You’ve probably seen the same thing, maybe in your own writing. You might not be certain what’s wrong or know how to fix the problem, but if your story has all the proper elements and should be strong but isn’t engaging—for you or your readers—maybe you’re keeping readers at a distance. Maybe you’re using filters that hold emotion and the impact of a scene away from the reader. Maybe you’ve created a separation, an extra step, between action/event/emotion and the reader.

Do any of the following phrasings sound familiar?

Jen turned toward the window. She heard a sound, a footstep, crunching the gravel outside. She figured she should hide, so she dropped behind the couch.

——–

As soon as he entered the foyer, he saw a body swinging in the entryway. He also saw the rifle against the wall. He heard the gentle tinkle of the chandelier.

——–

I felt the wood under my fingers, rough and brittle.

——–

I heard a cracking sound before I felt the room shake violently.

Reporting what a character sees, hears, feels, and watches can keep readers at a distance. These words can serve as filters to lessen the impact of the action or the emotion. Instead of encouraging the character and the reader to experience the elements of a scene, filters mute the power of those elements. The impact is weakened when it should be heightened. The reader is pushed away rather than pulled close.

A comparison—

Jen turned toward the window. A footstep crunched the gravel outside, only two feet away. She dropped behind the couch.

——–

He rushed into the foyer. A body hanging from the chandelier twisted with a gentle tinkle. A rifle, the rifle, lay against the wall.

——–

Rough wood broke under my fingers, brittle and dry.

——–

A thundering crack preceded the room’s violent shaking.

These are simple sentences, true. With simple changes. Yet the simplest changes can make a big difference to a piece of fiction. The effect of again and again reporting what a character experiences adds up over the course of a scene, a chapter, and a story. It adds up to distance. Can you imagine how a story would read if Jen always told us what she was doing rather than inviting us to experience those events with her?

Not all fixes for the problems in your story will be tough ones. Sometimes the answer is as simple as a word choice.

Let action unfold without a report. Let emotion be experienced, not noted.

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Are there times when reporting an action and using these filtering words would work for the story? Of course. A blindfolded character might note what he could hear as he was driven away from his home. A woman might say that she tasted the chocolate in her coffee if she hadn’t expected the flavor. Another character might report that she could actually see a ghost, surprised by the sight. 

When the sensing is more important than what is sensed, reporting that a character sees, hears, or feels something works well. When the event or emotion is—or should be—the focus, then you don’t want to diffuse the moment with words that report.

Help readers experience the events of your story by inviting readers into the action. Let them see, touch, hear, and imagine at the same time the characters do, not a step or two behind them.

Don’t let characters get between action and reader unless you’re creating distance for a purpose.

And definitely don’t push readers away from emotions, either the characters’ or their own.

Stir emotions and then push forward without pulling back again to make note of those emotions. That is, let the emotions stand on their own. Don’t point out they are emotions and that both the character and reader should now feel something.

Which would you rather read, especially if the style was consistent throughout a novel?

Jen trembled. She knew she should run, but she felt the fear lock her feet to the floor.

OR

Jen trembled. Fear locked her feet to the floor.

The emotional impact is usually far stronger without commentary from writer and/or character. 

Trust yourself. If you’ve written an emotion-inducing moment or scene, let the emotion play out without resorting to a play-by-play of what led to that emotion or what the reader should be feeling.

Get to the point. Rather than tell the reader about something, show that something. Let readers feel, not only hear about an event or emotion.

My suggestion here is to be mindful of the words you use to describe an event. Think close rather than distant, direct rather than filtered. Do a word search for felt, thought, saw, watched, heard, tasted, smelled, and knew. These tend to be the words used most often as filters and to create distance.

These are not necessarily wrong words and they’re not always overused, so don’t think you have to cut each one. But do check to see how many times you use each. See how many additional filter words you use in the same passage or scene. If there are too many, if the effect is distancing for the reader—if readers don’t engage with your characters or story events—consider changing your words.

Unless distance is required, rewrite sentences to draw readers close. Allow readers to experience actions and emotions as if they were present in the scene, not reading a police report or diary or even a character’s thoughts.

Keep readers close and interested.

Keep the words interesting for them.

Write engaging fiction.

***

If the desire is strong enough and I’m thwarted—especially by someone I don’t want to be bested by—I’ll work even harder to achieve my goal.

If I’m eight years old, I may pull a cone out of the freezer and eat it even if my mother tells me it’s too close to dinner or if my sister tells me the last cone is hers.

I may want one so badly that I steal one. Not a whole box, because of course that would be appalling. But I might sneak one out of the case at the convenience store. Which will get me into trouble and still not see me satisfied if my mother or the store manager catches me before I can eat the cone.

My goal may be all-encompassing, may have me ignoring rules or laws. I may steal from money from my mother’s purse to buy from the ice cream vendor who trolls the neighborhood.

My goals may push me beyond accepted and acceptable behavior.

My goals may be so strong that I hurt myself and my reputation in order to pursue them.

Or, at the other extreme, my goals may not stand up to any pressure and I may give up at the slightest challenge or roadblock.

Goals and desires can be of different strengths and thus produce different behaviors.

_______________________

Characters need goals.

Character goals drive a novel. Novels without character goals go nowhere. Or they go everywhere but nowhere special, prove to be aimless and without direction.

Novels without character goals have little meaningful purpose.

Stories without character goals have an incomplete structure.

Okay, I’ve made several claims here. Just what am I talking about?

Characters, particularly the protagonist and antagonist, have specific aims at the story’s start. They want something or they want something to happen or they want something not to happen. Maybe they want to be left alone, want to just finish their day’s work and not be bothered by anyone. Maybe they want to hide from the world, from a friend, from an enemy.

But once a story begins, both your protagonist and antagonist have their lives interrupted by others or by events beyond their control. They’re pulled into a mission or quest or an adventure they hadn’t planned for.

And now their goals have changed. Maybe a man still wants to be left alone to grieve but suddenly finds he must first save a friend’s daughter from the same man who murdered his wife.

Maybe a young woman must scour the universe for the man she thinks is her father.

Maybe a retired spy must save the planet from an enemy he knows inside and out, one no one else has ever been able to find or identify or capture. Maybe he has only five days before his nemesis secures the feisty but unwilling scientist who can complete his nefarious plan and put it into motion.

Your protagonist now has new goals, goals that push and pull him through your story, that logically get him from scene to scene and meeting characters who either help or hinder him.

He has goals that drive him, that allow him no respite because someone’s going to die if he doesn’t achieve them. Or someone’s going to hate him forever. Or someone will be disappointed. Or he’ll be disappointed in himself.

Or he’ll let somebody down.

Goals are objectives or maybe aspirations. They are a place a character has to reach for or get to, a task he has to complete, a monster he has to conquer, an enemy he must vanquish.

Goals may be based on a promise or be the result of a bet. They be may lofty or earthy.

There may be much more to the pursuit of them than a character could ever imagine.

_______________________

Goals come in varieties and levels.

Your main character could have that ice cream goal, a save-the-world goal, or a private-self goal.

The first, securing an ice cream cone for himself, or even for his daughter, would be way too thin to power a novel. Getting an ice cream cone is fairly easy for almost all of us. The pursuit of it wouldn’t involve too much effort or planning or angst.

Easy goals or short-term goals might come into play for a scene or for several chapters, but characters need potent long-term goals to get them through everything you plan to throw at them over the course of your story. The short-term goals are important to move a story from scene to scene, but I want to focus on long-term goals in this article.

There’s the second kind of goal, that of saving the world. This type of goal would be sufficient to see you through a genre novel. Your MC might literally save the world—from aliens or world destruction or Mr. Evil’s great-grandson. Or your MC could solve the crime, discover the murderer, prevent a murder.

Of course, not all save-the-world goals are literally about saving the world. This is an example of an external goal that a character reaches for outside himself.

The third type of goal—protect the self—would be enough for a literary novel. To go after this type of goal, your MC might have to discover who he is. Or he might already know who he is and instead try to hide his nature from others, so they don’t discover who he is. He may try to protect the status quo and not rock the boat. Or, perhaps your MC is a boat-rocker and she’s determined to shake up her family in an effort to discover who she is and where she came from.

