Publishing

The Dash Family and Saying What You Mean

January 23, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 2 Comments

There are some people who don’t bother much with punctuation or think that quibbles about commas are purely subjective. In some instances I’d agree with them, but overall, punctuation exists to help you say what you mean. Punctuation helps you emphasize what you want emphasized and communicate nuances of meaning you would add if you were speaking to your reader in person.

That’s why I find the differences between the three members of the Hyphen-Dash family absolutely critical. Just like any other family, the members share some traits, but have their own distinct qualities. Those qualities help you say way you mean when you write. I can’t cover all the nuances of the Hyphen-Dash family here, but I can give you a crash course.

Meet Hyphen

Little Hyphen is the smallest member of the Hyphen-Dash clan. He looks like this: -. For contrast, here’s en dash (–) and em dash (—). He’s so common that you can use him to verb something. And yet Lynne Truss, the delightful author of my favorite punctuation book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, calls Hyphen “a little used punctuation mark” in her chapter about him. That’s because Hyphen is confusing, and he’s an utter pain to use correctly.

Figuring out when to hyphenate a noun is relatively easy. If you want to know if you should say butter fly, butter-fly, or butterfly, you go to Merriam-Webster, type in any of the options, and see which one pops up. Simple. (Unless we’re talking about something like e-mail versus email, in which case it gets more complicated.)

Hyphenating adjectives trips more people up. I’m going to focus on the trickiest instances. The important thing to remember is that Hyphen exists to clear up ambiguities. Thus, to use Truss’s examples, you hyphenate shell-like because having three Ls in a row is a mess, and you hyphenate de-ice because deice could very easily be a word that meant something other than getting ice to go away.

Hyphenated adjectives work the same way. When you hyphenate two words, you essentially turn them into one word. For example, the phrase ugly bug juice could mean juice from ugly bugs or bug juice that is ugly. If you sprinkle in some of Hyphen’s charm, he can solve that ambiguity: ugly-bug juice is juice from unfortunate-looking bugs and ugly bug-juice is bug juice that happens to be unpleasant to see. So if you have two adjectives in front of a noun, determine whether you’ve laid an ambiguity trap. If you have, use Hyphen to build a bridge over it.

Meet Em Dash

Papa Em Dash is probably the punctuation mark most people get right—fact of the matter is that he’s hard to use wrong. Em Dash stands for an abrupt change in thought, in place of parentheses, in place of omitted letters in a name, for a cut-off statement, and sometimes even in place of quotation marks (though I don’t recommend it).

The problem is that Em Dash is so big (the width of an M in whatever font you’re using) that he draws a lot of attention to himself. So it’s best to limit your use of him. Use him when you need an interruption in your sentence—be that for pacing purposes or for a change in topic—and for very little else. If you use him sparingly, he’ll be more effective.

To get a true en dash in MS Word on a PC, hit CTRL + ALT + the minus key on your keyboard’s number pad (the hyphen key next to the zero is not the same). If you’re writing online, the HTML code for Em Dash is —. Stick the ampersand, mdash, and the semi-colon in your HTML code and you’re good to go.

Meet En Dash

En Dash is probably the least-known and least-understood member of the Hyphen-Dash family. But she can really communicate a lot for a line that is only the width of an N.

According to the Chicago Manual of Style (I call it BOB, for Bright Orange Bible, even if they did put a blue dust jacket on the latest edition), En Dash can stand in for to, signify an unfinished number range, assist with compound adjectives, and a few other assorted uses. It’s easiest to understand this through examples.

Standing for to. 2003–2010 means the years from 2003 TO 2010, whereas 2003-2010 could mean the same thing (incorrectly), or it could mean a file number that includes the numbers 2,003 and 2,010. This use can also appear outside of numbers. You can have a Cardiff–London train, for example, and author–editor interaction (which involves an author and an editor, whereas author-editor interaction is the interaction of one individual, an author-editor).

An unfinished range. 1993– would probably mean the life span of someone who hasn’t died yet. Hyphen is too small to really stand for a continuing life; instead it would seem like he was misplaced on accident. En Dash looks a lot more intentional.

In compound adjectives. Using En Dash with complicated adjectives is the most fun, and it’s also where she’s most important. En Dash connects adjectives made up of multi-word phrases or words that are already hyphenated. Observe: post-World War II years compared to post–World War II years (the first means years after War #2 after the end of the world, the second means after the second World War).

To use an en dash, in MS Word on a PC hit CTRL + the minus sign on your keypad. In HTML, use –.

