K.B. Rainwater's Blog

In school, we’re taught rules of grammar that Must Be Obeyed, Or Else, then we’re released into the adult world full of people who speak and write with what seems like little regard to the sacred laws. When we read a published book with sentences ending in prepositions, split infinitives, and other grammatical sins, we’re left to wonder whether these holy edicts are quite as mandatory as our teachers insisted. So what gives?

Last week, I touched on the fact that the formal grammar we learn in school is based upon Latin rules, whereas English is a Germanic language. Although sixty percent of our vocabulary comes from Latin, that’s a combination of scientific and medical terms, and words that infiltrated the vocabulary after the Norman invasion in 1066. Our underlying grammar, however, still has its basis in the language’s proto-Germanic roots.

Two of the rules that show up most often as Grammar Nazi pet peeves are split infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. Not coincidentally, neither of things constructions is possible in Latin. In English, we form the infinitive by using the preposition to plus the verb stem; in Latin, the infinitive is a single word. For a Latin speaker to split an infinitive would be a deliberate act, along the lines of an English speaker saying “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

On the other hand, prepositions do exist in Latin, but phrasal verbs do not. As I explained last week, phrasal verbs are verbs composed of more than one word, such as put up with or hang out. Taking away one of the words changes the meaning of the verb. Instead, Latin adds a prefix to the verb to change its meaning, often with an accompanying preposition, which then goes in front of the object of the verb. English also has a more rigid sentence structure than Latin, because our nouns are not declined. This makes it more difficult to shift the prepositions or pseudo-prepositions away from the ending of the sentence.

Those of you who haven’t studied inflected languages like Latin, Greek, or Russian might at this point be wondering how a noun becomes declined. Does someone have to tell it no?

Declension means changing the ending of a noun to denote its purpose in the sentence. Is it the subject? Direct object? Indirect object? Object of a preposition? The case it’s in will answer that question.

Proto-Indo-European had eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence. Vocative is used when addressing someone directly. Accusative is used for the direct object. Instrumental is used for the instrument with which something is achieved. Dative is used for the indirect object. Ablative is used for various things, among them objects of certain prepositions and indicating movement away from something. Genitive is used to indicate possession. Locative case is used to indicate location.

Latin only has five and a half cases, as opposed to the eight cases of its predecessor. Neither instrumental nor locative cases exist in the language, and vocative only remains in a vestigial form visible in second declension singular masculine nouns; in all other declensions, it’s identical to the nominative.

English, for the most part, has no declensions, although the remnants can be seen in our pronouns: I/me/my, you/your, he/him/his, she/her, it/its, we/us, they/them/their. Our pronouns distinguish between nominative, genitive, and accusative, where the accusative form has taken on all the functions that dative, accusative, and ablative serve in Latin.

Because of this, English sentence order has to be more rigid than other languages. English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, or S-V-O, so we know that the subject is going to come first in the sentence, and the object of the verb is going to come after the verb. Indirect objects either come before the direct object, or after the prepositions to or for.

Latin, on the other hand, is more versatile. It’s nominally a Subject-Object-Verb (S-O-V) language, but that’s just the default. In reality, the subject, direct object, indirect object, and verb can go in any order, because you can tell which noun is doing what based on its ending.

Since we don’t usually have to worry about case endings in English, we tend not to internalize the rules of declension, and thus wind up making mistakes like “Me and Sally went to the store,” and then after being reprimanded for that offense, overcorrect with utterances such as “They came to visit Sally and I.” These errors do violate the underlying Germanic grammar of English, and thus should be avoided. An easy rule of thumb is to replace the phrase containing the pronoun with a single, plural pronoun. If we or they sounds natural, then the pronoun should be I, he, or she. If us or them sounds natural, the pronoun should be me, him, or her. This is because I, he, she, we, and they are all nominative case, and me, him, her, us, and them are all accusative case.

On the other hand, splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions is acceptable, as long as wording things that way sounds more natural than it would to avoid those so-called mistakes.

“This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.” ~Winston Churchill

We’ve all been told countless times by English teachers and grammar pedants that it’s bad form to end a sentence with a preposition. And yet, often, trying to avoid this supposed grammar faux pas often leads to awkward and ungainly sentences, like the one quoted above. In speech especially, rewording a sentence to avoid this supposed “dangling preposition” sounds stilted and unnatural. The song Cotton-Eye Joe wouldn’t flow nearly as well without the phrasing “Where did you come from?” This is despite the fact that in formal English, the “correct” construction would be “From where did you come?”

Writing, however, is more formal than speech. So how do you decide on the proper balance between the flow of your words and avoiding too much informality in your work?

Well, first, it’s important to understand what exactly a preposition is. A preposition describes the location or time, or other characteristic of the noun or noun phrase that is its object, often in relation to another noun or verb in the sentence. I went to the store. I bought a gift for my boyfriend. In the first sentence, to is a preposition, the object of which is store. In the second, for is a preposition, the object of which is my boyfriend.

Notice that the object of the second preposition is a two-word phrase, rather than simply a noun. A noun phrase consists of a noun plus any number of modifiers—adjectives, articles, even subordinate clauses.

We learn in school that words like to, for, with, and up are prepositions, and are always prepositions, because part of speech is an inherent characteristic of a word. But this isn’t entirely accurate. Language is messy and complicated, and words don’t always fit into neat categories. Think of the sentence, “The girl hung up the painting.” Is painting the object of the preposition up? Of course not. It’s the object of the phrasal verb, to hang up. So what function is up playing in this sentence if it’s not actually a preposition? Well, we could call it an adverb, since it’s sort of kind of maybe modifying the verb to hang. How did she hang it? She hung it up. But it’s not really an adverb either. Really, it’s part of the verb itself, as in the phrasal verb to put up with. Putting up with something isn’t just a modified version of putting, any more than understanding something is a modified version of standing.

So why the confusion? Why teach us something that is inaccurate?

Up until a few hundred years ago, English didn’t have a formal grammar. A bunch of intellectuals decided that one should exist, because Latin had one; and since Latin was their example, it was Latin grammar that they imposed upon English. But English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language, and doesn’t follow the same linguistic patterns as Latin. They were forcing a square peg into a round hole, and ever since then grammar prescriptivists have been insisting that we’re speaking our native language incorrectly.

It only takes a bit of introspection to realize that this prescriptivist approach to grammar, which insists that part of speech is an inherent characteristic of a word, is laughably wrong. In English, the infinitive is formed by using the word to plus the verb stem. To be, to go, to hang. To can’t be a preposition in these cases, because the following word is a verb, not a noun. In addition, sometimes what looks like a preposition is actually a conjunction. In the sentence “I do my homework after school,” after is a preposition, the object of which is school. However, if I were to say, “I’ll check my Twitter after I finish my homework,” after is a conjunction. I finish my homework is a complete sentence in and of itself, rather than a noun or noun phrase.

So how do you determine whether a preposition is actually a preposition? One way is to try to identify the object. If what comes after it isn’t a noun or noun phrase, it can’t be a preposition. This doesn’t work as well with phrasal verbs, which do take nouns or noun phrases as objects—specifically, as the direct object of the verb. In this case, you can ask yourself whether you’d define the verb based on the conjugable form, or by the phrase as a whole. Put, put up, and put up with all have different meanings—you wouldn’t just define put and leave the rest of the phrase out of the definition.

Back to ending sentences with prepositions. By their very nature, prepositions require the object to come after them. The word itself comes etymologically from the idea of placing (posit) before (pre). (Some languages, like Hindi, have postpositions, which perform the same function as prepositions but come after the object, rather than before.) Since prepositions require an object, and that object comes after the preposition, it doesn’t make sense to end a sentence or clause with a preposition. Yet, in speech, often we do, even when the preposition is acting as a preposition.

Take this sentence, from one of my previous posts: “It’s a string of sounds to which a group of humans have ascribed an agreed-upon meaning.” The flow is pretty good, and I’d probably word it that way even in everyday speech, but then, I’m the kind of person who uses “ascribe” in casual conversation. Consider this variation: “It’s a string of sounds a group of people have ascribed meaning to.” Still sounds like a perfectly reasonable sentence, right? Possibly even a better sentence than the first one, if we’re talking about speech rather than writing.

Does that mean to isn’t actually functioning as a preposition? If it is, where is its object? Maybe it’s a phrasal verb, ascribe meaning to.