This protecting-the self is an internal goal and is often much more personal than the external kind.

Both saving-the-world and protecting-the-self goals can produce powerful stories and riveting characters. But can you imagine the story you’d create if you gave your lead character powerful external and internal goals? You could drive him relentlessly, playing the goals off each other so he has no choice but to succeed, no option to turn back. He can only go forward because to quit would shame him before the world (the literal world or his own world of friends and family and co-workers) or shame him in his own eyes. His failure might result in the destruction of that world.

A story with competing or complementary character goals would make for a powerfully compelling and engrossing novel.

A story that taps into a man’s fears for society and into his fear for himself will have a strong hold on readers.

So . . .

What does your protagonist (and/or your antagonist) want?

Societal or external goals: save the world, save the princess, recover the national treasure, discover a new world where mankind can make a fresh start, destroy the enemy, uncover the plot, recover the President, diffuse the bomb, neutralize the pathogen, identify the murderer, get a wife back, graduate from college, complete a masterpiece.

Personal or internal goals: prove himself, to not be found wanting, be a success, be the best concert violinist (ball player, father, whatever). persevere, show himself a better man than his father (or better than his father’s predictions), succeed or die trying, make it one more day, not kill himself, do it alone, ask for help, show himself a friend, love unconditionally, love for the first time.

There are many, many options for your character’s goals. But something should drive him. Something should keep him pushing forward when everything and everyone is pushing back, standing against him, discouraging him. Killing him either literally or figuratively.

Goals keep characters on task when they’d otherwise gather up their toys and go home. Or go hide in a cave. Or flip the world the finger and tell it they’re not going to put up with the garbage any more.

More about the goals—

Societal or external goals may be stated bluntly—Paul Booker’s got 72 hours to stop Dr. Badman from releasing his toxin. His only problem is that he’s no James Bond and therefore he has no national agency supporting him, no cool gadgets to aid him, and no experience in chasing crazed madmen across Europe.

A private or internal goal may not be as obvious and only reluctantly revealed through dialogue or backstory or action. Many people don’t like to reveal their weaknesses, not even to themselves, and may have a hard time admitting their primary goal every morning is simply getting out of bed or facing the job one more day. Maybe we see a character who drinks himself to sleep every night and who only slowly reveals that he does so because he doesn’t want to dream anymore of the fire that took his family four years earlier.

While an external goal might raise a few eyebrows, an internal goal may be belittled, even by the protagonist’s allies. Maybe especially by his allies.

It may be used against him by the antagonist as a means to prevent the protagonist from achieving his societal goal. It may be used as a distraction, as a weakness.

This internal goal may be stronger and more deeply entrenched than the societal goal. It, this internal ambition, may be all that sees a hero through when victory seems hopeless, when failure seems assured.

Pursuing either goal could get the protagonist into deeper trouble or pull him out of a difficult situation.

_______________________

All characters have goals—it’s the goals of the protagonist, the antagonist, and major secondary characters that fuel your fiction.

If characters don’t have a reason—a strong enough reason—to keep moving forward, they won’t. They’ll stop. It’s your job to give them strong goals—internal and external—and make those goals known to the reader. Hiding character goals from readers would have the same result as a character having no goals—there would be no believable reason for a character to push beyond the first challenge. And when characters have no believable reasons for their actions, readers tend to doubt their common sense or the storyteller’s skills.

Goals make a character’s actions seem inevitable. Reasonable. Justifiable.

They give purpose to character action.

They are necessary to see characters through the mess you’ve created for them.

Stories need characters with compelling goals. Readers need them.

Characters and goals go hand in hand in fiction.

And you have the task of making certain character goals are sufficient for you fiction adventures.

*******

Character goals are not the same as the writer’s goals.

Your character wants to make it through the bar fight alive. You want to create tension and show your character’s fear of dying as well as show off his karate skills. He wants to save the world. You want to entertain the reader.

Give your characters something to strive for, to reach toward, to desire. Give them a reason to go on.

Give them worthy goals.

And give your readers a story to remember.

***

You’ve been toiling along, writing according to your outline, or you’ve been pantsing without an outline and the words have just come tripping off your fingertips. You’re following the plan and it’s been good. Solid. Dependable.

No, not boring. Not predictable. Just . . .

Hmm. So maybe the plot is predictable. Maybe this passage . . . this scene . . . yeah, maybe this chapter and the last three have been rather steady. And flat. And steady. Did I already say that? It’s not that the action all sounds the same or the dialogue is a rehash of something from five chapters back. It’s just that . . .

Yeah, it’s boring.

So what are you doing wrong?

Maybe not a lot. And maybe you’re just too close to the work to see it clearly. But just maybe it is boring, boring because you’ve forgotten to include something—a revelation, the introduction of a new character, an unforeseen event—that was so unpredictable that you haven’t even surprised yourself for the last hundred pages.

Maybe your characters take only right turns and always peek around corners before they venture around them and so they’re never surprised by what they encounter.

Maybe the predictability of the characters and plot would lull even the most devoted reader.

Have you forgotten to surprise characters and readers? Have you been so slavishly committed to what you think the story should do (not to mention paying attention to all the rules and the mechanics of writing) that you’ve put a stranglehold on your characters so that even if they want to step out boldly, you won’t let them?

Let me suggest that you allow room for story surprises, both for characters and readers. Don’t let either group remain unsurprised as they travel your story world.

Introduce the unexpected and do so more than once. And make each surprise different from the others—

use different characters to spring the surprise

make use of different story elements

use twists but make them fresh twists

change the emotional level of the surprise

stir up a different emotion with each surprise

Use surprises to send the story in a new direction, maybe a darker direction. Use something new to shake up your protagonist or to stir up your antagonist.

Imagine a figurative hornets nest falling on your protagonist and his buddies. What happens? Might they scatter, chased away by the stings or simply the fear of stings? Might this leave your protagonist isolated? Maybe lonely? Maybe wondering why he’s been deserted?

Maybe your lead character is chased so far by the crazed hornets that he no longer recognizes where he is and has no idea how to return to where he’d been. Who can he rely on now? Where can he seek wisdom? Who can he trust for comfort?

This is your chance to add new characters or a new setting, maybe something dark, something totally foreign to your lead character.

Or, maybe it’s the antagonist who’s surprised by the hornets, and he’s made so miserable that he lashes out and steps up his attacks on the protagonist.

We’re not talking true buzzing hornets here. We are talking something surprising that shocks or challenges your characters. Something that wakes up your readers.

And this surprise, whatever form it takes, needs to be written in by you. Planned for by you.

So as you’re writing or rewriting, check for surprises. If your plot is predictable, you could use a surprise. Your characters and readers could certainly use one.

Note: Don’t confuse well plotted or tight-fitting with boring. I’m not talking about messing up the rhythms and balance of a strong story that fits snugly together with inevitable reactions following inevitable actions. I’m talking about changing the predictable, not the inevitable.

Inevitable is satisfying. Predictable is boring. Inevitable is strong story with balanced elements. Predictable is the same old story maybe set in a new city to give it the veneer of freshness.

If you’re bored or if your beta readers are bored or if your characters cross their arms and raise an eyebrow at you in your dreams, demanding something fresh, then add something surprising. Even if you’re not bored, check to see if you’ve included surprises for both characters and readers. If you haven’t, consider an addition.

Introduce a new character

Reveal a secret

Kill a character

Close up an escape route

Force a showdown

Embarrass a key character

Make your protagonist fail

Give a moral character a major moral lapse

Turn an enemy into an ally

Turn an ally into an enemy

Have a character tell a lie; have another character corroborate it

Raise someone or something (a long-abandoned dream) from the dead 

Ratchet up the emotion factor tenfold for a scene

____________________________

Remember to set up surprises before they’re needed—they need to make sense in terms of the plot and characters you’ve already got working.

