Elements of Wild Style: How to Start a Paragraph (I Can't Believe I'm Really Writing This.)

I'm reading a lot of submissions with paragraphs starting with "And" or "But." I am not amused. Is there some best seller doing this? Is that why people are hopping on this bandwagon?

Back in my hippie days. Now I eat them.

When dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in elementary school, starting a sentence with a conjunction was taboo. Why? Because a sentence is a new idea. It took reading a lot of Anne Rice to get over it. Sentences starting with conjunctions are okay, but maybe a comma is what you need.

What is a paragraph? A Paragraph is a collection of sentences focused on an idea. Since interesting fiction is a list of actions, each paragraph's sentences describe a unique action. 

A paragraph's first sentence kicks off a new set of ideas. If the ideas of a new paragraph are connected to the previous paragraph make them one paragraph. A new set of ideas will never start joined to old ideas.

When starting a new collection of ideas, you'll want to separate it from prior concepts. You'll want to avoid conjunctions.

It's cool if you think I'm wrong. I'm letting you know how to make this editor happy. I don't care what you do with your writing. This is one of those things that annoys me. I might stop reading. You want to be published? Keep me reading.

Elements of Wild Style: How To Write Dialogue So You Can Talk Shit: Part 3: Instant Commas Gonna Get You

So here is something to add to the woes of English grammar proper and improper, the use of commas in dialogue vs. the use of commas everywhere else.

Commas outside dialogue, are for lists, parenthetical suggestions, dividing clauses, etc.

Inside dialogue, they do all that and serve an additional purpose --they time pauses.

If you read the statement below aloud and "full stop" at the periods it's not the same as if you "half stop" at commas.

"I shot him. I promise. He's got two slugs in the face. He's fucking dead," Vinny said.

"I shot him, I promise, he's got two slugs in the face, he's fucking dead," Vinny said.

Here you have a series of independent clauses. "I promise" teeters between independent/dependent but I wanted to show even though "grammatically" periods are the default here, to facilitate the flow of how someone would talk let your commas do the work.

Elements of Wild Style: How To Write Dialogue So You Can Talk Shit: Part 2: Tagging Yo Ass Biotch

This is the only other acceptable way to tag.

There is only one dialog tag you will ever need, and it's "said."And congratulations, you don't need to use it that much. Don't worry, "said" is not like a name, you can't wear it out, and it never gets redundant because no one notices it.


Solid dialogue gives a reader the character's tone, so does their actions. This diminishes the purpose of tagging dialog to describe to the reader how the character's emotional tone when speaking.

"You want to know why?" he said.

"Shouldn't it be 'he asked?' not 'he said?'"

"Nope, when you write 'asked' it's redundant. The question mark does the work of the word 'asked.' The purpose of the word 'said' denotes who is talking. A question always ends with a question mark, likewise, it's a statement and were back to no one 'asking' anything, either way, you don't need 'asked'."

"What about using an adverb after 'said,' to show emotion? Even though Elmore Leonard said admonishingly not to do it."

"How can you ask something like that? The words you chose, show the emotion of the speaker, so you don't need, 'he said hysterically.' If the words don't do it, the character's actions will fill in what you're missing. 'You're tearing me apart Lisa,'" he clenched his fists and pulled them toward his chest, pumping his arms, enunciating each word.

"I still say, bologna to using only 'said.' What about so-and-so 'replied' or they 'responded?'"

"So-and-so's line of dialogue is the reply/response, so we're back to Conceptually-Redundant-Dialogue-Tag-Town."

"Awe shit, I think I got you on some semantics bullshit, because isn't using 'said' over and over redundant?"

"That depends on how you use it. There is a natural flow where the reader needs reminding of who is speaking, in that case, no, it's not redundant. Even if you were using all those other extraneous tags, you still wouldn't use them before or after every line of dialogue. You can't overuse 'said,' it's like overusing 'the.' 'The' is a determiner, and while 'said' is a verb, the way it's used is as a 'determiner' as in determining who is speaking." he said.

Elements of Wild Style: How To Write Dialogue So You Can Talk Shit: Part 1: The Shit Talking Awakens

There are books on the subject of writing dialogue. Being that I don’t want to write a book, but blog posts I have to break this up into parts.

The worst piece of advice I’ve ever received on the topic of writing dialogue is:

Just listen to the way people talk and that’s how to write dialoguealog.

