Writing Cleanly: Realistic dialogue

Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me in Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. :) All month long, we’ve been talking about writing clean fiction, and the things that are sometimes difficult for clean writers to get right. There’s a stigma against clean writing, one that says if you’re writing cleanly, you’re not writing well—and that just doesn’t have to be the case. Sure, we have to be a little more picky with the way we word things, with the amount of details we give when it comes to certain topics, but that doesn’t mean we have to compromise in terms of story. (which, by the by, is RAD Writing’s motto)

This week, for the end of our series, I chose a topic very unlike the rest of the topics in this series. I chose this topic because it’s something that I see in writing in general, but something that clean writers get a bad rap for, more than others. It’s something that I pride myself in being quite good at—and so it’s something I like to share about, whenever I have the chance.

Writing Cleanly: Realistic dialogue

It’s difficult, I know. While exposition often flows off our fingertips like fine silk, dialogue comes out clunky, overly wordy (or underly), and just plain wrong. It happens to the best of us, whether we’re clean writers or not—but there’s one aspect in particular, for which clean writers get a really bad rap. And that's where I'll place my focus, today.

When real people talk, they curse.

And clean writing avoids cursing, at all costs.

And you should! If you’re writing clean fiction, then you should avoid cursing. Please. Clean readers don’t want to read cursing, no matter how you’ve written it. They don’t want those words in exposition, and they certainly don’t want those words in dialogue. But there are a great many non-clean readers who expect to see cursing, because it’s in their day-to-day.

Personally, I don’t see what the problem is. As long as you’re writing good dialogue, realistic dialogue in general, then the curse words aren’t necessary at all. The vast majority of the time, in any sentence that includes a curse word, that curse word could be removed without altering the sentence in the slightest. So, why does it matter if we don’t write them? It’s beside the point though, because the argument has already been made and lost. Readers, even clean one sometimes, want characters to be fully realistic. Which means that some of them really ought to curse.

That being the case, I have two fairly simple options for you, for including curse words in your writing (without actually including any):

“He/she cursed.”

Easy, right? And it actually works rather well, most of the time. In many stories, especially sci-fi/fantasy, it bothers me when “normal” curse words show up in dialogue at all—because what are the odds that curse words are exactly the same on this world as they are right now, and on Earth? Maybe these people think hands are offensive, so they use hands as a curse. It just works better, in these cases, to use phrasing like “he/she cursed”—because then the reader can infer from the line before, what the curse was involving.

A new set of deity

This one is my personal favorite, and it works extremely well when you’re writing fantasy—but can work in alternate Earths as well. Make up a new set of gods, and use their names when people are cursing! Brilliant, eh? AC Schafer did it extremely well in The Wraith and the Wielder, if you ask me. Tsaw rahk, her characters say, when they’re cursing. And the meaning of it isn’t lost. We all know they’re cursing. We all know it’s a curse. But none of us are turned off by it, because that’s not a curse in reality. If you said that to someone, they’d probably just ask you to repeat yourself, because they didn’t understand what you said.

These, my friends, are my two favorite ways to include cursing in story, without ever actually including a curse word. And sure, there are times and places when a “minor” curse or two can be appropriate in your writing, but most clean readers don’t want to see any at all—which makes these methods far more appropriate when you’re writing in this arena.

Have something specific you’d like an opinion on, when it comes to cursing in clean fiction? Send me a message and let me know! I’d love to help!

In the meantime, have a lovely week—I’ll be back in March, with a whole new series!

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Writing Cleanly: Realistic injuries

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by, for the next in our series on writing clean fiction. It’s a subject that I think we really ought to talk about more often, because there’s a stigma against clean fiction. It’s a stigma that says clean fiction just can’t be as good as its unclean counterpart. And you know what? Most of the time… well, they’re right. Clean fiction just doesn’t get the hard-hitting nitty-gritty that a lot of readers are looking for out of their fiction. Which is why we need to spend a little more time honing our craft and perfecting the way we write, so our work stands up to the cultural norm.

This week, we’re talking about something that I touched on just a little bit in week one, but one that I thought we should come back around to, because of how important it really is in the long run.

Writing Cleanly: Realistic injuries

There’s a distinct lack of realistic injuries in television and film as well, and nobody seems to mind, but in the written word… believe me, they mind. They mind a great deal. So it’s extremely important that we take the time to write those injuries properly, and that we do our research so we know what we’re talking about.

Again, I’m going to remind you that there’s no way to please everyone. Clean fiction readers tend to be a little more intense of an audience, in that they can be far more difficult to please. They don’t know what they want, but they know what they don’t want and they’re not afraid to bash you online for doing the thing they don’t like. I know, it’s annoying. But you made the choice to write clean fiction for a reason, and there are ways to ensure that fiction is still amazing. I promise. It just won’t be able to please everyone who reads the genre. In fact, with a lot of the things I’m telling you, you might do better in some ways to not market as clean fiction. Other readers will love your books as well, and not even notice they’re clean.

When it comes to injuries in clean fiction, it is vitally important that you say what you mean. It’s a common trope of writing in general, that someone must be injured in the story, at some point along the way. So you’ll need to know who’s getting injured, how they would correctly respond to the pain of that injury, and what effects that injury will have upon them for the rest of the story.