Surprise not only readers and characters, but surprise yourself. Write something you didn’t think you had in you. Expose yourself and your emotions and your fears. Step out—leap out—of your comfort zone. Add power to scenes and action and dialogue by moving beyond what you thought you could say or write or declare.

Purposely surprise characters and readers so your stories will be those remembered and talked about. Give readers a reason to anticipate your next book. If they couldn’t guess what would happen in the last one, they’ll never guess what you’ve got in store for them in the next one.

At least that’s what you want them thinking and anticipating.

Take the time now—or make a note to do it later—to search for surprises in action or word choice or plot events or story threads. If you find no surprises, add a few. If you do have a couple, make sure they’re powerful and effective. Make sure you’ve given each a sufficient setup. Make sure they’re not simply one more story element—make them a successful story element.

Eliminate boring and non-engaging passages.

Add surprises to keep both characters and readers involved.

Write the unexpected, the good stuff. Write unpredictable fiction.

***

The end of a chapter—the last scene, the last paragraph, the last sentence—brings closure to one chapter but at the same time needs to lead readers and characters to the next scene and chapter and story event.

A chapter ending that doesn’t satisfy the events of the chapter, at least some of them, hasn’t done its work. And the chapter ending that doesn’t pull readers deeper into the story, fill them with anticipation for what comes next, also hasn’t accomplished all that it should.

A chapter ending that does neither fails the chapter completely.

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So, what in particular should chapter endings accomplish, and how does a writer make sure she writes successful endings?

Except for the first and last chapters,  the purposes of most chapter endings will be similar.

Endings will address and resolve or address and deepen story problems introduced in that chapter and/or earlier chapters. No, not every problem is resolved, but there will be some closure. At the same time, some new event or twist will raise the tension level. Will raise the interest level of readers. Will entice. Some answers will be provided, but those answers themselves might be what drives character and reader into the next story event. And into the next chapter.

Successful endings will raise tension for readers, keeping them involved in the story, keep them wanting to read just one chapter more, just until they find out who planted the bomb or who the prime suspect is or how hero and heroine will get together.

Not every chapter will have the same degree of closure as surrounding chapters; you’ll want variety in the feel of chapter endings, just as you want variety in many of the elements of your writing. But endings should reflect in some way what has come before, if only to mention an event or character or repeat a word or phrasing that will tie story elements together.

That is, you’ll use chapter endings to make connections to earlier events so events and characters are related in some manner. Otherwise your story will lack that interlocking feel that so appeals, that makes a story complete and full in itself.

Could you write for several chapters without such connections? Sure. Some authors—think writers of geo-political thrillers—may have a string of seemingly unrelated chapters. But eventually connections are made. Connections are revealed.

While a good chapter ending doesn’t ignore, with a few exceptions, what has come before, it definitely doesn’t ignore what comes after. This is where chapter-ending hooks come in.

Chapters end with hooks to draw, entice, push, or pull readers into the next chapter. Without appropriate hooks, readers have little reason to keep turning pages. If you satisfy past story events without giving the reader something to look forward to, readers can easily put your book aside.

Instead, you want readers unable to stop reading. You want them staying up late to finish the next chapter and then the next. You want them unable to put your story down because they just have to find out what villain Xerxes has in store for your hero or how your protagonist is going to pull his foot out of his mouth after his last boneheaded comment.

Chapter endings give readers an excuse to read on.

In simple terms, what do good chapter endings do? What’s their purpose? What should a hook accomplish? What shouldn’t a chapter ending do?

Good endings are goads and prompts and impossible-to-resist temptations.

Chapter endings will not put readers to sleep.

Chapter endings should introduce or raise tension and/or conflict.

Chapter endings can introduce new problems.

Chapter endings can reveal something new about a character’s personality or his reasons for being involved in whatever story issue has a hold on him.

Chapter endings can introduce new characters, new aspects of old characters, new events, and secrets.

Chapters can end with dialogue or with action. They should contain something new or surprising.

Chapters should never end with a character yawning and going to bed—readers will join that character in turning in.

Could you get around this final prohibition? Sure. You know I’m all for trying anything. But yawns and beds make readers want to put books down, not keep reading. Are you willing to risk putting your readers to sleep?

Chapter endings (other than the one for the final chapter) will not resolve all story issues revealed up to that point. If they did, readers would have no reason to keep reading. If all the story issues you introduced prior to chapter ten are solved by the end of chapter ten, what reason have you given readers for turning to chapter eleven? If there are no outstanding issues to be solved or resolved or pondered, chapter eleven would be just like chapter one and you’d be starting your story over.

While the ends of most chapters have similar purposes, both chapter one and your final chapter have additional purposes.

Chapter One
The end of the first chapter should compel readers to read on. A good ending for the first chapter will promise answers to story questions asked in that chapter. Chapter two will of course not answer every question, but a good ending to chapter one will convince readers answers wait just beyond the turn of the page.

The end of chapter one should show your protagonist (or your antagonist, if you choose to begin with him) dealing with the revelations of chapter one. Or it might show some new problem ready to fall on your main character’s head.

The end of chapter one should give the reader some idea of what the book will be about, whether we’re talking plot or tone or emotional impact. It should ensure that the story hook has been baited and dangled in front of the reader.

The end of chapter one, as with all of that first chapter, should make promises to the reader. Promises that the following chapters will need to fulfill.

The end of chapter one has to make the reader’s choice to purchase or read your book worthwhile. A reader still near the beginning of a book can be easily turned aside—he doesn’t have a lot invested in terms of time or emotion or thought spent on figuring out what’s been going on. That first chapter break is a time readers can still find it easy to put aside a new book—make sure you don’t give them any reason to put the book down and give them several reasons to keep reading, to invest their lives in your story world.

Make the end of chapter one as or more enticing than the opening lines. Convince readers they made the right choice in picking up your book.

Give not only readers but characters a reason to get involved in the plot you’ve crafted for them.

Final Chapter
The end of the final chapter will wrap up story threads, answer the most important of the story problems, will show whodunit, will bring the lovers together, will follow the hero to his home with his prize.

The end of the final chapter may also tease readers about the next story in a series.

This chapter may end with emotion, creating resonance for the reader, giving her feelings that last for more than just the moment it takes to read the final pages.

For the final chapter, think fulfillment. Fulfillment of every tease you’ve written, every enticement you placed before character and reader. Think completion and resolution. Think of making the investment in your story world well worth the reader’s time and money.

And worth every other activity he had to forgo in order to spend time with your characters.

I’ve talked about story resolutions in a couple of articles—Deliver the Payoff and Resolution: Tying up the Ends—so you can find more specifics about the final chapters of your novel. For purposes of this article, just know that the final chapter truly has to bring closure. Major plot threads cannot remain loose or unresolved. Characters have to complete their journeys. Some kind of ending must occur. And the more satisfying that ending is for character and reader, the more likely readers will return for the next of your stories.

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Use your chapter endings to look back and to look forward. Use them to satisfy, on the one hand, and stir up on the other.

Use cliffhanger endings if that works for the genre and the style of story you want to tell.

Use anticipation and fear and any emotion that will keep readers turning pages.

Shake up your story and characters with the unexpected at a chapter’s end. Satisfy and tease at the same time.

Write captivating chapter endings.

Write enthralling fiction.

***

Backstory is the accumulation, the totality, of the earlier events and histories of those people and things and places that make up your story world.

Backstory is the story before the story. It’s the events that transpire before the story events you’ve chosen to highlight and reveal and invite the reader into.

What’s in backstory are causes for the events of the story you put on the page. Backstory covers motive and history and the roots of character personality and motivation.

Backstory gives reasons and excuses for events that happen in the now of your story. But backstory isn’t that now. And if you dump too much of the past in at one shot, it slows the unfolding of the current story, may even deaden the impact of current action and event. It leaches the emotional power out of the story action that’s unfolding on the page in the story’s present.

Backstory is part of the setup for plot and characters; it is not a substitute for unfolding events.