I’ve seen this piece of crap advice in more than one book on writing, and I've heard it from more than one English teacher. Guess what? It's 100% bullshit. Ignore those words and blot them out of your head forever.

It was either Haylie Ephron or Chris Roerden who I’m paraphrasing here, but in fiction “Dialogue is stylized.” It’s stylized to be succinct, has flow and rhythm, delivers information, and is another form of action that gives character information.

So, here’s a real conversation.

“Hey, so how goes it?” Bill said.
“Things are good, what’s up with you?” Scott said.
“Meh, not much, what game is that?”
“The new version of the Legend of Zelda.”
“Is it any good?”
“Yeah, meh, I guess.”
“Oh, hey, you hear about Sal’s nephew?” Bill said.
“The one who got shot?”
“Um, the one who walked into a 7-11 at the wrong time.”
“Those kids sure did shoot him dead.”
"Listen, man, that ain't the way I want to go out.

What’s so bad? For starters, unless you’re interested in video games it’s boring, even then, it’s not heart-pounding. The general guideline for writing dialogue is just like working a day job: Get in LATE, leave EARLY. This goes for both the sentences and the volley between the characters.

If you look at everything above, what is needed? How do you minimalize it so it has some punch?

Bill walked in on Scott entranced with the new Legend of Zelda game.
“You hear about Sal’s nephew?” Bill said.
“The one who was shot and killed by some kids at a 7-11?” Scott said.

You don’t need the “Hey, hello” stuff, you don’t need greetings or salutations, that stuff is page filler. Avoid all the little bit stuff like “um,” "hey," "listen" and “uh.” That stuff might be how we talk, but on a page, it doesn't do anything. Condense information and make it easy to read. Dialogue has to relate to the story, to the characters, and much like when you’re writing anything else, it has to serve a purpose or it has to go.

Remember, short, sweet, in late, out early.

(paid for by Nintendo.)

Elements of Wild Style: Eye Stuff®, Compound Eye Stuff® and Alpha Eye Stuff®

Eye Stuff is when a writer describes a character observing a situation. This is and isn’t a big deal. It’s not bad writing per say, but a lot of writers do it and you don’t want to sound like everyone else, right? More than anything it’s clichéd, so if you like your Hallmark Cards then putting eye stuff into your writing is for you.

This is what happens when you use eye stuff in your writing.

There are three types of eye stuff. The first, known in the circles of literary science as standard eye stuff, is referred to as eye stuff for the sake of brevity. The second type of eye stuff is compound eye stuff and only referred to as such. Third and finally, there is alpha eye stuff. Above all, you want to avoid all three types of eye stuff.

EYE STUFF®

Eye stuff is when a writer uses an observational phrase such as “I gazed…,” “you see a…,” “she watched…,” “he saw…,” “it looked at….” It can happen in 1st, 2nd, and both forms of the 3rd person narrative. All other forms of eye stuff are built on standard eye stuff. You read it a lot in action or adventure novels. Typical eye stuff:

Seeing the terrorist running his way, his eyes shot to the gun looking for the safety. Spotting the button, he unlatched the safety on his bazooka. He raised the weapon and looked through the scope. He viewed the evil terrorist and aimed.

Vs. eye stuff removed:

With the terrorist running his way, he searched for the gun's safety. Finding it on the handle, he unlatched it, and raised the bazooka. With the scope against his eye, he aimed.

You don’t need to label observations. In the second example, the character's actions show what they are seeing using actions and reactions. Even in "lit fic" we want stuff "happening." So what about when the genre or context is different? Such as describing scenery in the first person when "nothing is happening," here's the eye stuff version:

Approaching, I saw the front of the black church. It’s color a darkness woven from the fabric of shadows.

Vs. eye stuff removed:

I approached the front of the black church. It’s color a darkness woven from the fabric of shadows.

But wait, what if the character isn’t moving but purely observing?

Standing in the square, on my left was the black church. It’s color a darkness woven [...]

Another eye stuff trap is when you "don't see" it. This is using eye stuff along with a negation ("no," "not," "don't," etc.) to create a false surprise:

He didn’t see the bear coming, it surprised him, biting his buttocks.

Newer writers struggle with this. The thinking is, I want to express surprise and tell the reader the character did know the bear was going to bite him in the ass. It was a total surprise, The bear snuck up behind him and the character didn’t know it was coming. “He didn’t see the bear coming,” is writing in negation and anticlimactic to boot. Without using eye stuff, the affirmative is a bit more fun.

