Help! Critique partners bash my use of dialect

Dear Editor-on-call,

Photo credit: Sgarton from www.morguefile.com

How do we figure out where the line is between a stylized voice/dialect vs. proper grammar? I know this is a hugely "case-by-case" basis, but I often find the pieces I write with a bit of a dialect or style get corrected by critiquers for grammar, effectively changing how the character would think.

Sincerely,
Dialectable Dilemma


Dear Di,

I suspect the subtext of your question is this: "What do you do when your critiquers are so zealous in their campaign to promote 'good writing' that they suck all the voice out of your work?"

Let's face it, reading is a subjective thing. Some people like to experience cultures beyond their own, to meet people very unlike themselves--and others don't. Any literary device you choose to use will have its fans and its detractors.

As I see it, you have a few options in this scenario.

A. You keep changing your book trying to please everyone until you hate it so much you shelve it.

Can we say neurotic need for affirmation? Nothing will make you quit writing faster than trying to be everything to everyone.

B. You ignore everything the grammar zealots say, because they obviously don't get you.

Of course, they very well might have good insights into non-dialect sections. Do you really want to lose that too?

C. You ask only those who get what you're trying to do to read and critique.

Here, you run the danger of stagnating, because these friendly folks won't push you to change and grow.

D. You provide requests for specific feedback when asking anyone to critique:
"This story contains dialect. Please highlight spots that you think aren't quite reading smoothly."

If you're getting a lot of advice that feels useless, consider how you can be more explicit about what would be useful. Every reader goes into some default mode when they aren't given instruction. For some, the default is "find a dozen nice things to say." For others, the default is "find every instance of nonstandard usage and sloppy grammar."


You can probably guess which option I favor (D, of course!). While it's a good idea to periodically reassess how healthy or dysfunctional your critique relationships are, don't be too quick to sever ties with those who seem too harsh--or give unhelpful advice. Most folks who get into critique groups do so with the intention to learn and to help. Sometimes all that's needed is a meeting session in which you establish some ground rules, then ask for specific kinds of feedback whenever you submit work to be critiqued.

If that doesn't change things, you can decide to ignore certain kinds of critique (like grammar correcting dialect), mull the crits and weigh their merits, or simply leave if the overwhelming feeling from the group is constant negativity and put-downs.

While I haven't read it myself, I've heard others recommend The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide: How to Make Revisions, Self-Edit, and Give and Receive Feedback by Becky Levine as a great resource for both new and established critique groups to function well.

And when it comes to dialect, go light. Research is essential for making it sound authentic. To that end, here are a few previous posts I've written
Swimming in the crick: delving into dialect
Howdy, 'allo, yo: five tips for researching dialect

And here are some addition helpful links on the topic:

The Uses and Abuses of Dialect
Grammar Girl: Writing Accents and Dialects
Writing Dialect: It's in the Rhythm

How have you dealt with unhelpful critiques? What's your take on dialect in fiction?
Have an Editor-on-Call question for me? Ask away!

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Dear Diary: Using a journal to brainstorm your fiction

Journaling is a kind of focused freewriting that can be useful for exploring, in a loose and free manner, either a character’s thoughts or your own.

Image: Teo Studio, www.etsy.com/shop/TeoStudio

Like the childhood diary that could be padlocked, think of journaling exercises as a “for my eyes only” prewriting. As with jots, the goal is to get ideas out as quickly as you can without judgment or revision.

Journaling is especially helpful for voice-driven writers who first need to get inside the protagonist’s head before planning any story events. It can also be a way for you to mentally process key parts of your plot. When preparing for revision, it can be a helpful way to think through what is and isn’t working in a manuscript. It’s also a great warm-up for beginning any writing session, especially if you’ve been away from the manuscript for a period.

