Dreamland Review Archive

Iridescent Stars (T)

'Snow fell from the sky creating piles upon piles of small white hills.'

There's two thoughts here: snow is falling from the sky, and it's creating piles. Because these are two thoughts, you need a comma to separate them. Correction:

'Snow fell from the sky, creating piles upon piles of small white hills.'

ii. TENSE

You have a slight tense problem, but any tense problem is a big problem. Often, when something just feels off about the story, but you can't figure out what it is, it's the tense. Inexperienced readers will notice it right off the bat, but they might not know what's causing it. Experienced readers will know right away that you have a tense problem, and they won't like it.

Most of your story is written in the past tense, but then you'll have the occasional present-tense verb. Here's one:

'But underneath that fur coat and snarled teeth lies a trapped soul.'

'lies' is a present-tense verb, and therefore it sticks out when used in a past-tense story. I would recommend finding and fixing the present-tense verbs since there were only a few.

iii. DIALOGUE

Sometimes you get your dialogue right, more often than not you don't. Here should be everything you need to know to get it right every time:

1. Definitions: There are two ways to indicate which character is talking. There are dialogue tags and there are action tags. To understand dialogue, it's important to know the difference. Dialogue tags are anything that indicates who is talking by describing or detailing how they are speaking (he screamed, she whispered, I asked). Action tags also indicate who is talking, but they only use actions to do so (he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked). Some verbs can be used as both, such as 'he groaned.' If you want to say he said something in a groan, it's a dialogue tag. If you want to say he said something and then he groaned, it's an action tag.

2. Dialogue tag preceding or following a spoken sentence: In this case, the beginning of the spoken sentence is always capitalized and if your dialogue tag is after, then you end the spoken sentence with a comma and begin the dialogue tag with a lowercase. If the dialogue tag comes before, then you place a comma after the dialogue tag and begin the spoken sentence with a capital.

Examples:

"Hello," he said.   OR    He said, "Hello."

3. Dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences: In this case, you have two options. You can a) pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or b) make it all one sentence, therefore ending the dialogue tag with a comma and beginning the spoke sentence with a lowercase.

Examples:

"Hello," he said. "It's nice out today."    OR    "Hello." He said, "It's nice out today."    OR    "Hello," he said, "it's nice out today."

4. Dialogue tags following or preceding special punctuation: Whenever you have an exclamation mark, question mark or a noun that must be capitalized, the rules do not change for dialogue tag punctuation.

Examples:

"Hello," I said.    OR    "Hello?" she asked.

5. Action tags in writing: In this case, you follow the regular rules of writing and end the spoken sentence with a period and begin the action tag with a capital.