You know I'll agree with this: an editorial in support of the quotation mark.
Alicia
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Got Editing Questions?
If you have an editing question you'd like us to address, feel free to send it to rasley at gmail dot com. We like reader questions because they save us from having to think up post topics on our own. ;)
Readers' Choice for Top Ten Blog Posts
- 1. Top Ten Reasons the Editor Doesn't Love What Your Critique Group Loves
- 2. How to Put It Together Into One Neat Tweet
- 3. Marks of the Amateur - Starting a List
- 4. When Unnamed Characters Speak
- 5. Character-Driven/Plot-Driven
- 6. The Words Not Spoken, the Steps Not Taken
- 7. This Was in the Comments, But It's a Great Question, So Let's Discuss--
- 8. Dialogue Tags
- 9. Enjambment in Fiction
- 10. Thoughts on Pacing - Nothing Brilliant
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Alicia
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Theresa
Readers' Choice for Best Series by Both Editors
Theresa's Dubious Honor
Useful Sites for Writers
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(323)
-
▼
December
(33)
- Housekeeping and a Question
- These are a few of our favorite things...
- 25 and Holding!
- Alicia, Here it is--
- We're #1!
- Quotation marks, rah!
- Emotion postponement
- Sentence simplification
- Spotted in the Wild
- Happy Holidays!
- Elmo Says
- From the Mailbag
- Another IT factor -- "As It"
- Another mark of the amateur
- Sequence with "like"
- Two Years, Two Editors, Two Ways to Win
- Gettin' Fierce
- When Unnamed Characters Speak
- Who is teaching this stuff?
- Fragments redux
- A Quick Sentence Revision Tip: Subordinate "IT"
- Let's Talk About Men
- This was posted on J's site, but I need to record it
- Guest Post: "The Wise of Being Funny"
- Fun things
- Foreblogging the comment
- Event sequence in scenes
- Vanity "Experience"
- Ah, Poetry
- Fakery and Fuckery
- Endings and Anarchy
- How Did Your NaNo Go?
- Computer Tricks
-
▼
December
(33)
When Theresa's not reading manuscripts, she's reading:
Labels
- action (26)
- active prose (12)
- acts (1)
- adjectives (10)
- advanced stuff (1)
- advanced training (1)
- adverbs (10)
- advice (2)
- agents (4)
- agreement (3)
- alliteration (1)
- American vs. British English (2)
- antagonist (3)
- antiheroes (12)
- art (1)
- audiobooks (1)
- author (2)
- author rights (1)
- authorial negation (3)
- authority (2)
- backstory (7)
- body parts (7)
- books (1)
- books we read (37)
- call to action (1)
- causation (4)
- chapters (2)
- character (81)
- characters (3)
- classes (2)
- classics (3)
- clauses (10)
- climax (2)
- coherence (1)
- coincidence (1)
- comedy (8)
- commas (10)
- concrete (1)
- conferences (20)
- conflict (18)
- conjunctions (5)
- contests (33)
- contracts (1)
- copy editing (9)
- Critique (1)
- Critique groups (7)
- danglers (7)
- deep pov (28)
- deep stuff (25)
- denouement (1)
- description (22)
- detail (4)
- details (1)
- deuteragonist (1)
- dialect (4)
- dialogue (38)
- dialogue beats (7)
- dialogue tags (6)
- direct publishing (9)
- double negatives (1)
- ebooks (3)
- editing (24)
- editors (24)
- electronic reading (1)
- ellipses (3)
- emotion (27)
- endings (15)
- epilogues (2)
- ETIQUETTE (1)
- examples (62)
- excerpts (1)
- exercises (23)
- exposition (13)
- eyes (2)
- fairy tale (1)
- feedback (1)
- film (13)
- first person pov (5)
- first sentence (1)
- flashback (4)
- foils (6)
- foreshadowing (1)
- formatting (1)
- frames (1)
- freewriting (2)
- fun stuff (5)
- future of story (2)
- genre (6)
- gerunds (1)
- goals (1)
- grammar (52)
- guest post (5)
- headhopping (2)
- hero (9)
- hooks (1)
- horror (1)
- horror books (1)
- hyphens (3)
- idea (1)
- inciting incident (1)
- innovation (2)
- interior monologue (9)
- internal conflict (1)
- irish (1)
- irony (3)
- journal (1)
- Kindle (4)
- life (3)
- line editing (63)
- links (36)
