Semi-colons are disliked by some, misused by others, and avoided by many. If you want to keep them out of your writing, that’s fine. In this article, I show you how they work conventionally. That way, you can omit them because that’s your preference, not because you daren’t include them!

What is a semi-colon?
It’s one of these: 

3 ways to use a semi-colon
There are 3 situations in which you’re likely to use a semi-colon in fiction:

Here, I focus on parallelism and clarity, but sentence pacing comes into play too – a useful addition to any fiction writer’s toolbox.
​
A little bit of grammar
Above, I mentioned independent clauses. An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. In case you don’t know what they are – and many writers know how to write extremely well without knowing grammar terminology so there’s no shame in that – here’s an overview.

Subject
A subject is the thing in a sentence that’s doing something or being something. In the examples below, the subject is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the subject of your sentence is, try this trick: change the subject into a question that you can answer yes/no to, as in the examples below.

​Predicate
A predicate is the part of a sentence that contains a verb and that tells us something about what the subject’s doing or what they are.
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In the examples below, the predicate is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the predicate is in a sentence that’s a question, turn it into a statement, as in the example below. The result might be clunky but it’ll show you what’s what. The subject is in bold and the predicate in italic.

Independent clauses
Quick recap: an independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. The subject is in bold, the predicate is in italic, and the full independent clause is in red.

​Parallelism and the semi-colon
Take a look at these two independent clauses.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground.
• The gravel dug into her elbows.

The second sentence is related to the first because the gravel that’s digging into the agent’s elbows is what she experiences after falling to the ground. We can therefore use a semi-colon to indicate this relationship, if we wish.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground; the gravel dug into her elbows.

Note that the first word of the clause after the semi-colon does not take an initial capital letter.

Could we use a colon?
A colon is non-standard because colons introduce additional/qualifying information about the first clause, not new information. Think of the information they introduce as subordinate, if it helps.

I recommend avoiding colons to join parts of a sentence that are equally weighted.

Could we use a comma?
A comma is non-standard when joining two independent clauses. Sentences using commas in this way are said to contain comma splices.

​I recommend avoiding this usage.

Clarity and the semi-colon
Heavily punctuated sentences can be confusing and clunky. For the reader, it can mean limping through your prose rather than moving at a pace dictated by narrative intent.

​Take a look at this example from Mick Herron’s Dead Lions, p. 88. There are two semi-colons in the original version, but for this example I’m focusing only on the first (see the section in bold).

​The en dash in the first alternative version looks awkward because we already have two parenthetical en dashes in play.

What happens if we introduce a comma instead? The sentence is already comma-heavy. All we’ve done is bring in yet another to muddy the waters.
​
The semi-colon works best. It effectively links the clauses it connects, but in a way that subdivides the sentence clearly.

​However, pacing comes into place here too. There’s more on pacing below but, for now, compare the original and the version amended with a comma. The creepy voyeurism is starker when set off by the semi-colon.

​More on pacing and the semi-colon
The semi-colon is harder than the comma. It lengthens the pause or increases the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a comma, making them both stand out.

The semi-colon is softer than the full point. It shortens the pause or reduces the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a full point, indicating a stronger, more intimate relationship.

Back to Herron for a closer look at the second semi-colon (see the section in bold) and some alternatives we could try:

​In the original, the semi-colon acts as a super-comma, subdividing the whole sentence into two more readable chunks.

However, more marked is the impact on the pace. The semi-colon forces us to slow down. That’s important because the clause that comes after it is about the denial of interrogations. The semi-colon makes us pause a little longer, which makes the sinister information that follows stand out.

Semi-colons and dialogue
Some authors resist the use of semi-colons in dialogue, usually on the grounds that the reader can’t hear the punctuation. Does that mean you shouldn’t use them?

A novel’s dialogue isn’t real-life speech; it’s a representation of it. Speech, like narrative, has rhythm. The writer’s job is to create speech that’s clear and well paced. If a semi-colon helps you to do that, why wouldn’t you use it?

Here’s a great example from David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks, p. 316:

Both versions work but Rosenfelt elects to use a semi-colon because he wants to show the relationship between the two independent clauses. A full point would pull the clauses a little further apart and reduce the intimacy between them.