The bear snuck up behind him and bit him in the ass.

Eye stuff is one of those things new writers do. Hell, I did it at one point and I’m sure you can look for it in my earlier works. It took me some time to see the light, and an editor saying, "You know how many times I read that?" What do you do if you want to point out that a person is seeing or witnessing something? Here are some ideas on how to handle it:

He acknowledged the flesh-eating monster standing in his doorway.

He nodded at the flesh-eating monster standing in his doorway.

He held up a finger signaling, wait, to the flesh-eating monster standing in his doorway.

The flesh-eating monster in the doorway growled. Chip turned, dropped his phone, opened his arms, and said, “Fred it’s been too long.”

In 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person subjective, the words on the page are what the character is observing. Labeling what a character sees, hears, tastes, and smells aren't necessary, because what you write is what they are seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling:

Smelling:
The aroma of bread filled the air. 
Vs.
He smelled the aroma of bread filling the air.

Hearing:
A foghorn moaned in the distance.
Vs.
She heard the foghorn moan in the distance.

Tasting:
Coppery blood filled my mouth.
Vs.
I tasted the coppery flavor of blood filling my mouth.

COMPOUND EYE STUFF®


You see compound eye stuff all over "romantic" passages. It occurs when two people look "at" or "into" each other’s eyes, the eye stuff is now “compounded.” It's eye stuff with more eye stuff added to it, often presented as an amalgamation of his and her eye stuff:

With his super-blue eyes, he gazed into her loving almond shaped eyes lovingly, as her heart pounded in her chest and she stared back. He closed his eyes and leaned into kiss her. She squinted, holding in a massive fart.

It's not reserved for bodice rippers alone, compound eye stuff can work between a group and an individual:

He looked at the other gamblers eyes scanning for tells as they returned nothing but cold stares. 

ALPHA EYE STUFF®

Alpha eye stuff is another form of compound eye stuff because it always involves at least 2 sets of eyes. You DO NOT want to use alpha eye stuff, it is overdone to describe human interaction:

The two Wall Street tycoons locked eyes vying to establish the dominant alpha.

The two gunslingers locked eyes vying to establish the dominant alpha. 

The two strippers dressed as clowns locked eyes vying to establish the dominant alpha and who would own the stage.

He stared at the eyes of his competitor on the billboard trying to make him back down. 

It’s so cliché that I can make up that cliché in advance and I know you’ve seen it before. As with everything in writing, there are exceptions. One of which is when you have two alpha animals trying to establish dominance. Eye stuff is unavoidable if you’re talking about dogs, wolves, or other animals that communicate using eye contact. In that case, they are almost talking, and there are not a lot of stories out there about the life and times of wild animals.

“Eye Stuff®,” “Compound Eye Stuff®,” and “Alpha Eye Stuff®,” are terms I made up, but they are real, you’ll see it, I saw it, and editors gaze upon it all the time.

Elements of Wild Style: Naming Characters in 9 Steps.

My 9 "Simple" Steps.

1. Know the character's ethnicity and age.

2. Know the effect of their name on them. Like, if they had a name they might have gotten teased about as a kid THINK ABOUT what it would do to/for them. I once knew a black kid named Aryan. Public school was not easy for Aryan. I've also known a lot of immigrants with hard-to-pronounce names for Americans so they introduce themselves as "Chad" but their real name is like "Chadaanasakarian." They'd flat out tell you, "You're not going to be able to pronounce my name, so don't worry about trying too, it's Chad, okay?"

3. Know who the character's parents were and their ethnicity. How did their parents feel about their ethnicity? A German immigrant to the US in the 1930s might avoid using the old family name of "Adolf" and instead name him "Donald."

4. The father's ethnicity will decide the character's LAST NAME. That is if the parents were married at the time of birth, or Mom (in the US) wanted to try and ding the Dad for child support. Likewise, the character might have Mom's last name --lookup last names based on her ethnicity, and pick one you like.

Use Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask Jeeves, whateves...

5. Based on 1,2 & 3, look up baby names using Google (or any search engine.) Enter something like, "Boys baby names Scotland." You might want to throw in a decade with that too. The name "Zelda" was real popular at the turn of the last century, but video games aside I don't see/hear it a lot --or "Morty" for that matter... Get Schwifty...

This is also helpful in creating an automatic family tree if they were named after their great-grandparent, or another relative, not uncommon --in real life.

