What is an interjection? I like how F.J. Rhatz describes them, “a noisy utterance like the cry of an animal.”
I was speed walking from my bedroom to the kitchen to grab a snack. I was so famished I walked too fast and hit my pinky toe on a door. Ouch! Crap! Darn it!
Those are interjections.
How do you edit your 1,000-word article in five minutes, your 5,000-word short story in ten, and your 400-page novel in under an hour?
Hint: forget spell check.
Steven Pressfield says he can’t read authors with strong voices anymore (he cites Philip Roth) because they rub off on him. That’s fine for Steve, but for us fledgling writers, those voices are like calcium supplements. They make our bones strong.
Lately, I’ve been reading Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. This is a problem because Annie Dillard has a unique and beautiful voice, and without meaning to, I stole it. I’m slightly embarrassed about it, so keep it on the DL.
When my English Literature professor, Marilyn McEntyre, told us Hemingway would write all day in small Parisian cafes and, afterward, take his lunch to the Musee du Luxembourg where he would look at Cezannes, it transformed how I looked at authors—and writing, for that matter—forever.
Elmore Leonard said, Never use any word other than “said” for dialogue. Why? Try reading the above out loud. The “he exclaimed” and “he admonished” and “she cried” become like a child saying your name over and over. Distracting.
The word “said,” though, is easily ignored. You want the attention focused on the dialogue, not your clever use of verbs. In many cases, it’s good to change up word choice. You don’t want to use “quintessential” or “luminescence” too many times. “Said” is a major exception. Let us tune it out. Please.