This isn’t easy, and for some reason, many clean writers just don’t bother to do the research. There’s this stigma that says clean readers don’t want to see any blood at all, even if someone gets stabbed in the stomach. Well, that’s just not true. We don’t want to see the gore of it. We don’t want to see sinew unless it’s entirely necessary (if a character falls and breaks his leg, we’re more apt to be okay with seeing that sinew—if he’s sliced open by another character, it’s harder for us to stomach). But most of all, we really do want it to be realistic. We don’t want someone to break their ankle in one chapter and three chapters later have that same someone walking around like it’s nothing.

Now, the easiest way to make sure you’re doing this correctly is honestly to find a friend. I’m willing to bet, in this day and age, that you know a nurse (or someone else in the medical profession). And if you don’t, well, it’s not that difficult to go into a hospital and meet one. ;-) Point is, a medical professional would be able to tell you exactly what effects that injury would have on a person, tell you how long they’d expect for recovery, and even tell you whether or not that person would be likely to pass out when the injury is inflicted.

Of course, if you don’t have a friend in the medical field and don’t want to make a friend for the sake of your writing, there’s always the internet—and it really is a treasure trove of information. Point is, you need to do some research, either way.

And like I said before, the rule of thumb for showing detail in injury is whether or not it was an accident, and the level of gruesome in the injury. Clean readers very rarely ever want to see spilled intestines, but we’ll handle smashed skulls, broken bones, shredding muscle, and very much more—as long as it happened by accident, or happenstance. Intentional injuries are much harder for us to stomach, and you’ll have to use your best judgement to decide how far you’re willing to go.

Have a specific injury you’d like an opinion on? Send me a message and let me know!

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Writing Cleanly: All aflutter

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. This week is Valentine’s day, the whole reason why I decided not to write a series on love, and I hope that you all have a marvelous one.

Because it’s Valentine’s and I didn’t want to be talking about love in two separate blogs, we’re talking about writing clean fiction—and some of the things that writers struggle with, when writing clean fiction. (by the by, if you haven’t read last week’s post, you should!) As an editor of clean fiction, I can tell you that there are a lot of indie authors who need help in this arena—which is what I’m here for, this month!

We’re tackling some of the subjects that are annoying difficult to brooch in clean fiction, because clean fiction readers can be even harsher than the other ones (and sometimes we question why we set ourselves up for this in the first place).

This week?

Writing Cleanly: All aflutter

Yeah, yeah, I know. I said I wasn’t going to be talking about love—but you know what, love is a tricky subject, when it comes to clean writing. It can be a make or break, for a lot of readers, and it needs to be approached very delicately, from start to finish.

If you hate writing love stories… I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’ll need this information at some point anyway, so you may as well stick around, or at least bookmark this post for later.

Now, before we get any further, I want to have one little aside. If you did want to read a series on love, this month, then click over to the RADblog. I’ll be posting about different kinds of love and how to write them in fiction, all through February and March. It’ll be great fun.

In here, however, we’re talking romantic, guy-meets-girl love.

The trouble with this kind of love, at least in clean fiction, is that it can lead to a lot of red flags, for a lot of readers. Especially when it comes to writing romance novels. Yes, there are clean romance novels. Yes, they actually are quite popular. But ask any romance author how they write their love scenes, and they’ll all give you very different answers.

See, just like with battle scenes, you won’t be able to please everyone when you’re writing. You just won’t. I’m sorry to say it, but you won’t. Some people want erotica and other people don’t—and the lines always blur at some point. Again, I’ll be showing you a couple ways you can potentially write your love stories, that’ll take you right down the middle in terms of what clean fiction readers are looking for, but that’s the best I have to offer. A majority, but not all.

The way I see it, there are two main ways to tell love stories in clean fiction. You can either have the love scenes all be behind closed doors, or you can have your characters be chaste (in whatever definition you choose) throughout the story.

With option one, you write a normal romance novel, only you have all the actual "romance" take place behind closed doors. That means your readers won’t see what’s happening, but they’ll know what’s happening, because you’ve implied it. There’s a lot of innuendo, in this sort of writing. A lot of, you-know-what’s-going-on-but-I’m-not-going-to-show-you, and that can be great way to write a love story. In many ways, you get the best of both worlds: you get to show your characters falling in love, and show what most people consider to be a normal relationship between two consenting adults, but without getting too steamy on screen.

Option two takes a little bit more doing, because you’ll have to put more thought and detail into your characters as a whole. You’ll have to be more intentional with the things you do describe, and the ways your characters think, to “justify” why there’s no “behind closed doors” time between them. Why? Because a lot of readers are expecting that steaminess, and you don’t want them to notice that it isn’t there.

Personally, when I’m using option two, I like the “fade to black” method. I cut my scenes before it can get too deep, before the characters get too far into their time together, so readers can decide for themselves whether or not anything happened—but I’ll make it mildly clear in later text, that nothing steamy actually happened between my characters.

Lastly, when it comes to deciding how much is too much steam… that’s really up to you. I can’t tell you how much steam to include, because it’s hard to say, without having read your story. Every story is different, every story needs something different, and I’m reluctant to give you a scale to measure against.

I will say something very similar to what I said last week, which is that I’ll generally measure my stories by the “would I allow my thirteen-year-old cousin to read this?” scale, and it seems to do well for me.

As for you? Well, you’ll have to find your own scale, because I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you consider clean.

If you’d like specific advice, however, shoot me a message! I’d love to help point you in the right direction!

[love]

{Rani Divine}