I spent much of the summer working on my Punctuation 101 book. You may remember that I wrote some “Punctuation 101” posts many years ago on this blog. Or maybe not you don’t remember at all! (It was a long time ago, after all.) Back then, many of you told me that I should write a book of punctuation rules for fiction writers, and so I have. It comes out next week.
It took me a really long time because punctuation is kind of boring. At least compared to writing a fantasy novel. However, I did my very best to try and make the subject interesting and easy to understand. This a book of rules, but it’s only the rules fiction writers should need. I decided to share with the the last chapter of the book, which is maybe considered a spoiler, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’d never before given too much consideration to punctuation as art. Writing this book changed that for me. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about punctuation, but I also learned a lot about myself and how I use punctuation in my writing. So here is an excerpt from my soon-to-be-released book Punctuation 101.
You can be totally black and white about following every punctuation and grammar rule and write an entertaining book. You can also break lots of rules and still write an entertaining book. You, the author—the artist—get to decide what kind of author you are going to be.
And that’s pretty exciting.
If writing is an art form, punctuation is a medium on your artist’s palette. You could try and tell stories without any punctuation, but that would be like trying to paint without a canvas. Punctuation holds all your words together on the page. What’s cool, though, is that no other author will use punctuation exactly like you.
Examine Your Methods
Have you ever seen the posters that strip classic novels down to their punctuation? I find it fascinating. For fun, I went ahead and did just that for my first published novel By Darkness Hid and for Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. I first deleted out all the letters, formatting, and spaces until only the punctuation remained, then I pulled a random selection from each book and made an image to share. Here are my results.
By Darkness Hid by Jill Williamson
Jane used many more commas than I did, a sign that she wrote more complex sentence structures. She also liked the occasional semicolon, em dash, and parentheses. And look at all those exclamation points!
I used shorter, simpler sentences. I also used lots of question marks and dialogue. Some of my question marks and quotation marks were italicized, which was how I formatted telepathic dialogue. (I’m a fantasy novelist.) I also had four section breaks in this image, each depicted by sets of three asterisks.
Isn’t that fun?
Here is how I did this. Using the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word, I replaced one letter and numeral at a time with nothing in the replace box. This is basically going through and deleting the letter As, then the letter Bs, etc., all the way through the alphabet. I did the same for each numeral (0–9). Then I deleted all the spaces. And finally I had to delete all the formatting by looking up the following symbols and replacing them with nothing:
^p for paragraphs, ^t for tabs, ^l for line breaks, and ^k for page breaks.
It was tedious, let me tell you. Once I was done, I copied-and-pasted a section of the punctuation into Photoshop, but you could paste it into Paint or any other graphics art program. Then I had to manually hit “enter” at the end of every line to make the punctuation fill the page.
You don’t have to go this far to examine your punctuation methods, but do study them. Why do you do what you do? Do you have a reason? Or do you choose your punctuation without really thinking about it? Is there a particular punctuation mark that you overuse? Is there one you rarely or never use?
Experiment
How might changing some of the punctuation marks, varying the sentence structure, or using more or less dialogue or paragraphs in your writing impact the stories you tell?
Record yourself reading some of your writing out loud, then play it back. Do you hear a rhythm to your words? Is your prose short and choppy or does it ebb and flow? Does your pacing barrel forward like a freight train or does it meander along like a man on a leisurely stroll? Do you have a good contrast of both? How are your transitions? Do you switch starkly from one to another, do you prolong action to create tension, or do you gradually build up to a magnificent crescendo?
How do your sentence structures work together? Would you read a sentence differently if you rewrote it? Broke it down into shorter sentences? Combined it with some other sentences? Added more commas? Turned some of your dialogue into narrative or your narrative into dialogue? What if you replaced some of your commas with em dashes?
Play around with this and see what you discover. The slightest changes here and there could affect the way your story looks, sounds, and feels to a reader.
Find Your Unique Style
It will take time and practice to find your unique writing style. This is one reason I encourage new writers to set aside that first manuscript that has so dazzled them and write a second book. Then a third, fourth, and fifth book. With each new book, you improve in craft, style, and voice. You hone your skills.
While you’re writing, it might be fun to study the punctuation practices of other writers. Don’t read only in your genre, though. Read widely, in many genres, including poetry, which is a genre that uses punctuation in many creative ways. Practice, learn, and grow. Once the rules become second nature, you’ll no longer worry if you can get away with breaking them. Your respect for the rules, your instincts, and your experience will make all this second nature. You’ll know, deep down, that no one else in the world can tell a story like you can.
I’ve never really paid that much attention to my punctuation habits, except I know I’m addicted to semicolons. They create such interesting sentence structures and present the perfect opportunity for contrasting description. Granted I probably use too many of them, which means I am often aware of how many semicolons I’ve put in this paragraph or that block of dialogue. I also use em dashes often (love ’em!) and have a habit of not using a comma where others would have–particularly at the beginning of sentences (see the sentence “Granted I probably… above). I just like the rhythm created when I leave out one comma here or there.