Should you use semi-colons in your fiction?
Some authors prefer to omit semi-colons for a variety of reasons: they're deemed pretentious, confusing, interruptive or ugly. But I’m not sure we should judge them so harshly:

• They needn’t be pretentious. There’s nothing pompous about Herron and Rosenfelt’s writing. Both authors create compelling modern commercial fiction that keeps their readers on a page, and dying to turn it.
• While not all readers understand the grammatical nuances of the semi-colon, few will be stopped in their tracks if you use it well.
• Are they interruptive? Yes; if you use them too frequently; and your writing lurches; like a driver who’s too heavy on the brakes; too much of anything can grate. And; yes, if; you put them; in the wrong; place. Used purposefully, however, they can affect rhythm and bring clarity to a story.
• As for ugly, well, that’s subjective. I think they’re just lovely!

Further reading and cited works

• Dead Lions, Mick Herron, John Murray, 2013
• Dialogue tags
• How to punctuate dialogue
• How to use adverbs
• How to use apostrophes
• More resources for indie authors
• New Tricks, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central, 2009
• Style sheet template
• Using commas and conjunctions

A vocative expression is one in which a person is directly referred to in dialogue. It needn’t be someone’s name; it could be a form of address that relates to their job or position, or a term of endearment, respect or disrespect. Here’s how to work with them.

Purpose of vocative expressions
Vocatives serve several purposes in fiction writing:
​
1. They help readers keep track of who’s saying what to whom. This is especially useful when a character is talking to two or more people.

2. They can enrich characters’ emotions by conveying a deeper sense of urgency, frustration, surprise or patience.

3. Readers can learn quickly about how characters relate to each other. Does one rank higher or defer to the other? Perhaps they’re friends, lovers, or loathe each other.

Overuse that distracts
Overusing people’s names and titles can be grating. Vocatives aren’t the only way of signalling who’s being talked to – you could use action beats (See: What are action beats and how can you use them in fiction writing?). And if there are only two people in a scene it will be unnecessary to continually use direct forms of address.

Think about the natural speech you hear in your everyday life. Most of the time, people don’t use vocative expressions excessively. Follow their lead in your novel.

Compare the following examples:

The original version is much cleaner. The vocative in the first line helps to convey Vivian’s sarcasm. After that, Chandler lets us do the work and the conversation sounds natural.
​
How to punctuate vocatives
Commas are required for clarity.

• If the vocative expression comes at the beginning of the sentence, place a comma after it.
• If the vocative expression comes at the end of the sentence, place a comma before it.
• If the vocative expression interrupts a sentence, place a comma before and after it.
• A vocative at the beginning of a sentence can also stand alone, in which case it will be followed by a full stop (period) or exclamation mark.

Punctuating vocative expressions incorrectly can lead to ambiguity. Compare the following examples of dialogue. Notice how the missing comma changes the meaning from expressions of address to instructions to carry out acts of violence.

Lower-case or upper-case initials?
Should you use lower-case or upper-case initials when addressing a person in written dialogue? It depends.

People’s names
Names are proper nouns and therefore always take initial capital letters in the vocative case.

Terms of respect, endearment and abuse
Vocative terms of respect and endearment take lower case when used generally. Examples include: madam, sir, m’lady, miss, milord, mister; buddy, sweetie, darling, love, dear; and dopehead, fuckwit and plenty more I’d love to write here but won’t!

When terms of respect are used in conjunction with names, they become proper nouns and take upper case. Endearments and insults usually remain in lower case because they’re used adjectivally.

Titles of rank and nobility
Titles of rank and nobility take initial capitals when used vocatively. Examples include: Your Majesty, Commander, Constable, Agent, Lord, and Detective Inspector.

Compare these with narrative text and dialogue that include indirect address forms. If the relational titles are used as names (proper nouns), we retain upper case. If we’re using common nouns with determiners (a modifying word that references a noun such as ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘each’, ‘her’ and ‘my’) we use lower case.

Titles indicating a relationship
When used as a form of direct address, relational titles take upper case. Examples include: Mother, Uncle, Dad, Auntie, Grandma and Papa.

Again, compare these with narrative text and dialogue that include indirect address forms. If the relational titles are used as names (proper nouns), we retain upper case. If we’re using common nouns with determiners, we use lower case.

Summing up
Use vocatives as follows:

• to convey who’s being spoken to
• to enrich mood and emotion
• to indicate what the mood or relationship is between the speakers

Use appropriate punctuation to set off forms of address in order to avoid ambiguity. And be judicious – overuse will distract and irritate readers.

And, thank you, dear reader, for getting to the end of this article! (See what I did there?)