Journaling exercises

• Journal your key characters’ important memories that shaped them most
• Journal about your key characters’ deepest fears
• Journal about your key characters’ ambitions and dreams
• Journal about your protagonist’s bucket list
• Journal your protagonist’s opinions of other characters
• Journal your antagonist’s view of the protagonist
• Journal about your protagonist from the viewpoint of another key character
• Journal a fiasco moment in your character’s voice
• Journal about a moment your character would feel empowered
• Journal about potential plot events as a character might experience them
• Journal about conflicts among characters
• Journal your protagonist’s impressions of key settings in your story
• Journal a basic arc of your story in your protagonist’s voice
• Journal your impressions of each character in your story
• Journal about scenes that are almost ready, and how you might polish them
• Journal about problem scenes and how you might repair or replace them
• Journal your hopes about this manuscript
• Journal your concerns about this manuscript

How might journaling help you keep moving forward with a project?

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Thoughts on TFIOS, suffering and change

In the lead up to a new school year beginning, I've gotten out of the blogging habit, sadly. Today I thought I'd "get back in the saddle" so to speak with a quick review of a book everyone's been talking about this summer.

Fan art from Tumblr

What surprised me most about John Green's The Fault in Our Stars is the light touch gallows humor and wry narrative voice. This book had me laughing far more often than I'd expected for an ostensibly weepy kind of story. That was a big plus.

I also loved that Green shows how living with a life threatening illness influences personality in a way that struck me as wise and insightful: the ever-present threat of death would quite reasonably make a kid into an "old soul" who tries to think big thoughts and be someone special in a very condensed lifetime. He even does a good job of showing the tremendous tedium of watching someone die.

Where I wasn't as deeply gripped was the romance part of the story. There's an extent to which Hazel is trying to protect her own heart and Gus's. But when she does decide to love, I didn't quite feel the shift as much as I'd hoped. It remained still a very intellectual kind of love.

The story's most fascinating character was, to my mind, the antagonist Peter Van Houten, a misanthropic alcoholic author whose first novel is a favorite of the teen characters. This once eloquent, wise soul has become wonderfully horrid in a way only truly broken people can be. His response to personal loss is what Hazel most fears her illness will incite in others (she once refers to herself as a grenade that will explode, leaving casualties).  Van Houten's bad behavior has surprising consequences; it incites Hazel to at last show she has developed a backbone and a strong voice in the midst of loss.

Whether Van Houten ultimately leaves behind his wallowing and changes for the better remains an open question, like the unwritten sequel to An Imperial Affliction. Van Houten either is or isn't redeemable. Hazel and Gus ignite change in him or don't. It's the kind of ending that, like suffering, exposes rather than changes one's views of human brokenness.

As a window into a very, very underrepresented minority in literature--disability and illness are pushed to the margins even more than race or poverty--I'd recommend this book. I finished with a tremendous appreciation for my health and a renewed sense that we need to do more as a culture to love those with physical differences, whether chronic or acute.

What are your thoughts about this best-seller? If you haven't picked it up, would you? What have you been reading lately?

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No stamp required: epistle brainstorming

“Epistle” is a fancy word for letter or correspondence; coming from the Greek, it means “send news.”

Epistle brainstorming is a method in which you write imagined correspondence by a character or even between characters. Since it’s imagined, you can conceive of exchanges happening slowly, as with postal-service mail or rapid-fire, as with texting or instant messaging.

Photo: SRCHEN from morguefile.com

The goal is to get characters speaking in their own voices. It’s a great warm up for dialogue. It can also help you figure out how your protagonist would think through and interpret an event so you can narrate it in your protagonist’s voice.

Epistolary exercises might also help you brainstorm back stories. Sometimes the act of telling a story to someone else can help clarify which details are most important.

You can also use epistolary brainstorming to interact directly with your characters to develop plots that feel organic and emerge from who the characters are. Imagine you, the author, are instant messaging with your character in order to ask deeper questions.

Epistolary exercises

• Write a letter describing a pivotal experience that changed a character’s life.
• Write a text exchange between the protagonist and best friend explaining a major plot turn.
• Write a text exchange in which one character tries to pump information from another.
• Write a love letter that lists the beloved’s most loved characteristics and describes the time s/he knew that affection and admiration had become something more.
• Write a text exchange in which one character tries to hide information.
• Write a letter in which a character summarizes his/her entire childhood.
• Write a letter in which a character summarizes the events that led him/her to make an important decision or life change.
• Write a letter in which a character describes his/her family to another character who has never met them.
• Write a text exchange in which you ask your character his/her reasons for taking a particular action or his/her feelings about events or other characters.
• Write a text exchange in which you ask the protagonist what s/he thinks should happen in the story—how s/he would prefer to tackle the story problem.
• Write a text exchange in which you discuss your revision ideas with the protagonist.