The Takeaway

If you’re someone who has moaned about the limitations of the written word, but you haven’t taken a closer look at the punctuation options you have, stop moaning and start studying. There could be all sorts of nuances you’re missing out on.

The Indelible Importance of Stories

January 20, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’m building a post about dashes. But I was also without my reference materials for most of this week because I was traveling. The travel also meant I was away from the internet for a while, so I can’t really give you a set of wonderful roundup links.

Instead, I want to share this TED talk from Chimamanda Adichie called “The Danger of a Single Story.” It’s a few years old (July 2009), but it’s pure gold. Adichie hits on a tangible function of stories: they help us learn how to see and understand other people. The more stories we experience—be it through literature, film, music—the more people we understand. If you limit the stories you know about people, you limit yourself.

So listen to Adichie’s stories. They’re worth hearing.

5 Tips for Popularizing Your Scholarly Writing

January 11, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 1 Comment

Though I frequently post about fiction, a lot of what I edit is nonfiction, especially scholarly theses, dissertations, journals, and books. Every realm of scholarship adds something to our lives, and having the chance to work with scholars from different fields is something I relish about my work. The trouble is that most scholarly research never leaves the halls of academia to find a general audience.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and ideas don’t necessarily have to be dumbed down to reach a general audience. If you’re a scholar who wants to popularize some of your scholarly work, here are a few principles you should follow.

Define Your Terms

In scholarly writing, you and your academic compatriots have a lot of words you use as shorthand for ideas. This is useful: it helps you understand one another, it helps you know who’s done their background research, and it saves you a lot of time spent explaining yourself. But if you’re adapting your research for a general audience, you need to cut back on the clique vocabulary. Try to use more common words for the concepts you’re talking about. If you still want the ease of using your field’s jargon, make sure you take some time to define the term you’re using before you put it in every other paragraph. You should also do this if you’re using a common word in an uncommon way.

Example: My research led me to reevaluate my stance as a prescriptivist, as someone who clings to grammatical rules instead of looking at how language is commonly used.

Make Your Method Clear without Madness

In many sciences (both hard and soft), research papers and articles include a section about the method for a study or experiment. This description is important because it shows your study was rigorous and you did what you could to remove bias and skewed results. However, most of your talk of double-blind studies and chi-squared tests isn’t going to be immediately familiar to a general audience. Complicated setups and endless statistics sometimes end up translating into unmitigated madness.

So ditch your methods section. Instead, weave parts of your method into your conclusions. When you say this chemical probably contributes to cancer, explain that you believe that because your statistical analysis was based on a large sample size and you used a standard level of skepticism; don’t explain how you determined your sample size and set a low alpha value as your significance level.

When you make your method a part of your conclusions, it’s easier for a general audience to understand why certain parts of your setup are important. If a part of your method doesn’t fit in the discussion of your conclusions, you might not need to include it at all for this particular audience.

Put Yourself in Your Writing

To make your research more accessible, it’s important to include a human element. Since you are a human, you can stand as that element. You might want to explain why this research is important to you and why the topic draws your interest. Are you fascinated by the depths of the universe? So are a lot of people you aren’t astronomers. Let them see your enthusiasm and they’ll be drawn into your writing. If you found something that made you reevaluate your previous positions, explain how surprised you were. It’ll make you more personable.

Most scholarly writing aims to remove your personal objectivity from the equation, but when you’re popularizing your work, put yourself into your writing. It will make you a better guide for your readership if they understand that you are a person.

Invite Your Reader In

Another way you can add a human element to your research is to invite your reader (who is also human) into your writing. Relate your research to your readers’ daily lives, to their aspirations, to questions and curiosities they may have had. Use analogies your reader relates to when you explain dense concepts. The more you make the topic relevant to your readership, the more interest they’ll have.

You do this same sort of thing with the literature review that is typical in many scholarly formats. With your literature review you relate to previous researchers and your academic community: your readers. With general writing, your readership is different, so you need to find different ways to relate to them.

Present Your Takeaway Often

The last thing you can do to reach a general audience is the most important: tell your reader why your research matters. If your chemical engineering breakthrough could help create viable and affordable electric cars, explain how (this part of the breakthrough makes the concept cheap; that part makes it super effective); if your study of ancient literature uncovers elements of Jung’s collective unconscious, explain how understanding the collective unconscious helps an individual; if your sociology study unearths an interesting concept about families, point out how it could relate to the reader’s family.

When you relate your conclusions to your reader’s life clearly and often, it’s easier for your reader to understand why your research is important. That’s the reason you started researching in the first place, isn’t it?