Except that’s not the case. The verb is ascribe, while meaning is the direct object—the object of the verb, which would be in the accusative in languages like Latin and Russian. The object of to is which, the relative pronoun that refers to the subject of the sentence. In the second version, the which is omitted as being unnecessary, but it’s still implied, as the indirect object of the verb. In English, the indirect object can come between the verb and the direct object, as in the sentence “I gave my boyfriend a present,” or it can be the object of the preposition to or for, as in “I bought a present for my boyfriend, and then I gave it to him.” In Latin—the language from which the pedants drew all those tiresome grammar rules—you couldn’t end this sentence with a preposition, because the indirect object is indicated by the use of the dative case (which survives vestigially in English pronouns, as in “I gave him a present”), rather than with a prepositional phrase. So you would have to include the pronoun which, with the dative ending.

Now that we’ve covered what exactly is a preposition and what is not, what are the rules for ending sentences with prepositions in your writing? In formal writing, avoid it where possible. Even in the case of a phrasal verb, you should shy away from ending a sentence with something that looks like a preposition, if only because it will cause a certain percentage of your readers to judge you.

In fiction writing, the rules are more fluid. For dialogue, think about what your characters would actually say. Are they like me, where they reword even their everyday speech to avoid breaking this arbitrary rule? Or are they more prosaic in their speech patterns?

How about in the narrative? Well, that depends on the point of view of your novel. If it’s first person point of view, consider whether your narrator would differ in their writing from what they would say in everyday conversation. For omniscient third person point of view, it’s probably best not to end sentences with prepositions at all. For limited third person, you have a bit more leeway, based on what feels more true to the narrator’s character and internal dialogue.

The important thing is to remain true to your character’s voice without sacrificing meaning, clarity, and flow. Feel free to ignore the dictates of prescriptivist grammar if that works better for your story. In cases where you think it would be best not to end the sentence with a preposition, or pseudo-preposition, consider whether there’s another verb you could use in the place of the one you originally chose—for instance, the quote at the beginning of this post could become “This is the kind of nonsense I will not tolerate.” Alternatively, try to figure out the actual or implied object of the preposition, and move the preposition to that part of the sentence, e.g. “That’s someone I’d like to hang out with” could become “That’s someone with whom I’d like to hang out.” Just be sure to avoid awkward phrasing that interrupts the flow of the narrative. Ungainly restructuring of sentences is something up with which you should not put.

I’ve been a fan of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s books ever since I read the first Dark-Hunter novel back in college. She created such an interesting and compelling world, full of rich mythology and different pantheons. In fact many aspects of my own world-building can be traced back to her works.

Now I’m on Book 26, and I’m about ready to DNF the entire author.

I don’t know if her writing was always this bad, or if she just stopped caring somewhere along the way. Based on some of the reviews I read for Dragonsworn, I suspect it’s the latter. I can still remember details from the first book in the series, which I read a dozen years ago, but I had to go back and re-read Book 24 because I wasn’t certain I’d actually read it, despite my Kindle assuring me that I had. I still can’t remember what happened in Book 25, although my Kindle tells me I read that, as well. But I don’t want to re-read it, because I just don’t care.

Kenyon seems to love torturing her characters and giving them the worst backstories she can imagine, yet it no longer engages my emotions. I just want to yell at them to stop whining and blaming their bad attitude on everyone else.

Her sex scenes were never spectacular; I remember thinking that even when I was still eagerly awaiting her next book and reading it as soon as it came out. There’s no tension in them. Characters are horny, characters try to resist each other for whatever reason, characters have sex, it’s described in mechanically explicit detail, characters experience orgasm. She tells us what’s happening, rather than showing us how the characters are feeling.

That also occurs in the rest of her writing. She tells the reader how terrible her characters’ backstories are, but there’s no emotion behind it. Fight scenes are described in a way that makes it clear the characters might lose, but the danger never feels real.

In addition to all that, she head-hops, moving from one POV to another multiple times in a single scene. Now, I will say that she’s very good at making it clear just who is the POV character at any time, but it means it’s harder to get deep into the characters’ heads.

And…her characters, and writing, tend to ramble. A lot. Even the quotes they get tattooed on themselves to remember lost loved ones are unnecessarily long. It’s like she’s Charles Dickens, getting paid by the word.

In Dragonsworn, particularly, I noticed that her descriptions of sexual tension just…aren’t. The hero is hard from looking at the heroine. Now she does something, and he’s even harder. Oh look, she’s nice to him, and he’s harder still. It goes back to the telling rather than showing. Instead of blood pooled in his groin, and he felt himself thickening, it’s he grew hard. Instead of he throbbed, so hard he was nearly drilling a hole in his pants, it’s he got even harder. Like, okay, he’s horny, cool story bro. Why do I care?

Honestly at this point the only reason I’m still reading is that I’m so invested in the series, and there’s only one book left. There are still two ongoing spin-off series, though, and I’m not sure I want to invest any more time or money into them.

The worst part is, I know she can do better. Her writing as Kinley MacGregor is completely different. I read all of Kinley MacGregor’s books and didn’t even suspect it was the same author until I visited her website. In fact I had to double-check the copyright just to be sure. But I suppose when you’re twenty-six books into a bestselling series, there’s no longer any need to give it your best effort. Other than, of course, artistic integrity, and wanting to give your loyal readers what they’ve come to expect out of your works.

“What was the author’s intent in writing this passage?”

That question always infuriated me as a kid. How could you know the author’s intent? Did you ask them? I was an author, too, or at least a writer—I’d been writing stories since before I could write—and I knew instinctively that some people would misconstrue my message. To make matters worse, the teachers never really taught us how to ferret out the underlying meaning of a passage. Oh, they taught us symbolism, but the implication was that the symbols were somehow universal, something everyone knew, which meant the exact same thing in every circumstance, regardless of the author’s background or level of education.

In college, I wound up arguing with a teacher about authorial intent, and I still believe I was correct. But the tables had turned; I thought I knew what the author had intended, and the teacher didn’t agree. The specific scenario was Catullus’s poems about his girlfriend’s sparrow. My argument was, and still is, that Catullus crafted his poems very carefully, so he would have known that at least some of his readers would think he was talking about his penis until the very end when that interpretation became impossible, that he intended the double entendre and the gotcha moment at the end. I thought at the time that my understanding of authorial intent had evolved and expanded when teachers stopped telling me what and how to think, just like my skills at essay writing had suddenly bloomed the moment I got to college.

Now, looking back, I don’t think that’s the case. My argument about Catullus’s intent was based upon my understanding of his writing style; in the case of high school English, we studied books out of context, with no knowledge of how those authors typically expressed ideas. It wasn’t that I was no longer being told how to interpret the passage; it was that I was being given the full framework upon which to base my interpretation.

Perhaps what was covered in high school was enough for neurotypical students. I can’t say, because I’m not neurotypical. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and am almost certainly autistic as well. What I can say is that what I was taught did not work for me. Instead it left me with the firm belief that authorial intent can’t be left to vague textual evidence and unknown symbolism, but must rather be based upon how the reader interacts with the text.

If the author intends for the text to be open to interpretation, that’s fine. A recent example is the Good Omens TV show. Neil Gaiman has stated that it’s a 6000-year-long love story, but anyone’s headcanon as to exactly what type of love story it is, is equally valid. We can debate about whether this is a cop-out, but it does mean that arguments as to what the author’s intent was are rather pointless.

When I read The Giver, I was among the 2% of people who thought it had a happy ending. Most of the other 98% were satisfied with the belief that the main character died and went to Heaven at the end, although some were disappointed. From what I understand, the sequel indicates that my interpretation was the correct one; but the author has never come out and said that the majority of readers were wrong.

As vindicated as I might feel to learn that my interpretation is correct, it’s rather worrying when the majority of readers misinterpret a text. When that is the case, somewhere, something has gone wrong. The point of a story is to communicate between the writer and the readers. Of course some aren’t going to understand exactly what you’re trying to relate, but if you’re doing your job, most will internalize your point in a way that mostly resembles what you intended. The percentage who interpret it correctly might decrease as time goes on, or among those who are not your target audience, but for the most part, people should understand what it is that you meant to communicate.

The further people get from the source, or the less familiarity they have with the context of your works, the less accurately they will interpret your story. If you only intend your symbolism-heavy work of high literature and satire to be comprehensible within the current canon and political climate, that’s fine. Not everything has to stand the test of time. And it’s always possible for future readers to familiarize themselves with the context in which the work was written, as we do for books like Animal Farm and the Greco-Roman canon.

This is, of course, a completely separate issue from simply including themes and references that not everyone will pick up on, but which aren’t vital to comprehending the main intent of the work. We can appreciate Shakespeare’s plays for the dick jokes without being experts on the political climate of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

But if you want your readers to interpret your work in the way you intended them to be read, it's important that you include the clues inside the text itself. JK Rowling has become somewhat of a joke with the way she retcons her works to be more inclusive than the way she wrote them. Dumbledore is gay, but Remus and Sirius aren't. Hermione can be black, except there's no basis for that in the text.

