60 Seconds with Ann Swinfen

Ann Swinfen spent her childhood partly in England and partly on the east coast of America. She read Classics and Mathematics at Oxford. Her first three novels, The Anniversary, The Travellers, and A Running Tide, all with a contemporary setting but also historical resonance, were published by Random House, with translations into Dutch and German. Her fourth novel, The Testament of Mariam, marked something of a departure. Set in the first century, it recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history. At the same time it explores life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. Her second historical novel, Flood, is set in the fenlands of East Anglia during the seventeenth century, where the local people fought desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators.

Currently she is working on a series set in late sixteenth century London, featuring a young Marrano physician who is recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. The first book in the series is The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez.

She now lives on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband (formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee), a cocker spaniel and two Maine Coon cats.


Website: http://www.answinfen.com
Twitter name: @annswinfen
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ann.swinfen?fref=ts
Link to Mariam podcast: http://bit.ly/1DPEhhh

Tell us what genre you write in and why?

In the past I’ve written contemporary literary fiction, but I’m now writing historical fiction. History fascinates me, and the sense that all our roots are in the past. We are what we are because of everything that has gone before.

Where do you write?

In an armchair, with an extra large lap tray holding my laptop, notebook, pen, cup of tea… Piled up on either side, reference books and notes.

What location most inspires your writing?

I love the sea, but also any wild open spaces – mountains, moorlands.

Which of your books are you most proud of - and why?

Aren’t all of our books like our children? It’s unkind to single one out. But I suppose The Testament of Mariam is the most searching. Though I always try to confront serious issues as well as tell a good story.

Tell us why you chose to write 'The Testament of Mariam'?

Those who haven’t read The Testament of Mariam should understand that it is not a religious book. I’m not a church-going Christian. However, I do believe there was a remarkable man called Yeshûa ben Yosef (his Aramaic name), living in the Roman-occupied province of Palestine in the first century. I was intrigued by the fact that a man from a peasant village in the northern, rebellious part of the country managed to change the world with his message. Yet he was flesh and blood, had a normal family. What would it have been like to be the sister of such a man? That was my starting point. I wanted to dig away to find what it would have been like. At the beginning.

How did you handle the research?

Research is a joy! It feeds my appetite for history and I gobble it up. I probably buy far too many research books (the house is groaning under their weight), but I like to own them. The internet can be useful as a starting point, but I prefer to use the professionals. For Mariam I was astonished to find what a lot of detailed information was available, including the massive transcription of the Dead Sea Scrolls. When I needed to write a psalm of my own to use in the Essene portion, I even found a book on the structure and imagery of the psalms!

How did you so effortlessly transport the reader to the period/location?

I suppose it’s because when I am writing about a particular period and location, I am simultaneously living there myself, inside my head. All my senses are alive to the situation, so I suppose that comes across in the writing.

What book has most impressed you this year?

I seem to have been rereading a lot this year – the whole of Dorothy Dunnett’s work, the whole Cadfael series. I’ve also read, for the third or fourth time, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I’ve long admired Hilary Mantel’s work and I think these are her best yet, so they take the prize.

You have moved from trad to indie publishing - why?

I became very frustrated with traditional publishing, with all its restrictions and long, long delays. When my agent said she wasn’t interested in handling historical fiction any more, it was time to move on. Indie publishing hands back control to the author, so we are reverting to the publishing practices which existed right up to the end of the nineteenth century. Indie authors form a warm and supportive community. I’m in control and have a wonderful group of friends – no wonder I’m happy!

What are your future writing plans?

I’ll be continuing with the Elizabethan Christoval Alvarez series, featuring a young physician working as a code-breaker and spy, which will eventually carry on into the reign of James I. A lot of readers have been urging me to write a sequel to my seventeenth-century fenland novel, Flood, so that is on the cards. A mediaeval series is a gleam in the corner of my eye.

Thank you so much, Gill, for inviting me to do this interview – excellent questions!