As a woman might have to pull her hair up before she take a sweat-inducing exercise class, so might your character have to deal with something from her past before addressing something in the present. The putting up of the hair is not the important element; the exercise class is. Same with backstory and story events. The element of the backstory that you share is not the main event; it’s only the preparation for it. It needs very little attention, only enough to reveal what it is and what it accomplished in order to ready the character for the real action to come.

Backstory is the failing grade from a middle school math class that compelled your protagonist to work so hard at school that he had no time for friends and outside activities, a practice that extends to his lifestyle as an adult.

It’s the uninvolved father who turned your female antagonist against men over a certain age so that she only seeks lovers in their twenties. Even though at story opening she’s celebrating her fortieth birthday.

It’s the holocaust or world war or alien invasion that created the need for martial law that led to the fascist government that rules the world in your dystopian sci-fi series.

Backstory is everything that happened in your story world and to your characters prior to the point you open that world to readers. It’s the antecedents. It’s part of the cause for which you are showing the effect. It’s the setup of your story.

It’s what has made your opening page possible. Inevitable. Engaging.

It’s the history of both your story world and your characters. It’s the events and people who have shaped characters and story setting.

It’s not your unfolding story but it is everything that makes that story possible and necessary and inescapable.

Backstory accounts for the why of the story events and actions that occur at the top of your story. It’s the explanation for your protagonist’s and antagonist’s attitudes and motivations and drives.

_____________________________

Backstory can and should be revealed in a variety of ways. You can slip it in so it seems incidental, as if revealed only because you were revealing something else, or you could explain it plainly so there’s no doubt you’re writing a paragraph of backstory.

Use both methods, knowing they create different effects.

When backstory is dribbled in, revealed piecemeal, the reader learns a character, gradually develops an understanding of his motives. When backstory is laid out though exposition, the reader is clearly told what’s happened and perhaps how it affected character or elements of the setting (government policies, social mores, religious practices and so on).

There is a time for both styles of revelation, but direct explanation can pull the reader out of the fiction. Use it sparingly, knowing that any such explanations can have a reader feeling he’s being taught a lesson rather than getting to know a character the same way we get to know people in the 3-dimensional world.

But don’t think you can’t ever express backstory through direct revelation. Sometimes that’s the quickest way to lay out a revelation. And sometimes that’s more important than spending three pages on a min-scene that would eventually reveal the same information.

Consider such explanations for use in narrative summary or when you introduce a new scene. Or even when a character has a moment of clear reflection and comes to some glaring conclusion about his own motives.

Straight revelation can work. But you’ve got to control its flow and the effects.

The introduction of backstory, except in prologue, should never come before current story elements. No opening chapter one with a flashback—open with the now, get the reader involved in it first, and then reveal essential or noteworthy elements from prior days or years or eras. Do you remember the Paul Masson wine ads? We will serve no wine before its time? Let that be your pledge regarding backstory: Never too early and always just enough.

The quick details—

Show backstory

through sections of exposition, perhaps at the top of chapters and scenes

through dialogue

through character thought and reflection

through flashbacks

through a prologue

to reveal character motivation

to slow the pace

to set up subsequent scenes

to provide meaning for events and character action and reaction

to add veracity to a character’s stands and personality

to provide distractions and murky motives and red herrings (yes, you can manipulate backstory for purposes other than straightforward revelation)

An event or action or word of dialogue or setting prop may stir a character into thoughts about a past event—make sure that characters have a reason to suddenly remember and dwell on a moment or past event rife with deep meaning. That is, people don’t usually stop in the middle of a crosswalk because they’re overwhelmed with the memory of a car crash from 20 years earlier. Give the character a prompt for diving into memories or thoughts of the past.

And use the memory to create an effect on the present. Show events from the past only as they make an impact on the current story.

Backstory is best digested in small doses. Take care to not pile up revelations and merely pour them out in boring clumps via info dumps. And remember to include backstory before it’s needed, otherwise it reads as coincidence.

Let backstory influence character decisions and attitudes and actions. Use it to give a character’s actions consistency.

Keep in mind that you, the writer, need to know much more about character history and earlier events than readers ever need to know. Let your knowledge color, flavor, the story. Let backstory bring shadings to a character. Let it fill in details about place and time and the cultural expectations of the people groups in your tale.

Use backstory for depth, so characters have a history, a full life, before the moments of your current story.

Use backstory to make characters realistic, as if they’d been in motion all along and you merely captured them in a moment of time. Use backstory to make readers believe that just as characters were real, involved in their own lives before page one of a book, that they’ll continue with their lives after this episode of their lives is complete and the reader closes the book.

Reveal only the backstory that’s important for the story you’re writing. That is, some events of a character’s backstory might work for a different tale, one you could write or might write. But include in your current story only what you know of a character that has importance for the current story events or to set up subsequent stories for that character.

Don’t tell every secret of your characters’ lives, just those relevant for this story. Allow your characters some privacy.

Don’t spill all about character history or setting events, but do share those moments and earlier events that directly lead to your story’s action and character motivation.

Reveal causes for a character’s stand on an issue or the reasons he is who is he or the reasons he must act on an issue.

Don’t give readers more than they need; keep them curious, at least a little bit. Provide answers, yes. But don’t necessarily connect all the dots. Be clear about events that occurred before your story begins, then reveal how those events formed your character’s personality or dreams or goals as he moves through the events in your story.

Flavor the now of story with bits from the past, but don’t allow the past to take over the now.

When you’re tempted to tell all, remind yourself you’re writing fiction, not a treatise on the effects of World War II on fictional characters. Know a lot; learn to keep secrets.

And learn when to uncover secrets for startling effect.

Use backstory, but make sure it works in the background without drowning out current story events.

Write stories with depth.

Write characters with pasts and futures.

Put backstory to work for your fiction.

***

Have you wondered why? Have you ignored such advice or followed along with it?

Have you purposely omitted faith and religion from your stories because you’ve been told it doesn’t sell or that readers don’t want such stories?

I want to remind you that you can make anything work in your fiction, even religion and all—good, bad, and indifferent—that comes with it.

Much of the advice against putting religious elements into fiction probably came about because of the over- or heavy-handed use of religion in novels. But we don’t throw away a rich source of character motivation or a major contributor to setting or tone just because some writers were heavy-handed.

Yes, keep in mind that you don’t want to overplay any story element, and that includes religion and faith. But not overdoing doesn’t mean you have to cut religion out altogether. What other broad subjects are so often ignored in fiction? There aren’t many.

And while there is a religion category in fiction, that doesn’t mean if you add a faith element to your story that it’s automatically put into that category or that your story wouldn’t better fit another category designation. You are not writing a religious book simply because you include a faith component, no matter what someone else tells you. At its most basic, religion is merely another story component, one that can accomplish for your story what no other component can.

Quite a few of the manuscripts I’ve edited recently have featured a religious connection. And I’m talking religion in many guises.

Not all mentions of faith are what we’d consider traditional, but belief systems are not being ignored in fiction.

Writers are including both traditional Western and Eastern practices, but they’re also writing about angelology, prayer, meditation, Roman and Greek gods, Egyptian deities, Wiccan rituals, elaborate rites, and simple daily faith.

Religion and faith are broad categories with lots of practices and options among them. Don’t be hesitant about considering any type of religious rite or ritual or belief for your characters and their fictional lives. Some book series are built around religion and faith. A lot of sci-fi and paranormal romance focus on what would be broadly considered religious or belief systems.

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Would a religious element fit your story? One or more of your characters? Would religious practice of some kind be expected or commonplace for the era, for the background or occupation of your lead characters? Do your protagonist and antagonist have competing belief systems?

Do protagonist and antagonist share a belief system but have opposing views about how the practices should be carried out? Maybe a difference of opinion about who should be leading worship? A difference of opinion over who should be worshipped?

Do your characters recognize the passage of days because of a church calendar? Does your protagonist attend daily mass, celebrate a formal Shabbat seder every week, perform Salah every day?

Maybe you’ve got a character who talks to God easily, as though he’s been doing it all his life. Or, maybe you write a character who doesn’t know God but who calls on Him in a crisis.