In my own stories, Kerry is autistic and demisexual. I didn't consciously write her that way, but I'm autistic and ace-spec myself, and that came out in my writing, even though I didn't realize it at the time. Hel is non-binary, which again is hinted at in the text despite the fact that I didn't realize it when I was writing her. It may not have been part of my intent when writing the characters, but it's a valid interpretation of the text--in fact is the author's interpretation of the text, upon re-reading what I wrote.

There's a lot of controversy over death of the author and how readers interact with a story, but any fully-fleshed fictional world leaves a great deal up to the imagination, and the author can only control what words are put to paper in the canon itself. If the stories leave themselves up to interpretation, that's on the author, not the readers. You can't control what other people do with your words once they've been released to the public.

I don’t normally read contemporary romance, since I don’t find it as engaging as paranormal or historical romance, but the first book in this series was suggested to me due to the aromantic main character, something that’s extremely rare in a genre based around romantic connections. After devouring that book, I immediately purchased the next book in the series.

Reverb is the third and final installation in the Twisted Wishes saga, and it more than lives up to the promise of the first two books. I fucking adore David, and I adore the way Anna Zabo writes him. There are so many—hints isn’t the right word, since it’s not a secret, or a twist, but—subtle details that make it obvious he’s trans from the very beginning of the book, without explicitly mentioning it until a good way into the novel. It’s very clear that this book is written with a trans audience in mind. Lots of questions a cis reader might have remain unanswered. The sex scenes are about celebrating the beauty of a trans man at home in his body, rather than describing the mechanics in a way for cis people to understand.

The entire series is unapologetically queer. Homophobia, transphobia, and bi erasure crop up, but not as major plot points, just as an acknowledgment of the difficulties queer people often face. It’s all handled in a very respectful manner, more likely to invoke feelings of fellowship than to trigger traumatic memories.

The found family dynamic of the band is to die for. Mish’s relationships with her bandmates are portrayed as just as important as her relationship with David, and during the “boy loses girl” portion of the story, he also loses the friendships he’s forged with the rest of the band. The acceptance he finds with the band is as relevant to the plot as the love story.

The main conflict in Reverb centers around a stalker who has been targeting Mish Sullivan, the band’s bassist. The hero has been hired as security; it’s literally his job to protect her. But he doesn’t make the mistake of thinking she’s fragile or otherwise weak for needing a bodyguard. It’s an excellent example of how to leverage the bodyguard trope without falling into the trap of perpetuating misogyny or glorifying uncomfortable power dynamics. Clear, continuous, enthusiastic consent is present every step of the way.

The energy of a touring band vibrates on every page. That, more than anything, is what keeps me coming back for more. There’s never a boring moment. This book will keep you up past your bedtime, desperate to find out what happens next. Five out of five stars.

Recently the question came up on Twitter of whether it’s possible to write a character who’s significantly smarter than you. The short answer is, yes, it is! But how do you do so?

First, it’s important to determine what exactly makes your character “smart.” Sherlock Holmes is extremely observant, with a wealth of knowledge and the ability to put together subtle clues that most people would miss, or wouldn’t know what to do with. Dr. Daniel Jackson is fluent in twenty-three languages. MacGyver can make explosives out of the stuff you find in your kitchen, or build an airplane out of bamboo and trash bags.

Second, you might want to consider whether your character is realistically intelligent. “We’ll go as foreigners….I speak twenty-three different languages; pick one,” is one of my favorite lines from SG-1, but even for the most gifted linguists, it takes one to two years to become proficient in a foreign language, and unless they started learning it as a child, they still won’t have anything approaching native fluency. Being able to converse in twenty-three different languages is one thing; being able to pass for a native is something else entirely.

Dr. Bruce Banner gets a lot of flack in the online fan community for having seven Ph.D.’s, because what’s the point? People who have never gotten a Ph.D. see having one as a sign of intelligence, so having more than one must mean more intelligence. But while smart people are more likely to pursue higher education than your average Joe, to a degree with enough statistical significance that level of education achieved is used by psychologists as a factor in determining baseline IQ when testing for brain damage, the number of doctorates a person holds doesn’t matter. Why would you start from scratch in a new field when you could use that time to be making advances in the one you’ve already mastered?

That’s not to say your character can’t be a genius. Real geniuses do exist! And of course it makes sense to write stories about them. But just like Olympic athletes spend all their time training, most people who have made breakthroughs in science don’t have time to lead what we would consider normal lives. Intelligence isn’t some sort of cheat code that allows a person to master a subject without putting in the work. It can certainly make it easier, and an intelligent character could well pick up new skills faster than the average person, but if they’re trying to be the best in their field, some sacrifices must be made.

Alright, so you know what makes your character smart and you’ve done your research on whether their abilities are plausible. How do you actually write them?

This depends on what sort of smart you want them to be. If their intelligence isn’t integrally relevant to the story, for example you want to write about a rocket scientist but don’t yourself have any knowledge of the subject, you can give them a job at NASA and include a few scenes where they’re pondering some trajectory problem or working through an equation while hand-waving the details, which would probably just bore your readers anyway. You’ll have to do some research about what sorts of things rocket scientists actually do, and perhaps run your draft by someone who actually understands rocket science, but neither you nor your reader need to understand the details in order to make it believable that your character does understand them.

It gets a bit more complicated if the characters area of expertise is relevant to the plot, but the philosophy remains the same. It just means that you have to do more research in order to ensure the plot remains plausible. You can’t just pick and choose the parts that are easiest to understand.

For example, when writing Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton didn’t actually have to figure out how to clone dinosaurs, he just had to learn enough about cloning that the story made sense. If you want your character to build a time machine, you don’t have to be able to build such a machine yourself, but you do have to consider how you’re going to deal with potential paradoxes, hopefully in a way that doesn’t contradict our current scientific understanding. I myself have a character named Zibeon Naberius who’s a master strategist. You know he’s a master strategist because he’s won a lot of battles. He’s also an expert at predicting what people will do and manipulating them to do what he wants. It’s fairly easy for me to write this because I already know how my characters will react in a given situation, and what will make them behave in a particular way. I created them, after all.

That brings us to another great way to demonstrate intelligence: show your character figuring something out that you already know. The go-to method is to have them solve a Rubik’s Cube, but that doesn’t really require intelligence, just the ability to memorize and apply the seven steps; it’s pretty easy to find a guide to solving one online. As far as I know there is no guide to solving a Square-1, which is kind of like a Rubik’s Cube but also mutates its shape—I had to figure out how to solve that shit myself—but on the other hand, nobody’s ever heard of a Square-1, so it wouldn’t serve its purpose of signaling to your readers that this character is supposed to be smart.

A better way might be to show them solving clues, or figuring out the answer to a riddle. Think of the last mystery novel you read, or episode of a CSI-type show that you watched. There are going to be clues scattered throughout the plot that you probably missed the first time around, but that make it pretty obvious who the killer is when you go back and read or watch it for the second time. The author of course knew who the killer was from the beginning, or at least by the time they started writing the final draft. That’s what allows the characters to finally determine the truth. The same can be said for a riddle. You don’t have to be able to solve the riddle yourself without knowing the answer, or it could have taken you ages to figure it out, but your character could still solve it in a matter of seconds.

In this vein, sometimes intelligence isn’t about what you’re able to understand so much as how quickly you’re able to understand it. A child prodigy doesn’t have to be any smarter at ten than you are now. The difference between a smart student and an average student is often in the fact that the smart student understands the lesson as soon as it’s explained, often before the teacher delves into the details. I taught myself to divide when I was four because I’d learned addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Subtraction was just opposite-addition, so it made sense that there had to be an opposite-multiplication. It wasn’t that other students couldn’t learn division when it was explained to them; it was that I comprehended it on an instinctive level. I’ll often make connections between things that others miss, or that aren’t necessary to understanding the topic but make it easier to grasp, such as when I was learning geometry in seventh grade and forgot half the formulas for circles on my final exam, but was able to re-derive them from the ones I remembered because I’d discovered how they were all interconnected, or the time when I figured out that the Greek histemi was just a reduplicated form and had originally been sistemi (in Greek the perfect tense is formed by reduplicating the first consonant of the stem, such as pepaideuka being the perfect tense of paideuo), but the s had become an h in the same way that the word for six, which is sex in Latin, is hex in Greek. The teacher, who had a Ph.D. in the subject, had never even considered this, although as soon as I pointed it out he agreed that it made sense. Inventing or discovering something requires more intelligence than simply using or replicating it, so if you’re writing historical fiction or fantasy, you can use your modern knowledge to have your characters invent or discover something that is known in modern times but not in the setting of your story.