Book image by healingdream via FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Starscape image by nuttakit via FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Virus image by renjith krishnan via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Weekly Roundup: 12/31–1/6

January 6, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 2 Comments

The Rook Trailer

You all know how excited I am about The Rook, which comes out next week, right? Then you’ll all want to watch the book trailer, right? Of course you will!

MTV Shows

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Writers: Will Work for Cheap

Kristine Kathryn Rusch looks at the money writers make. As you might expect, she tears down certain traditional publishing standards, but she hardly leaves self-publishers unscathed. If you write, regardless of how you intend to publish, you should read this. Afterward you might still have the mentality Rusch attacks (i.e., it’s better to be read than paid), but you’ll be more aware of the choice you’re making.

This post is longer than those on most other blogs, but it’s well worth the read.

Daisy Whitney: 7 Best Practices for Building an Online Presence

Author Daisy Whitney looks at some best practices in the online world. I’m a big proponent of authors figuring out how to be in the internet’s eye before they really dig in to blogging and social media as marketing platforms, and Whitney does a good job of giving you a foundation.

Villainous Characterization Techniques

January 4, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 3 Comments

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about humanizing your book’s villains. Today I’m going to analyze some humanized villains and talk about the specific traits and techniques that make those villains more human and interesting—I’ll even show a humanizing element that can save your villain from being completely flat. Because any villain’s characterization can span an entire book or series, let me preface this post by saying it’s probably full of spoilers. I’ll keep them as mild as I can, but if you want any of these books to remain completely unspoiled, avoid reading that book’s section and skip to the technique summary at the end.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum

I’ll start with the book most of you won’t mind having spoiled. Gollum from Lord of the Rings is the most humanized villain in the trilogy (some might even argue that he’s not much of an antagonist because he helps so much). J.R.R. Tolkein humanizes Gollum by making him utterly pitiful. The heroes of not only Lord of the Rings, but also of The Hobbit pity Gollum, and the reader does too. He’s a lonely, mostly deranged creature that is driven by something other than his own rational thoughts. His addiction to the ring has made him less than his own halfling. Because the reader can feel sorry for Gollum, it’s hard to hate him completely, and his villainous actions are more impactful. When he falls back into actions driven by his addiction, the reader aches a bit because he couldn’t resist it forever.

Villainous technique: Make your reader pity the villain.

The Last Unicorn: King Haggard

Through much of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn there is no physical antagonist impeding the unicorn’s quest to find the rest of the unicorns. Once King Haggard arrives on the scene, he fills that role. Haggard lacks the human ability to be happy, which you might think would make him less than human, but he lacks this ability because of a common human failing: he doesn’t know what would make him happy. This selective ignorance drives Haggard’s deepest flaw, and it’s also something many people in the world share. Lots of people don’t know what will make them happy. Many of them spend years in pursuit of something they think will make them happy, but because they didn’t know what would make them happy, they end up unhappy, just like Haggard. Haggard’s ignorance is his most endearing factor (and it makes you pity him a bit, just like Gollum).

Villainous technique: Give your villain some ignorance your audience shares or sympathizes with.

Blackdog: Tamghat

Tamghat in K.V. Johansen’s Blackdog isn’t exactly a poster boy for a humanized villain (although I loved the book, I didn’t think he was even that memorable). However, one thing that kept him from being completely flat was Johansen’s use of a foil character. Tamghat is the villain, but he shares a lot of backstory with Moth, a character who the reader is supposed to like and sympathize with. Because readers learn Tamghat’s backstory (and thus, much of his motivation) from a foil character they like, it’s easier to understand his motivations and follow his goals.

Villainous technique: Introduce a sympathetic foil character that shares some of your villain’s traits.

I Am Not a Serial Killer: Dan Wells

(Heads up: This is probably the most spoiler-filled section.) Dan Wells’s I Am Not a Serial Killer has a very humanized villain, Mr. Crowley. As the book’s antagonist, Crowley is behind a series of killings in the main character’s home town. However, his motivation is what makes him incredibly human. He kills because he needs to steal body parts so he can stay with his elderly human wife, who he fell in love with even though he’s a demon. He gets caught for his killings because he doesn’t want to have to go far from his wife to harvest body parts. Crowley displays traits that most people would consider admirable: love, fidelity, and consideration for someone he’s been with for a very long time. The fact that these traits drive him to a horrible outcome makes that outcome more powerful.

Villainous technique: Give the villain morally admirable traits (which can sometimes lead to morally reprehensible results).

