This post is just a fun little writing game to point out some of the quirks of my writing, some intentional, some of them I thought about, and others that just keep showing up no matter what I do.

This was inspired by Joel's post of the same name which was inspired by shellshark's post. Mostly I see it as a little fun, not unlike the hash games that show up on the fediverse. Also an opportunity to say why I do some things and some that haunt me.

Tokenization

Let's start with the most annoying: I frequently write the opposite word of what I mean. I also skip words when I'm writing. Because I also type it correctly, that means I don't notice it when I'm checking for spelling or even scanning the page. This has been one of my most frustrating little bugs I've never really handled.

I also miss the plurals of words or skip a couple key letters (but still spell some random word right).

I also start paragraphs frequently with “So,...” or "Because…".

I also say “does that make sense” way too often in general.

I do not like complex sentences. I loved learning German, but hated having to wait until the end of the sentence to know what was going on. And, while I have a relatively large vocabulary, I don't use when I write. I like simple sentences; according to a lot grammar programs, I write at a “third grade level.” I'm not sure what that means since I was reading David Eddings and Andre Norton in third grade.

I also love interrobangs but I use them for one specific purpose: when someone is screaming out a question. Honestly, if I had the nerve, I would typeset the books with “‽” instead of “!?” (and never "?!"). You never know, I might some day.

Likewise, I have rules for using ellipses (only for trailing sentences or thoughts, eliding, and leading examples) and em-dashes (parathenitcal asides and interrupted sentences and thoughts) along with specific formatting. Outside of those, I almost never use them.

Outside of ellipses, I don't use repeated punctuation. You will never see a “!!” or a “??” out of me.

Likewise, you will almost never see a casual use of italics or bolds in my writing and rarely in my conversations. Italics are for names of books and plays, ships, and whatever else the Chicago Manual of Style says they are for. One of my early lessons was “the words you write should give the intensity or purpose” right after they told me I should never use an interrobang again. Still going to use those.

Details

I'm terrible at details. I mean, I usually scatter in a few here and there, but I don't need to know someone's height or how big their bust is. Most of the time, it's a light brush of hair color, eye color, and specific build.

But, that depends on the character. Since I write single point-of-view stories almost exclusively, the personality and interests of the main character also dictates the details. The seamstress notices stitches and the fit of clothing. A warrior will have obvious weapons right up there before they notice hair color. The teenage boy is going to be staring at someone's ass or breasts. My OCD mage has a stunning amount of detail that I have to dial back because it can be overwhelming (I don't write Mudd much anymore because of that).

Now, the part of me that shows up in every character is how I show emotions. Remember the scene in The Accountant when they are in prison and Ben Affleck's character says “you are angry.”

That's kind of me.

I don't always know when I'm feeling an emotional unless I look at myself objectively. ("I appear to be speaking loudly and typing faster, I think I'm upset.") I'm not so great at reading other people's emotions at an unconscious level, so I'm usually looking for someone's body language, how their language structure changes, how they fidget or what goes on in their faces. That shows up in my writing because I don't really have a concept of “they are angry” in my head. I have to show it, because that is how I perceive emotions.

Sadly, this happens even for my characters who can understand emotions and don't have my struggles.

Structure

My paragraph structure is formulaic. Some of this comes from my favorite writing book, Techniques of a Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain but others come from patterns. I'm fairly strict about one paragraph per character. I used to have one person saying something, then have the next character in the same paragraph but then I found it confusing. So, the actions and dialog are kept in the same paragraph to make it easier to know who is speaking.

I also use the back and forth with these paragraphs, the motivation-reaction unit (MRU) that Swain talks about. Those two together tie together into the beat of moving the story faster but also help me picture the scene since one thing leads to another in a logical sequence.

It also helps prevent something Mickey Zucker Reichert told me: there is no such thing as simultaneous action on the page.

Swain and Jim Butcher's also create another reoccurring pattern in my writing. I like to take a chapter to smell the roses. The so called “sequel” scenes where the characters have a chance to process what happened in the previous one, come up with a new plan that will eventually fail, and then go into it. That helps break up the constant build-up of scenes, which I usually reverse for the end of books, and instead keeps things moving steadily.

And the last is: I don't do scene breaks. I mean, I used to but then I realized I don't like the “hours later” starts to paragraphs, so I break apart the chapters. New location? Chapter. Hour later? Chapter. Character takes a twenty minute nap? Chapter. Sex scene? Depends on the book, but fade to black is always a chapter.

Exposition

I hate exposition. I'm not talking building a scene and setting it. I'm mostly talking about the “as everyone in the entire room already knows, the current president of France is….” If everyone knows, then I want the scene to be natural.

That is why I have epigraphs for when I really need to tell everyone a rod is sixteen and a half feet, or a chain is sixty-six feet. When I need to let readers know who the royalty is in the country or how a certain aspect of magic works.

This does mean I don't resolve every plot. If a character doesn't have the opportunity to know why something happened, they will never know. Someone else might, but not them. I try to resolve the “important” plots, but I'll leave some dangling ones here and there to be picked up later.

Style Guide

Now, given all those, you probably aren't surprise to know that I've formalized some of the intentional aspects of my writing and posted it as a style guide for my editors. That way, they won't call out things I've done on purpose or I do because of my tools.

Conversations

And the last section, how I talk informally. The biggest one is when I have a problem, I give a lot of details to explain it. Way too much in some cases, but I don't like wasting people's time, have a relatively high typing speed, and can read at a rather impressive rate. So, to avoid someone going through the basic diagnostic problems (“is your computer turned on”, “have you rebooted”), I will try to detail what I have tried so we can skip the easy steps.

This leads into first “wall of text” responses I give. The other is when I'm upset. When I am upset, I type faster. Usually, I'm trying to explain why I did something and my reasoning behind it because someone implied I was stupid or didn't understand the problem. This leads to the other wall of text.

Probably the most impressive one was when I was going through college. I was trying to get out of a networking class because I had been doing it for years. The person who reviewed it came back with a “nothing in this person's resume indicates they have any idea how networking goes.”

My response started with asking what level of the OCI networking did they feel I didn't have enough experience. And then started detailing my experience in all seven layers. I waxed poetically about running cat5 in the drop ceilings of my work or the hours I sat in front of a nine-inch monitor writing a real-time stock trading application. It took me an hour to write thirty pages of a response, which I sent back before I realized I should have sat on it or maybe edited it.

About two hours later, I got the “yeah… I'm not going to read this, good enough” response and I got out of the class.

The last thing is probably related to whatever value of the autism spectrum I'm on: I tag a lot of my sentences with an emotional state at the end. Usually in terms of “old school” emoji (:), :(). I know that text is a lossy form of communication, and it is highly likely the people will misunderstand you, so I try to give hints of whatever emotional state I think I'm trying to convey.

I don't like graphical emoji though, mainly because I can never figure out the keys and I don't like the packaged emojis on most systems. But, if I find ones I like, such the fruits on Microsoft Teams, I'll use them fairly heavily.

Now, emojis at the beginning of a sentence is a thread indicator. That means I'm having multiple conversations going on at once and need to group them. Kind of like playing D&D and having an in-character chat, and out-of-character chat, and a “anyone see the cheetos” chat.

Final Thoughts

So, those are some of my quirks of writing and the origin of a few of them. Hopefully, this will interest someone but it was also a chance to self-reflect on myself.