On Lousy Dialogue

I recently bought a book. Admittedly, it was a comic book, and admittedly, it was written recently, which should have told me something. It was dark, fairly bloody, the story unfinished (which seriously irritated me), and the artwork was blocky and involved too many nigh-monochromatic scenes.
Had I had more of a chance to pre-read it than I did, I would not have bought it.
But these things above, while griping, were not what made me throw up my hands and howl in irritation.
That was the dialogue.
Now, I love dialogue, especially in comics. You give me some witty banter, some nice back-and-forth, and I will read it over and over. And, if the writing is funny, I will giggle for several minutes over it. I love quips, one-liners, even soliloquies. I like stark, serious discussions that lay bare a character's soul.
I dislike profanity. And this comic book was full of it. There were perhaps two, maybe three pages that went by without the characters dropping F-bombs, often three or four in the same sentence. The most prolific word in that entire work started with F. Nobody--street rat, thief, royal, mysterious guy, random Joe, even the pestiferous shadow-things from an evil dimension--could express themselves without turning to that word. None of them.
Seriously?
Maybe people think that's 'edgy'. Maybe they think it's a sign of progress that you can put uncensored profanity on every page and it will still sell. I don't know. I just know I hate it.
I've seen a lot of people furiously defending their right to spout words that, when I was a kid, would get you hauled inside to have your mouth scrubbed out with soap. I've seen people sneering at the idea of censoring profanity in comics (comics that kids might see, as well!). There is a page on Facebook celebrating so-called 'Intelligent, Classy Ladies' whose main form of self-expression has four letters.
Well, I've got something to say about that.
Seriously?
It's not edgy, it's not smart, it's not cool. And it sure as shooting isn't intelligent or classy. Cussing a blue streak used to be a sign of a rough character. I'm not sure it still isn't. But in my not-so-humble opinion, it's more a sign of immaturity and bad imagination. Anybody can say those words. It's not saying them that makes you rise above the rest. Saying them--and saying them defiantly when someone else asks you to please clean up your language--makes you sound like a bratty little three-year-old who's just learned he can get a rise out of his mom by saying 'poop'.
That's it. Not smart, not cool, not classy. Just a preschooler.
And those who, in indignation, proceed to blister the wallpaper and the ears of all listeners with their limited vocabulary...have just proved my point.
This also involves writers. At least buy a thesaurus and use that. It might cramp the style of some to say, oh, perhaps, 'copulate' or 'coitus' instead of the ubiquitous F; but it will, at least, expand your vocabulary a little bit and give you the impression of imagination.
Or why not stretch your imagination beyond the marital act and come up with some new swear words altogether? My mom uses algebraic terms. Her favorite is 'polynomials'. I have added new syllables to older grumbles, such as making 'pestiferatious' out of 'pestiferous' (which is one of my favorites, by the way).
One of my favorite parts of writing dialogue in fantasy stories is coming up with new things for people to swear with. Some of them might use the names of fabled villains. Others just string random syllables together to get proper emphasis. Or better yet, get people to use their imaginations. David Eddings, though some would argue that his stories could be better (myself, I love them), was a master of this. He leaves you with no doubt that his characters are more than capable of absolutely blistering every eardrum for five miles...yet he never uses any actual curse words. He tells you that the character swears, and describes the reactions of the listeners, but what they say is left up to the imagination. Which makes the scenes not only safe to read aloud when children are nearby, but also makes them funnier.

And finally, if you must swear, then take the advice of none other than the Pope. (I'm afraid I don't remember which one it was, and I can't figure out how to look it up online. I've tried.) At the time, a building in the Vatican was undergoing either repairs or renovation. There was a carpenter up in the rafters, and the Pope--and no doubt more than a few Cardinals--down below. The carpenter hit his hand, and, being a carpenter, let loose a string of blasphemous obscenities. The Pope looked up and shouted at him, "What's the matter with you, brother? Can't you just say merde (shit) like the rest of us?"

