This week was all about words. I noticed a lot about the words people said and what authors wrote, and about the words I read and those I wrote. After checking with a friend who works in a book store about seeing books with non-traditional formatting, she said nothing in the store or what she’d checked out from the library had what I’d seen: single quotation marks around dialogue, not indenting for new paragraphs (including dialogue, which made the words confusing to read), double spacing between paragraphs. The next time I come across odd formatting like this, I’ll check if the book was published outside the US or perhaps self-published, sans editing.
I usually jump online to do writing sprints with other authors. After an hour, we take a break and chat. I’ve found the words used to describe the topics some talk about to be distracting. Instead of asking about writing or marketing or publishing, they talk about health issues, movies/TV shows and actors, and extraterrestrials. With the choice of logging off or listening to sad/worrisome/unknown words, I think about using their topics to describe a character or how it might impact a plot.
After reading a book by an author I like, but didn’t like this particular book 1 in a different series, I’m currently reading another author I like. This book 1 in a different series is good. It starts in action (in media res). She shows more than tells. The characters are believable and likeable. So far, there are no plot holes or weird formatting to pull me out of the story.
I think of this when I work on my own project. It starts in media res. There are a lot of characters (this is book 3 in the series). Though this story takes place in the same city, Tampa, Florida, the places are different than books 1 and 2, but a few of the places will be the same: police station, local restaurant. I’m balancing the words I hear and read during the week with the words I write. Even within my current story, the characters’ dialogue is balanced with description, with action, with internal thoughts. Sometimes I pause to think of a particular word, weighing one versus another. Getting them down in this first draft is the goal.
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