- lists (4)
- log lines (16)
- manuscript (1)
- mark of the amateur (11)
- melodrama (1)
- memoir (1)
- memory (1)
- metafiction (1)
- metaphor (4)
- middle (1)
- modals (1)
- modifiers (14)
- motif (9)
- motivation (7)
- multiple POV (4)
- mystery (4)
- names (4)
- nano (2)
- narration (1)
- narrative (8)
- narrative summary (6)
- new media (1)
- nouns (5)
- omniscient (2)
- openings (60)
- ordinary world (7)
- other (42)
- outline (2)
- pacing (12)
- paragraphs (37)
- participial phrases (23)
- participles (3)
- passive voice (9)
- past participles (3)
- Pen Olympics (18)
- pennames (1)
- perception (1)
- personal (7)
- phrases (1)
- pitching (28)
- plot (64)
- plotting (3)
- poetry (16)
- poetry plotting deep thoughts (1)
- polls (2)
- possessive (1)
- POV (51)
- POV contest (11)
- PR (14)
- predicates (5)
- prepositions (8)
- principles (1)
- productivity (14)
- progressive verbs (1)
- prologue (5)
- promotion (3)
- pronouns (11)
- proofreading (2)
- prose (5)
- protagonist (12)
- publishing (1)
- publishing industry (93)
- punchlines (1)
- punctuation (33)
- query letters (15)
- quotations (1)
- quotes from writers (1)
- read and revise like an editor (2)
- reader expectations (5)
- readers (2)
- redlines (12)
- reinventing (4)
- rejections (4)
- relative clauses (3)
- reversals (6)
- reviews (2)
- revising (8)
- revision (5)
- revision letters (8)
- romance (8)
- rule (1)
- rules (4)
- scene (3)
- scene charts (1)
- scenes (58)
- scenes pov setting emotion character (1)
- secondary characters (4)
- self-publishing (2)
- semicolons (2)
- sense of smell (4)
- sentence combining (5)
- sentence construction (2)
- sentence fragments (10)
- sentence structure (37)
- sentences (89)
- sequels (3)
- sequence (2)
- series - Alicia's sample line edits (45)
- series - Johnny and Drago (8)
- series- ongoing rants on PPPs (9)
- setting (31)
- settings (1)
- short stories (1)
- short stories Plot structure (1)
- show don't tell (5)
- simile (1)
- slang (1)
- smart stuff (2)
- sound (1)
- stephen king (1)
- story (7)
- stream of consciousness (2)
- structure (33)
- style (7)
- subject/verb agreement (2)
- submissions (57)
- subordinate clauses (4)
- subplots (3)
- subtext (10)
- symbolism (1)
- synopsis (11)
- syntax (2)
- teaching (1)
- tech (1)
- technique (1)
- tense (5)
- tension (3)
- terms (1)
- theme (24)
- thought (1)
- thought tags (1)
- three acts (1)
- tone (1)
- topic sentences (1)
- transitions (6)
- tritagonist (1)
- turning points (1)
- TV shows (23)
- typography (5)
- usage (10)
- verbs (27)
- villains (3)
- vocabulary (2)
- voice (50)
- word choice (1)
- words (41)
- workshop (5)
- worldview (2)
- writer control (1)
- writer's block (3)
- writers (3)
- writing advice (1)
- writing process (3)
Posts
19 comments:
I got 1.5 pages into a book without quotation marks--a book that began with dialogue--and gave up. Please. It drives me absolutely batty when authors do something like this.
Although, I must admit, much about lit fic drives me batty. So perhaps the punctuation thing isn't so unexpected.
You know, I've never actually read a book that did this. I guess I'm too inured to "commercial fluff". ;-)
Ooh, nasty comments over there!
Dave, Cold Mountain eschews quote marks, as I recall. Try it and see what you think. :)
Alicia
That's ridiculous and pretentious. I'm so tired of the "avante guarde" types I could scream. I swear when people ask me what I read they are fine until I list romance. Then they give me this, "Oh, you must be stupid" look which I equate to attitudes like this.
What's funny is that my vocab and intellignece meter, even after my Thyroid Cancer, is usually higher than those who do it.
GRRRR
And yes, I purposefully found a way to use quotes. LOL
For all those pretentious authors - I will never knowingly buy your book. If I do buy it and start to read it and it eschews the quote marks, then I will take it back.