Why the War on Pink?

First, let me put something straight. I'm not going to squawk about gays or breast cancer or bullying victims. Nor is this going to be a defense of a color that I really don't like all that much. It's simply a question that needs answering.
And the question is: why is it so wrong to let little girls be little girls?
I've become aware of a small but very loud string of outrage over products marketed for girls: in particular, the glittery, rhinestone-studded dress-up clothing and pretend accessories. For reasons I do not understand, these people do not believe it is in girls' interest to 'force' them to pretend to be fairies and princesses, with tea parties and tiaras, high heels and wands. They laud Merida as a proper Disney role model, and scorn all the others.
And, so far as I can tell, they scorn them simply for their pretty dresses, attractive faces and eternally manageable hair. Oh, and having princes.
Now, the hair issue might just be envy (I know that when my hair blows in the wind, enjoyable as the feeling is, I always end up with a frillin' witch-nest of tangles) and the princes are just a feministic sneering at the idea of a woman needing or wanting a man. But come on! Down on princesses for nice dresses? For heaven's sake! Unless you're writing A Princess of Mars and everyone walks around in jewels and fighting harnesses and nothing else, coming up with the jewel-toned clothing for your royal maiden is half the fun! Even if your character is a butt-kicking fighter and would rather wear a dagger than a reticule, she can still like dressing up on occasion!
But it's not just the pretty things these people dislike. It's the whole idea of letting girls...be girls. Yes, little girls will wiggle out of their clothes and run around butt-naked. (Or switch clothes with their little brothers. Outside. In the back yard. On top of a climbing platform five feet off the ground.) Yes, they fart. They're messy, and they like to play in the mud. They are, in many ways, like boys. But they're not boys, and they shouldn't be made to feel they have to be like boys. They have their own quirks, and they should be allowed these quirks.
A girl given the chance to draw will probably draw bunnies and flowers, ponies and unicorns, princesses and fairies. Not because she's been taught to draw those things. Because she wants to. Because she likes these things. A boy, on the other hand, will draw guns and tanks and explosions and bloody fights and dinosaurs and lightsabers and bullets hitting people...again, not because that's what he's been taught to draw, but because that's what he wants to draw. Both of these are examples taken from my own childhood. I loved drawing unicorns and horses, princesses and fairies--still do, actually. So did my sisters. My brothers, on the other hand, covered their papers--and, on one memorable occasion, the closet door--with battle of all sorts. Guns were most prominently featured, but there were monsters and space ships and sometimes swords, often explosions, and usually casualties littering the ground.
This was not because we were taught 'boy stuff' and 'girl stuff'. Our toys were not segregated. We did not have one box with Barbies, baby dolls, and sparkly dress-up clothes marked 'Girls' and another box with toy weapons, cars, trains, and action figures marked 'Boys'. The toys were all jumbled together in one box--well, not the Barbies. Those were mine and I had a box that they and their clothes were supposed to go in--and everyone could play with them as they desired. But they didn't play with them the same way.
I remember playing with Gary's cars one time: there was a bad guy, and a hero, and a pretty lady, and her sweetheart. I don't know entirely how Gary played with them, but I can assure everyone that there was not a pretty lady and her sweetheart. Ever. But there were probably a lot of crashes and explosions.
Gary, Peter and Davy loved explosions. They built their block houses and then blew them up with terrific bangs. Even when computers entered the equation--Lego Creator then and Minecraft now--they always found ways to blow stuff up. Their favorite component was, and is, the dynamite.