These are really just a few ways you can make your villain more dynamic. How have your favorite authors humanized some of their villains?

Books to Look for in 2012

January 2, 2012 by Kristy S. Gilbert 6 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a new year. That means a whole new year of books! I’ve been trying to keep my eyes and ears open for news of upcoming releases that pique my interest. I’ve got several on my list, but I also have a huge gap in my book year. So I’ll let you know about books I’m looking forward to if you’ll let me know about your go-to list for 2012 (especially if you’re looking forward to books coming out in the spring and summer).

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (January 2012)

After reading a snippet somewhere (probably in Publisher’s Lunch), I put The Rook on my radar. Then I read the sample chapters months ago. I followed the @RookFiles Twitter feed. The voice has me captivated, and I have the book pre-ordered. I’ve never pre-ordered a book in my life. (My mom pre-ordered Harry Potter books on my behalf, but I’ve never actually felt the need to do it myself.) O’Malley, you better deliver. I expect to enjoy myself between those simple black covers.

Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell (February 2012)

Thief’s Covenant is coming out as a part of Pyr’s new YA line. I haven’t picked up a new YA for a while (not since last Christmas when I bought Matchless on a whim), but I’ve been looking forward to this one since I heard about it at WorldCon last year. (P.S. Is the cover not awesome?) The main character is the only remaining worshipper of her household god; everyone else who used to worship him is dead. Now she runs through the city as a thief, trying to keep ahead of the people out to kill her.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (February 2012)

I’ll let you in on a secret: although I’m a military wife, I’m not normally into military genre books. War literature is something I dig (you might remember that I love Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried), but genre military fiction (military SF, for example) normally doesn’t float my boat. But something about Shadow Ops: Control Point intrigues me. Maybe it’s because it’s military fantasy, which is something I don’t recall running into before. It’s an interesting angle, and I’d like to see where it goes.

Big Gap for Spring and Summer

Please donate your suggestions to fill this gap. Or I could use this time to catch up on some of the wonderful books that are already out that I haven’t had a chance to sample yet.

Six Little Sisters by Garcia McCall (Fall 2012)

This book is coming out from Tu Books, an imprint with a cause. A cause that has led it to introduce me to this very interesting-sounding book, Six Little Sisters. I got this description of it from Tu Books’ editorial director’s blog: “In this retelling of The Odyssey, Odilia and her five sisters embark on a quest to return a dead man to his family and must overcome monsters from Mexican folklore as they journey home.” Sound cool much? If not, maybe you’re just not enough of a folklore junkie yet. Don’t worry. Listen to me long enough and I’ll get you hooked eventually.

Rootless by Chris Howard (November 2012)

Rootless is another book I saw a pitch for in Publishers Lunch. A tree sculptor who fashions decorative trees out of scrap metal learns about the possible whereabouts of a real, living tree. He sets off to investigate. Yes, this is in a dystopian world in which all living trees have supposedly died off.

Your Favorites for 2012

What are you looking forward to in 2012? I’m open to all suggestions. I seem to only have speculative fiction on my 2012 reading list, but I’d be happy to hear recommendations for mainstream fiction, nonfiction, Billy Collins–like poetry, or any anthology with folktales in it. If you’re on Twitter, you can also use the hashtag #books2012 to tell your tweeps about books to look for.

Yearly Book Traditions

December 26, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert 4 Comments

Now that it’s after Christmas, I am going to indulge in one of my yearly book traditions. In addition to reading whatever books my family have been so kind as to give me, I’m also going to read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. I’m going to read it before January. Why?

Well, primarily because it is traditional. Secondarily, I read The Dark Is Rising every year because it is a book I love dearly. The book, and the whole Dark Is Rising sequence, is something I can easily fall into an immerse myself in. It’s an enveloping kind of book that completely transports me into the realm between its pages. I like to increase that feeling of immersion by reading this book during the time in which it takes place. The majority of the action in The Dark Is Rising occurs in the twelve days following Christmas. Being surrounded by snow while the English countryside of the story descends into winter makes the book that much more powerful. (This tradition isn’t hurt by the fact that my grandma, who has since passed away, was the one who gave me my copies of Susan Cooper’s sequence.)

The Dark Is Rising isn’t the only book I reread every year. I tend to reread The Last Unicorn (I explain that in this post about Peter S. Beagle), The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, and Night Watch by Terry Pratchett.

Ella Enchanted is pure delight, a smooth read, and it only takes me about one sitting to read it cover to cover. It’s easy to come back to as a comfort read. It’s like good macaroni and cheese.