Cited sources

• 29 Seconds. T.M. Logan. Zaffre Publishing, 2018
• Dune. Frank Herbert. New English Library, 1984
• Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë. Scholastic, 2014. Kindle edition
• Maddon’s Rock. Hammond Innes. Fontana Books, 1947
• The Big Sleep. Raymond Chandler. Penguin, 1948
• The Hard Way. Lee Child. Bantam Books, 2006
• The Inspector and Mrs Jeffries. Emily Brightwell. C&R Crime, 2013
• The Punishment She Deserves. Elizabeth George. Hodder, 2019. Kindle edition 

Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. Here’s how to use them in your fiction writing.

What do action beats do?
Action beats enrich characters’ voices by telling us about their emotions, their movements and their intentions while they’re speaking. They can even tell us who’s speaking and whether their speech is reliable or not. And they can ensure that readers don’t become bored.

In that sense, we can think of them as alternative narrative ‘voices’ that enrich our perceptions of, or engagement with, the characters.

1. The voice breaker
Long chunks of dialogue can be off-putting. Action beats can act as rhythm moderators that break up the speech and its tagging.

​2. The emotional voice
Action beats can be mood indicators. In real life, we express what we’re feeling or sensing – for example, sadness, pain and frustration – with our bodies as much as our voices. Emotions manifest physically.
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In fiction, complementary action beats can enrich the reader’s understanding of character emotions but without clumsy dialogue tags or adverbial modifiers that distract from the dialogue.

​Here are some examples:

3. The physical voice
​Perhaps you’ve heard of the term ‘talking heads syndrome’. When there’s a lot of dialogue, the reader can end up dislocated from the environment, as if the characters are speaking in a vacuum or floating in white space.

In ‘The Dreaded “Talking Heads Syndrome”’, writer James Boyle discusses an example from a writer in his critique group:

‘... [they] wrote a scene for a mystery story in which a detective is arguing with her boss. Though somewhat trite, the dialogue was realistic and believable, but there was virtually no description of their surroundings, no description of how the characters react to their environment.’
​
Action beats ground the dialogue by quickly giving it physicality – a geographical region, a room, a time of day, the weather conditions, even a body. They keep the reader grounded in the scene, which helps retain immersion.

​Here are a few more examples:

4. The alternative voice
What a character says via dialogue and what they mean or think might be very different. Action beats can act as an alternative voice that indicates reticence or unreliability. They say what the character can’t or won’t.

​The examples below show you how it works:

5. The voice indicator
Action beats and dialogue run on from each other because they’re connected. That means we can use beats instead of tags; they tell the reader who’s speaking.

Once more, I've given you some examples below:

How to lay out action beats and dialogue
Because action beats relate to dialogue, we run them on rather than creating a paragraph return.

Here’s an example from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (p.125):

How to punctuate and format actions beats
Before the dialogue
The action beat ends with a full point. An opening speech mark follows. The first word of the dialogue takes a capital letter.

• He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

Note that I’ve styled this with single quotation marks, but doubles might be your preference, especially if you’re writing in US English.

After the dialogue
The dialogue finishes with a full point followed by a closing speech mark. The first word of the action beat takes a capital letter.

• ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain.

Again, I’ve used single quotation marks, but doubles are fine too. It’s a style choice.

Within the dialogue
You have several choices about how to handle this depending on where the beat goes and what punctuation style you choose.

Example 1: Mid-sentence
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue mid-sentence, which lends emphasis to the word ‘This’.

If you’re writing in British English style, you might prefer spaced en dashes and single quotation marks. This is how it looks:

• ‘This’ – he jabbed at the chintz curtain – ‘is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

If you’re writing in US English style, you might go with closed-up em dashes and double quotation marks. This is how it looks:

• “This”—he jabbed at the chintz curtain—“is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.”

Notice the lack of initial capital letters and the omission of commas in both examples.

Example 2: Between complete sentences
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue between sentences. This is how it works:

• ‘This is the problem.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

Notice that because the sentences in the dialogue are complete, we punctuate and capitalize according to the Before the dialogue and After the dialogue examples above.
​
Overuse, repetition and cliché
As is always the case with good writing, devices such as action beats, free indirect speech, dialogue tags, and anaphora work best when the reader can’t identify a writing pattern. Instead, mix things up so that your reader doesn’t guess which literary tool’s coming.

Pay attention to whether you repeat particular action beats, particularly clichéd ones. If your characters often purse their lips, furrow their brows, rake their hands through their hair, spit on the ground, or roll their eyes while they’re speaking, it’s time to think of alternative ways to express despair, disgruntlement or annoyance.