Similarly, smart people have an easier time picking up skills and knowledge. If you want your character to have a skill you yourself possess, but just be better than you, or have picked it up more easily, it’s a simple matter of shortening the timeline of when they acquired it. If it’s a skill you don’t possess, you’ll have to do some research to be sure what they’re doing is possible, then simply describe what they’re doing rather than how they’re doing it. It’s a story, not an instruction manual.

For knowledge, if you want your character to be an expert in a given topic, you will yourself have to become knowledgeable about it in order to have them speak intelligently, but you don’t have to retain that knowledge. I have a character named Lixa Ratrau who is described as a “font of useless knowledge.” She can wax eloquent on the etymology of just about any word. In order to write her, I make notes about interesting trivia that I learn that might be relevant to the dialogue, and also do quick etymology searches on Google about different words that come up.

Writing a character who’s fluent in multiple languages, like Dr. Jackson, can be both the easiest and the hardest method of writing a character who’s smarter than you. The easiest, because you can simply translate all their conversations into English and simply tell the reader that it’s in a foreign language; the hardest, because if you want to do more than that, you run the risk of an actually bilingual reader calling you on your bullshit. The percentage of people who speak at least one other language is much higher than the percentage of people who understand rocket science.

This comes up a lot in the context of writers writing bilingual characters who aren’t necessarily smarter than anyone else, they’re just foreigners who speak English as a second language, or are the children of immigrants. Code-switching is a big thing that most monolingual writers get wrong. “Salaam, that is, hello,” isn’t really something people say. Sometimes they’ll say something like, “Salaam. Hello.” Even then, though, in my experience, that usually occurs when they’re speaking with someone who understands both languages, and multiple, effuse greetings are the norm. “Salaam. Sobh bekheyr. Khubi? Halet chetore?” That translates to, “Hello. Good morning. Are you well? How are you?”

Another thing that I’ve heard of is a character saying something like, “Bonjour. Comment ça va? Oh, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget what language I’m speaking. Hello. How are you?” While it’s true that multilingual people often do accidentally speak in the wrong language, they don’t typically realize it until they get blank looks from whoever they’re talking to, in which case they’ll just switch to the correct language—or to another incorrect language, if they know more than two languages. When I was in Ireland learning Irish Gaelic, I’d just come off a year of a semi-immersion course in French, and there were times when the first half of my utterance would come out in French and the rest would come out in Irish, e.g. “Je ponce que ta me ar strae.” I’ve read a story about someone who was in a foreign country trying to order a coffee, ordered in the wrong language, corrected themself in a second incorrect language, and apologized in a third, all the while the poor barista was just looking on in horror, not understanding a word they were saying.

Personally, I drop a few foreign phrases into my speech, usually in places where they’ll be easily understood, or it doesn’t matter whether people understand me. If I’m trying to make my way through a crowd, I might say, “Gabh mo leisceal” for excuse me, then “Go raibh maith agat” for thank you, since really the important part is getting people’s attention. I’ll also tack “Insh’allah” onto the end of a statement of something I hope will occur, and mutter “Alhamdullilah” when something finally goes my way. In addition, I’ll use “Befarma’in” when inviting someone to proceed me through a door, because there isn’t a good English equivalent of the sentiment. I once had a friend greet me with “Salaam aleykum,” to which I quite naturally replied “Aleykum al-salaam.” This surprised her, since it had been a while since she’d heard the proper response, and she hadn’t really been thinking when she used the Turkish greeting rather than an English one.

Code-switching can occur on the micro or macro level. On the micro level, a person might switch between two or more languages within the space of a single conversation, due to a variety of reasons that still aren’t adequately understood. From my personal experience, and reading the experiences of others, I can confidently say that certain set phrases might be more readily expressed in one language than another, such as greetings, prayers, and curses. I watched a comedy skit once in which an Arab felt comfortable cursing in English because “Allah doesn’t speak English,” and some children of immigrants feel more comfortable cursing in English than in their parents’ tongue because of their strict upbringing; on the other hand, I’m a native English speaker, and while I do know some foreign curses because I find them fascinating, if I stub my toe I’m going to revert to my native tongue.

One bilingual speaker on Twitter wrote that they use their native-language terms to refer to most vegetables, which makes sense especially when such vegetables are less common in American cuisine. Code-switching occurs quite easily on the level of single words that aren’t easily translatable into the language being spoken. We can see this in the English language’s propensity for adopting foreign vocabulary for concepts we don’t already have, like kamikaze and schadenfreude.

In my experience code-switching most often occurs in the context of conversations where all participants speak both languages. When talking to someone who only speaks English, with the exception of specific utterances such as greetings or prayers, I’m not going to randomly slip into speaking Persian; but in class this past month, the teachers would switch almost randomly between speaking Persian and speaking English, often within a single sentence. One thing that stood out to me was the fact that where there was a calque between English and Persian, that is a word or phrase that was translated in a word-for-word or root-for-root manner, often the teacher would simply use the English word in an otherwise Persian sentence.

Unfortunately, this is very difficult to demonstrate in a natural manner within a story, unless you’re specifically writing for an audience that understands both languages; and if your character is intended to be smarter than you, and speak languages which you do not yourself understand, that is unlikely to be the case.

Another aspect of the multilingual character is one who has to figure out a language that nobody else understands, like Dr. Jackson in the Stargate movie. A solid foundation in linguistics can help with this, as can any experience with translating foreign languages. I found the line “I think the circle says ‘The place of our legacy’…or it could be ‘a piece of our leg,’ my translation’s a bit vague,” to be utterly hilarious, although the alliteration between the two possibilities interfered with the suspension of disbelief. You can experiment with putting foreign language text into Google translate and studying the hilarity that results. Most recently, in my personal experience, we were working on a translation in class about growing grapes, and Google insisted that one word from the passage meant “shit,” when in context that didn’t make sense. One of the students translated it as “shovel” instead, which was one of the alternative meanings. Well, turns out that it did mean “shit,” since it was talking about fertilizer.

As with the rocket science example above, you don’t have to have a Ph.D. in linguistics to write this sort of character, although at least some knowledge on the subject does help. The more detailed you want to get about what exactly they’re translating, the more knowledge you’ll have to have. At one end of the scale, you can simply describe the ancient writings as blocky text or incomprehensible squiggles, and then have the character remark that they’re similar to some writing system the character knows; or if it’s a spoken language, describe it as guttural, or melodic, or however you interpret the living language most similar to what you imagine the language to be. On the other end of the spectrum, you can include the actual inscription or phonetic rendition of the speech in your text, as Tolkien did in The Lord of the Rings. Depending on how smart you want your translator character to be, and how much you want your multilingual readers to relate, you can have them have a single epiphany after which they translate flawlessly, or have them struggle and gradually make sense of what’s being said.

Spoken language is often more difficult for non-native speakers to parse than written language, since there’s more of a margin for error based on missing or mishearing part of the message. While the grammar of written language is more complicated, since it depends on the fact that you can read and re-read until you understand what’s going on, having to translate spoken words in your head into your native tongue makes it more difficult to follow the flow of the conversation. However this doesn’t hold true for languages like Mandarin which have a non-phonetic alphabet; most non-native speakers of Mandarin are better at listening than at reading. And even for languages like Persian where the reading is easier than the listening, there are children of immigrants who grew up speaking the language at home but never learned to read it.

Consulting with people who are well-versed in the subject is always a good idea. I wouldn’t call bilingualism a topic for a sensitivity reader, unless your character is a non-native speaker of the primary language spoken in your book; it’s more like doing research on the subject of medieval fashions, or making sure your depiction of a modern city is accurate and the time it takes to get from one place to another makes sense. Though I don’t myself have a degree in linguistics, I have studied the topic extensively, and have a degree in Classics, which covers Greek and Roman language and literature. If you want to consult on the topic of multilingual characters or fantasy languages, I’m happy to be of assistance.

In summary, it’s quite possible to write characters who are more intelligent than yourself. You just have to figure out what it is that makes them intelligent, and how to portray that in a manner that you can do justice.

Stories run on conflict. If nothing bad ever happens, the characters have nothing to strive for. There’s no tension. Plus, a novel where nothing ever goes wrong would be a tad unrealistic. People make mistakes. They get into arguments. They hurt each other, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Sometimes they can’t get along for what seems like no reason at all.

When I was in school, there was this girl there with me, we’ll call her K. My first real encounter with K was in study hall. She’d had a long, stressful day, and I was in pain because my period had just started. One of us said something, the other took offense, and before we knew it we were verbally going at each other. I left the encounter with the firm belief that she was an utter bitch and I wanted nothing to do with her.

