7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Years of editing Scottish-set romances proves this brilliantly. One more "I dinna ken" and I would have cried.

Ha-ha! I had a beta reader who complained, "but what happened to her accent? Where'd it go?"

It went to the rubbish bin, where excess patois belongs. One or two phrases to get the feel in the reader's head and they'll start doing the translating themselves. No one has to describe a redhead as being a redhead in every single paragraph, once you know, you know.

It's particularly egregious in fanfic. Yes, we know Scotty has an accent. And Chekov. And Rogue. WE KNOW.

Also, everything "apparently" happens with me.

I wouldn't be surprised if I overuse that one too.

I know I violated the exclamation points rule, but if someone yells something I have a hard time not using an exclamation point. Maybe that tells me something about the attribution tag or physical beat I'm using.

And Turtle, Dana. Yes, he's from Queens, he smokes weed, and mostly? he ought to be wearing a T-shirt that says "Comic Relief", but somehow I still hate it when fic writers make it seem that what comes out of his mouth isn't English. Maybe it's the populist in me.

It went to the rubbish bin, where excess patois belongs.

Someone really should have told Emily Bronte that. It would certainly have made teaching Wuthering Heights a little easier.

Years of editing Scottish-set romances proves this brilliantly. One more "I dinna ken" and I would have cried.

I blame Robbie Burns for this. And ah, crap. It's almost Burns Day again. [link]

(It occurs to me that I bet a lot of romance writers from the US use Scots inappropriately. Like, for characters from the Gàidhealtachd. Thay shouldna dae that. Tis juist wrong.)

My biggest pet peeve with writing is dialogue that sounds nothing like actual speech patterns. Not dialect, but overly formal, grammatically correct dialogue: "I do not like going to the market alone. Would you like to come with me?"

Most contemporary characters, in casual speech, are going to say something like, "I don't like going to the store alone. Want to come?"

I think that most writing "rules" go out the window in dialogue. People don't speak correctly, and they will say "suddenly", and I think there's a huge realm of difference between "Look out," he said and "Look out!"

Also "There's a spider on you," he said and "There's a spider on you," he whispered.

And I twitch when someone says "Never do X." Not everyone needs to try to be Hemingway.

Gàidhealtachd

I am somewhat shocked to recognize this, and rather pleased to be able to pronounce it, and know what it means.

It's good to recognize your own writing tics. I know I will discover, or rediscover, a word and be so thrilled with it I use it all day. Rereading later, it's written in pink neon, it's so obvious.

Shortcut words and phrases like "suddenly" or any variation of "seem", "just"--once you know you lean on them while getting the narrative down, you can be aware you do so, and deal with them in revision. If you're using "suddenly" too much, you need to write out what is sudden about a given scene and then see how you can telegraph the action in a few streamlined words, rather than use the shortcut word. this is true of almost any overworked adverb.

With words like "just", you can train yourself to recognize at least some of them while you're typing them. Getting the narrative down is most important so you don't want to pause if you're on a roll. But you can take a minute to substitute "only" or another synonym in its place, or a bracketed note to yourself to examine the scene or phrase later and decide if the use is actually needed.

I find half of dialog attribution is unnecessary, anyway. If you're writing a scene that moves, in which the speakers are brushing down their horses or polishing tack, cleaning guns or swords, sharpening knives, cooking, searching for the missing sardines, it's fairly easy for the reader to keep track of who's saying what by your describing the action as the characters speak. It's a more natural flow than simple attribution.

But when attribution is necessary, "said" is the least intrusive, as is "asked". Connie's "whispered" is a very good indicator of when and how one should use another, more descriptive word. But the less of the descriptive attributions you use, the more weight the ones you do use have.

Um. Just a few thoughts. Sorry to go on.

They're good thoughts. I certainly like physical beats better than attribution tags, though, like anything, it can be overdone.