posted
Okay I have this terrible habit of throwing pauses into my narration ALL the time. As I am writing it feels natural and appropriate to the POV I am striving to narrate from. However, many times when re-reading I feel like the pause is either misunderstood or else distracting. I have never been cured of this habit because I am not sure what to do. Do I discipline myself to only pause at a sentence break, or else how how do I indiacte a good-natural pause.
I am talking about using elipses "..." and/or hyphens "--" midsentence. I know they are very important in dialogue but how about in narration? I have observed the same habit in JK Rowling who seems to us "..." and "---" several times a page, and, well, she's relatively successful...
My other question is when do you think it is more appropriate to use a "---" instead of a "..." or visa versa?
posted
Everyone here will say that JK Rowling is a successful author for one reason: she can tell a story. Now, along with that reason comes another thing everyone here will say: She is not that great of a writer, so with her using "..." and "-" comes with lack talent of actual writing. But as storytelling goes, she has that down pact.
As for your pauses, they're probably needed as you can't have one major plot point after plot point after plot point. You need some filler just to make it seem more... readable, I guess is a word I'm trying to say as a normal reader.
As for your narration parts, I see them used in the current novel I'm reading, "Lady of the Sorrow's" by Cecilia Dart Thornton. She uses "-" when she explains past events.
For example:
Today Greg was going to the beach - he spoke to his friend Tom yesterday about meeting him there - and he was going to buy an ice cream.
posted
If you're worried about particular parts, have a few people read them. Then ask them if there were any places where they got distracted from the story by the writing, or where they reread something. Those are spots to work on. One of the best ways to improve your style is to make it go unnoticed. When the reader pays more attention to the *way* something is written, your style is muddying the content.
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Well, when I am writing I am trying to express the narration in strict terms completely relative to a single character during a scene. A fantastic example of the pauses I throw in is something your actually said,
quote:You need some filler just to make it seem more... readable
I have paused like that all the time.
"Bob held the clipboard in his hand. The evidence... it was all there. It was only a matter of time before they'd find him--days perhaps."
I might write something like that using both tactics "..." and "---" in the same paragraph.
posted
The em-dash (--) is used to indicate a continuation of an idea. This is also not read as a pause.
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posted
I like the pause ... too. I suppose I could write, "She's going to the, um, the store." When a character stops to think, or "She's going to the," Jody said, then tried to remember where she had been going. "The store, that's it." Or "She's going to the," Jody paused, she couldn't remember. "The store?" Roger supplied. But the little dots are a lot quicker. Guess I'll have to work on this one.
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posted
I've always taken it---and do it, like this here---in some (maybe misguided) attempt to represent actual speech patterns while still trying to be as clear as possible...with occasional "ers" and "ums" thrown into the dialog as well.
I can't recall being confused by reading speech like that---but, offhand, I can't recall reading speech like that. Maybe it just doesn't make any difference to me.
(I'd try to make it a little smoother than I've written things down here, though. Chat room and message board talk tends to be, well, disjointed at times.)
posted
I'm afraid I have to disagree on the ellipsis, but this may be a difference between UK and US usage that I'm not familiar with. To me, an ellipsis is the best way of indicating a pause, or trailing off an argument/sentence. I think the "ellipsis-as-omission" is mostly used when selectively quoting another work (e.g. "As Atkinson remarked: 'It is better to win ... than to take part'"), in journalistic/factual writing. But when you're writing informally... well, then things are different.
I certainly wouldn't take a dash as a pause. For me it indicates a sudden switch - to provide some moment of revelation - and frequently hints that you're going to switch back again.
Ok, if you do really feel the need to write in melodrama,
"Spock," James said, "I need..." His voice paused as he stepped towards his science officer. "...to go..." He took a deep breath and extended his finger dramatically at Spock. "...to the store."
Or you could just say.
James gestured spastically towards his science officer, then said, pausing every other word, "Spock, I need to go to the store."
I'd reccomend the later.
[This message has been edited by pantros (edited August 08, 2006).]
posted
I want to thank everyone for this thread. It has really made me re-evaluate the way I write dialogue. I am a great abuser of the pause device, in whatever form I can find, ellipsis, em-dashes, commas, etc. I doubted that my dialogue would work as well without these punctuations. But after reading this thread, I went back and rewrote some of my dialogue in various different ways, tossing out the pauses. What did I find? It works better in the new form.
So I had to think about why. Why does it read ok without all those pauses, when normal people speak with a lot of pauses? The only reason I could come up with is that written dialogue is not an attempt to recreate an actual conversation. No one wants to read a transcript of a conversation. Dialogue is just another tool to advance a plot, or flesh out a character, or capture a reader's interest. I was approaching it from the wrong perspective. I still may not be right, but I think I'm closer than I was before this thread came along.
As for the original question, using pauses in narration, I'm not sure about that. I mostly pepper my dialogue with hesitant stops and statements that trail off at the end... I don't use them much mid-text, but I can see where these things might want to sneak in, if you are aiming for your narration to sound like it would if it were spoken aloud.
The question is, do you want your narration to read like it is being spoken aloud?
posted
I should have also said that I use "He paused" a lot when I'm writing dialog. ("I'm saying this right here." He paused. "Now I'm saying something else.")
I try to deal with it when I revise, but some of it persists to the bitter end...
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