If they were adopted and didn't have a name at the time, take into consideration the background of the people doing the adoption.

6. Try to not have too many characters with the same letter in their first name, or worse the same first name. I've only read one book with two characters with the first name and I stopped at page 100 and was like Fuck this, I'm confused, --apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

7. When you finally have a first and last name, Google it and be sure that it's not the name of the main character from a sitcom or the lead singer of a band you've never heard of. If it is, return to steps 4 and 5 as needed.

8. If the character has a nickname make a story for it, or that nickname better do all the talking on its own. A biker named "Rotgut" tells you what he likes to drink. Sometimes a nickname is an ironic opposite, such as a fat guy called "Tiny." 

A nickname's backstory isn't essential, hell, sharing a backstory may slow down your writing. But it's always better to have more and edit it out later.

9. I try to give main characters short easy-to-remember names. I also go for short names because I'd rather type "Chad" over typing "Chadaanasakarian" X thousands of times in a book/story/screenplay. 

Elements of Wild Style: Adverbs and Adjectives.

I’d figure I’d start off with the “greatest hits” of things I see new writers do that vex editors. The all the time "greatest hit," I see is adverbs and adjectives and the overuse of them. They are the ink of the poison pen. Edit them out, do it and you're left with meat and potato noun and verbs sentences that go bang.

What are Adjectives?

An adjective is a word that describes a thing. They shortcut using a solid description. I like the word “beautiful,” I overuse it, but it was overused --even before I overused it. Now, I kill it out of my writing, but let me show you why. This is how adjectives weaken sentences:

With her beautiful face and body, she seduced me.

Yeah, I’m preying on a weak sentence here, but I’m trying to make a point. Seduced, without beauty:

Her hazel eyes took you to a movie where she was the star. With her runway model face, porn star body, and the elegance of a 1950’s matinée ingénue, she had me.

Adjectives allude to “lazy writing.” When you describe settings or characters or even the possessions of your characters using adjectives you are short-changing the reader.

Barry's 1970 Hemi Cuda was in glorious condition.

Okay, you get the idea that Barry’s car is in “glorious condition,” but above we don’t know about Barry or his passion for the vehicle because of that "glorious" adjective, check it:

Barry simonized the 1970 Hemi Cuda’s custom paint job to a shine of flowing reflections.

Here you got Barry taking the time to polish the car to a shine vs. it looking "glorious" whatever that means. Adjectives suck the punch out of your writing. If you are struggling to figure out if something is an adjective here are some helpers:

They interact with nouns. They “describe a thing” and while you might be thinking “minimal” or “fewer words” you’re right, but not in a good way. Adjectives steal the opportunity for poetry in your prose and make you look lazy as a writer. Lazy writers defend this stuff tooth and nail.

Use a simile, metaphor, or any kind of analogy, you know, write.

Adjectives are the Common Cold and Adverbs are Ebola 

Adverbs will fuck you in the ass. Some editors reject on the basis of adverbs sight on seen. Is this censorship? Is this bigotry? Is this fair? Is this a hindrance to your creativity?

Before whining about the elements of your style think about what writing is. Writing is taking ideas and giving them phonetic symbols others can understand. What happens when the idea lacks clarity? Or the idea is exaggerated? Adverbs are words that fuck with clarity and proportion. They are defined as “a word or phrase that modifies verbs, adjectives, other adverbs --and suck beyond sucking” and they set you up for a one-way ticket to rejection town. 

A shitty sentence with just an adjective :

The fish was big.

The same sentence made shittier with an adverb:

The fish was very big.

Why is this shittier? Because there is no idea of proportion and there is no clarity to the exaggerated “big” done by the “very.” The fish could be very big for a minnow. Who the fuck knows? And then what is big for a minnow? To be clear, if we make our fish into minnows, these two sentences still suck:

The minnow was big. 

The minnow was very big.

But…

The minnow stretched the length of Barry's Hemi Cuda.

There is a string of nouns letting you know how big your bait fish is.

“Very” is not your common POS adverb, most adverbs end in “ly.” Starting out, many of us are guilty of some shit like this –and I know my horror writer friends have written sentences like this in their first stories:*

He walked quietly, softly, gently touching his feet to the floor.