How might you use epistles to explore your characters and their opinions, attitudes, beliefs and voices?

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Abracadabra! Using sleight of hand in fiction

Narrative misdirection is a writerly trick of establishing false expectations in your readers, directing their attention to the wrong information and causing them to ignore correct information. It's an excellent way to surprise them, and has uses in nearly every genre, though it is a staple of mysteries.

J.K. Rowling happens to be a master of this technique. Time and again, Harry is certain he knows who the villain is, and every time he is wrong! Author and blogger John Granger goes into a great deal of detail about Rowling's method in his book Unlocking Harry Potter.

In my novel Never Gone, I also played with the technique in various places. For example, take a look at this excerpt from chapter 12.

Go ahead. I'll wait for you.

You're back? Excellent. Did you see how misdirection can be an effective tool to make humorous moments funnier?

I'll explain the elements of narrative misdirection by walking you through what I did, and why and how I did it.

1. Limited viewpoint. My piece is in first person. The only perceptions you have are Dani's. There's a good possibility that she does not have the whole picture. She very well might misinterpret the data in front of her. But it's hard for you, the reader, to know that because I've removed other sources of interpretation by limiting the perception to only what she directly experiences, knows, or remembers.

Rowling uses third person limited. Omniscient narrators are a no-no in this technique. Your POV must limit perception.

2. Sympathetic voice and reader identification. Dani's internal monologue paints her as a smart, arty dreamer who's a bit shy. She obeys her aunt grumblingly, having thoughts of being put-upon with "stupid" assignments. Everyone has felt this way at one point or another. As a reader, you sympathize and take her side. You become willing to trust her judgments about what is happening and why.

3. Playing with expectation. Aunts are those sorts of benevolent authority figures we expect to play "the straight man" in any joke. I describe Cecily having a young child who is usually weaving through her legs or swinging from her purse strap, which cements a picture in your mind: maternal and focused there. I give you only the details that would support your existing expectations of "aunt."

4. Clues the character chooses to ignore. This is VERY important. The truth must be in the scene and there for the astute reader to pick up. Otherwise you just have very annoying out-of-nowhere surprises, not narrative misdirection.

I hint that Janie should be around, and that she had been playing a game called "guerrilla stealth"--a name that implies unexpected combat. I also point out that Aunt Cecily is the instigator of Dani ever leaving the cathedral nave and going into the quire. As a reader, you chose to ignore the importance because Dani does.

5. Details that capture your MC's attention. Does the beauty of Durham cathedral's quire really matter that much? Or the fact that the guide has an exotic accent? No, but as a reader you're willing to be pulled along in Dani's flight of fancy because of the style in this paragraph. I used a little writerly magic dust of pretty words and alliteration and imagery to momentarily sweep you into Dani's distraction.

Keep in mind you can't do pages of this kind of thing, but just a paragraph can be an effective "sleight of hand." It's like the "jazz-hands" dazzle that magicians use to point you away from the real action.

Likewise, drawing Dani's attention primarily to the guy she tripped over keeps you, the reader, from looking deeper into what her family members are doing.

6. Confirm misinterpretations. Both Aunt Cecily and Janie play to Dani's expectation. The aunt scolds, the cousin becomes "ashy pale" at the scolding. And it's no small scolding. The aunt's big reaction cements the misinterpretation as true.

7. Payoff, in which misinterpretations are clarified. This is one tiny detail you might be tempted to overlook. Do wrap up how the surprise really happened, because it's annoying to the reader when you don't. Rowling always does. In my little scene, it was a simple exchange: "You weren't supposed to tell your mum" and "you never said that." I didn't have to give a detailed back story of how or when Janie and Cecily planned their trick on Dani. The reader can imagine it easily enough. But I did need to make it clear they were in cahoots deliberately from the beginning or the payoff would have fallen flat, because readers just wouldn't buy it.


