Dialog Tags
Part of being an aspiring writer is receiving feedback, and a big part of getting feedback is giving it. I've belonged to several critique sites over the years, including but not limited to deviantART (which, while a good site, leaves much to be desired if your goal is useful feedback on lengthly prose), Critique Circle (which is a great site, but I started to have trouble keeping up with the queue), and Scribophile (which is useful, but unfortunately much of the useful bits for novel-writers require that you sign up for the premium membership).
However, the point of this post isn't to analyze the various websites out there, but rather to emphasize a piece of common advice I've found myself giving lately. It's about something that should be simple, but isn't: dialog tags.
Something that should really be as easy as she said gives a lot of people trouble, sometimes because they don't understand the nature of the dialog tag, and sometimes because they try too hard. There are a couple of common mistakes that, while technically grammatically correct, should be avoided by anyone who wants their work taken seriously.
While technically "wrylies" is a bit of screenwriting jargon referring to parentheticals in a script, it's the one that's stuck with me over the years. They're also called "Tom Swifties," but I prefer the screenwriting term. An example is:
Care and Feeding of Your Database – People and Organizations
If you work in the fundraising department of any NPO, that department most likely has a database with which to keep track of its donors and prospects. Many NPOs use The Raiser's Edge, a Blackbaud product; others use eTapestry, Microsoft Access, and other, similar programs. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a list of different companies and their software programs.
Databases like Raiser's Edge (RE) are extremely powerful, but they require "care and feeding". It isn't enough to create a record and drop your donor's information into the document with no regard to consistency. If you're starting up an NPO, you're lucky: you can design "best practices" now, and while you'll need to make sure your volunteers or employees stick to it, you'll be making a clean start.
If you're part of an established organization, your job is a little more difficult: not only do you need to develop best practices; you should change your pre-existing and active records to the new system, and you'll need to convince your fellow employees to follow the system. This post will cover tips for your database records involving people and organizations; funding requests will be another post!
MAGIC TO THE BONE, Devon Monk – Review
MAGIC TO THE BONE is the first book of the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk. It is also Monk's debut novel, and has the rare distinction of having a cover that stays relatively true to the novel while still being visually alluring. The cover artist was Larry Rostant, and he did a great job. I bought the paperback some time ago, before the second book came out, but in honor of book three coming out November 3rd, I thought it would be a good idea to take the opportunity to re-read the series.
Allie Beckstrom is a Hound, able to trace a spell back to its caster, and while she may be one of the best there is at what she does, that doesn't make her home any less crummy or her bank account any less meager. This despite the fact that her father is a rich, powerful businessman, because she left that world long ago. But when she comes across a little boy dying from an illegal magic Offload, which is a way of avoiding the price of magic, she's drawn back into that world--because the Offload bears her father's magical signature. And then her father turns up dead, and she's the lead suspect, which complicates things quite a bit.
My favorite element of this series is the price of magic that Monk has chosen to have her characters pay. The first line of the back-cover blurb was Everything has a cost. And every act of magic extracts a price from its user... and that drew me in immediately. I come from the school of thought that insists that magic shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail-free card for a character; it doesn't exist to make things easy or just for the shiny coolness factor.
I remember when I first came across Holly Lisle's eleven Rules for Better Fantasy. I won't say they changed my life, but they certainly changed the way I read fiction. If a particular kind of magic is a way out of trouble for a character, or doesn't come with consequences, chances are I'm never even going to get past the book's back cover.