In college English classes all over the US, professors train editor wannabes to replace all words ending in “ly” with the adverb shittly. This is not just a conspiracy theory, I may have dropped out of those classes, but I was there for that. I can tell you, this is real or at least a real conspiracy theory. The only thing an editor worth their salt is going to read when they see a sentence like the one above is:

He walked shittly, shittly, shittly touching his feet to the floor.

Then the editor will reject you for writing a sentence using shittly three times in a row. The reality is adverbs undo impact, and turn lean sentences into melodramatic, redundant crap-o-la:

He brooded.

          Vs.

He anxiously brooded.

Brood means to agonize, worry, fret, etc. Anxious means the same thing, tagging a “ly” at the end of "anxious " and sticking it in front of "brooded" makes the reader do twice the work for the same payoff. And that is Writing Shittly 101 for you.

It’s redundant, and not in the “setting a minimalist rhythm” form of redundancy, but the boring kind of redundancy. Even if you think you're J.D. Salinger and being slick like this:

Maxine uncrossed and crossed her legs, a threatening gesture that filled Harrison with the need to act obsequiously. This earned him penalty points from her parents who could only quietly love their daughter on very sophisticated terms. They all had way too much wine.

Now Mr. I-Hate-Genre-Fiction who thought his story about college kids at home from Choate for a weekend with the alcoholics would get published in “The Atlantic” or “The New Yorker,”  let me show what the editor reads:

Maxine uncrossed and crossed her legs, a threatening gesture that filled Harrison with the need to act shittly. This earned him penalty points from her parents who could shittly shittly love their daughter on shittly sophisticated terms. They all had way shittly much wine.

Use your word processor's search feature for "ly" and get that shit out of your writing, then google “adverbs that don’t end in ly,” get a list of those and get rid of them, replace them, do whatever you need to, but no more writing shittly. Okay? 

I like you and want better for you. 

After all my hateful propaganda toward adverbs and adjectives, guess what? There is a time and place for them. Which is in dialogue.

“Dude, he’s really huge.”
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“One of his gigantically fat legs is bigger then your whole body.”
“At least I can quickly outrun him and maybe wear him down.” She cocked her head.
“Only if he chases you.”

You still don’t want to go crazy with them like I did above. Editors have been beaten and traumatized to hate adverbs and adjectives, and when you see how they weaken writing it's kind of hard not to hate them as a writer. One place where adverbs do work is in children’s dialogue.

“So Denis, how big was the dinosaur?”
“He was very very big.”

Another place some of this can be skirted is in 1^st person narrative, but you have to be careful if you are going to use adverbs there, adjectives are okay-ish, but you’re still short-changing the reader. This is a risk that I wouldn’t recommend. I get it, not everyone in the world is a poet, and if your characters aren’t poets maybe their narrative should at least reflect that? My best answer is to use what your character relates to for metaphors and analogy and the poetry of your prose doesn’t have to be “pretty,” or exist even. With adverbs, adjectives, and simple:

I met Drake at the dog track he was a really sleazy guy.

This is with no “poetry” to it, but it shows you everything you need to know about Drake:

I met Drake at the dog track. He wore a white suit, black greased back hair and five gold chains over his dollar bill patterened tie. He picked at his teeth with his fingernail.

With just a little bit of “spin” on it:

When I met Drake, he was picking his teeth with his pinky fingernail. He donned the garb native to the dog track. His duck suit contrasted his slicked back hair glinting in the sun as did his gold chains resting over his dollar bill patterned tie. He might not be the chief, but this was his tribe.

Even when writing in 1^st person, I wouldn’t go apeshit with adverbs and adjectives, in most writing books they say something like 1 adverb for every 5,000 words of non-dialogue. I don’t know how a number like that is made up, but I’d roll with it. Even in dialogue, adverbs and adjectives don’t always help. If you’re writing a horror story which of these is “scary?”

“Get the fuck out of the water. I see a really big minnow.”

Or:

“Get the fuck out of the water. I see a minnow the size of a car.”

Granted both examples are stiff, but I’d be afraid of the fifteen-foot-long minnow over the seven-inch minnow, but that’s just me.

On a final note: Adjectives and adverbs are imprecise and fuzzy and allow for interpretation and loopholes. Watch a modern politician's speech and count the number of times they use them. The bigger the politicians the more they use them.

More stuff that might help you:

http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

^ Won’t get adjectives but it will get adverbs. When in doubt:

http://parts-of-speech.info/

*A simile is when you use “like” or “as.” “His breath was like chemical warfare."
** I know because I did.