So there you go, a quick primer on the basics of simple narrative misdirection. In mysteries, of course, it gets considerably more complicated. The author must layer in clues and dazzling distractions, one on top of another.

How do you think you might use this technique in your writing?

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The iceberg approach to demonstrating character

We've all heard the advice "show, don't tell," but putting it into practice can be a challenge. Today I'd like to share one of my favorite techniques for showing how a character's mind has been shaped--associations.

Associations are “tip of the mind” thoughts that, like icebergs, show only a portion of the whole story. Most of the mass is hidden under the surface, whether it's a mass of history or emotion. Associations are a huge part of character voice because they tell a tremendous amount about a person in just a few words.

Think of the word-association games psychotherapists use. When your character hears the word “home,” does he think “fried chicken,” “fear,” or “fantasy”? Any one of these answers gives a window into an intriguing story.

Associations can be a shorthand way of showing what kind of past experiences the character has gone through, what he values, and what forms of culture shape him. Associations show up in the way characters describe things, and especially how they make comparisons, such as similes and metaphors.

Here are a few associations at work from my novel Never Gone:

Images burst in my mind like sudden sun through stained glass.

This person is someone who frequents:
a. sport arenas
b. churches
c. suburban malls


“Crikey,” Uncle says. “We’re in Dante’s eighth circle of hell.”

This person is...
a. a man of the soil who works with his hands
b. an Irish dancer who dreams of becoming the next Michael Flatley
c. an educated bloke who has studied Classical literature

Side note: Associations to other literature or film--allusions--can be used strategically to bring themes of the other work to bear on yours. Dante's eighth circle of hell is for "sowers of discord" (people who cause conflict and dissension between others) and their fate is to be cut to pieces. This is thematically important to the story, and the uncle's role especially. 

The simile and metaphor in each of these examples pours a great deal of back story into the characters without my having to tell you "Dani grew up attending church every Sunday without fail," or "Uncle Philip took a First in Classics before attending law school."  As a reader, I'm bored being told these rather dull facts. It's far more interesting to see how life experiences shape the characters' minds. Don't you agree?

Tips for developing associations 

1. Determine a few key environmental pieces for each character. Having more than one will make for an interesting, multi-layered personality, rather than a repetitive, one-note character.

They should be important for how the character interacts with others and moves the plot along. Be careful about this second bit--it's very easy for associations to become tangents that muddy the story rather than enhance it.

For example, my protagonist Danielle is a Christian artist who likes to read fantasy novels. Each of these pieces play into how she perceives the world. She's attuned to the spiritual aspects of life, she is visually driven and deeply imaginative. She tends to mentally rearrange what she sees so she can draw it the way she wants, which creates spiritual blindness in her. All three factors shape her motivations and the kinds of reactions she has to events.

2. Research the environmental factor and make a sheet of key terms, images, events, allusions, etc.

Some terms and images from Dani's character sheet:

steeples, stained glass, hymns, Psalms, kneeling, prayer, angels, demons, Jonah and the whale, the Good Shepherd, parable of the lost sheep

galleries, museums, Metropolitan, MoMA, Frick, sketch pad, charcoal, graphite, shade, stroke, cross-hatch, curve, line, plane, hue, perspective, vanishing point, orb, cone, cylinder, still life, landscape, portrait

castles, magic, Harry Potter, invisibility cloak, spells, Hogwarts, Hagrid, Lord of the Rings, Denethor and Faramir

3. Look for opportunities to layer associations into each character's thought life and dialogue. Associations most naturally occur when describing something or making comparisons.

How might using associations enhance your characterization? Which authors use this technique well?

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My voyage to voice

During the spring of sixth grade, something very strange happened to me. Whenever I opened my mouth to speak, the sound that came out could be breathy and girlish, hoarse, or squeakily soaring between registers.

This was not supposed to happen to girls.

photo from morgefile.com

Voice change was, as far as I knew, a boy thing. One day the kid telling you to stop hogging the swings would sound like your sister, then he'd sound like someone had replaced his larynx with a slide whistle, and a few weeks later, he'd sound like your dad.