I built houses. I learned how to make flying carpets. I spent my whole turn customizing my character to look nice. (And I still do that. My favorite feature about Skyrim is how carefully I can tweak my characters to look just the way I want.) My sister recently squealed almost loud enough to be heard in the next county when we got the latest Minecraft additions and she discovered they had added recognizable flowers. She then spent her turn revamping her gardens. Davy, who had built enough exploding houses to level a small kingdom, cheered over the new fish.
Girls and boys are different. I know that's not politically correct. But it's true. And it's meant to be that way. Girls will grow up to be women. In a perfect world, they will grow up to be wives, mothers, nuns, queens, and the quiet rulers of their homes. This does not mean they cannot work outside their homes; this does not mean they cannot garden, spin, sew, dye wool and flax, make jewelry, organize, write, draw...but it does mean they should not feel they should choose between family or career. Women have the gift of nurturing and caring. They should not be told this gift is demeaning, because it is not.
Boys will grow up to be men. And in a perfect world, they will grow up to be husbands, priests, kings, warriors, and masters of every trade imaginable. And above everything else, they will grow up to be fathers. They will be loud and noisy and boisterous, they will enjoy farts and belches in a way women will not, they will enjoy a good fight as much as a good conversation. And that is as it should be.
Men are meant to be the movers and shakers. They are meant to wander over the world, starting and ending wars, exploring distant lands, hunting, fishing, farming, cutting down trees, making cars and steel, quarrying rock and building cities. Their minds are wired and their bodies are built to let them do this.
Women, on the other hand, are meant to keep their homes. They are meant to bear children and keep order over an unruly household. They are meant to be the decorators, the cooks, the nurses, the comforters, the disciplinarians, the keepers of small animals, the tenders of flowers and garden plots. There is a reason our minds are as active and as confused as they are--it is meant to help us keep track of the chaos of a home. And it is not demeaning! Why on earth would it be demeaning to be absolute queen of your own domain, as opposed to the sweating servant of someone else? (And ladies, if you are not the unquestioned, unchallenged, ruling queen in your homes--something is wrong!)
But this good and natural course of things is despised as degrading. We decide that, knowing better than the umpteen-million generations who went before us, that we can reverse these decisions. Women Are As Good As Men! We Can Do Everything They Can! And so on and so forth, ad infinitem, ad nauseum. So women force themselves to do tasks they are not truly suited for and demand that men perform tasks they are not suited for.
And they insist that this insanity begin in childhood. So they try to convince boys to play with dolls, they carefully avoid toys with 'gender' association, and they scream at the sight of a little girl in pretty clothes. As a result, boys do not develop the skills and mindsets they will need as men, and girls grow up confused as to their true task in life. Boys get the impression that masculinity in men is wrong. Women are convinced that femininity of any sort is wrong. So we end up with men who are either wimpy or hate women, and women who hate men and themselves. We end up with the broken hearts and homes of the hook-up culture, epidemics of venereal disease, and the bloody mountain of tiny corpses that results from abortion. Women are actually more degraded now than they have been since the time of Christ.
And yes, I agree this needs to stop. It must stop, and soon, before the world crumbles--because it will. When there is no foundation, the house cannot stand.
There won't be an easy way to mend this problem. But maybe we can start at childhood.
And we can let little girls wear pink.