Religion and belief in fiction can be as simple as a dad kneeling with a child, teaching him to pray. Or faith in a story can be the barest snippet of a scene in a hospital chapel with a character thanking God for sparing his wife. Or religion can feature in every other scene, acting as the backbone of the story’s structure.

The addition of religion can bring color and depth to your stories. It can bring a touch of reality to what the reader knows is unreal. Or it can make what is seemingly normal into something altogether alien.

A woman in crisis may well turn to God. She may turn away from Him. She may question what she’s always believed. She may delve into beliefs she’s only heard about but never explored.

Religion can be an underpinning of the story, it can be a thread laced through it, it can be the barest hint of a mention that causes turmoil. That is, it can leave a large footprint throughout your story or the barest trace of its presence.

The religious element can be used for back story or to create conflict and raise the tension in a scene. Religion can put characters at odds with each other or draw them close. It can reveal prejudices or it can reveal truths. It can help a character or impede his progress. It can tie a character in knots or free him from what has him bound. It can do both in the same story.

Religion can be explanation or excuse or revelation.

Religion and all its trappings can add layers to story and depth to characters. Don’t be too quick to ignore the religious element and its impact on story and character and reader.

Keep in mind—

Readers can be easily turned off by too much of the religious element. As with any writing element, don’t overdo.

You are writing fiction, not a screed or a proselytizing tool.

You want to make the religious elements fit the character and the era and the genre.

Mentions of faith can be subtle or grand.

Religion is personal and marrow-deep in many individuals, in your readers. But the strength of those connections shouldn’t stop you from using religion for your characters. Actually, because readers so identify with their beliefs, that’s a strong reason for you to include the religious element. Religious issues can create an instant emotional tie that you produce with few other story elements.

What you can do—

Put what you know of people and of faith to work for your stories. Don’t hesitate to push emotional buttons for characters and readers. Manipulate the religious element for effect.

Decide on the level—intensity and depth—of the faith elements you’ll include. Is faith part of what makes your character who he is? Does it color everything he does or is it merely background info?

Use faith and rite and ritual to reveal character, advance plot, create or raise conflict, provide back story, play the centerpiece of an action scene.

Make faith a natural part of a character, not an add-on.

As with any story component, don’t introduce religion only once and then drop it. If you include faith practices or issues, put them to use.

Don’t overanalyze or over-explain faith and beliefs. As you don’t explain how a car runs when a character jumps into it to make a fast getaway, don’t explain how religion makes a character behave. Just make use of faith the same way you make use of a car.

Create individuals of faith rather than writing caricatures. Not all religious people are angelic in thought or behavior, as they were written 150 years ago. And not all priests and modern religious believers are psychotic, evil men hiding behind their faith, as they’ve been written for the past 40 years.

Don’t allow other writers or experts to tell you what to include in your fiction. Writers are including religion, faith and beliefs, and they’re doing it well. Use any element that fits your story.

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Consider faith for your fiction. Don’t add it only because you can, but don’t ignore it if your scenes, plot, and characters would be more involving with it.

Put religion, faith, and belief to work for your fiction. Draw from any subject matter that suits the tale you want to tell and that fits the characters who live in your story world.

Don’t allow yourself to be steered away from any story element that would enhance your craft, any element that could be the making of your story or your personal writing style or your career.

Introduce faith into your stories.

Write about characters and their beliefs.

Write powerful, inspiring fiction.

***

You know you’re supposed to. Characters shouldn’t sound like their creator but they also shouldn’t sound like each other. Not in speech and not in thought.

Do you ever wonder how God does it, makes each of us so completely different? Well, writers get to tackle the same job. And sometimes it’s tough. But there are tips for creating unique character voices.

Use different words
Characters can have their own slang, business lingo, favorite expressions, and favorite curse words.

One character may not curse at all and another may curse like a long-time prisoner and still another may tip-toe around curses with a country mother’s sensibilities—infrequent cussing that’s nonetheless powerfully effective when it is released.

An engineer will use words a painter wouldn’t. A barber won’t sound like a corporate CEO. Neither the barber nor the CEO will sound like a drill sergeant. None of the three will sound like a kindergarten teacher.

One character may use short words, another the 50-cent version. All will have pet expressions and phrases that they love to show off.

Some characters may avoid certain words or phrases altogether, not wanting to give power or voice to what those phrases mean.

Use different sentence patterns
Let one character use short sentences, another long or convoluted ones. Let some characters use repetition in words or phrases.  Vary sentence construction and word order—nouns don’t always have to come first.

Let one character use participial or absolute phrases while another goes for noun followed by verb followed by object.

Add humor to one character
If you can write humor, let one character be the jokester. Maybe create puns for a character. Maybe give him really bad puns.

Cut off speech or thought
Allow one character to use clipped speech or incomplete thoughts. Since this kind of speech can be strong and noticeable, make sure you don’t write the same style for all characters. It’s very easy to slip into a pattern or rhythm; think rappers or Damon Runyon characters. One with a highly unusual speech pattern is usually enough.

Let a character ramble
Some people can’t get to the point. Create characters who ramble or beat around the bush or just take forever to say what they need to say. Rambling speech or thought can bore the reader, so be judicious with this technique. But do use it if it fits a character. Or if a character wants to drive others crazy.

Try a few of these techniques—

Have characters pay attention to different things—some will note their surroundings, some will not. Some will note furnishings or temperature or changes to a room. Some will notice other characters, especially the changes in them, but some characters are oblivious. Use what they notice to differentiate characters.

Give each a personal response style to questions. Some will answer others directly; others will hesitate or answer with a question or not answer at all.

Have one character dominate the conversations.

Have one character always interrupt and one character never interrupt. And then, when one of them acts out of character, others, including readers, will notice.

Consider character education and experience and purpose—is the character trying to schmooze someone? Is he striving to come across as honest when he isn’t? Let one character (almost) always tell the truth and let another almost always lie.

Consider the pressure the character is under—sentences will get short and choppy if a character is worried or is thinking of something else or has too many concerns to think about.

Consider the age of the character, the sex of the character, the culture or national background of a character.

Consider the snob factor—just who does your character think he is? Who does he want to be? Pretend to be? Fear to be?

Consider regional differences. Does your character say highway, expressway, thru-way, or something different?

Do you have a character who uses nicknames, one who speaks in lovey-dovey coos, another who preaches at his friends? Maintain their speech styles and patterns without overburdening readers with too much of a good thing.

Make sure that not all characters say oh or well or oh, please, or dagnabbit. Make them sound different because they are different. Let what’s inside the character reveal him. Let the events happening around him—and their effect on him—influence his word choices. Create different reactions for every character.

Do not use odd spellings and dialect as your main method of pointing out different speech patterns. Words may sound different in dialect, but the words are the same. So they’re actually spelled the same. Use other methods for indicating accents and dialect.

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This is a short one today, but I hope there’s enough here to get you started on differentiating your characters’ speech and thoughts.

Don’t worry too much about character voice on your first draft, especially if you’re not quite sure who the characters are yet. If you do know, try to use words and speech patterns they’d use. If you don’t know who they are when you begin, wait until they reveal themselves and then begin writing specifically for them.

Or, if you want to try on a character voice, as you might a costume, write a scene or two with different styles of speech and thought, and see if that doesn’t help you figure out just who these characters are.

Give variety to your characters. Let them speak from their hearts and their guts with all the honesty that’s in them. Let them reveal themselves through word and thought.

Write different character voices.

Create a variety of characters.

Write engaging fiction.

***

All sentences must have a subject and a verb and if they have supporting words, that’s even better. But never use sentence fragments—never, never, never.

Are you nodding because that’s the advice you got?

Well, perhaps that’s the way to teach language skills to children just learning how to write. Perhaps it’s the way to teach non-fiction. Or perhaps not. Creative non-fiction is filled with incomplete sentences. Perhaps it’s just a first step from a first teacher, and somewhere down the line someone else was supposed to teach us how to break that rule in order to create phrases that make a splash when they’re grammatically incomplete but oh so thoroughly complete in meaning.

