When Characters Interru--

[00:00:00]Hello there. I have a new literary pet peeve, okay? If you do this, please stop. What I'm about to tell you, you can find everywhere. It's very common.

[00:00:12]I find it in short stories, in screenplays. I even found it in this Hugo and World Fantasy Award winning novel.

[00:00:21]So, the pet peeve is this, when one character is speaking and then another character starts speaking and cuts them off, how do you represent that? Well, I'll tell you how cuz we all do it the same way. It's with an M dash. Or if you're doing screenplay, sometimes you do like two hyphens. Case closed? No, there's more to say because there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way is very simple. You simply put the M dash after a word. Now, let me show you the wrong way to do it, okay? And I'm using examples from this. I could use examples from so many other things, but because this won the Hugo, you know, this isn't a review of this book. That's not what this video is.

[00:00:59]Okay, so I'm just going to read a few examples to you. "Apologies, ma'am.

[00:01:02]Didn't mean Didn't mean Oh, here's another one from the same page. "But if you want to parse all your problems, yo. Fuck."

[00:01:16]"We can't compel people to be present and answer me."

[00:01:20]"But if by chance you happen to meet one of them, I must insist you be polite, thoughtful, obedient, un "There is nothing there for him to see, mistress. We cano."

[00:01:33]Cano, like the Quebecois folk rock band from the '70s.

[00:01:37]Deep deep reference. "I know they were friendly, but Blaz was known by man."

[00:01:42]He's known by man in general? "Ma'am, what was that, foe?"

[00:01:47]What was that?

[00:01:49]Fobogola?

[00:01:51]"And hurry before someone else stops you to shake your ha."

[00:01:55]I hate it when people shake my ha.

[00:01:57]People are always shaking my ha. You little son of a [ __ ] You little SON OF A BI.

[00:02:04]These are just a few simple examples, but I hope you get the point. The point is that when you put your em dash to cut off the line finish the word. And now I can see some critics of me saying, you know, but But Josh, the whole point of that is that the person's being cut off. They're being interrupted. So, they stop speaking mid word. And my response to that would be, fine. Okay, fine.

[00:02:30]Actually, no, it's not fine because I have several responses to that. The first is you should really listen to the way people speak. Okay, people don't actually speak this way. When people are interrupted, there's always overlap where they're both speaking at the same time.

[00:02:45]>> I'll tell you, Thompson, a man's dying words.

[00:02:47]>> they? You don't read the papers?

[00:02:49]Charles Foster Kane died, he said just one word, Rosebud. That's all he said?

[00:02:53]Tough guy, huh? Yes, but the guy's calling for a nurse.

[00:02:56]>> JUST THAT ONE WORD. BUT I'm I'm sorry, you can't actually represent that accurately on the page. In screenplay, you can get a little bit closer cuz you can do dual dialogue where there's literally two lines of dialogue side by side. In novels, you have to work with your medium. Okay, you have to work with the elements of your medium. Novels are incredibly linear. It's just one word followed by the next one sentence followed by the next. But even if your character, let's say, is prone to cutting themselves off mid word, here's the problem is that the pronunciation of what you have on the page is different than what they were going to say. I might look at the word answe in this one.

[00:03:35]We can't compel people to be present and answe.

[00:03:38]I and I might know in my head, oh, they were going to say answer. So, really what they're saying is answe a answe answe It still doesn't make sense, does it? It's still one syllable. You can't cut the syllable in half, right? That doesn't make sense.

[00:03:52]But even if you could, when I'm looking at that word on the page, it says "and swee". That's what it says on the page.

[00:03:58]That's what you've written, right? So, is your character actually saying "and swee"?

[00:04:03]Cuz if they're not, then just put the damn R there. It's a pet peeve of mine for another reason, too.

[00:04:09]Okay? Now, this is the bigger picture thing, which is that if you have one character who's always cutting everyone off, right? That's a characteristic of them. That is something you deliberately give to that character. Maybe you have two characters who do that in your story, okay? You have a story full of rude people who speak over others. But when everyone is doing that, it's actually just a kind of lazy writing crutch that you're leaning on.

[00:04:31]But it's part of a a trend I see in writing more generally. This is the last point I'll make on it, where things interrupt in general, you know?

[00:04:40]You're You're in the middle of doing something, then bam! Oh, the enemy's attacking now. You know, all of the gate broke down and the leviathans are attacking the city. Ah, like now this is happening.

[00:04:49]Um Yeah, okay. That's That's the immaculate out of the blue, right? The herald comes announcing the presence of something unexpected, right? That's That's your inciting incident, your call to adventure. But when that kind of thing happens all the time, and when it happens on this micro level, too, where like constantly things are being interrupted and in the middle of one thing, interrupted something else, what it disallows is momentum from building organically, causation building organically. A happens, which leads to B, which leads to C, right? You want there to be this continuous motion through your story. You want to get some motion, okay? You want to get some motion. I'll say it again. You want to get some stimulation. Woah, it's exciting. Woah, stimulation. Woah, something happened. Woah, something happened. Woah, someone cutting you off.

[00:05:30]Someone cutting you off. Right? Cuz you want to get conflict, you want to get excitement, you want to keep people's attention. But really what it ends up doing is the exact opposite because things can't build, okay? Look, I'm speaking generally, right? There's exceptions. There's times when it makes sense to do this, when you want to do this, when it can really add something to a scene. But, if you watch films, there are many moments when somebody cuts someone else off and it's super unnatural. You can even like see the actor saying the last word they're supposed to say and then wait for the other person who's about to cut them off.

[00:06:01]>> Then again, stay where you are. You'll be safe there. But, I Stay in that cockpit. He can't catch up with us.

[00:06:07]>> Yes, he can. He's been developing a ship that has advanced warp capabilities and I have to >> Captain.

[00:06:11]It's a pet peeve of mine, but Robert Jackson Bennett, you know, congrats on your Hugo.

[00:06:23]>> [music]