It's no picnic to be the girl having this kind of boy thing happening to you. Especially if you got one of the leads in the sixth grade musical.

For a while, I managed to keep my affliction secret by telling everyone I had laryngitis and speaking only in a whisper. As long as I didn't try to engage my larynx, the embarrassing register changes and sudden bugling didn't seem to happen. I sucked a lot of cough drops and passed a lot of notes.

The affliction lingered. Salt water gargles did nothing. I tried talking it out in the woods behind our house. Tried singing it out by practicing my upcoming solo again and again, restarting whenever my voice hitched then squeak-squawked.

The afternoons of talking to the trees paid off. I was able to manage play rehearsals, speaking lines clearly. When I felt my larynx hitch, I'd stop, clear my throat, start again. The director thought I needed to see an allergist for all the throat clearing, but he let me keep my big role.

The rub came when we started adding in the songs. But try as I might to hide my affliction from Mr. Farr, the day came when he wanted to rehearse my solo. No more lip syncing, like I'd done in the full-chorus numbers. He played the opening bars, and I began to sing. The piece was a parody song of "Beautiful Dreamer" from the kids' musical "Frankenstein Follies," and I was cast as Liz, one of the villains. I needed to sound conniving and wicked. Squeaking every third syllable just isn't very villainish. Squeaking is for the comic relief, not the bad guy.

Mr. Farr was kind when the first swoop happened. "Relax," he said. "Pretend this is a player piano and you're all by yourself."

His advice was of course rubbish, because the moment I relaxed, my voice betrayed me horridly. It cracked and I could only speak in a wheezy helium voice.

Mr. Farr blanched. "How long has this been going on?" he demanded.

"Weeks." I squeaked.

"Weeks?" He looked at me askance. Surely he was going to kick me back to the chorus with the musically challenged kids, give my part to someone else. Someone with no imagination who had no idea how to be awesomely evil like I could.

"Sorry," I whispered.

"Take the week off, " he told me. "And don't worry. You know the story of the Ugly Ducking? That's what's happening to your voice. Give it a little more time, then we'll work on your breathing."

I went home and sobbed. I was ugly. An ugly-voiced freak. I would have to take up sign language and pretend to be deaf or something. Mr. Farr was picking my understudy. I was finished in theater.

I barely spoke all week, I was so upset. I spent hours in the woods, singing to the trees. The hitching wasn't happening, but something else was. From deep in my chest to the tip-top of my sinuses, things were resonating differently.

When my next scheduled rehearsal came, I smiled shyly at Mr. Farr.

"You doing better?"  he asked.

I nodded.

"You ready to try again?"

I nodded again. He played the opening bars, I filled my lungs with air and out came the sound. The woman sound. It poured out of my eleven-year-old self and it was as terrifying and wonderful as magic. The squeaks and hitches and cracks were left behind like the dull, grey down of a cygnet. And I soared.

Have you ever gone through a painful transition? What did you learn from the experience?

Voice tips for your writing

Today I'm talking "Elements of Voice" with author C.M. Keller, over at her blog A Merry Heart. There I discuss some key aspects of developing unique voices for your characters. If you're looking for ways to pump up your fiction, swing on by for tips.

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Speaking out for the Silent

Many think of poetry as being uniformly introspective--about sensations and feelings. But some poetry has a far larger agenda. Activist poetry seeks to give voice to the voiceless, to paint a picture that stirs you to action.

Modernist poet Muriel Rukeyser (1913-80) is probably best know for her poem sequence, "The Book of the Dead" (1938) which sought to bring national attention to the epidemic of silicosis--a deadly lung disease caused by exposure to silica dust in mines and factories that did not take adequate steps to protect workers.

Rukeyser's style feels prosy, in part to make it widely approachable. She wanted the widest audience possible, so that national opinion would be swayed and her readers would put pressure on leaders to regulate industries that were poisoning workers. Here are two sections from that poem sequence.