Then, the most amazing thing happened. The next day, she apologized. She explained that she’d been under a lot of stress, and she’d taken it out on me. Here’s the thing, though: She wasn’t entirely at fault. I’d been just as unreasonable, and I was determined to think the worst of her. But she decided to be the bigger person, and take the blame, and attempt to repair things.

Well, upon realizing that she wasn’t such an unmitigated bitch after all, I had to reevaluate my assessment of her. I apologized too, and explained that I was on my period, so I hadn’t exactly been myself either. After that, we were fast friends. I even took a day off work to go to her wedding out of state.

Anyway, the point is, sometimes in times of high stress, people don’t exactly behave in the most logical of fashions. And if that leads to a fight, they can carry a grudge against the other person, even if they were equally at fault.

There are going to be misunderstandings and personality clashes between your characters, even those who are purportedly working toward the same goal. Everyone approaches a problem with different worldviews. Different motivations.

In romance novels especially, it’s vital to for there to be conflict between the main characters. A science fiction or fantasy novel that’s entirely about an external conflict can still be gripping, but a romance requires internal tension. The classic formula of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back doesn’t work if there’s never a scene where the boy loses the girl.

(This is true in same-sex romances as well. Girl meets girl, they have lots of sapphic sex, they live happily ever with no conflict doesn’t exactly make for a gripping read.)

From here on I’m going to talk mainly about romance, although this can apply to other genres as well. Any kind of interpersonal conflict adds to the tension in a story and keeps readers turning pages.

Romance often depends on sexual tension, that will-they-or-won’t-they. The characters have to want to be together, but there’s something holding them back. I love the enemies-to-lovers trope for this reason. It provides lots of potential for conflict, along with a ready-made reason for them to resist their attraction to each other.

Conflicting motivations are also great. An excellent example of this is Eve Pendle’s Six Weeks with a Lord. The heroine needs her dowry in order to rescue her brother; the hero needs it in order to restore his estate. Both are noble goals, and there’s no good way to resolve the conflict. The book sets up the “boy loses girl” confrontation from the very beginning, making it a necessary and believable part of the story.

A lot of romances…don’t. The fight that causes the heroine to leave the hero, or the hero to cast the heroine out (in my experience this only happens in m/f romances, although it could just as easily occur in same-sex romance), is based on a misunderstanding that could have been solved if the two characters would just take thirty seconds to consider the other’s perspective, and not immediately jump to conclusions. Do fights like that happen in real life? Absolutely. My argument with K is a prime example. However, there’s a difference between two people getting off to a rocky start on a first meeting, and two people who have presumably by this point fallen in love with each other just exploding for little to no reason.

In order to sell the break-up scene, it has to build up from the beginning of the book. Examples of this can be seen in two of my novels. (Spoilers ahead.)

In Bite Me, Kerry Thomas is an FBI agent who is investigating vampire pirate Jacques Dumond as a suspected serial killer. As part of her investigation, she begins to date him, in order to gather more information. He’s cleared, and the two of them fall in love. Then, Jacques discovers that Kerry works for the FBI. He, quite understandably, feels betrayed, and reacts out of pain and emotion rather than logic.

In this scenario, there was never really a good time for Kerry to tell Jacques the truth, and we can’t expect Jacques to give her the benefit of the doubt when he discovers her betrayal. The relationship-ending confrontation isn’t a cringe-inducing farce; it’s something that has developed naturally from the events that precede it. Both characters are acting in a reasonable, if not precisely rational, manner.

In Give ’Em Hell, the heroine (Helen Astra) has recently escaped an abusive marriage, and encounters the hero (Daryush Derakhshani) just as she’s begun to recover emotionally from the ordeal. He’s had a crush on her for years, so when he finally gets the chance to sleep with her—after she rescues him from ISIS—he immediately falls head-over-heels in love. The problem is, premature declarations of love are a tactic commonly used by abusers to trick their victims into committing to a relationship before they have a chance to discover the abuser’s flaws, which is something that happened to her with her ex. So when Dare says he loves her, Hel panics and runs away.

In this scenario, the reader might want Hel to give Dare the benefit of the doubt, but her history prevents it. It’s the old adage of once bitten, twice shy. Even though he hasn’t actually done anything wrong, his actions remind her of past trauma. She doesn’t know him well enough to trust his motivations, so she acts to protect herself rather than risking making the same mistake twice.

As a bonus, there’s also a break-up scene in my book Insider Threat. I actually wrote the book specifically to include that scene, which is between two secondary characters who showed up in Playing with Fire and Bite Me. Jack Murphy, Kerry’s best friend, has been dating Kerry’s distant cousin, Katrina Stormwind, over Kerry’s protests. Kat is eighteen and determined to save herself for marriage, so between that and Kerry’s threats, she and Jack haven’t had sex. So when Jack discovers that she’s pregnant, his temper, which is on a hair-trigger at the best of times, explodes. Kerry sides with Jack, believing him when he says there’s no way the baby could be his, leading to conflict between her and Kat, who up until this point had gotten along.

While Jack ought perhaps to have listened to Kat’s side of the story rather than just jumping to conclusions, and Kerry ought perhaps to have given her cousin the benefit of the doubt, their behavior is in line with their respective personalities. Even when (double spoiler) Jack and Kat eventually reconcile, Kerry remains upset at Kat for not being more vocal about what really happened. Kat, on the other hand, was only eighteen when this occurred, and resents that nobody was willing to listen to her about her side of the story. In addition, she was too hurt at the time to advocate for herself to people who weren’t willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

This leads us to the flip side of conflict: the apology. As when K swallowed her pride and apologized to me, an apology is often necessary for characters to move on after a conflict. Sometimes both characters are equally at fault; sometimes the blame falls more firmly on one than the other. In either case, a genuine apology is necessary so that the readers believe in the reconciliation.

In the case of Kerry and Kat, the apology comes in Come Hell or High Water, years after Kat and Jack have reconciled. At this point Kerry and Kat have been working together to get revenge on Helen’s abusive ex, since Hel is Kat’s cousin and Kerry’s third-cousin, and Kerry values family over everything else. Kerry’s apology is noteworthy not in it’s particularly well-delivered, but in the fact that it occurs at all. Here’s how it goes down:

“Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for the way I’ve treated you these past few years,” Kerry said.
Kat blinked, wondering if Sam had slipped something hallucinogenic into her mimosa. “I’m sorry...could you repeat that? I’m sure I didn’t hear you correctly.”
“I-apostrophe-m-space-s-o-r-r-y.”

Not exactly the ideal apology, especially given the snark inherent in that last bit—but at least it’s an acknowledgment that she was in the wrong.

Apologies are tricky. Both in real life and in fiction. We don’t like admitting that we were wrong. It feels like an acknowledgment that we’re somehow bad, that our detractors are correct. But everyone makes mistakes. To err is human; to forgive divine. Yet in order to forgive, the person who erred has to ask for forgiveness. Has to admit that they erred.

One of the most common apologizing tactics I’ve encountered is what I’ve termed Schrodinger’s Apology. We’ve all seen it. It’s the apology that starts with “I’m sorry if.” I.e., “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” They’re both sorry and not sorry at the same time, depending on how you feel about what they did.

If you want to prolong the conflict between your characters, and don’t care if your readers decide one of them is an utter tool, this is an excellent tactic. “But I apologized!” Yeah…but not really.

Similar to Schrodinger’s Apology, but not quite as bad, is the apology that replaces “if” with “that.” In this case, they are sorry, but only because there were consequences to what they said. “I’m sorry that you were offended.” They’re not sorry for saying something offensive; they’re only sorry that their audience included some sensitive snowflake who got offended by what they said.

This actually happened to me recently. A Native American friend of mine got upset that some white dudebro on Twitter used the term “spirit animal,” but they were on lock and didn’t want to go off it to respond. So I informed this dudebro that the term was cultural appropriation and was offensive and disrespectful to Native Americans, and that he should remove it from his vocabulary. His response boiled down to, “I’m sorry that you were offended, but I didn’t use it in a disrespectful manner.”

Here’s the thing though. I wasn’t offended. He was apologizing for something that hadn’t even occurred. My Native American friend was offended, yes, but I’m 98% white, and any Native American blood I might have is just DNA. It doesn’t affect me, personally, if other white people culturally appropriate Native American terms. I used to use the term “spirit animal” myself until I was informed that it was offensive. I was just using my white privilege to call out a fellow white person. It’s no skin off my back if someone uses ethnic slurs against an ethnicity that doesn’t include me, or culturally appropriates a culture of which I’m not a part. You haven’t hurt me by doing so. I’m calling you out on behalf of the other people who could be harmed. Because I realize that we’re all human and equally deserving of respect.