I love that you love semicolons, Colin. That’s awesome. Good job keeping an eye out for the rhythm you’re creating in your writing.
Jill, your artwork is SO fun. I’ve never seen that before!
I’m partial to ellipses and em-dashes, and I always have to cull in edits. Proper comma usage drives me crazy. I’m always learning new comma rules.
In Microsoft Word you can use search ranges to speed up the text replacement and do everything in only two steps. First check the “use wildcards” box and use the pattern “[a-zA-Z0-9 ^l^t^m]” without the quotes. You may need to change the special formatting characters to be the right ones that your version of Word uses. In the second step you can remove all paragraph breaks by unchecking the “use wildcards” box and doing the replacement of “^p”.
Wow! That’s nice to know, Brian, thanks!
I’m so gonna do this! And I’ve got to get your book! I love semicolons and feel they get overlooked so much in writing. They add depth to structure, at least from my perspective. I also love exclamation points and find that my characters shout at each other quite a bit…until I edit, lol! Then again, I write historical/Military fiction and a lot of scenes take place on the field, so I guess they do shout a lot…
I also love commas and “…” whatever you call that!
Love the *** scene break! In my Civil War series, I use the year the book took place (ex.1864) and surround it with stars on either side. Like, book 1 had a star, 1861, and another star. Book 2 had two stars on either side, etc.
Just curious, what do you feel is the proper way to write someone’s thoughts in a book? Do you use italics, no quotation marks, just like regular diolouge, but with “she thought” instead of “she said”? I personally don’t use quotation marks, but I do use italics. Just wondering what’s “the right way,” since you’ve been traditionally published, lol!
On inner thoughts, every publisher is different, but most adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the go-to reference for the publishing industry. Chicago does not advise italics for inner thoughts. You either write them as narrative, since you’re already in the point of view of a certain character anyway, or you put them in quotes with a “she thought” to mark the difference. The way I write currently is to simply put them in my narrative. Ex:
Jill typed the answer into the comment box. After this there were two more comments, then she’d go back to working on the book cover for Punctuation 101. So much to do and it was already 4:30! Where did the time go?
I see italics all the time, however, including in some of my earlier books. And with my stories that have telepathy, I did use italics to set apart those thoughts from everything else.
This is so interesting! You wouldn’t immediately think of individuality in punctuation.
Personally, I think I use a lot of semicolons, em dashes, and parentheses. I like using parentheses to add a little bit of humor. Something like “He decided to go along with the plan (although he secretly thought it was a terrible idea).” ;D
LOL, yes. Parentheses work well for humor, Emily. Isn’t it fun to look at those images. You can Google “classic novel punctuation poster” and you’ll find some more images like the ones I made. It’s fun to see how different they all look.
I discovered the em dash a year or so ago and was absolutely obsessed with it for a while. I completely overused it. 😛 Now I’ve stopped using it quite as much except when it’s needed. XD
I also used to hate semi colons for some reason (probably because a lot of what I read used them incorrectly and I didn’t see the point of them), but they’re growing on me now and I’ll toss them in every now and then.
That’s funny. I am rather fond of the em dash, as well. I find I’m becoming less steadfast about all the punctuation “rules” as the years go by. I used to cringe at a semicolon in my stories because I heard someone say at a writers’ conference that semicolons didn’t belong in fiction. Now I put them in sometimes. Look how I’ve grown! LOL
Whoa… I’ve never heard ANYBODY talk about punctuation like that!! And, I’ll admit that my own punctuation isn’t the best. I learned all the rules in school, but once I started writing, I realized that punctuation is NOT the same for fiction. I mean, it probably could be, but that would be boring. Thanks for the post, it really inspired me!!
^^And see, there I used a comma, when I was supposed to use a semicolon. xD
I’m so glad you’re inspired, Talia. I never thought about this much either until I saw those punctuation posters. And way to make an artistic choice!
I saved the punctuation art and set it as the wallpaper on my phone. XD
I love manipulating punctuation to create a rhythm with my words. Semi-colons are my favorite and I use em-dashes often; I also have a lot of dialogue. Occasionally I write sentences in parentheses, but I can’t get away with it often because I write in first person. ?
That’s awesome, Josie!
EM DASH!
This is a cool way of looking at it! I love em dashes and probably overuse them. Also parentheses, but moreso in my blog posts and emails.
Semi-colons forever (even though I know that it’s tacky to overuse them). But my current WIP is largely written as if it was written by my MC (as in, it’s not just from his POV; he’s actually writing it), and I decided early on that one trait of my MC is that he doesn’t know how to use semi-colons and therefore never does. So it actually is kind of stretching me as a writer to no longer use them at all!
Ha! That’s fun, Lydia. And a nice challenge for you too.
Love this post, Jill! How fascinating that two writers can have a unique punctuation “style”!
I’m excited about your new book! Will there be a print version as well?
Isn’t that interesting? Yes, there will be a print version. I’ll post a link when it’s available. 🙂