Ignoring The Redline

This has been a crazy busy week for me. I do apologize for posting just two articles but sometimes life dictates what you will do whether you like it or not. Well, life really didn't dictate things as much as work did but that's another story.

As much as my mind feels like it's been through a blender I just could not pass up the chance to write about today's topic. I will admit that this topic came to me as I was revising my manuscript but then again we learn the most when we are actually doing that which we want to learn about.

Like many of you I write on a laptop using Microsoft Word. I believe we have all seen the red zigzag line under sentences and words whenever we make a grammatical mistake or misspell a word. In my opinion many of us have come to rely on that redline while writing and as soon as we see it we want to correct whatever that problem is before we continue. There is a time; however, when we should ignore that redline and continue writing. Yes it will be hard to ignore that line but it is necessary in this instance. Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that I should leave a mistake in my cherished manuscript? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. When should you do this? When you have a conversation between your characters.

I truly believe that once we start writing and we see these errors our old English teachers pop in our heads and reprimand us until we fix it. Let's face it...we don't use proper English when we talk to others, especially if they are friends or relatives. The strange thing is when we try to write these conversations in our manuscript we get this itch to have everything proper and correct.

As you know I am revising my manuscript and this topic flew at me like a missile. I was reading a conversation between two of my characters who happen to be brothers. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello Steve. What are you doing tonight?"
"I am watching television. What are you doing?"
"The same but I wanted to talk to you."

This is just a small snippet of the conversation but enough for you to get the point. When I read this section I immediately thought "this is not how people talk." At least it's not how I talk to my brother anyway. So one of my revisions to this conversation went like this:

"Hey man, what's going on."
"Nothin, watching a little T.V. You?"
"The same. Dude we need to talk."

Of course after I made the changes those redlines from Word were all over the place but I believe the changes made the conversation more believable and comfortable for the reader. Granted some of you may read the above and think that they both are no good but you can see the difference between the flow of how we talk to one another as compared to writing properly.

If you are having problems with conversations in your manuscript I would recommend relaxing for a moment and picture yourself having a conversation with that character. How you speak to a friend, family member or stranger is your best example of how your characters should talk within the pages of your manuscript.