To be fair, I was mildly offended by his reply, since “I didn’t use it in a disrespectful manner” rather dismissed my assertion that using the term at all was disrespectful. But he wasn’t apologizing for that, and he wasn’t apologizing for using the term in the first place; he was only apologizing for offending me, which at the point of apology hadn’t actually occurred. In his case, a simple, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I won’t use it again” would have sufficed. Instead he felt the need to double down and defend himself.

This is rather common among people who have been told they’ve done something wrong. “That term is racist and you shouldn’t use it” is internalized as “You’re racist and therefore a horrible person,” and they feel the need to defend themselves against the perceived accusation. If the term isn’t really racist, not the way they used it, then they can’t be racist for using it. But doubling down on their right to use an offensive term just escalates the conflict. In this case, it caused me to add swearing to the mix: “Nah bitch, I ain’t the one you offended, my Native friend was upset by your words. Just don’t fucking use the term.”

Of course at this point he felt the need to tone-police me and inform me that swearing wasn’t necessary. Sorry not sorry, but you gave up your right to be treated respectfully when you declared that Well Actually it’s not disrespectful despite being informed to the contrary. I tried to be nice, you decided to argue. And your apology wasn’t really an apology at all. Oh, and now you’re trying to tell me how I ought to react to your bigotry? Yeah men have been telling women how they should behave, how they should protest, for decades, centuries, millennia. Same for any marginalized groups. If we don’t protest the right way, then our objections can be dismissed.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you” or “I’m sorry that I offended you” can be a great way to escalate the conflict, or to indicate characterization of someone who isn’t comfortable with confrontation and therefore accepts such a non-apology. But a discerning reader isn’t going to be satisfied if that’s the extent of a character’s apology for bad behavior. For example, if the hero does something hurtful, and the heroine is therefore hurt, and the hero’s apology is “I’m sorry that you were hurt,” whether or not the heroine accepts the apology, I’m not going to trust in the Happily Ever After. The hero has demonstrated that he believes it’s actually the heroine’s fault, not his, and he’s unlikely to change his behavior to accommodate her. This sort of thing is just going to happen over and over again until the heroine accepts it as inevitable.

So how do you write genuine apologies? Well, it’s rather similar to how to apologize in real life. First, you have to accept responsibility for your actions, and apologize for that, rather than the consequences thereof. “I’m sorry you were hurt” places the onus on the victim. “I’m sorry I said this hurtful thing” places the onus on you. Second, you can express how you’ll prevent the harm from being perpetuated in the future. “It won’t happen again” is a good default. In some cases it will also be necessary to atone for the damage done. “What can I do to make up for it?”

In the case of “spirit animal” dudebro, as I mentioned, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I won’t use that term in the future” would have been a perfectly acceptable apology. Indeed I’ve gotten this sort of apology in the past in similar situations; sometimes it hasn’t even included a “sorry.” Once I was even on the receiving end, and I don’t think I said “sorry” then.

(CW: slurs)

Examples:
Me: And everyone was looking at me like I was retarded.
Friend: The term “retard” is offensive because it’s been weaponized against mentally ill people.
Me: Oh okay, thank you for telling me. (I may not have been this gracious during the actual incident, but I did take it to heart.)

Coworker: I feel gypped.
Me: Just so you know, the word “gypped” is an ethnic slur coming from “gypsy” and implies that the Romani are dishonest by nature.
Coworker: Oh I didn’t realize, that’s good to know.

Me: These players left a pizza box, a half-drunk energy drink, and an empty chicken fingers basket in the play area.
Fellow judge: Savages!
Me: So the word “savage” has been used as an insult for Native Americans and we should probably remove it from our vocabulary.
Fellow judge: I didn’t know that, thanks for telling me.

In all these cases, an explicit apology wasn’t necessary, because they occurred away from anyone who might actually be harmed. The important part was the implication that the person would do better in the future. This also translates to genuine apologies. You can be sorry for messing up all you like, but that doesn’t do anyone any good if you’re not actually going to change. Abusers may feel bad about hurting their victim, and be genuine in their remorse, but it doesn’t matter unless they actually change their behavior.

A good apology acknowledges the harm done, admits culpability, and promises that things will be better going forth. In the case of the apology dudebro should have given: “I’m sorry” with no attempted justification or deflection would have indicated culpability, “I didn’t know” both exculpates the actor and admits that there was harm done, and “I won’t use that term in the future” shows that he intends to change his behavior.

So what might this look like in fiction? Well, other than Kerry’s snarky barely-apology to Kat, there is at least one other apology that occurs in my books. Let’s return to Bite Me, when Jacques and Kerry are first dating. Kerry, who does not yet believe in magic, consumes an alcoholic drink—something to which she is not accustomed—and then finds herself inundated with demon pheromones from a third party trying to seduce her away from Jacques. Kerry is demisexual and a virgin, both of which lend her some resistance to the pheromones, so rather than becoming enthralled by the demon trying to seduce her, she focuses her sexual attention on Jacques. After the encounter, she’s embarrassed, because she realizes that such behavior is out of character, and she blames it on the drink. She’s upset at Jacques for taking advantage of her in her inebriated state.

Jacques, of course, knows that her behavior was due to the demonic pheromones, which just makes things worse. He should have resisted. In his defense, he wasn’t expecting demon pheromones to translate into desire for him; typically they cause the recipient to focus on the demon in question. But given her reaction, he does know that this is absolutely his fault.

Kerry isn’t talking to Jacques and refuses to listen to his apology, so what is he to do? Well, after he leaves several desperate messages on her voicemail (“I am a bastard and a whoreson and whatever else you would like to call me, just please call me!”), her sister decides to act as his ally. Ash tells Jacques where Kerry can be found, and Jacques shows up at Kerry’s place of work.

(It’s important to note here that Jacques’s behavior in this case could be construed as stalking, and the reconciliation only works because Kerry would absolutely have castrated him if she felt in the least threatened by his actions.)

Jacques apologizes to Kerry in front of the students she is teaching. He accepts the blame for what occurred, articulating why their encounter was in no way her fault. Such a public apology could easily have gone wrong, being used by a manipulative individual to coerce forgiveness from a victim, but Kerry isn’t susceptible to such tactics, and Jacques has been advised against trying it by a friend. The apology works because he states what he did wrong and doesn’t try to justify his actions. He screwed up, and he knows it.

In real life, a lot of apologies have ulterior motives, which is why we get such shitty ones. The person apologizing wants to make themself feel better, or wants the person they hurt to forgive them for screwing up. In the former case, the apology becomes not so much admission of wrongdoing as a justification of what they did wrong. I’m sorry if, I’m sorry that, I’m sorry but. I didn’t mean to hurt you, therefore it’s not my fault that you were hurt.

In the latter case, they might get angry if their apology isn’t accepted. But I apologized; you have to forgive me. Obviously now you’re the one in the wrong, because I did what I was supposed to do. How dare you still be upset at me after I told you I was sorry?

These can be excellent ways to escalate conflicts in books, especially if there’s no need for the characters to reconcile. Just keep in mind that these are not good apologies. If your character apologizes this way, and the person they hurt accepts the apology, the discerning reader isn’t going to feel like the issue has actually been addressed. Yes, real people do accept these non-apologies, usually because they know a better one won’t be forthcoming, or they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t (i.e. the apologizing person will lose their temper because they have a history of abuse). But that’s the point—a relationship built on such non-apologies is inherently abusive. The reader won’t believe that the character is actually going to change, and if that’s the basis of the supposed Happily Ever After, it won’t ring true.

In summary: characters make mistakes and have misunderstandings, which is both realistic and leads to conflict which keeps the reader invested in the book. However, these mistakes and misunderstandings have to be rooted in the characters’ personalities, and not based on assumptions that get blown all out of proportion for no reason. When characters do fight, eventually, if you want them to reconcile, one or the other will have to tender an apology. That apology should admit culpability and promise a change in behavior; otherwise it’s nothing but empty air.

A few weeks ago I woke up to a reply to one of my Tweets where I talked about how it’s fine to write outside your lane, just do your research and hire a sensitivity reader. The reply was from a YA author with a book coming out sometime this year—at least according to his Twitter profile. I did a little digging, and he found his editor on YouTube, and there’s no evidence that he actually has a publisher. Anyway, his response to my exhortation to hire a sensitivity reader was, “No. No I will not. I know why I’m writing this story. I’m writing it because it’s in my head and I want to share it with the world. Writers don’t have to justify themselves to you or anyone else.”

