dialogue

How to Use “Thou” Correctly Every Time

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How to Use "Thou" Correctly Every Time

Many genres, especially fantasy, make use of anachronistic language—enough so that it’s worth taking a closer look at words like thou and thee.

Anachronistic language is, simply put, a style of speech that belongs to an era other than the one in which the book is written. While it can add a new dimension to your dialogue, use it with caution—it’s easy to abuse language we don’t see often (in prose, anyway).

Knowing how this speech was used when it was extant helps us apply it to our own writing. We can then go in and spice up our dialogue with the appropriate pronouns—we just have to be sure not to go overboard.

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A Comprehensive Guide to Subjective and Objective Case Pronouns

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A Comprehensive Guide to Subjective and Objective Case Pronouns

When I was in eighth grade, my Language Arts teacher taught us how to diagram sentences. Subjective and objective case pronouns, transitive and intransitive verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs—sometimes, I thought my head would explode.

Every week, we ran through a new part of speech, until we could diagram sentences longer than even Charles Dickens would have known what to do with. Using prepositions (and not ending sentences with them like I just did), placing vocative commas, identifying the difference between direct and indirect objects—we could do all this and more at the age of thirteen. Generations before me could probably do it a lot younger. Hopefully, they continue to teach the generations after mine how to do it, too.

Cruel and unusual for a bunch of kids? Maybe. But it also made me appreciate how words fit together. After all, when you know how to use words properly, you know how to abuse them better.

And that’s when writing gets fun.

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The Truth About Dialogue Tags and How to Make Mistakes Writing Them

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The Truth About Dialogue Tags and How to Make Mistakes Writing Them

One of the fastest ways to tell a book was self-published, or a fanfiction was written quickly, is to look at the dialogue tags.

Now, of course, most self-published books use dialogue tags well. Many authors either do their research and know the proper syntax, or hire a professional editor, or both—but not all. And the ones who don’t? Well… The proof is in the pudding.

I hate to be a negative Nancy here, but not all dialogue tags were created equal. Some are fantastic, some are mediocre, and some are just plain bad. However, there is one dialogue tag that rises above the rest when it comes to brevity and clarity: said.

Yes. My favorite dialogue tag is “said.”

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