Summing up
Use action beats to enrich the emotionality of your characters’ speech and add interest to your writing. Think about how they can anchor the dialogue in a physical space, and whether they’ll provide an alternative to a speech tag so we know who’s saying what. However, watch out for oft-repeated phrases that turn beats from pop to pattern.

​Cited sources

• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah. Harper, 2017
• Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben. Arrow, 2018
• Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson. Hodder & Stoughton, 2018
• The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty. Serpent's Tail, 2012
• The Dreaded 'Talking Heads Syndrome', James Boyle, 2014

Apostrophes confound some authors. Not knowing how to use them doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, but getting them wrong can distract a reader and alter the meaning of what you want to say. This guide shows you how to get it right.

What does an apostrophe look like?
The apostrophe is the same mark as a closing single quotation mark: ’ (unicode 2019).

This is worth remembering when you use them in your fiction to indicate the omission of letters at the beginning of a word. More on that further down.

What do apostrophes do?
Apostrophes have two main jobs:

1. To indicate possession
2. To indicate omission

And sometimes a third (though this is rarer and only applies to some expressions):

3. To indicate a plural

​1. Indicating possession
The English language doesn’t have one set of rules that apply universally. However, when it comes to possessive apostrophes, the following will usually apply:

Add an apostrophe after the thing that is doing the possessing.
​

• If there is one thing – one noun – an s follows the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural noun is formed by adding an s (e.g. 1 horse; 2 horses), no s is required after the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural is formed irregularly (e.g. 1 child; 2 children), an s follows the apostrophe.

Possessive apostrophes and names
Names can be tricky. The most common problem I see is authors struggling to place the apostrophe correctly when family names are being used in the possessive case, even more so when the name ends with an s.
​
Here are some examples of standard usage to show you how it’s done:

Note that in the Melanie Fields singular-possession example, there are two options. Both are correct but some readers will find the second more difficult to pronounce because there are three s's a row.

Hart’s Rules (4.2.1 Possession) has this advice: 'An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x, or z sound […] but an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in pronunciation, typically after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable.’

If you're unsure whether to apply the final s in a case like this, use common sense. Read it aloud to see if you can wrap your tongue around it, and decide whether the meaning is clear. Then choose the version that works best and go for consistency across your file. Pedantry shouldn't trump prescriptivism in effective writing.

2. Indicating omission
Indicating omission when one word is created from two
In fiction, we often use contracted forms of two words to create a more natural rhythm in the prose, particularly in dialogue. The apostrophes indicate that letters (and spaces) have been removed.
​
Common examples include:

Indicating omission at the beginning, middle and end of single words
We can use an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing at the end of a word (dancing – dancin’), the middle of a word (cannot – can’t) and the beginning of a word (horrible – ’orrible).

Start-of-word letter omissions are commonly used in fiction writing to indicate informal speech or a speaker’s accent.

Make sure you use the correct mark. Microsoft Word automatically inserts an opening single quotation mark (‘) when you type it at the beginning of a word because it assumes you’re using it as a speech indicator.

Apostrophes are ALWAYS the closing single quotation mark (’) so do double check if you’re indicating omission at the start of a word.

Indicating omission in numbers and dates
Plural numbers don’t usually require an apostrophe because there’s no ambiguity. In fiction writing, it’s common to spell out numbers for one hundred and below, but even when numerals are used, no apostrophe is needed for plurals.

Omission-indicating apostrophes at the beginning of dates are acceptable according to some style manuals. In the example below, the 1970s is abbreviated. It’s conventional in UK writing to follow the NHR example below.
​
In fiction, however, you can avoid the issue by spelling out the dates. This is universally acceptable, and my preference when writing and editing fiction.

3. Indicating a plural with an apostrophe
When indicating the plural of lower-case letters – for example, if you want to refer to two instances of the letter a – it’s essential to use an apostrophe because the addition of only an s will lead to confusion.
​
In the non-standard examples below, you can see how the plurals (in bold) form complete words, resulting in ambiguity.

For that reason, it’s considered standard to use an apostrophe (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online 7.15 and New Hart’s Rules 4.2.2).

When indicating the plural of upper-case letters, the apostrophe would be considered non-standard because there’s no ambiguity.

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes and possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are the bane of the apostrophe novice’s writing life, especially its!

The following possessive pronouns NEVER need an apostrophe: hers, theirs, yours and its.

• it’s = the contracted form of it is (or it has)
• its = the possessive pronoun

​If you’re unsure whether to insert an apostrophe in its, say it out loud as it is. If it makes sense, you need an apostrophe; if it doesn’t, you don’t!