Like. My dude. I don’t even know who you are. A bit of digging shows this dude makes liberal use of the #ownvoices hashtag even though, as far as I can tell, he’s not marginalized in any way, and he absolutely despises sensitivity readers. So it seems that he was searching Twitter for one of those terms, came across my tweet, and felt the need to defend himself as though the tweet was aimed at him and him alone. Good job on calling yourself out, I guess.

He went on to say, “The world needs everyone’s story. I don’t want to write this story. I need to write this story. I’m not going to put my ideas on the shelf because they might offend. And nobody else should either! Stand up for your art!”

Clearly, this guy’s artistic integrity is more important than the marginalized people he might harm in the telling. I told him to stay in his damn lane, since by that point it was obvious he wasn’t going to listen to feedback from a sensitivity reader even if he could find one to give it. His response was, “No. I’m not going to stay in my lane. I’m going to swerve all around the road until all the young writers know it’s ok to write about anything. My books aren’t going to harm anyone. Your hand wringing will have no effect on me.”

Alright. Look. I’m not the writing police. I can’t actually keep you from writing whatever you damn well please. You have over 1700 followers; I have fewer than 400. But here’s the thing. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Remember Jurassic Park?

What I can do is call you out on your bullshit. Because no, not every story needs to be told. If you’re a Young Earth Creationist writing a propaganda adventure where the protagonists discover that dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to trick us into sin, the rest of us don’t need to be reading that crap. If you want to write a Twilight BDSM fanfic and then change the character names to sell it as original fiction, maybe take a second to consider the actual harm it will cause. Because it did. Fifty Shades glorified abusive relationships and led to people experimenting with BDSM without understanding consent, and real people actually got hurt. You know what might have prevented that? A sensitivity reader who understood how BDSM actually works.

The world doesn’t need your story. I know you’ve been assured since before you started writing that every story deserves to be told, but that’s not true. Your teachers lied to you to make you feel better about yourself. The drawing on your parents’ fridge isn’t evidence that you’ll one day be a better artist than Michelangelo, and your writing doesn’t rival George R. R. Martin. You’re not entitled to an audience, or an agent, or a publisher.

“Every story deserves to be told” is advice that’s meant for a specific context, just like “Never give up.” If you’re fighting a losing battle and the only options are surrender or die, then by all means, give up. Live to fight another day. The writing advice is aimed at people who are worried that their story won’t have an audience, that nobody is going to want to read their sappy romance between a vegetarian vampire and a humanoid robot. It’s not meant to be an excuse to ignore historical or present reality because that doesn’t agree with the vision you have for your book. You might want to write about how your thinly-veiled self-insert character single-handedly saved the Allies in World War II, but that doesn’t mean that the story is going to sell. And perhaps you really loved the cowboys versus Indians trope when you were growing up, but in the meantime most people have realized that those stories are extremely harmful to Native Americans and maybe we shouldn’t be writing them anymore.

The world doesn’t need more stories about marginalized people told from the perspective of those who have historically oppressed them. It needs more #ownvoices stories about acceptance and hope. It needs stories about black vampires and gay Jewish kids who go on adventures. It needs books set in fantasy worlds based on the Middle East where everyone speaks a version of Arabic.

I know your story is your baby, and you can’t bear to hear criticism of it, but you need to realize that the child you’ve raised has turned into a bigoted piece of shit, and you’re the one to blame. It’s spewing racist bullshit and perpetuating misinformation, and we’re not offended, we’re angry. You’ve chosen to exploit us, our stories and our pain, for your own personal gain, without a care for the damage you might cause. And the bigger your fanbase, the greater your responsibility.

With your privilege, you’ve never had your basic humanity denied based on your gender, race, or sexual orientation. You probably can’t imagine what that’s like. You don’t silently suffer microaggressions day in and day out, because to protest every one would take up all your time and energy, and label you as “easily offended” and “problematic.”

Making mistakes in representation isn’t the same as getting historical details wrong—although I’d bet you actually put some effort into researching your setting, unlike the people you write about, assuming that your goal is getting published rather than languishing in obscurity.

Really, what are you afraid of? That you’ll be told you’re wrong? Wouldn’t you rather learn that before you publish, rather than showing your ass to millions of people? You might believe that “creativity dies in committee” (actual quote that dudebro re-tweeted), but if you employ an editor, you’ve already acknowledged that no one can write a story entirely on their own. Imagine if writers decided to stop using editors because they “stifle creativity.” Only you don’t have to imagine it; all you have to do is go read one of Anne Rice’s later books.

You don’t have to take your sensitivity reader’s advice, any more than you have to listen to everything your editor has to say. I hired a sensitivity reader for one of my books that has a black heroine, and she objected to my method of acknowledging asexual people, not realizing that I am myself #ownvoices for the asexual spectrum. She also wanted me to be more detailed in my descriptions of black skin tones, when I tend not to be detailed at all in my descriptions of anything. I did read up on the resources she provided, but I don’t feel comfortable describing black skin tones in more detail than white skin tones, because I feel that would serve to exoticize non-white people.

In my case, it also helped that I read several #ownvoices black romances before writing the second draft of the story, which I knew going in would be a complete re-write. That sort of research is certainly beneficial, and it can help you avoid obvious pitfalls, but there are going to be things that you as a white writer just don’t notice. Like when my black heroine talked about race issues at a dinner with her white boyfriend’s two sisters and their white husbands. I’m used to reading black women talking about issues online, but in-person they tend to be more reticent, since there’s no easy escape.

Sensitivity readers aren’t there to stifle creativity. They exist to help your story be the best it can be. If your story’s only value is in insulting other cultures, then there’s no reason to impose it upon your audience. Plenty of stories do that already; your story is in no way unique. But if you actually care about depicting marginalized people in an accurate and respectful manner, then sensitivity readers can help you accomplish that goal.

Just remember, random cishet white dude #792, as you go to write your adventure about a gay trans Muslim woman—the world. Doesn’t. Need. Your. Story.

Last week I wrote about sex scenes, which are the most difficult scenes to write. A close second are fight scenes. Like sex scenes, they require a close focus on choreography, and a deep dive into the characters’ psyches to ensure that the reader is receiving the appropriate emotional punch. A clinical description of what’s going on just isn’t going to cut it.

Similar to the way authors will throw in sex scenes to try to spice up their story without actually understanding how to make them good, a lot of authors include gratuitous fight scenes in the hopes that they’ll up the tension and keep the readers invested. But a bad fight scene can turn a reader off more quickly than having no fight scene at all. If they get bored during what should be the most exciting portion of the book, they won’t want to continue to waste their time.

The most important part about writing a fight scene is to make the reader feel the tension. It’s not about showing off your main character’s cool fighting skills; it’s about upping the stakes and making your reader want to root for the main character. That’s not to say you can’t include some gratuitous scenes that demonstrate what a badass your main character is. Just that such scenes should probably be relatively short, and embedded within another scene; otherwise they’ll feel anticlimactic.

Pacing is incredibly important when writing fight scenes. You may have noticed that I tend to have a rather flowing pace. My paragraphs are several sentences long, and my sentences tend to have multiple clauses. The words flow from one to another, allowing readers to take in the concepts and mull them over in a leisurely fashion. The way I write is almost conversational.

Fight scenes need to be quicker. They’re packed full of action. We want the reader to read them at the same pace they’re happening. Fast. All at once. Each sentence should pack a punch. What would be a single sentence in a normal scene can be split up into two or even three sentences for a fight scene. Paragraphs should also be shorter, consisting of only two or three sentences. This allows the reader’s eyes to speed down the page, making it seem as though everything is happening more quickly.

It’s also important to engage the senses when writing fight scenes. Don’t spend long, rambling paragraphs setting the scene, but throw in little descriptions. The coppery scent of blood. The thud of fist on flesh. Searing pain as a sword cuts into your character’s side.

Also, don’t fall into the trap of describing everything that’s going on. Fights are chaotic by nature. Your character probably isn’t aware of the entire scene. Being sparse on the details can help your reader feel like they’re present in the moment. It recreates the chaos. Any internal monologue should be brief, and perhaps cut off halfway through, both to maintain the pace of the scene, and to show that your character just doesn’t have time to think.

Your character doesn’t have to come close to losing the fight to make the scene exciting and full of tension. The most gripping description of disarming a bomb I’ve ever read was in Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain. The bomb is disarmed with, like, thirty seconds to spare, but because the person disarming it doesn’t have a way to tell how much time is left, and because of the way the scene is written, it’s even more impactful than watching a clock slowly count down from ten as the hero desperately tries to diffuse the bomb.