Absalom
by Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

I first discovered what was killing these men.
I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel:
Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17.
They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work
for the mines were not going much of the time.
A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew,
he formed a habit of dropping in evenings to drink,
persuading the boys and my husband—
give up their jobs and take this other work.
It would pay them better.
Shirley was my youngest son; the boy.
He went into the tunnel.

My heart my mother my heart my mother
My heart my coming into being.

My husband is not able to work.
He has it, according to the doctor.
We have been having a very hard time making a living since
this trouble came to us.
I saw the dust in the bottom of the tub.
The boy worked there about eighteen months,
came home one evening with a shortness of breath.
He said, 'Mother, I cannot get my breath.'
Shirley was sick about three months.
I would carry him from his bed to the table,
from his bed to the porch, in my arms.

My heart is mine in the place of hearts,
They gave me back my heart, it lies in me.

When they took sick, right at the start, I saw a doctor.
I tried to get Dr. Harless to X-ray the boys.
He was the only man I had any confidence in,
the company doctor in the Kopper's mine,
but he would not see Shirley.
He did not know where his money was coming from.
I promised him half if he'd work to get compensation,
but even then he would not do anything.
I went on the road and begged the X-ray money,
the Charleston hospital made the lung pictures,
he took the case after the pictures were made.
And two or three doctors said the same thing.
The youngest boy did not get to go down there with me,
he lay and said, 'Mother, when I die,
I want you to have them open me up and
see if that dust killed me.
Try to get compensation,
you will not have any way of making your living
when we are gone,
and the rest are going too.'

I have gained mastery over my heart
I have gained mastery over my two hands
I have gained mastery over the waters
I have gained mastery over the river.

The case of my son was the first of the line of lawsuits.
They sent the lawyers down and the doctors down;
they closed the electric sockets in the camps.
There was Shirley, and Cecil, Jeffrey and Oren,
Raymond Johnson, Clev and Oscar Anders,
Frank Lynch, Henry Palf, Mr. Pitch, a foreman;
a slim fellow who carried steel with my boys,
his name was Darnell, I believe. There were many others,
the towns of Glen Ferris, Alloy, where the white rock lies,
six miles away; Vanetta, Gauley Bridge,
Gamoca, Lockwood, the gullies,
the whole valley is witness.
I hitchhike eighteen miles, they make checks out.
They asked me how I keep the cow on $2.
I said one week, feed for the cow, one week, the children's flour.
The oldest son was twenty-three.
The next son was twenty-one.
The youngest son was eighteen.
They called it pneumonia at first.
They would pronounce it fever.
Shirley asked that we try to find out.
That's how they learned what the trouble was.

I open out a way, they have covered my sky with crystal
I come forth by day, I am born a second time,
I force a way through, and I know the gate
I shall journey over the earth among the living.

He shall not be diminished, never;
I shall give a mouth to my son.

Gauley Bridge
by Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

Camera at the crossing sees the city
a street of wooden walls and empty windows,
the doors shut handless in the empty street,
and the deserted Negro standing on the corner.

The little boy runs with his dog
up the street to the bridge over the river where
nine men are mending road for the government.
He blurs the camera-glass fixed on the street.

Railway tracks here and many panes of glass
tin under light, the grey shine of towns and forests:
in the commercial hotel (Switzerland of America)
the owner is keeping his books behind the public glass.

Postoffice window, a hove of private boxes,
the hand of the man who withdraws, the woman who
reaches her hand
and the tall coughing man stamping an envelope.

The bus station and the great pale buses stopping for
food;
April-glass-tinted, the yellow-aproned waitress;
coast-to-coast schedule on the plateglass window.

The man on the street and the camera eye:
he leaves the doctor’s office, slammed door, doom,
any town looks like this one-street town.

Glass, wood, and naked eye: the movie-house
closed for the afternoon frames posters streaked with
rain,
advertise “Racing Luck” and “Hitch-Hike Lady”.

Whistling, the train comes from a long way away,
slow, and the Negro watches it grow in the gray air,
the hotel man makes a note behind his potted palm.

Eyes of the tourist house, red-and-white filing station,
the eyes of the Negro, looking down the track,
hotel-man and hotel, cafeteria, camera.

