May 14, 2010
I confess – sometimes when I’m flipping through writing magazines and journals, I’ll stop to read the ones titled THE 8 WRITING BLUNDERS YOU DON’T WANT TO MAKE or THE 3 THINGS AGENTS DON’T WANT TO SEE – not to find tips to improve my writing necessarily. Usually it’s to make myself feel better. You know the articles – when to use whom vs. who and avoid using ‘ly dialogue tags. Part of me figures that I have a degree in Creative Writing, so I understand grammar – certainly I can check off these “blunders” and give myself that much needed pat on the back. (Yes, I realize this is arrogant and self-serving – but that is a topic for another post!)
Well, GULP, I found a blunder. Yes. I’m sure there are many more I am guilty of, but I found a blunder that seems so basic now that I read it that I can hardly believe I succumbed for so long!
The blunder was the use of ellipses in your writing. Now I’ve used ellipses often in my dialogue and thought nothing of it. Heck, I’ve used ellipses in almost all of my blog postings! But according to this article, ellipses are cowardly and lazy. In real life people’s speech and conversation doesn’t just die off. Real people simply stop speaking (thus a period), or their thought is interrupted (a dash). How true. To use ellipses in your dialogue, then, would seem to be a way to rush the dialogue without paying true homage to the character’s feelings and intent.
Perhaps even more humbling than realizing I’ve been making this blunder for so long is thinking about how many ellipses I need to now go back and fix!
I’m sure you all have many more blunders, I can add to my list. Feel free!