Dreamland Review Archive

PALINGENSIS (T)

Three, the em dash (—). The em dash is longer than the others and really awesome, because we use it a lot in creative writing. We use it in most places where you're using the hyphen—that is, to cut off narration, dialogue, or insert clarification.

#2: COMMAS

The best way to fix up your commas is to focus on the commas before conjunctions. Look at this sentence:

'Their eyes shot up and what they saw made their feet tremble.'

That's two independent clauses. How do you know? Because if you put a period instead of a conjunction, the sentences still make sense—they don't rely on other sentences for clarity. When you've got two independent clauses, you need a comma before the conjunction.

In addition, this rule goes for sentences without conjunctions, too, like this:

'she asked rolling her eyes.'

Now 'rolling her eyes' isn't independent, but it is a new thought, which means you need a comma:

'she asked, rolling her eyes.'

ii. TYPOS

You have a few typos in your book that can take away from the reading experience. Sometimes it's just a spelling error, for example: it's. If you're trying to say 'it is' then you use a single quotation there. If you're trying to say it possesses something, then you don't use the quotation. For example:

'it's echo ringing like a bell.'

Pull that out: 'It is echo ringing like a bell.' That doesn't make sense. Therefore, no quotation. Just 'its echo ringing like a bell.'

You've also got a double 'and' in the first sentence of the first chapter, which isn't a great impression on the readers, no matter how tiny the mistake is. It's worth using text-to-speech or Grammarly (with caution) to fix em up.

iii. DIALOGUE

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."