dannedmind

WORDING: MUST

Let’s talk, if we must, about the word MUST.

It’s one of my favorite four-letter words because it makes the speaker sound so desperate when they say it, or even weak.

“It must have been someone else.” Always sounds suspect to me.

“We must complete the assignment or we’ll all die!”

It’s a word to be used when something is necessary or required. It’s a word I feel like I heard way too much as a kid. And it’s an ugly sounding word, kin to ‘musk’ and ‘uh’, like the antithesis of ‘most’ or the swamp cousin of ‘moist’.

But sometimes, ugly words are what MUST be used to get out point across.

One of my favorite movie titles and all-time favorite HAMMER HORROR film is FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED!

Have you seen it?

It’s the fifth in their series and unfortunately, spoiler, even though the fiery ending would lead us to believe the dastardly doctor has been destroyed, there was one more sequel (the Ralph Bates starring HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN being ignored, but not out of distaste, I adore that movie, that movie features one of my favorite endings of all-time–maybe I’ll write more on that later).

WORDING is an ongoing series of posts I’ll be making about words. I won’t always delve into proper use. depending on the word and what it means to me and potentially others there may be articles about words that trigger me, words I love, words that always look misspelled to me and more.

FREE SHORT STORY: THE LIGHT

Dear Potential Reader,

Sure, it’s July. You probably have a cookout in your near future. A day the beach? A moment in the automobile where you realize you need a shower because you have absorbed all the chlorine in the pool?

But as you step between your air conditioned car through the blistering heat back into that perfectly central air cooled home, descend with me into the chillier moments of the year with my short story, THE LIGHT, about a man in a snowstorm and the things that can go wrong when things aren’t going right.

CLICK HERE TO READ

The following tale was written during cold weather, nearly immediately after a snow storm cut a work day short and my car’s tires lost traction for just a second and I bumped a curb when I tried to stop for an ill timed red light. The rest of the drive home through the world of a snowpocalypse I began to exam how life could be worse. How every hill, curve, stop (necessary and unplanned) could spur the end of the life I realized I treasured. I drove cautiously, counting down the curves, hills, and stops I knew awaited me.

What you are about to read is another tale of the Lady or the Hatchback Woman. She’s that lady with a car full of random things that always end up in another person’s possession, and that possession is what changes their life.

Hope you enjoy.

All the best,

DAN JIRE

WRITING TIPS: GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS UNIQUE VOICES

There are a lot of ‘cheats’ to giving your character a unique voice. Word choice is everything, but it’s also very important to make your characters sound different so that the reader never has any doubt which one is speaking.

There are accents, although they don’t always look great on a written page, but there are certain ways someone from different parts of the UK will sound. Just as someone from New Jersey doesn’t sound like someone from South Carolina.

“Y’all know what I mean?“

But if your setting means every character has a similiar accent, you’ll want to use a different set of cheats.

Attitude is the easiest.

If someone is chipper and excited, they’ll ramble and shout.

“But you know exactly what I mean, don’t you? I mean it’s so obvious!”

But maybe they are direct, concise.

“Understand?”

There are subtle ways too, the create a specific cadence. Some people refuse to use contractions because of either pretension or a desire to be clearly heard.

“Do you not understand what I mean?”

There are other character ticks you can add. Perhaps your speaker never uses personal pronouns.

“You understand, don’t you?”

Or they use too many personal pronouns.

“I want you to understand me. Let me know if you don’t.”

Or maybe they talk like Starfire from TEEN TITANS GO!

“Do you the understand what it is that I am the saying?”

Give your readers an easy way to differentiate and you’ll save some finger energy not having to add a million speaker tags.

Want more writing tips? Check back every LAST Wednesday of every MONTH . . .

WORDING: START vs. GO

In reading UNDERSTANDING COMICS by SCOTT MCCLOUD, there’s a moment where he points out that a character facing the left of the panel presents a stop to the action because we read left to right. If the character is facing right, our eyes keep the movement going to the next panel.

If I said that wrong or it’s confusing, go check out his long-heralded study on the comic book medium. It’ll change your life. It reveals not only the workings of comics but of our minds.

So, with that idea in mind, if the way a character is looking can inform us of movement, so can words based on the sound.

START, because of the hard T sound at the end doesn’t move for me. The word START stops.

GO, on the other hand has the open mouth O sound that a singer could draw out. It doesn’t just stop it moves.

Maybe that’s why we don’t say ‘Ready. Set. Start!’

FREE SHORT STORY: A JAR OF FORTUNES

Dear Potential Reader,

I’d like to share with you my horror short story A JAR OF FORTUNES, in which a husband is curious about receiving a fortune from an old lady’s pickle jar.

CLICK HERE TO READ

I intend to post one free short story every month. Check back every First Friday of the Month for a Free-to-read short story.

A JAR OF FORTUNES is an old one, having first been published over a decade ago. It’s one of those quick reads, almost flash fiction, that I was trying to perfect to make sure I kept a reader’s attention. But I’ve always loved the idea being affected by something we don’t believe in, as if disbelief is some kind of protection against the supernatural–the opposite of something like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET in which an entity’s power is derived from victims believing in his existence.

Hope you enjoy.

All the best,

DAN JIRE