And in the beerplace on the other sidewalk
always one’s harsh night eyes over the beerglass
follow the waitress and the yellow apron.

The road flows over the bridge,
Gamoca pointer at the underpass,
opposite, Alloy, after a block of town.

What do you want – a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.

What causes do you think might be well represented in activist poetry?

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Writing Guys: tips from YA author Jennifer R. Hubbard

Today I welcome a special guest, author Jennifer R. Hubbard, whose second novel, Try Not to Breathe, released in January. I've read it in both draft and published form, and friends, it is a great read. It has some of the best insights into adolescent depression I've ever read, a well-balanced mix of seriousness and humor, and my favorite kind of romance--one based on friendship and trust built over time.

I asked Jenn to share some insights about writing opposite-sex narrators. Take it away, Jenn...

Try Not to Breathe is my second book written with a male narrator, and people often ask how I write from the opposite-sex point of view, or whether it gives me any problems.

Writing as a male character wasn’t something that struck me as unusual until people started asking me this question, after my first book (The Secret Year) came out. I wrote short stories for years, and some of them had male main characters and some had female main characters. I thought of myself as a person and my characters as people, without dwelling much on which of us were male or female. So much of what we experience in life—the taste of a tomato, the feel of rain on our skin, the pain of a toothache—has nothing to do with whether we’re male or female.

Nevertheless, there are real cultural differences. In our world, for example, aggression is still encouraged, or at least tolerated, far more in boys than in girls. On the other hand, talking about emotions is expected more of girls.

One advantage a writer has in writing across gender lines, which may not be the case when writing across lines of race or religion or ethnic group, is that we spend so much time with each other. Chances are very high that we have family members of the opposite sex, that at some point we live with people of the opposite sex. We have father-daughter, mother-son, brother-sister relationships. We may have aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. We may have classmates, teachers, or coaches of the opposite sex. We see each other at the grocery store, on the bus, at concerts.

I grew up having male friends and relatives, male teachers. I grew up reading books by male authors. I think that’s why some of the characters in my head speak with “male voices.” One good test, for anyone who’s having difficulty writing a male character, is to think of the guys you know. Ask yourself: Can I imagine any guy I know delivering this line I just wrote? Not a guy on a movie screen, saying what I wish he’d say, but a real-life guy?

You can also solicit the opinion of male readers. However, not all guys are alike, so don’t assume that any one person can speak for a whole gender. Dick Cheney is a guy. So is Justin Bieber. So is Chris Rock. So is the Pope. But they’re all different people with different worldviews and experiences, and they would all speak and think differently.

===

Jennifer R. Hubbard is the author of the contemporary young-adult novel Try Not to Breathe (Viking, 2012), in which the 16-year-old survivor of a suicide attempt befriends a girl who is trying to understand her father's suicide. Hubbard's first book is the The Secret Year (Viking, 2010).

For more information about Jenn's books, including links to purchase copies, go to http://jenniferrhubbard.blogspot.com/p/publications.html.

Have you ever attempted an opposite-sex narrator? What excites or intimidates you about it? Any other questions for Jenn?

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Compare with flair

Dear Editor-on-call,

Recently I wrote, "He must have been thirteen at the time, as he was about a year older than I was" on the first page I presented at a SCBWI critique session. I was told it should read: "He must have been thirteen at the time, as he was a year older than me."

I think the editor is wrong. What do you say?

Sincerely,
Woe am I
(aka Carmen Ferreiro Esteban)

Dear Woesome,

This is a two-pronged issue. First, we have to consider the grammar rules for comparisons. Second, we should discuss the issue of audience and diction.

Comparisons using "than"

For the record, your instincts are right. Using the objective case--me, her or him--in "than" comparisons is grammatically incorrect.

The rule to remember is that the two things being compared must have parallel grammatical form, tense, voice, case.

Examples:
Incorrect - She is taller than him. (Noun cases don't match: one's subjective, the other objective.)

Correct - She is taller than he is. (Note the verb is repeated for clarity. )

Incorrect - I like Mona more than him. (Both unparallel and ambiguous.)