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes in plural forms
The apostrophe novice can fall into the trap of creating plural forms of nouns by adding an apostrophe before the final s.

Summary
I hope you’ve found this overview useful. It isn’t exhaustive – there are entire books about apostrophes. Fucking Apostrophes is one of my favourites.

However, when it comes to fiction writing, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about more than the basics covered here.

If you’re stuck on where to stick your apostrophe, feel free to ask me for guidance in the comments.

Further reading

• Fucking Apostrophes (Simon Griffin, Icon Books, 2016)
• How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article and free booklet)
• Punctuating dialogue in fiction (video series on my YouTube channel)
• New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

Dialogue tags – or speech tags – are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. This article is about how to use them effectively.

A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech:
​

• Dave said, ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That,’ said Dave, ‘is the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say,’ Dave said.​

​​
Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up longer chunks.

Rather than give you a bunch of zombie rules that you’ll want to break about two seconds after you’ve read them, here are three guidelines to bear in mind when thinking about which tags to use, which to avoid, and when you might omit them altogether:
​

1. A good tag doesn’t trump the dialogue.
2. A good tag doesn’t repeat what the dialogue’s already told the reader.
3. A good tag doesn’t impair how natural the speech sounds.

Why said often works best, and when it’s not enough
The speech tag said  ‘is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible,’ say Mittelmark and Newman in How Not to Write a Novel (p. 132).

I agree, and I recommend you embrace it! If someone’s told you to avoid repeating said, head for your bookshelf and take a peek inside some of your favourite novels for reassurance.

If you deliberately try to avoid said, you run the risk that your writing will reflect that intention. If your reader is focusing on your avoidance, their focus is not where it should be – on your story.

Still, there will be times when you’ll want a tag that tells your reader about, say, the sound quality, the mood of the speech, or the tone of voice. Speech tags aren’t the only way to do this – for example, you could use action beats before the dialogue, or adverbial phrases after your tags – but few readers will complain if you use the likes of whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered or whined. Hissed is one that I rather like, though some writers and editors are less keen.

Even though said 's invisibility makes it harder to overuse, avoid the temptation to place it after every expression. Here’s an example of how it looks when it's been overworked (see, too, the final section in this article, ‘Omitting dialogue tags’):

Showy speech tags and underdeveloped dialogue
Showy tags can overwhelm dialogue. Since you’ve written your dialogue for a reason, that’s where the reader’s attention should be. When the tag is more visible than the speech, it’s a red flag that the dialogue, not the tag, needs enriching:

​Instead, we might amend the dialogue so that it conveys the preaching tone, and leaves the tag (said) with the mechanical function of indicating who’s speaking:

Showy speech tags and double-telling
Some speech tags are just repetitions of what the reader already knows – they double-tell. Asked and replied are two common examples, though these are used so often that they don’t fall into the showy category. For that reason, I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid these, though do take care not to overuse them.

Showier examples – such as opined, commanded, threatened – become redundant if you’ve got the dialogue right:

In the first three examples, it’s clear from the dialogue that an opinion, a command and a threat have been given. The speech tags repeat what we already know; we should consider whether said is a less invasive alternative.

In the fourth example, amazing and the exclamation mark (!) tell us that the speaker exclaimed, so again the showy tag is redundant.

It’s a question of style, of course. I’m not giving you rules but suggesting ways of thinking about the function of your tagging so that you keep your reader immersed in the spaces of your choosing.
​
Non-speech-based dialogue tags and the reality flop
Even if you decide you do want a more extravagant tag than said, take care when using verbs that are not related to the mechanics of speaking.

Examples include: smiled, gesticulated, ejaculated, thrusted, fawned, scowled, winced, smirked, sneered, pouted, frowned, indicated and laughed.

The physicality of these verbs will jar your reader and they immediately introduce an element of inauthenticity into the prose. They’re great words for describing what other parts of a person’s body can do, but are unsuitable for use as dialogue tags:

Try one of the following instead:

Alternatives to showy speech tags – more on action beats
Rich action beats can complement or even replace speech tags, and are useful if you want to keep your dialogue lean and are tempted to use a showy speech tag. Keep them on the same line as the speaker they’re related to.

Action beats let you set the scene so that the reader can fill in the gaps with their imagination while a character is speaking.

Here’s an example of dialogue with a showy speech tag – moaned:

In the alternative below, the reader can discern the moaning manner in which the speech is delivered because James’s discomfort is shown in the action beat preceding it:

Notice how the action beat is punctuated. There’s a full stop (period) after winced.