All the other books have a certain way of enveloping me, of making me feel things deeply. They all wound, enlighten, and enlarge me in powerful ways. Along the way, yes, Pratchett makes me laugh; yes, Beagle charms me with his descriptions; yes, O’Brien systematically questions my trust in narrative truth. But the thing they share in common is that these books have heart to them, and I compulsively return to that living heart year after year.

Are there any books you read yearly, or are there just a few books you keep around for rereading? Or do you eschew rereads?

Humanize Your Book’s Villain

December 19, 2011 by Kristy S. Gilbert Leave a Comment

Your book’s villain or antagonist is probably the reason why you have a story to tell. He or she is the one who causes the protagonist’s problems, stands in the way of the protagonist’s desires, and completes the conflict that lies at the heart of your story. Even so, many writers (not always newbies) neglect to make the villain a compelling character in his or her own right. When your villain is a one-dimensional character, your story’s conflict also becomes one-dimensional and you miss out on a prime opportunity to make your book more compelling.

The answer? Humanize your villain.

Humans are complex beings; nobody has only one dimension to them. Even real people you dislike have more to them than that one annoying habit that drives you up the wall. I’d venture to bet that people are so complex that you can find common ground with anyone on this planet if you have a chance to interact with them long enough. So there is absolutely no reason why your books’ antagonists can’t have complex motivations, competing impulses, and maybe even a bit of goodness in them.

An Example: Achebe’s Okonkwo

To illustrate my point, I’m going to use an example of writing that humanizes with painful precision (although the character I’m going to be using is the protagonist, not the antagonist). In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the main character, Okonkwo, is a strong and fierce man. I hated him. He beat his wives and killed children. Even though those actions were acceptable in his culture, he did them in ways that discomfited and outraged his peers. Almost everything he did made me hate him more. (So much so that I probably would have stopped reading the book had it not been assigned reading. I came to be very grateful that I read the entire book; it’s on my list of best eye-opening experiences.)

[Slight spoiler] A point came in the novel in which Okonkwo is summarized. A stranger takes one element of Okonkwo’s life and uses it to create a summary and “understanding” of him that supposedly stands for his entire life. [/Slight spoiler]

That moment broke my heart. My heart broke for a man I detested, because he was such a complex person that seeing him reduced in that manner was horrifying.

The key to making me sorry for Okonkwo was the fact that Achebe made Okonkwo a man. Not a straw man, not a cardboard cutout, but a man. Most things in that man irritated me. Some I could understand. Okonkwo was proud and never wanted to be seen as less than a paragon on manhood by everyone around him. I’ve never tried to be a paragon of manhood, but I have felt the pressure of other people’s eyes and the need to look capable. I’ve never felt like those feelings could justify the sort of things Okonkwo did, but I’ve felt those feelings.

Means to a Humanized End

What’s the takeaway from all this? Your antagonist doesn’t have to be one-dimensional to be villainous. I found Oknonkwo villainous, but reducing him to less than he was offended me. Your villain can be a heinous human being, but make him or her a human being. Here are some ideas on how to do it:

Give your villains more than one reason for their actions. We all do things for a variety of reasons. Very rarely does one motivating factor determine all our actions. If your antagonists wants to take over the world—or even just the corner store—give them more than one reason. It will make their goals more realistic and their means more understandable. Okonkwo wanted to look good in front of others, to be a good father, and to defend his culture against invaders. Those motivations all influenced his actions.

Give your villains universal traits. Everyone has felt embarrassed, angry, hurt, and betrayed. All of us may not have felt those things to the same extent, but we’ve all felt them. If your villain can act on traits that your reader understands, even if your villain’s reactions are more extreme than what your reader’s, the reactions will be more human. Okonkwo feared shame above all else, and that’s something I could sympathize with.

Give your villains a reason to think they’re heroes. Everyone is the hero of his or her own life story. When you’re crafting your villains, consider things from their points of view. Would they be able to justify these actions to themselves? Their mothers? Maybe your villain is motivated by love, by family duty, by a desire for security. If your villains are motivated by a goal your reader shares, their actions will be more believable and even more horrifying. Okonkwo thought he was fulfilling his role as a man; the idea that his actions were what it took to be a man made my insides roil.

Your villain’s actions need to be as realistic and as human as your hero’s. When both of them are multidimensional and realistic, the conflict between them becomes more engrossing. The more you engross your readers, the more they’ll keep coming back to hear your stories.

For more tips, check out this post about villainous characterization techniques.