Face it: readers of fiction know that sentences don’t need to be complete in order to make an impact. Fragments can be understandable. They can be strong. They can be necessary for the life of a passage.

And what readers know, writers know. And those writers know how to write grammatically incomplete sentences that are nonetheless complete for their purpose.

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So, now that you know it’s okay, sometimes preferable, to use sentence fragments, how do you use them correctly?

Use them, but do so with the knowledge that there are times and places where they work better than others. There are times when the paragraph or scene is better served by full sentences, with specific verbs and subjects. There are times when you need to spell it all out.

Not only are there places where fragments don’t work, there are some fragments that don’t work at all. For example, the shortcut style of instant messages and texts and tweets has crept into long fiction and sometimes just doesn’t fit.

Ever read something such as—

Tilly dropped the cookie sheet. For the second time. Betty turned to hide her face. Grin.

Grin? What does that mean? That Betty hid a grin? Couldn’t hold back a grin? That she wanted to grin? That Tilly was grinning? That a grin was threatening to break out but Betty couldn’t let it because the last time a grin escaped, her mother was so shocked she fell over backward—off the ladder she’d been perched on to take down Christmas decorations—and she’d tipped into the Christmas tree and of course that had listed toward the window, knocking out the newly installed glass and after that, with the hole in the glass, the cat had escaped, so Lady, the Pekinese with an attitude,  had to jump out after her and . . . Well, let’s just say that Betty didn’t grin unexpectedly any more.

It’s hard to convey something such as that with a simple grin.

What about—

Tilly’s boss told her to clean the cages before she took the animals out for their walks. Blank stare. How could she clean the cages with the animals still in them?

———————–

“I love you, my dear,” Zeke said.

But his shoes were tied, he was pulling on his coat, and his packed bags were sitting at the door.

“I’ll always love you. I just need to . . . find myself.”

Find himself? Cocked brow. Yeah, I’d show him where he could find himself.

What does blank stare mean here? Does Tilly offer one? Feel that she’s wearing one?

What of cocked brow? Where’s the verb? Who’s doing the cocking? Does the phrase convey what it should?

There are too many possibilities for what these could say to leave the reader with only blank stare or cocked brow. If you’re writing long fiction, take the time to provide enough information for readers to understand, to take in meaning and emotion.

In novels and novellas, even in short stories, we’ve got time. We don’t have to shortcut everything the way we do for social media. We get to expand.

That’s not saying you can’t use shortcuts, even single-word shortcuts. Just be sure that your shortcuts make sense. Remember the reader. And fit your shortcuts to the genre and era and setting of your fictional world. Fit them to the character.

Also, be aware that you’re using a shortcut and know why. Don’t use them only because you’ve  just spent an hour texting and that type of construction—a benefit when we text—is on your brain.

Write with deliberation. Use what works for the story, not what happens to pop out onto the page.

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There are other kinds of incomplete sentences as well. Again, some work, others don’t.

Fragments and incomplete sentences that work—

The April showers brought not only spring flowers but tornados. And devastation. John stood at the edge of his property, shocked. The house his grandfather had raised up from the Kansas field was no more, wiped away in a moment. He could see for miles where once trees had stood to block his view. Now? Emptiness. A vast void. The Kansas earth wiped clear of man’s presence.

———–

Paulette raced up the stairs, panting. Afraid she was too late. Afraid of what she’d find. Simply afraid. Hell, she was terrified.

———–

Danny wanted to forget his troubles. Forget his job. Forget his wife.

No, on second thought, he liked the job.

These fragments work because they make sense. They are based on what has come before. So . . . Explanations work as fragments. Repetition works. Answers to questions work.

Fragments and incomplete sentences that don’t work—

Tim was ecstatic. His excitement overwhelming him. X

———–

Diana put the dagger. X

 ———–

 Yes, I need you to bring. X

———–

While he read. X And then he’d take a bath and have a glass of wine. While Diana read.

Why don’t these fragments work?

In the first example, a period has separated the wording of  an absolute phrase. But the two parts of the absolute phrase need to be in the same sentence. Replace the period with a comma, and you have a sentence that does work. Or, change the verb form of overwhelm and that works also.

Tim was ecstatic, his excitement overwhelming him.

Tim was ecstatic. His excitement overwhelmed him.

What about Diana and her dagger? That fragment doesn’t work because the meaning is incomplete. Where did she put the dagger? We have no idea.

Diana put the dagger inside her boot.

The sentence with bring is incomplete because bring is a transitive verb that needs an object. We need to answer the question bring what.

Yes, I need you to bring the dagger that’s in your boot.

The final example is a bit trickier. If the first sentence is the first in a scene, it has no connection to anything else and so while I read has no meaning. While is a subordinating conjunction whose purpose is to connect a dependent clause to the rest of the sentence. (There’s a bit more to it than that, but for our purpose, that’s enough.) Since there is no rest of the sentence, there is nothing to connect to. The phrase is meaningless.

Yet, we could use this grammatically incorrect snippet to mean something if we let it refer—connect, in a way—to what has come before.

When the similar while you read follows another sentence—when it so clearly refers to the previous sentence—it can stand alone. Is it grammatically correct? No. Does it work in fiction? You bet. You can even use such a sentence as a paragraph of its own, for emphasis—

Tim was ecstatic; his excitement overwhelmed him. Almost overwhelmed Diana too. But Diana only shook her head and put the dagger inside her boot.

“Yes,” Tim said. “I need you to bring your dagger. And to kill Smyth, of course.”

Then Tim would no doubt read Smyth’s diary while she took care of Smyth’s body. Tim would follow up with a bath and a glass of wine.  

Tim grinned, gave her a thumbs-up. Yeah, he’d sip his precious wine. Then it would be her turn to read the diary.

While she waited to kill Smyth’s precious wife.

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The way a writer crafts her sentences—fluid and detailed, short and to the point, peppered with modifiers, sparse and lean—is a reflection of that writer’s style. Sentence construction, rhythm, patterns, word choices, sound, the visual of letters on the page—these elements working together define a writer’s style. Showcase it. Make it.

And the use or absence of sentence fragments is one element of that style.

Put fragments and incomplete sentences to work for your fiction if it works for your and your stories. It’s allowed. It’s okay. It’s sometimes necessary.

But learn what works and what doesn’t. Be grammatically incorrect on purpose, not by accident.

 Use incomplete sentences for impact, for changes in rhythm, to convey a character’s personality or frame of mind.

Keep in mind—

Pretty much anything goes in dialogue. Throw the grammar rules out the window if doing so fits your character and the emotion of the moment. No one needs to speak in complete sentences. Let character speech raise the tension when characters don’t answer the question that’s asked but the one that’s implied or the one that’s ignored. Let characters be unclear. Let dialogue sound different from your narration.

Some sentences which look incomplete aren’t. And even if they’re grammatically incomplete, they are nonetheless acceptable.

Commands are complete in themselves.

Swab the deck [you swab is implied]

Do it.

Question words are complete.

Why?

When?

Answers to questions and implied answers to (implied) questions are complete.

Would she take the job? Yes.

She wondered if he actually did it. He had.

The punch line? Five balloons and one pet snake.

Interjections are complete.

Holy cow.

Yowza!

Damn.

Oh no.

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Might you need to use grammatically complete sentences for a company report or thesis? Sure. But even in those circumstances a good writer knows how to create impact with an incomplete sentence.

Write creatively. At the same time, write to communicate. Be clear, but use any tool, every tool, to create an impact.

Use sentence fragments if you can do so without confusing your readers (unless confusion is the intent).

Explore your options. Mix up your sentences so they’re not all the same. Not all by the book. Not all even sentences.

Write dramatic fiction. Write entertaining fiction. Write good story.

***

These individuals are more (or would that be less?) than grammar experts or curmudgeons. They go well beyond simple courtesy to make their points about grammar or punctuation, often pointing out errors and simple typos.

And they make the rest of us who also care about correct grammar and punctuation look to be of like mind, when most who truly care about language have no interest in embarrassing or offensively correcting those who might not follow language standards.