Neither of these examples is wrong or right. You might decide that you prefer one over the other. Rather, I’m showing you alternatives so that you can make informed decisions about how to make your writing engaging.

Using proper nouns in dialogue tags
If your fiction is gender binary (and it might well not be) and the genders are known to the reader, you needn’t repeat the speaker’s name every time they appear in a dialogue tag. You can use third-person singular pronouns: he and she. Clarity is everything here.
​
Notice how Alexander McCall Smith uses nouns and pronouns in his dialogue tags, and peppers the text with action beats so that the reader knows who’s speaking (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 125):

​Omitting dialogue tags
If you’re confident your reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags altogether. Once more, it’s not about rules but about sense and clarity.

This will work best if there are no more than two characters in the conversation, and even then, most writers don’t extend the omission for more than a few back-and-forths before they introduce a reminder tag or an action beat.

Here’s an example from Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks novel Sleeping in the Ground (pp. 273–4). There are two characters in this scene: Banks and Linda. Robinson omits most of the dialogue tags in this conversation because it’s clear who’s speaking, but he keeps us on track with an action beat and a tag halfway through:

Summing up
When it comes to dialogue, remember the function of the tag: to indicate which character is speaking.

​Says Beth Hill, ‘These tags are background, part of the mechanics of story; they meet their purpose but don’t stand out. They let the dialogue take the spotlight’ (The Magic of Fiction, p. 166).

So, during the self-editing process:

• Check your tags to ensure they’re performing their indicative function rather than taking the spotlight.
• Position them to moderate pace and improve rhythm.
• Take care with non-speech-related tags.
  
• And support your dialogue with action beats so that said can take invisible pride of place.

Cited sources and further reading

• Alexander McCall Smith: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Abacus, 2003
• Beth Hill: The Magic of Fiction. Title Page Books, 2016
• Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman: How Not to Write a Novel. Penguin, 2009
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article)
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (videos)
• Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017

​

This post shows you how you can use commas and conjunctions to alter the rhythm of a sentence. Changing the rhythm can help your readers immerse themselves deeper in the mood of your narrative and the emotions of your characters.

Standard grammar advice – the stuff we learned when we were kids – calls for lists with three or more items (or phrases or clauses) in a sentence to be separated by a comma, and for a conjunction to be inserted before the final item:

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols and machetes.

Or, if your preference is to use the serial (or Oxford comma):

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols, and machetes.

The use of this one conjunction is called syndeton, and it moderates the pace.

When it comes to fiction, standard grammar works very well for the most part. However, there are other accepted literary devices you can use to help your readers feel the scene you’ve written in a different way: asyndeton and polysyndeton.

I’ve used examples from crime fiction in this article but the principles apply across genres.
​
More on syndetic constructions
Syndeton is everywhere. It’s the most oft-used way of constructing a sentence with multiple clauses, and it works well because it aids clarity: this thing, that thing and that other thing.
​
Here’s an excerpt from At Risk by Stella Rimington (p. 369):

And here’s an example from Jo Nesbo’s first Harry Hole thriller, The Bat (p. 250):

This second excerpt is taken from a chapter in which the head of the crime squad, Neil McCormack, delivers a long speech to the protagonist, Harry Hole. Harry has just spent nearly an hour delivering his own monologue, updating McCormack on everything that’s happened so far.

The mood of the entire scene is one of contemplation and resignation. The characters give each other the space to talk without rushing. Their behaviour feels controlled, and the way they talk is measured.

The grammatical structure of the sentence (syndetic) is a good choice because it moderates the speed at which we read, and reflects the mood.

Omitting conjunctions – asyndeton
Authors might choose on occasion to change the mood of a sentence by deliberately removing the conjunction. Separating all the items with only commas accelerates the rhythm.

That speeding-up can have a variety of effects:

• Imparting emotions – for example, frustration, futility, despair, desperation, determination, fear, hysteria or urgency.
• Indicating that a person is speaking rapidly.
• Evoking a sense of dislocation by bringing clinical precision to the narrative.
• Adding weight to each clause, thereby increasing drama.

Let’s go back to the Nesbo example and see what happens when we change it:

‘They helped the Allies against the Germans and the Italians, the South Koreans against the North Koreans, the Americans against the Japanese and the North Vietnamese.’

By omitting the conjunction and inserting a comma, a sense of frustration and urgency is introduced. It’s subtle, certainly, but that’s the beauty of it.

If Nesbo had wanted to convey more immediacy, he could have elected to make these small changes. They would have altered the rhythm and showed (without spelling it out) that McCormack’s tone had changed or the pace of his speech had increased.