Why Limit Steampunk?

This quibble has been niggling at my mind for a while: why is all steampunk Victorian?
It's a fascinating era, to be sure. And I can see why the age of the Industrial Revolution would lend itself nicely to a world of wild inventions. But there was more to the past that the Victorian; more ages that might work equally well.
 Why not try for a Renaissance Steampunk? Say Leonardo da Vinci put his inventions into action, most of them actually worked, and this kicks off a wild inventing spree in Italy. Alchemists figure out chemical reactions that actually work. Some decry this as black magic; others find it interesting and get into it themselves. Inventors scramble to find sponsors--the Borgia popes and Frederick Barbarossa II. Travel is revolutionized, and people question whether their flying machines should be used for conquest or to help spread the Word of God.
Or try an Ancient Greek steampunk. Believe it or not, steam power was actually invented in Ancient Greece, by an inventor named Heron. His little steam engine never got above being a toy...but imagine triremes and chariots powered by steam engines. Imagine the war engines of Archimedes--and what he could have come up with if he'd survived that siege! Imagine the ancient world if the inventors got a little more credit--and took their work further.
Imagine steampunk technology in colonial or Exploration times. Why not send Christopher Columbus on his trip across the Atlantic in a silken balloon?
And on the supernatural side of things, why limit Steampunk to werewolves and vampires? Not all stories do this, admittedly; one of my favorites, Tales of the Brass Griffin, (unfortunately discontinued) admirably mixes the more common fantasy races into the setting of the world. But take it further! Perhaps the realm of Faerie objects to the spreading of technology and iron everywhere? Perhaps Faerie takes advantage of a world growing blind to their presence? Would the Fae realm be fighting to survive...or enjoying the changes?
Maybe that dashing young man romancing solitary girls by night isn't a vampire at all, but the dangerous Ganconer. Perhaps a riverside town is haunted by strange songs that rise from the depths of the water each night, as nixies and river-nymphs congregate. Perhaps whispered tales are told of a stray 'cart-horse' roaming the area: in reality, a Kelpie seeking prey. A wood is carefully avoided by those old folk who remember the stories of it; but the youngsters and newcomers don't believe the tales, and enter freely--only to find that the stories are, in fact, true. A wealthy factory owner tries to buy out a town and farmland to put more mills on, and kicks off a war with the Fae beings who live in the area...but are they fighting for the farmers, or will the farmers and townsfolk just get caught in the crossfire?

Steampunk is such a wonderful, versatile genre. Don't limit it to what's popular now!

Revisiting the Damsel in Distress

I do not think I need say that there is not a more vilified stereotype in the entire realm of storytelling than the damsel in distress. The mere mention of her will send feminists up in arms, screaming in rage. Storytellers will sneer, dismissing her as the weakest type of character.
But is she?
Here I will look at the types of Damsel in Distress one might come across--and might conceivably use for stories.

1: The Passive Damsel.

The Passive Damsel comes in two forms: the Scream Queen and the Stoic. I shall deal with these separately, since there are some pretty big differences. But what makes them similar is that both wait to be rescued.

The Scream Queen. 

Admittedly, this one deserves the scorn. This is the utter stereotype: the limp dishrag who can't--or won't--do anything for herself but wail and plead and wait. She probably won't even try to help the hero in any way, and not just because she's tied up and can't. This is a truly weak character, and should not be used. 

She doesn't necessarily look it, but I'm willing to bet she's been kidnapped.

The Stoic

While she is willing to wait for her rescuer, the Stoic is a far different sort than the Scream Queen. This type appears in a number of the 'Mars' books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, where women are kidnapped so often they probably come with carrying handles. The Stoic treats her captors with scorn and her captivity with cool indifference. She usually knows She will be rescued, and is willing to wait for him to come...but she will cheer him on if she can do nothing else, and if she can, she will fight to help him out. There is a lot that can be done with a Stoic maiden, and they are fun to work with.

2: The Escape Artist

Not the best picture, but the best I could find.

This type is by no means helpless. While she may be hoping for a rescue (Princess Mabelrose, the example I gave here, prays quite earnestly for a handsome prince to rescue her from the dragon who has kidnapped her), after she realizes that either no one is coming, or that it's nearly impossible for anyone to come, she simply takes matters into her own hands and gets out herself. This type is quite clever, manipulating her situation to enable her escape, and willing to make use of anything lying around that might come in handy. She is a tricky and wise sort, and one that can be a lot of fun to make use of. 

3: The Damsel in Distress from Hell

This is my personal favorite. This gal may have been captured, and she may not be able to escape, but by golly, whoever got her has just bitten off more than he can chew. This is the one who escapes and is recaptured so many times the villain just lets her go. Or she's the one who makes it impossible for anyone to come into her cell because she's always waiting by the door with something heavy. She need not be a feminist, sneering any rescuers to scorn, and she may, in fact, need some help to actually get out of wherever she's being held. But by the time her hero shows up, she will have paved the way for him to get in and get out, because all the soldiers will be so sick of trying to deal with her that they just get out of the way and let them go through. I make use of this character a number of times in my own stories--partly because I hope that I would be this kind of damsel in distress, should the problem ever crop up...and partly just because it's fun to imagine the resulting hijinks.

