Free The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M Bickham

about excessive use of "dirty words," my young males always protested vehemently that that, after all, "is the way it is."
    I have seldom succeeded in convincing them that dirty talk often looks dirtier on the page than it actually is. I have tried to convince them that such strong words, if they are to be used at all, should be saved for those story situations where a really strong word really is needed to convey the emotion. But I haven't convinced many of that viewpoint, either.
    So over the years a steady stream of Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine stories and novels filled with dirty words have winged their way out of Norman, Oklahoma, and its environs, headed for the great literary marts of New York. So far, every one of them— every one of them —has failed to sell. And I am convinced that the gross language was the only factor that doomed several.
    Most of us let slip a cussword once in a while. A few in a novel are certainly not going to shock anybody. But it's a rare, rare bird who has enough talent to sell a story or novel with a high percentage of those words in it. You might be able to mention several examples of books that prove such realism does get published. I can give you the names of dozens of talented people who never got published at all because they couldn't keep the garbage out of their characters' mouths.
    You will make your own decisions about character speech. However, I hope you'll think about the points just raised. Oddball spellings, excessive dropped letters to indicate colloquial mispronunciations, attempts at racial or ethnic dialect, and heavy use of realistic dirty talk all risk offending someone; some you might offend will be editors, who have the checkbooks, and others may be members of honorable American minorities who have already been thoughtlessly battered, verbally and otherwise, for a dozen generations or more. Under such circumstances, is it really necessary?

18. Don't Forget Sense Impressions
    Wally, my problem student, brought me some story dialogue the other day. It read like this:
    "Don't make me go any closer!" Annie cried.
    "There's nothing to fear," Joe soothed. "See?"
    "That's easy for you to say!" quoth Annie.
    "Is that better?" asked Joe.
    "Oh, yes!" murmured Annie. "Much!"
    "Annie, you do love me, after all!"
    "Yes!"
    I'll spare you the details of the real-life conversation that then ensued between me and Wally. However, the gist of it from my standpoint was that I as a fiction reader didn't have any idea of what was going on in Wally's story in the dialogue just quoted. Wally protested that he had, after all, followed the rules of stimulus and response, and had given me everything the characters said; therefore, he couldn't understand what my problem was.
    I then tried to explain to Wally that the dialogue left me at a loss. Among other things, I could not:
    •  See anything that was happening during the dialogue;
    •  Hear anything except the dialogue words;
    •  Smell anything that might be pertinent, Taste anything, Feel any other possible tactile sensations;
    •  Know any thoughts the viewpoint character might be having, so that I might as a reader get a hint as to how I was supposed to be taking this dialogue;
    •  Feel any emotions of the viewpoint character, also as an aid to my reader response to the situation being portrayed;
    •  Be aware of the goal of the viewpoint character, so that I can guess how things are going in the scene.
    "Wally," I concluded, "dialogue without any sense impressions, thoughts or feelings of the viewpoint character gets totally abstract; it stops making sense; the reader gets lost. I'm not suggesting great, purple patches of stuff—just enough to keep me oriented."
    Wally went off and rewrote. He soon came up with something like the following (his additional material is italicized):
    The chill wind tugged at Joe's coat as he pulled Annie closer to the edge of the cliff. Behind them, gusts swayed the ponderosa pines. A few feet