Style

A young lady came into the library on Thursday and mentioned that she needed to have a college paper proofread. I volunteered to do that.

Last night, I proofread it. There were only a few mistakes. It was a good paper and I could see that she had spent a lot of time on it.

When I finished proofing that paper, I went to bed and read a chapter from a novel before I went to sleep.

The novel, THE REAPERS ARE THE ANGELS, is a story set in a post-Zombie Apocalypse USA, narrated by a semi-literate sixteen-year-old girl.

It's entertaining.

The author, Alden Bell, does a great job with the voice of the girl. Her language is very appropriate.

What I find distracting is the punctuation. I sometimes have to re-read a section to be sure I know who is speaking. That is no big deal and - in fact - it can be good because it keeps me from skimming.

When I was writing EVIL IS ALWAYS HUMAN, I tried to punctuate correctly even when my characters spoke in dialect. I guess that is the style with which I am most comfortable.

One of the projects I'm working on right now is told from the point of view of Marvin, my dog. In this piece, Marvin uses correct punctuation and quotes characters in dialect, however he does not indent for new paragraphs. He's a dog, after all.

Although I realize writers are supposed to learn the rules and then break them, I had enough trouble reading THE SOUND AND THE FURY and I never did get more than a few pages into ULYSSES. For my preferences, I like a writer who follows at least a few of the stylistic conventions.