In fact, if your hero almost loses every fight, the fight scenes will start to lose their impact. The greater the danger the hero regularly faces without lasting consequences, the more the reader will start to trust in their plot armor to see them through. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The first time a bullet whizzes by your hero’s head is terrifying; by the fortieth time, it’s old news, and your readers no longer care. Worse, they may lose faith in your writing. In a battle where the odds against surviving are ninety-nine to one, there are still going to be some survivors, and it makes sense to choose one of them as your hero. But in real life, the next time that hero goes up against a hundred-to-one odds, he’s probably going to lose. Eventually his luck is going to run out.

You have to up the stakes. Allow your hero to get injured in a way that affects his ability to fulfil his quest. Or just don’t count on the specter of looming death to keep your readers invested, but rather write in a way that the hero’s fear is evident on the page. Maybe he didn’t come close to dying, so your readers aren’t becoming skeptical about how often he’s managed to cheat death; but he did injure his ankle in the fight, and now he’s limping. He’s aware of the pain with every step.

I’m not saying this is easy to get right. It’s not. Every time I go to write a fight scene, I have to completely change the way I form sentences, the way I convey what’s going on. Not to mention the difficulty with striking a balance between showing off how utterly badass your main character is, letting them get beat up a bit to demonstrate that they’re actually in danger, and not making the possibility of success so slim that your readers can no longer suspend their disbelief.

But fight scenes can be integral to the success of your story. They’re worth putting forth the effort. And the better you make them, the more invested your reader will be in your book.

The romance genre gets a bad rap. People like to make fun of it for being formulaic, for dealing with themes they deem unimportant, and of course, for the utterly atrocious writing that can be found in several of the sex scenes. What they don’t understand is that writing sex scenes is hard. For me, it’s the hardest part of writing a book. So of course in a genre where most of the books contain one or more sex scene, there are going to be a lot of really bad ones. Take any non-romance book that contains a sex scene, and odds are better than even that it will be terrible. In the romance genre, you at least have to go looking for the awful sex.

So why is writing sex so difficult? Most of us have actually had decent sex at some point in our lives, so you’d think it would be easier to write than, say, piloting a spaceship, or transforming into a werewolf.

Well, there are a few factors here. The first is the fact that the reader is viewing the act, not participating in it. Amateur porn, even when it’s a video of two people who are really enjoying themselves, isn’t as titillating as the professional stuff that we all know is in no way realistic. With books, we don’t have to worry about camera angles, but we do have to keep the reader invested when they’re not the one experiencing all the sexy sensations. Imagine a scene that went like this, just describing what was going on:

“His eight-inch penis was erect. She took off her shirt, revealing C-cup breasts. Then she took off her pants and panties. She lay on the bed, butt right at the edge, legs spread. He knelt between them. He went down on her until she came. Then he rose, and thrust into her vagina. She was so wet. He could tell she wanted him. He continued thrusting until she came again. ‘Chad!’ she cried. ‘You’re so good!’ He came.”

Not very sexy, right? The reason for that is we’re just seeing the actions, not feeling the emotions. This is a place where it’s very important to show, rather than tell. Emotions can be conveyed through getting deep into the character’s minds, and also through subtle descriptions of their reactions.

“His cock throbbed in anticipation. He’d never been harder in his life. After all these weeks of dancing around each other, finally he was going to be able to taste the depths of her passion. His hands trembled.”

Same scenario, but that first sentence has been expanded to an entire paragraph, and we’re right there along with our hero, feeling what he’s feeling, cheering him on. Sure, it’s a little cliché, but I wrote it on the fly.

Another big thing is word choice. Some words are sexier than others. I’m not talking about vulgarity; “he thrust his dick into her weeping pussy” is pretty vulgar, but not terribly sexy. I try to avoid technical terms like penis and vagina, because they make the scene sound clinical. I also don’t like cunt or pussy. Cunt just sounds harsh, and pussy sounds awkward.

Cock can be good to use in reference to a penis, but be careful not to overuse it. That leads to things becoming repetitive, and repetitive is boring. On the other hand, you have to be careful with your euphemisms. Purple-helmeted warrior might be a change of pace and let you avoid saying cock for the umpteenth time, but unless you’re going for humor, it has no place in a sex scene.

There’s also the matter of making sure we keep track of what’s actually going on. If you’ve read a lot of sex scenes, especially in fanfiction, you’ve probably come across at least one where one of the characters would have needed extra limbs or inhuman flexibility in order for the scene to make sense. In most scenes, there’s a minimum distance between all of the characters, which means you don’t have to focus on every little detail. In sex scenes, they’re literally occupying the same space. Where do all the limbs go? Is it physically possible for your six-foot-six hero to be fucking your five-foot-nothing heroine and sucking her breast at the same time? There’s really no easy way to make sure you’re not violating the laws of physics, but one thing you can do is take notes while watching porn. Just remember that a lot of the positions shown in pornography aren’t the most comfortable in real life.

So far we have to focus on word choice, variance, choreography, and making sure we’re accurately conveying our character’s emotional experience to our readers—and we haven’t even gotten into the two most difficult parts. This is a sex scene devoid of context, one that currently exists only to give our readers a prurient thrill. But in a romance novel, sex scenes serve a purpose. They redefine the characters’ relationship and drive the plot. They can also serve to explore power dynamics between the characters, and their differing personalities. And if the book has multiple sex scenes—or you’re writing a series with multiple books—you have to be careful to make each scene unique. When I first started reading romance novels, there was an author who basically recycled the same five sex scenes for all of her books, and it got to the point where I would forget who the hero was of a particular novel, because there was nothing to tell the books apart.

Power dynamics doesn’t just mean bondage and dominance. It can be about which character has more experience. Is your heroine a virgin? Is your hero a virgin? Do you have two heroes, and one of them is significantly older? Is one of your characters shy, and the other one more confident in their sexuality? Are multiple of these factors at play, and how do they interact? How do their personalities inside the bedroom differ from their personalities outside the bedroom?

In my novel Give ’Em Hell, the heroine is the first female Navy SEAL. She’s strong, confident, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. The story starts with her rescuing the hero from ISIS. But she doesn’t know how to communicate her needs in the bedroom, because in her only previous relationship, her ex simply dictated to her what she ought to like. So when they have sex, she’s not just having a good time with a sexy archaeologist; she’s also healing from past trauma, and learning to articulate her desires, while giving up the reins to someone she trusts.

When writing a sex scene, consider:
-Why are these characters having sex?
-What emotions are they feeling in the moment?
-What sorts of things do they like?
-Is this a lust-fueled coupling or a slow seduction?
-How much time do they have? Is there a chance of them being interrupted?
-What are their hopes and fears with regards to this encounter?
-Who’s calling the shots?

In addition to all of this, you also need to figure out a way to work in discussions of protection and consent. Alphahole heroes may have been all the rage in decades past, but recently there’s been a growing trend of readers who just can’t connect with a hero who doesn’t respect the heroine’s agency. Even though the readers may know from context that both characters are into it, it’s important for the characters to be clear about that, as well. This can be as simple as a character saying “Do you like that?” or “Tell me if I do something that you don’t like.” Counterintuitively, it can also be sexy if one character does something the other one doesn’t like, the other one objects, and the first character stops doing it. Yes, we’re weaving together a fantasy, and maybe in our fantasy both characters instinctively know exactly how to bring the other the maximum amount of pleasure, and that’s fine. But we can also have fantasies where the other character isn’t a mind-reader, and makes mistakes, but is willing to respect our boundaries and change their behavior accordingly. This serves a double purpose of increasing the sexual tension, and making the romance more believable—not only in the sense of people being flawed, but in the sense of demonstrating why the other character is coming to care for them.

As for protection, you might think you don’t have to include it in your story. Your characters will only conceive or get STDs if you want them to, so why should you interrupt the sex scene for them to roll on a condom? Well, there are two things at play here. First, is it in character for them to be irresponsible? You might know they’re not going to get pregnant, but they don’t. Second, how will your readers feel about the risks your characters are taking? We don’t read sex scenes in a vacuum. We bring along all our knowledge and past experiences. If your readers are worried about the consequences of the characters having unprotected sex, or want to shake the characters for being irresponsible, they’re not going to be enjoying the scene. Now, some of this is subject to the limits of historical accuracy; your Regency hero may not have access to early condoms, and he’s probably not thinking to question the heroine about whether she’s contracted an STD. But he can still pull out, or she can use a sponge. These methods aren’t as effective as modern birth control, but it shows that the characters are aware of the risks and doing what they can to mitigate the danger.

And of course, if you want to improve your craft, the best way to do so is to study the masters. Find an author in your genre—historical, paranormal, contemporary, etc.—who writes good sex scenes, and analyze what it is about those scenes that makes them good, and how to incorporate that into your own work. Kresley Cole writes some of the best sexual tension I’ve ever read, and KJ Charles is an expert at writing incredibly hot gay male historical romance. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s going to be easy.