End conclusion? Don't scorn the girl who's kidnapped and needs rescuing. Play around with her and let her take an active role. Who knows? She might really surprise you!

Why 'Good Guy' need not mean 'Boring Guy'

"You speak of him as if he was a friend," said Gimli. "I thought he was dangerous."
"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous; more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset by dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you yourself are dangerous, in your own fashion."  ---The Two Towers

There is, in popular culture, the notion that 'good' means 'safe'--and therefore boring. And this idea is nowhere more prevalent than in those stories aimed at young women. The 'good guy' is the safe, boring one; the 'bad boy' is dangerous, strong, and therefore exciting. Now, I'm hardly one to say I don't find dangerous characters appealing; I do. Especially dangerous male characters. But I don't like the bad boy. He's usually a jerk--and I don't like jerks.
Plus, in real life, the bad boy is probably going to seriously hurt the girl who falls for him, whether in her body or her heart. He's not dangerous because he's strong, like a trained war-horse or a loyal mastiff. He's more like a rotten bridge or an unstable cliff. He's dangerous because he's not stable enough to give her the relationship she needs--because he's weak.
What literature needs is romantic leads who are dangerous--and good. You do not need to make your character a brooding 'bad boy' with a short fuse to make him romantically attractive. A strong man with pure morals who can kick butt seven ways from sundown is just as cool.

Tell me this was not cool. 

And if he is doing it all for his girl--yowza. 

Seriously, this guy is awesome. 

Now, I know the chances of finding the equivalent of Aragorn or John Carter in real life are virtually nil; but the chances of finding a bad boy with a heart of gold are smaller. And teaching girls to chase after jerks results in a painful real-life backlash, as several of my aunts can attest. 

So there is a real need for stories that star the good-but-dangerous romantic lead. How do you make a character good but not boring? I have some tips. 

First, show the internal conflict. Being good is not easy, despite prevalent opinion. It takes real strength to take the harder, better path as opposed to the easy, dishonorable one. It's especially dramatic to make your hero chaste, especially when he is really, really attracted to the heroine. Maybe it's gratifying to have the pair of them tumble before he puts a ring on her finger...but it's nowhere near as dramatic as letting them wait until it's cemented. Especially if they mean it when they say 'until death do us part'. That's hard. And it's very impressive.

Second, don't be afraid to make your good guy strong. Being good doesn't mean being weak--and it shouldn't. He can be a paragon of virtue, gentle of speech, willing to help out just about anyone, and still be able to trash any number of attackers. In fact, that's a more exciting thing. You expect the tough, mean, trash-talker to be a butt-buster. You don't necessarily expect it of the refined gentleman--so when the refined one turns around and annihilates the attacking enemies, there's a lot more drama, and the interest in him is heightened. 

Third...don't make things easy. He has to fight. He has to struggle. Whether he is struggling with temptation or with external enemies, with his place in society or just to survive, it cannot be easy for him. He must fight to get the girl. Do not, for heaven's sake, make her just fall for him. Don't make your heroine a spineless dishrag who falls for the first beautiful face she sees. He must pursue her, even if she is interested in him right off. He must struggle to win her heart and her hand. 

He must also struggle for his place. The old fairy tales are actually a great thing to look at for examples of this: while they may end, "They lived happily ever after", the prince and princess never have an easy path to get to where they are. They have to fight. They have to struggle. Sometimes, they nearly die--and in several stories I've read, they do die and have to be brought back to life! 

And finally, don't be afraid to make your character truly good, for fear he won't be popular. Yes, the brooding bad-boys have large fan bases. But so do the stalwart gentlemen. And they're usually the ones worth having.

I rest my case.