Here are two examples from Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (p. 274 and p. 355):

In the example above, Ludlum could have introduced ‘and’ after/instead of the final comma of the first sentence with no detrimental effects, but I think its omission brings a sense of urgency and determination to the writing that reflects the tension of the scene.

In the excerpt below, he uses asyndeton to evoke a sense of futility, frustration and anger. The reader is forced to become bogged down in the senseless loss of life from a bullet to the head:

Asyndetic constructions can be particularly effective in noir and hardboiled crime fiction. These genres don’t shy away from the dark underbelly of their settings. The characters are often as damaged as the gritty environments they work within, and a sense of hollowness and futility underpins the novels.

Here’s an excerpt from The Little Sister (p. 177) by the king of hardboiled, Raymond Chandler:

Imagine that second sentence with ‘and’ after (or instead of) the final comma. It would ruin the flow and remove the utter sense of despair and hopelessness. Chandler doesn’t overdo it though. He saves his use of the asyndetic for the right moments rather than littering his pages with it.

Using multiple conjunctions – polysyndeton
Another technique for altering rhythm is that of using multiple conjunctions. Polysyndetic constructions are interesting in that they can work both ways:

• You might introduce multiple conjunctions to evoke a sense of excitement or hysteria. In this case the pace would be accelerated.
• Or you might use them to create a sense of overwhelm. In this case the pace would be moderated as the reader is pulled into the mire of the narrative.

In the following example, Chandler (p. 103) shows us two different groups of people waiting in a reception area that the main character, Philip Marlowe, has entered. By using a conjunction between each adjective describing the hopefuls, he enhances the brightness of their mood. This in turn tells us more than Chandler gives us in terms of words about the other group. We can imagine their boredom and frustration:

There’s a powerful example of the polysyndetic in Kate Hamer’s The Girl in the Red Coat (p. 151). Hamer uses it to enrich a child-character’s voice. Carmel has been abducted and is experiencing a kind of dislocation as she plays with two other children. The multiple conjunctions serve to emphasize the overwhelming giddiness. There’s almost no time to take a breath:

Beware the comma splice
Asyndeton should not be confused with the comma splice.

A comma splice describes two independent clauses joined by a comma rather than a conjunction or an alternative punctuation mark. I recommend you avoid it because some readers will think it's an error and might leave negative reviews.

​The standard-punctuation column in the table below shows how the authors have got it just right. The right-hand column shows you how the non-standard comma-spliced versions would appear.

I hope this overview of syndeton, asyndeton, polysyndeton and the comma splice will help you to discover new ways of playing with the rhythm of your own writing while keeping the punctuation pedants at bay!

Resources and works cited

• At Risk by Stella Rimington. Arrow, 2015.
• Literary Devices: Literary Devices, Terms, and Elements. This site is stacked with accessible guidance on definitions and terminology.
• More free crime writing tools, tips and resources.
• Other more general self-publishing guidance.
• The Bat by Jo Nesbo. Vintage, 2013.
• The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer. Faber & Faber, 2015.
• The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum. Orion, 2003.
• The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler. Penguin, 1955.

Today’s post is about creating tension in crime fiction with sentence length. I look at how overwriting can mar the pace of a novel and frustrate a reader, and how less can sometimes be more.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #93

Around eighty per cent of the books that end up in my editing studio are in the crime fiction genre.

One of the most common problems I encounter is overwriting. That’s not because the authors are poor writers. It’s because they’re nervous writers.

It takes a lot of hard graft to put enough words on a page to make a book. Yet it takes an equal amount of courage to remove them ... or some of them.

‘What if the reader just doesn’t get it?’
‘What if they’ve forgotten what I told them above?’
‘What if I haven’t provided enough detail?’
‘What if I just love both ways I’ve said that?’

These are the kinds of questions that result in anxious authors bulking up their prose.

In a bid to help you trim the fat, I’m going to explore the following:

• Trusting your reader
• Feisty fragments and snappy shorties
• Damage by dilution
• Letting go of what you love

​Trusting your reader
The issue is sometimes one of trust – in the author’s own writing and in the reader’s ability to fill in the gaps. Some genres of fiction lend themselves well to more flowery prose that goes off at a tangent for a moment, a little narrative indulgence for the purpose of artistry or even titillation.

Crime fiction, however, is all about the page turn. That doesn’t mean that the description isn’t rich, but there is an expectation of forward momentum. Avid readers of the genre love it for the thrill of the ride.