Correct - I like Mona more than I like him. ("Mona" and "him" are both direct objects.)

Alternate - I like Mona more than he does. (This is a shorthand for saying "I like Mona more than he likes Mona.")

Incorrect- It will be faster to go this way than going that way. (Verb forms don't match: one's an infinitive, the other, a participle.)

Correct: It will be faster to go this way than to go that way.

Voice and diction

When is it preferable to break grammar rules to keep character voices authentic and unstuffy? That depends on a number of things including genre, audience and character voice.

If you write for emerging readers (the under-9 set), consider how teachers will perceive your work. From their perspective, it's more important that proper grammar be continually reinforced so that their students internalize it. They will curse your rule breaking.

As readers age, their grasp of language becomes more sophisticated and fluid. They can better discern a fictional character's voice from, say, a textbook narrator voice. They become aware of dialect and can point to how Huck Finn sounds different from Harry Potter.

In my opinion, the most compelling reason to make a character speak ungrammatically is to convey their lower social class and lack of education or sophistication, or to create contrasts.

A kid raised in the slum is more likely to botch grammar than who attends a posh boarding school. But either kid might assume the speech of the other as an affectation, a mask, to fit in or stand out in a particular environment. Rule breaking for this purpose can be an effective characterization tool.

There certainly are some forms of grammatical correctness that have almost entirely disappeared from speech. Taking the high road means your character's voice will be perceived as uptight and stuffy. You're unlikely to hear a teen use "whom" much anymore. And following the bogus rule that you can't end a sentence with a preposition (which is a Latin grammar rule, not a genuinely English one) will similarly nerdify character voice.

I'd rather spend 300 pages with someone who asks me, "Who should I send this letter to?" than one who asks, "To whom should I send this letter?"

Your example sentence ("He must have been thirteen at the time, as he was about a year older than I was") reads naturally enough. It doesn't seem to me to fall into the "uptight grammatical prig" category. Keep it as you wrote it.

So, readers, what do you think?

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Child voice

I'm a bit burned out on revisions after several days of long slog, so I thought for fun I'd dig out something completely different to blog about. A poem. An old poem written during my brief career in the MA English/Creative writing program at Michigan State, polished and published a few years later.

Not Quite Away

Yesterday
all my troubles seemed so far
across the street my best friend
or close enough stepped on her
gerbil squish
She was walking it on a leash
like a dog pretty dumb I think
probably she'd forgot everything else and
burst into Tomorrow
I love ya tomorrow you're
only a day
around the block
the Bartelli boys who like to stick
crawly things into people's lunches
bought the guts for 50 ¢ &
2 red rubber bands & a swirly
marble all stuffed into
her hand too late for me
to yell cooties she smiled toothy
and wiped scritch scratch
her bloody shoe in the grass

© 1996 About Such Things

As you might guess, I was experimenting on a number of fronts here: interpolating song lyrics, breathless stream-of-consciousness style, tone/subject dissonance and finally voice. You could say my choice was somewhat in reaction to the mop-pushing megalomaniac in my poetry class who loved to use allusions to the Gilgamesh epic, among other pretensions. Ugh. Being around him made me want to write real, to get past all the grad school trying-to-sound-important BS. What could be less important-sounding than some silly kid story? So that's what I did. I worked from of a true childhood tale a high school friend had shared about one of her neighbors who thought it would be fun to walk her hamster on a leash, then inadvertently killed it. I vaguely recall that money had been exchanged to use the rodent remains for some ghoulish purpose.

My initial inclination for telling this had been to take a knowing tone, looking on this scenario with adult eyes. But it felt entirely wrong. I realized that if I was going to be true to this story, I needed to enter into the child world--seeing the neighbor girl as the kid I imagined she was, impulsive and apt to burst into song. I mined memories for details, like what the truly evil kids did for fun. Instead of 30 pieces of silver, the beloved pet is sold off for kid treasures--the sorts of things I admired in my parents' desk drawers, on my siblings' closet floors. By using onomatopoetic words, I tried make the gore concrete but not sensationalized.

It's an interesting escape, to dip into your well of memories, to set cynicism aside and speak again as a child.

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