. Sit somewhere that gives your ears full auditory range. Listen. Attempt to copy down whatever dialog drifts your way. . . .”
Loren’s real name, by the way, is Nerol Notae (the final letter of both names being silent). Yes, he’s that Nerol Notae! He cleverly disguised it by writing it backwards so he could blog in relative obscurity, but we have found him out. From now on, the famous Nerol Notae will not be able to hide his blog from his many off-Broadway fans, his Fifth Avenue fans, his Champs-Élysées fans, etc. The world had to know sometime, Nerol. Thanks for the fish.
When I’m a celebrity, I won’t forget the little people, however contemptible they may be
What a day it’s been in blogdom!
First, the immortal Hunter Baker (author of the soon-to-be-released The End of Secularism), plugs West Oversea over at Mere Comments.
Then “Mike” at Threedonia (one of the best blogs in the world for sheer fun) posted about Hunter Baker’s post.
If we can just keep this momentum going, I’ll soon be hobnobbing with Jonah Goldberg and refusing to return Ann Coulter’s calls.
(Just a joke, Ann. Call me anytime.)
The June Smithsonian includes a light piece entitled “Words to Remember,” by Miles Corwin, about Amanda McKittrick Ros, generally considered the worst novelist in history.
If I didn’t recall, from C. S. Lewis’ Collected Letters, that he and the other Inklings used to wile away the evenings reading passages from Ros’s novels, to see how long they could last before breaking up in laughter, I’d be tempted to suspect her whole story was a hoax.
What price prose like this:
“Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”
Sure, it’s bad. But is it really worse than Dan Brown?
I’m working on my new linen Viking tunic. Cut it out last night. Tonight I think I’ll tackle the neck hole, always one of the trickiest parts of a tunic.
There’s nothing intrinsically unmasculine about sewing (he insisted, his face nevertheless revealing his profound shame and ambivalence). A sewing project is essentially an engineering job. There’s lots of measuring and fitting stuff together, with (one hopes) the solid satisfaction of a well-constructed product at the end of the process.
I think the problem is that clothes just don’t matter as much to guys as they do to women.
Reenactors are different, though. We compare our trousseaus like debutantes.
In a manly, virile way, of course.
Ignoring the Truths of the Past
Andrée Seu writes about laodicean and other curious words.
What Does a Publishable Author Need?
That is, what does an unpublished writer need to know or do to become a published author. In this post, the writer says a variety of important things which he contradicts later in the post, specifically how writers should do their homework before thinking they are good for anything–more or less.
The Warren Adler Short Story Contest
The Warren Adler contest is taking short stories now through July 13. This year’s theme is “Short Fiction in Varied Genres” and there’s a $15 admission fee.
How now, Dan Brown?
Patrick O’Hannigan, over at The Paragraph Farmer, discusses an interesting post from Language Log on the (apparently inexhaustible) topic of what a really lousy writer Dan Brown is.
It occurs to me to wonder—why would so many people want to buy and read books written so amateurishly? Granted, the average reader can’t explain the differences between good style and bad, but (within certain limits) every reader can tell a well-written book from a badly written one, because badly written books are—by definition—hard to read. That’s really the heart of good writing—putting down words that convey the author’s exact thoughts in the most efficient, evocative way. If Brown is as bad as they say (I’ve never read any of his books myself), I assume he must be rather heavy going. And yet millions of readers soldier on to the ends of his works. Continue reading How now, Dan Brown?