Great characterization is key, of course. We want the protagonist to draw us in, the antagonist to pique our curiosity, and the supporting cast to deepen the picture, but ultimately we want to know whodunnit.

And that means we want words that help us understand what’s happening, why, where, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, why it’s being done, and how it feels.

And we only need to be told once. We might need a little clarifying nudge here and there but we’re capable of extracting a lot with less than you might think.

Feisty fragments and snappy shorties
If you’re trying to evoke tension in your reader, short sentences and fragments can be very effective.
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Look at the following examples and notice how the authors keep their narratives lean.

Here’s an excerpt from Gone Bad by JB Turner:

Turner gives us just enough to set the scene – when, where, who and what – but no more. He trusts us to fill in the gaps.

He might have given a more detailed description of the forest – its sounds and smells. He might have delved deeper into Cain’s emotions, or helped us to picture the backpack by detailing the colour, make, number of pockets and zips, and where the ammo was being held. He could have told us, word for word, how Cain loaded the gun, how careful he was, which bullets he used.

But he doesn’t. Turner leaves it to us to imagine the woods, to see in our mind’s eye the loading of the rifle, and to sense the cold hard determination of the shooter. And the backpack gets no more than a passing mention, because to do more would slow the pace and act as a distraction.

And the result is just right – Goldilocks would approve.
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Now consider the choppy fragments in Jens Lapidus’s Life Deluxe:

Lapidus loves the colon more than any other author I’ve come across! It’s a hard piece of punctuation but it works because the characters we’re being introduced to lead hard lives. They’re always looking over their shoulders, thinking in short snaps, weighing up what’s in front of them ... and what might be behind.

Lapidus dares to trust us, dares not bore us. And because of, rather than despite, the short sentences and fragmented prose, reading the scene is an immersive experience for the reader. I recall a sense of taut fatigue as I read this book, like I was right there, ever watchful, on my guard.

This author’s deliberate punctuation choices and choppy style mean the word count is reduced but the tension is heightened. He doesn’t pad his narrative with purple prose and stage direction. Like Turner, he trusts us to do the work.

Damage by dilution
Consider your own writing. Leave your draft alone for a few days. Then return to it and see what happens if you take a more reductive approach to a scene.
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​It's all about balance at the end of the day. Not too much but not too little. Howard Mittelmark & Sandra Newman write:

I’m not suggesting you remove information the reader needs to know, but asking you whether there is material your reader doesn’t need to know, material that might bore them or hold them back.

Neither am I suggesting you avoid creating emotive scenes that are high on tension.
Rather, might you build this tension with shorter, tighter sentences that demand your reader do some of the work?

And I’m not suggesting you should limit every sentence in your book to five words – not at all. I’m suggesting that you might use this technique when you think it would work, when it would push your reader forward, when fewer words – the right words – would work as well or better than more, especially if you know you tend to overwrite.

​Letting go of what you love
For some authors it’s not about trust, but about not wanting to let go. Perhaps you found two delicious ways to say the same thing and now you can’t bear to cut either. Or you constructed a stunning paragraph but it’s interrupting the conflict or the action.
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In The Magic of Fiction, veteran editor Beth Hill says:

Hill asks authors to grab ‘the liberty to cut words as freely as you added them’ and then to enrich what’s left.

1. Precision: Use specific descriptive nouns and verbs that are appropriate to the scene and to the character’s voice.
2. Finesse: Eradicate waffle from phrases so that they’re 'pitch perfect' – use punctuation and words that match the mood: harsh scenes could benefit from words that are pronounced harshly and contain hard consonants.
3. Length: Play with ‘short and punchy words and short, hard-hitting phrases and incomplete sentences’.

It’s tricky for some beginner writers, I know, but repetition and interruption mean there are redundant words in your writing. And to make your novel sparkle, you need to let go of them because they’re not adding something new, they’re not in the right place, or they’re in the way.

Take courage. Try it with and without. You might be surprised.

Cited works and further reading

• Gone Bad. JB Turner. No Way Back Press, 2015
• How Not to Write a Novel. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. Penguin, 2009
• Life Deluxe. Jens Lapidus. Pan, 2015
• The Magic of Fiction, 2nd edition. Beth Hill. Title Page Books, 2016

If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit the Self-publishers page on my website. Try these in particular:
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• 5 tips for writing about physical pain in fiction
• 11 things that helped me succeed as a self-published author
• The art of firearms in fiction
• Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
• How to be a better writer: Using a growth mindset to hone your craft
• Slipping into character – understanding the impact of narrative point of view
• What's the difference between a rule and a preference?

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