While I too would like error-free comments in blogs and in articles and in e-mails, I don’t fly off the handle when I find errors—and I’m talking about in my own writing as well as in the writing of others.

We are not perfect and for some writing, there’s no need for perfection. A timely response is sometimes more important than a grammatically perfect one; a blog comment is not a white paper or thesis. Also, errors don’t always mean a lack of knowledge. Even those who know the difference have typed there for their or they’re.

In addition to giving grammar lovers a bad name, these grammar authoritarians can generate a response that’s contradictory to the one they may hope to inspire. Well . . . Perhaps their actual aim is to stir controversy. If they truly cared about language and grammar and punctuation, they’d probably find a more palatable way to get their points across. Readers of a blog are not likely to fall over backwards to thank the commenter who jumps on another commenter for using the wrong verb tense or an incorrect word. That is, this grammar authority will not convince others he’s right if he’s rude and bombastic.

He may instead discourage others from pursuing correct or standard grammar. After all, who wants to be so strait-laced about the rules that they turn into someone who  belligerently mouths off to strangers?

Of course, there are also those who think any rule should be ignored for art’s sake. I don’t know that these have been blessed with a moniker—grammar anarchists?—but they also hold strong opinions on grammar rules and language use. They argue for using language as it’s spoken and written by real people in their daily lives.

At the extremes, then, there are those who would hold to unchanging rules of language and writing and those who consider rules to be unnecessary limits on creativity.

Well . . .

How about we say that either extreme doesn’t necessarily help writers or harm writers? How about we take the best from both sides, especially if we write fiction? How about we make the two extremes meet somewhere in the middle?

Why not take the best of prescriptive grammar—the norms and rules and accepted usage—as well as the best of descriptive grammar—language and syntax and words as they’re actually used by speakers of a language?

By taking this stand, I’ve pretty much set myself outside the prescriptive camp if we’re actually talking the point of view of the true grammar nazi. But you’ll find that prescriptive doesn’t have to mean absolute. Prescriptive rules and formulas are not only recommendations for language, they are a way to teach grammar, to give everyone the same frame of reference, a foundation to work from. Those prescriptivists who focus on this aspect are more accepting of variations.

When used for purposes other than to beat down those who make errors, grammar rules can be recognized for their strengths. We understand they are not designed as straitjackets to constrict writers.

Instructors teach children and those new to the language via rules and examples. They do so to frame language for those just learning it. Without rules, those unfamiliar with the language would have no idea how to construct a simple sentence, no idea of the necessity of nouns and verbs, the importance of word order, or the nature of subject-verb agreement.

Those learning language need rules, and those using language need rules.

If we expect readers to understand that it was Wolfgang and not Marta who raced after the car, writers and readers have to share common rules and practices and understanding.

While these two sentences reveal the same information—

With Marta watching, Wolfgang chased after the car.

Wolfgang chased after the car while Marta watched.

this sentence reveals something different—

Watching Marta, Wolfgang chased after the car.

Without understanding the rules for word order in a language, readers might not get the meaning of a sentence. Or might wonder if a sentence has one or more possible meanings.

Without knowledge of the rules, readers might never understand what it means when someone breaks those rules. Readers might not be able to appreciate the impact of a broken rule.

Without knowledge of language standards, readers may never understand nuance or hyperbole or sarcasm or irony.

Punctuation rules are also important. This sentence means something quite different from the others—

Watching, Marta Wolfgang chased after the car.

Rules are vital for understanding. For communicating. And the individuals on both sides of a communication—the one speaking/writing the message and the one receiving it—have to be able to understand.

Think of rules and the prescriptive as keys to a code: anyone who knows the keys can read the code.

For writers, this is all-important. We want readers to understand. We want them to follow the plot and feel the emotion. No, we don’t always want to be perfectly clear, not in terms of giving away too much too soon. But even when we’re hiding information, we want readers to follow our misdirection. When we confuse the reader, we do so on purpose. We don’t want to inadvertently confuse.

Most of the time, we’ll want to provide the key to unlock the code of story. When we don’t provide it? Well, readers who can’t follow our books toss those books across the room.

So . . . We realize that we do need rules and we do need to follow them—for the most part—to keep the reader going where we want him to go.

This means we use standard grammar and punctuation.

We use a style sheet so our stories are internally consistent.

We follow the house rules of our publisher to maintain consistency within the house.

We use style choices that fit the genre. This is important because genre readers expect certain conventions. Too much that’s contrary to genre standards will pull the reader from the story, have him wondering what the writer was trying to do.

This doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. But you do need to know what you’re up against when you defy genre convention.

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But if we have to follow the rules, what about creativity? What about the way real people speak these days? What about the influence of TV and texting and instant messaging?

What about the way we speak as opposed to the way we’re taught to write? How can we deal with discrepancies there?

This is where the descriptive comes in. Descriptive grammar shows how language is used in the real world. Linguists who study dialect and trends and social media can tell us all about how people actually use language. And they can show how that use varies across a country or between generations or within the tiers of a large company.

Writers can take advantage of what we learn from linguists and their studies. If you want a character who speaks today’s slang and who uses non-traditional grammar, you can put slang in his words and thoughts. You can use non-standard grammar.

You can have a character speak almost any way you want him to speak.

But the wise writer knows what such wording means to the story and to the reader.

The uncommon is often noticed. And the uncommon in the written word may be noticed quicker and in greater measure than the uncommon that’s spoken. We expect young people to come up with new words and new ways to communicate—that’s been happening for years.

But those of us already familiar with rules and patterns and styles will notice the uncommon in what we read.

A writer needs to understand this. Needs to understand that the uncommon can take the writer out of the fiction and have him studying or wondering about the mechanics.

Understand, as well, that slang and fads change. If something new doesn’t become something established and then something common, it simply disappears and makes way for the next new style. What once was hip, if it doesn’t become standard, instead becomes dated.

You might not care that a secondary character sounds out of fashion before your book is published; you might care very much if your protagonist’s appeal goes of style before readers get to enjoy him.

Keep in mind, also, that what is trendy to one group may mean absolutely nothing to another group. So, while Hollywood may promote certain practices for their current stories and young characters, the rest of the country—the rest of the world—may find such fadishness laughable or incomprehensible.

One reason to stay with what works and has worked for years is that it does work. Standards are not subject to sudden whims and momentary challenges.

On the other hand, standards do change over time. There’s no reason to hold on to traditions simply because they’re traditions. New traditions can work too. And old traditions should be put aside if they no longer serve their purpose.

That is, use something because it works, not merely because it’s traditional or because it’s new and flashy. Prescriptive or descriptive grammar, use what works for the story and the genre and the reader and for you.

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For fiction, take advantage of every tool. Use traditional grammar when doing so serves your stories and sample from everyday practice when that works. Consider genre and consider your readers.

Think and plan and write for the long-term, if you want your stories to be appreciated for more than six months.

Learn standard grammar and punctuation so you can communicate with others who know the same rules.

Adapt when doing so fits your characters or plots or genre.

Write fiction that resonates. But also write fiction that’s understood.

Unlock the code to your stories.

Write effective and entertaining  fiction.

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I wanted to leave you with an example of when descriptive grammar can trump prescriptive, especially when used this way in fiction.

Then is not a coordinating conjunction, but we often use it as if it were. We think it and say it as if it carried the same grammatical weight as but or and. So we have sentences such as—

Ike skated past the cross street, then he pulled to the curb.

She said she was sure she’d seen a gun, then she changed her mind.

If we were sticking to the rules, we’d write—

Ike skated past the cross street, and then he pulled to the curb.

Ike skated past the cross street, yet then he pulled to the curb.

Ike skated past the cross street; he then pulled to the curb.

Ike skated past the cross street before he pulled to the curb.

Ike first skated past the cross street and then pulled to the curb.

She said she was sure she’d seen a gun, but then she changed her mind.

We can have technically correct, or we can write the way our characters would think and/or speak. And the two might not be the same.