Be forewarned. Why should I have to work at reading something that is done wrong much less pay for it? Because that's all it is - prose written wrong.
I'm so glad that, when I sold out my Art to become a commercial hack writer of romantic fluff, the sale included free quotation marks. Whew!
JT
Like Dave, I've never seen a book that did this. However, I would think the author an idiot for doing such a thing. It already drives me batty enough when authors don't include commas that I would have. (Not to mention my new aversion to leading PPPs - I should scowl at Alicia forever for that. :) Every time I read one in a published book, I'm analyzing it to see if it was really necessary!)
But I will freely admit that I'm not literary fiction's target audience. Oh sure, on the outside I might look like their type - educated overachiever and all that. But the reason I read is to lose myself in a story. If I have to parse missing quote marks or pretentious tangled sentences, I can't do that. Escapism - now that's my thing! :)
Leona, I so hear you. I've spent too much of my life being judged by people assuming that I'm less smart than I am. I am so freaking over trying to prove myself to those types. So I just don't. :) One of these days I may get a bug up my butt to finally test into Mensa just so I can wave it in their faces and say "Yeah, I read and write romance, you wanna make something of it???" (Again, I survived public school in the then-current murder capital of the world, people really shouldn't mess with me...heheheh)
Jami G.
AMEN!!!!!!
Having read Cold Mountain and a couple of books by Cormac McCarthy I vowed to never read another novel that didn't use quotation marks. Rather than finding such writing an elevated form of artistic expression, I find it sophomoric.
Dave, try to wade thru McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Road. At least he should have used some his saved effort from not typing quotation marks for punching up the dialogue which was flat and of little use in advancing the story.
But then, he has won a Pulitzer, and I have not.
Sorry, JG, for leaving you out of my comment to Dave.
I have additional issues with Cold Mountain. I didn't find the story or the characters compelling. How can that be when I was raised on stories of my ancestors' exploits in the Civil War? I found the movie far more powerful. How often is that said?
Hi Wes,
I haven't seen Cold Mountain either, so I can't compare the book and movie. I wonder why you found the movie more powerful - did it make you feel more connected to the characters?
As I said, that aspect is more important to me than anything else when I read. If I don't get lost in the character's lives and world, then it's just words on a page. I want to forget that I'm reading at all. I want the immersive experience.
Literary fiction often wants to draw attention to the prose itself - the lyrical quality of the words and rhythm, etc. And while I can appreciate that - and I'm not knocking it by any means - that's just not what I want to spend my little free time reading. And if someone wants to dismiss me because my tastes are too "pedestrian", I shrug. :)
Jami G.
Okay, Alicia, how did you know I have Cold Mountain sitting on my bookshelf, still in the pristine condition of a book that has been opened but not read? (Yes, I said I haven't read any books that pull that stunt, not that I haven't seen them.) I suppose someday I'll have the time and fortitude to actually read the thing, but I haven't done it yet. (BTW, I had ancestors who fought in the Rebellion, too, but you don't see a lot of fiction written about the Union soldiers - I wonder why? And yes, I just called it the Rebellion - we used to do that in Vermont, back in the day.)
Well, in Virginia, where I grew up, it was called The War for Southern Independence, or The War of Northern Invasion, or The Second American Revolution.
But Cold Mountain doesn't excuse the war or anything-- the real villains are (straw men) the Home Guard, oddly enough.
At least, that's what I remember, though probably the lack of quote marks messed up my ability to follow the story. :)
Alicia
Dave, it's worth a read. Brush up on Homer's Odyssey before you read Cold Mountain, and you might get more out of it.
Theresa
Yes, Dave, it's based on the structure of the Odyssey. It's interesting how many modern works follow the great O!
Alicia
Hear, hear! I can't stand it when literary novels leave out the quotation marks. It screams, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm so pretentious!" Yet another reason to avoid the genre.
It makes my mental ear go flat-- all the dialogue reads to me as deadpan. Those quote marks are like little ears pricking to tell me to inflect what follows... and if they're not there, I lose the inflection, and it all sounds like one of those early American Idol contestants. (Flat, I mean. :)
alicia
I agree, Alicia.
Thnks fr lnkng tht pst t ws vr ntrstng thnk prctc stpd lk lmntng dvrbs
Dontspacesbytheirverydefinitiontakeupspaceonthepage?Howannoying.Let'sgetridofthemtoo.
I left you a little something on my blog. :)
Post a Comment