Camping - Author Style

For those of you that don't know and those of you that care: the same people who bring authors/writers/people-who-love-a-challengers National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) also bring us Camp NaNo. So for an extra two months out of the year (April and July this year) we can enjoy the insanity that comes with meeting a word goal in 30/31 days.

Camp NaNo is a bit more relaxed than NaNo. You can set your own word goals instead of going with the 50K that comes during the NaNo event. Because the two camps are in the summer there are less people on the forums BUT you're placed in a cabin with people who are (supposed) to be participating.

I've lucked out in both April and July and gotten great people in both cabins. Some aren't so lucky and get people who either don't talk or disappear for unknown reasons. The cabins are a special camp feature: we have a chat feature so depending on time zones we can talk to people in real time about writing instead of having to wait for the forums.

Last camp I worked on Lies and probably had my cabin-mates wondering what the heck I was on with the questions about gender and what not. They were exceptionally helpful and we met our overall goal of 225K. My goal was 75K which I think I hit in the third week. My memory sucks.

This camp I'm working on Testing Grounds a sci-fi novel set in and about 2013 where aliens attack earth under the guise that they want to help us. It'll be explained further in a later blog. This month I set my goal at 50K and by the end of the day (July 9th) I'll have it completed. The fun part is that our cabin goal is 150K and with another cabin mate at 30K our cabin only has to write 3 words a day to complete the overall goal. I figure by the middle of the week or the beginning of next week, we'll have hit 150K because we're awesome like that.

NaNo and the two Camps are not only fun challenges but are also great motivation. I don't need anything to keep me writing but it is nice to take a break sometimes, go to either the Camp Chat or the forums and talk to fellow writers. The months outside of Camp and NaNo are pretty stagnate in talking to other writers as I've never really clicked with writing forums outside NaNo. I know there are a lot out there but I can't get into them like I can with the NaNo forums.

Anyway, it's always good to have a fellow writer (or few dozen) to talk to when you run into a problem in your writing. It's nice to know that out there, somewhere, another writer might be having the same issue. It's good to know you're not the only crazy one.

I plan to post updates about Camp NaNo progress but we all know that I'm more pantser than a planner so, yeah. Until next time: don't put your entire marshmallow into the fire unless you like flinging a flaming ball of goo around and enjoy the taste of burnt goo.

The "Said" Debate

Some authors will say that when writing the only dialogue tag that should be used is the word "said." This confuses me mainly because when I was taking Journalism my teachers told me the same thing. I believe that journalism (reporting the news) and being an author (telling a story) are different. In fact, I remember reading a quote from a famous author (I can't remember who) saying something like: "All journalists have a fiction story inside them. That's where they should keep it."

If that's the case why are we as authors told to always use the word "said" in dialogue? Why are we being told to be like our news-reporting cousins? The answer to that is usually: 1) the reader ignores the dialogue tags anyway and 2) the familiarity of said prevents it from drawing attention to itself.

That second part of that is fine but the first part is irksome. Why should we as authors who have spent weeks (months or years) writing, re-writing, editing, scraping, and re-doing our novels be okay with letting someone ignore part of what we've written? Why should we be fine with readers ignoring part of our hard work and dedication to our craft? Why are we being told it's okay to ignore a tool in our author's tool kit?

Letting all dialogue tags be "said" is like a plumber ignoring his wrench. Dialogue tags are part of our word counts, they're part of our stories and we should pay just as much attention to them as we do to pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, sentence structure, plot, characters and everything else.

If the reader skips a dialogue tag it's not good enough reason for authors to simply replace all of them with one word. Some readers skip over description of places or certain scenes, so should we stop writing descriptions or certain scenes?

I'm not saying that every dialogue tag should be a word different than "said." I'm saying to mix it up a bit. Used "whispered," "muttered", "uttered", "grumbled", "whined", "shouted", "told", "informed", "described", "voiced", "answered", "responded", "exclaimed", "cried", and "mumbled" occasionally. Throw in a few "said with a(n) *insert action here*." These words give feeling to what the character is saying and the description that comes after the dialogue amplifies it. Besides, if we all just "said" things, we'd be talking like monotone robots all the time.

There are many that would disagree but even Stephen King has used "exclaimed", "told", "repeated", and "amplified" all within a few pages (51-55) in his book Thinner. A more recent example is Under the Dome pages 277-279 where "whispered", "shouted", and "cried" appear. There's also a "said dully" and a "said eagerly" mixed in among the "saids."

Dialogue is all about balance and I think a constant repetition of the word said (or no dialogue tags at all) will stifle it. Balancing it with other dialogue tags and a few describers makes for more interesting reading. "Said" should always be the most common dialogue tag as various ones would get too distracting but there is no problem with mixing it up a bit.

I have to admit the reason I wanted to write this blog was because of a thread in the NaNo forums. Some authors there agreed with the prospect that "readers ignore the dialogue tag anyway" and were telling (see what I did there?) other authors that "said" was the only dialogue tag that should be used all the time. One even went so far to say it was the only dialogue tag used besides "told" if (s)he wanted to mix things up. I ask (again): why should we allow (and be okay with) readers ignoring part of our work? It is because it's convenient for them? Is it because we're in this fast-paced world and reader's want to burn through books on their eReaders? Those are not good enough reasons.

Our characters, plots, dialogue tags, scenery, and slew of others elements are equivalent to a plumber's wrench, snake, screw drivers and pliers. If plumbers ignore tools of their trade the result could be disastrous. I'd like to think the same applies for authors.

So what do you think? Should authors obliterated every word but "said" from our dialogue tags? Should it be a mix? Why?

The writing community.

In browsing the Internet for different things about writing, I stumbled across an entire enormous community for authors.

The website is amazingly immense. I can barely find my way around but so far it seems like a fairly good resource. A good way to market and to get tips on improving certain aspects of my own work.

I can connect with other authors as well as discuss the works of famous writers. Everyone there seems friendly and very helpful. I think I'll enjoy it there. And the new community has given me a few ideas for writing this blog.

I'll have to delve into it further over the next few days and really start using the forums to get to know my fellow authors better. It should be a fun weekend.