If this is the speech/thought pattern of a character, then use the grammar and punctuation styles that work to reveal that character. Yes, you could reword the original. But if Ike’s brother is reporting how he eats, this may be perfect for that report. This is especially true if we’re talking about dialogue.

Many use then in place of a coordinating conjunction in speech. Showing that use in your fiction is a reflection of a common practice, one that doesn’t cause confusion for the reader. You can always write the sentence in the grammatically correct way, yet using then incorrectly won’t cause your story to fall apart. 

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Inner dialogue is simply the speech of a character to himself. He hears it and the reader hears it, but other characters have no idea what’s going on in his head.

It’s the same for us and our thoughts. Unless we reveal them, no one knows what we’re thinking. In our worlds, however, even if we do reveal our thoughts, it’s likely that no one hears those thoughts uncensored. Lovers may share most of what they’re thinking, or an abusive parent might dump every thought on a child, but for the most part, men and women don’t share every thought. If they did, they’d be talking nonstop.

And they’d be opening up the very most intimate part of themselves. Most people simply don’t tell what they’re thinking, in full, to others. To do so would make them vulnerable, naked, without protection.

That’s a bit too much for any of us 3-dimensional people.

With characters, however, we get to listen in. And we hear not only passive thoughts—the stream of consciousness patter that flows through the mind—but deliberate dialogue—a character giving himself a pep-talk or talking himself into or out of particular actions.

Thought and inner dialogue give the reader insight he can’t get from watching a character’s actions from the outside.

Inner dialogue and thought reveal truth. They reveal darkness. They reveal hope or dreams or resignation.

They reveal emotions or beliefs too painful to be shared with other characters.

They reveal the heart. They reveal despair of the soul. They reveal strength of the spirit.

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Thought and inner dialogue can be used to raise the emotional level of a scene. When we see a mother comforting her child, telling him all is well, and then we see into her thoughts, knowing that in truth she has no hope that all will be well, we feel her love for her child. We see her own feelings and the need she feels to protect her child from a painful truth.

Character thought can also lighten a scene. A man who’s holding back sarcasm or inappropriate humor may present a blank face to other characters but may reveal his irreverence to the reader.

What else can thought and inner dialogue do?

Thoughts and lectures to self allow readers insight into a character

They allow characters to be differentiated

They give characters an honest voice

They can reveal character motivation

They can slow the pace of a scene

They can reveal a character’s conflict between his inner man and the needs of others

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So, how does the writer convey the thoughts and inner dialogue of a character?

First, the character must be the viewpoint character for a scene. Unless you’re writing from a completely omniscient viewpoint, which is quite unusual these days, you won’t be dipping into and out of every character’s head. And you certainly won’t be doing so within the same scene. So be sure we don’t get a thought from the dog when a couple is having a fight, not unless the dog is the viewpoint character for the scene.

Also, you’ll only want to reveal thoughts and inner dialogue that advance the plot. We don’t need to hear everything, just the good stuff. You could show random thoughts a time or two to establish the way a character thinks, but skip those kinds of thoughts for the most part. Give the reader thoughts that reveal the character and have bearing on the plot. Thoughts that up the emotional temperature for the reader.

In practical terms, try the following. The option without italics makes for the least intrusive read. 

1.  Use italics and dialogue tags

For traditional third-person narration, use italics to indicate a character’s thoughts or inner dialogue. Clearly signal to the reader that what she’s reading is thought or inner dialogue and not spoken dialogue.

Montrose angled his head, taking in both Giselle and her sister behind her.

They look nothing alike, he thought. He should have known Giselle was not Ariana.

Also . . .

Montrose angled his head, taking in both Giselle and her sister behind her.

They look nothing alike, he thought. I should’ve known Giselle was not Ariana.

No need to write he thought to himself. The reader knows he’s not thinking to someone else. Unless, of course, we’re talking paranormal or sci-fi. In such cases, you might indeed need to tell us who Montrose is thinking to.

Note that the verb look is in the present tense. Because this is inner dialogue—words directed to the character from himself—verb tense can be past or present, even if the rest of the narrative is past tense.

2.  Use italics without dialogue tags

When you’ve made it clear who the viewpoint character is, use italics without the dialogue tags. Readers will understand that the viewpoint character is the one revealing his thoughts.

Montrose tilted his head to get a clearer view of the hoyden behind Giselle. They look nothing alike. He dismissed the two of them with the flick of a wrist. And neither looks like my Margaret.

Use of italics allows the writer to treat thoughts as if the words are dialogue, as if the character is speaking to himself. So, we can use the present tense look rather than looked, even if the rest of the story uses narration in the past tense. The writer can also use I and me and we and our, even if the story is in the third person. Whatever you can do with spoken dialogue, you can do with a character’s inner dialogue. If you’re using italics to convey that inner dialogue.

3.  Don’t use italics at all

You can eliminate the use of and need for italics if you’re using first-person narration or deep POV in third-person narration. Since the reader knows and feels he’s in the character’s head, there’s no need to use italics to highlight thoughts of the character or dialogue directed to the character from himself.

Montrose tilted his head to get a clearer view of the hoyden behind Giselle. They looked nothing alike, these two women posing as his dead wife’s sisters. He dismissed both with a flick of his wrist. They also looked nothing like his sweet, sweet Margaret.

Stupid, ignorant fool. Should have known better than to believe. Than to hope . . .

There is no doubt that Montrose is the one thinking these thoughts.

In the first person—

I tipped my head to get a clearer view of the hoyden behind Giselle. They looked nothing alike, these two women posing as Margaret’s sisters. I waved them away. And they certainly didn’t favor my sweet Margaret.

Stupid, ignorant fool. I should have known better than to believe. Than to hope . . .

Note that without the italics, I kept the verbs in the past tense, to match the rest of the narration. This is a deliberate choice. It maintains consistency for the reader, keeps her from wondering why the writer changed from past to present tense.

With italics, the reader is given a signal to alert her to the inner thought. Without italics, there is no visual signal. Readers will understand that they’re reading thoughts, but a change to present tense in those thoughts—pushed up against past tense with the rest of the actions—may cause a hesitation for the reader. And you don’t want to do anything to pull the reader from the fiction.

This practice of switching verb tense only when using italics is a suggestion, not a hard rule. You’ve got options, and if you can make your story work by mixing present tense in your viewpoint character’s thoughts with past tense in that same character’s actions and do so without the visual aid of italics, try it. There’s nothing wrong with trying something.

Yet know that such a practice won’t be universally understood or accepted. Realize that you might lose your reader. And you definitely don’t want to make your reader hesitate, don’t want her wondering about the mechanics of story rather than the plot of story. Help the reader out.

While I wouldn’t want to say you can’t try something, my recommendation is to only switch tense in thought or inner dialogue if you use italics to show what you’ve done.

Do not, however, use I, me, we, or our without italics if you’re using third-person point of view. Without the signal of the italics, readers will think you’ve switched from third to first person mid-paragraph.

Keep in mind—

While it’s not required, consider beginning thoughts and inner dialogue with a new paragraph, as if it were spoken dialogue. Yet even as dialogue can share a paragraph with action, so can thoughts. Treat inner dialogue as you would spoken dialogue.

Never use quotation marks for thoughts, even if those thoughts are inner dialogue, a character talking to himself. Reserve quotation marks for speech that’s vocalized. Readers should be able to tell when a character is speaking inside his head and when he’s talking aloud, even if he’s the only person in the scene.

Plus, if you can cut back on distracting visuals, including unnecessary punctuation, do it.

Be consistent. Use the same method of conveying character thought and inner dialogue on the last page that you use on the first page. Consistency keeps the reader grounded in the fiction. Changes in method distract the reader.

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I hope these tips are helpful as you look for ways to convey thoughts and inner dialogue.

If you’ve explored other options, let us know what you’ve seen or tried for yourself. What works for you? What doesn’t?

Let your fellow writers and editors know how you write inner dialogue and character thoughts.

Share your own tips about punctuating thoughts.

Let us know how you write good fiction.

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On May 16, 2012, I made a couple of changes to the examples and their explanations. I hope the options are now clearer.