Anne has kindly offered one lucky reader the chance to listen to the audiobook version of The Testament of Mariam for FREE via Audible. Simply email whether you are US or UK based to Gillian@wordswithjam.co.uk to enter the prize draw.

You can read Gillian's review of The Testament of Mariam .... HERE

The Gate Clock, a short story by Rae Gellel

The Gate Clock

The town is mostly dead; the drizzle-splashed pavements beaten upon only by the faint orange light of street lamps, the occasional unsteady, slapping steps of a bare-footed girl carrying her stiletto shoes in one hand. The blunt faces of shuttered shop fronts shun the night - vintage clothes and retro records and gimmicky coffee bars want no part in its proceedings, and the only life exists in garish, bustling pockets.

The Gate Clock is one such pocket.

Although establishments that thrive on darkness and drink often have little regard for the affluence of an area, the pub, with its hastily scrawled chalk signs boasting '4 shots for £5', is still a shining beacon of coarseness amongst its more genteel neighbours; for, hanging like an after-thought beneath the rarely-lit neon title, is a sub-heading synonymous with cheap drink and late opening hours, with vomit-splattered toilets and over-dressed women, with easy sex and impending regrets - 'J.D. Wetherspoon'.

Its roomy decor of stained carpets and maple panels is unremarkable. But such widely appreciated attributes attract a loud, mismatching rabble of visitors; ghetto boys in obscenely white trainers, trendy students in Che-Guevara adorned T shirts, groups of old men with alcohol-pickled skin who grope and snicker at scantily-clad girls and groups of young men with acne-mottled skin who fumble them instead with awkward, stilted conversation.

The heavy glass doors are in permanent motion, exhaling icy breath on the bare backs of legs and opening onto a large courtyard of wooden tables and an overspill of nicotine gulping pub-goers, small rings of shivering, chattering people that protrude, mirage-like, from clouds of smoke. In a world punctuated only by the occasional whoosh of a passing car, the gathering is a sudden explosion of noise that seems to perforate the night itself, the purposefully exaggerated laughter of drunk young things a chorused obnoxiousness as they stagger to the bus stop a convenient few feet away.

Tonight a woman of indeterminable age is perched beneath its cracked glass, sobbing into her trembling palms with an arena of sagging Waitrose bags at her feet. She does not raise her head for the occasional half-hearted, off-kilter concern of a passing drunk.

Two doors up is a perennially lit McDonald's, the lurid yellow 'M' illuminating a seemingly unconscious homeless man with an eerily celestial glow. Beside his damp bed of blankets is a chipped dog's bowl, but no dog.

It was in this world of half-light and half-life that Silena found the still smoking butt of relapse, smoldering away enticingly on an empty table. She was on her way inside when it caught her eye - inexplicable really, so tiny a thing, emitting the most miniscule light from its fag-sized inferno - but she saw it nonetheless, and plucked it from the green Heineken ashtray. She huddled her treasure under her oversized leather jacket, avoiding the curious gaze of a solitary smoker as she shoved through the heavy doors. She didn't smoke herself.

Paul was a smoker, the very same one who watched the skinny Blonde snatch up the tail end of a Marlboro Light like it was a precious jewel. He felt he was three quarters of the way to pissed, though in reality he had surpassed that particular signpost hours ago, and in the drink-addled treacle of his brain the girl's strange act was so intensely perplexing that it distressed him. If he had been feeling sharper he might have drawn it to his friends' attention and quickly extinguished its curiosity with laughter and jokes gently crested with misogyny, but that night, interchangeable from multitudinous nights in the past few years, he was particularly drunk and particularly deadened, his enjoyment an auto-piloted exercise that operated on an epidermis-level. It was as if the sheer inscrutability of the deed raised such flurried questions in his mind that it was momentarily aroused from its stupor, the sudden passing beam of a torch that illuminated his intelligence long enough to have him realise that he felt like utter shit. It wasn't dissimilar to being operated on under local anesthetic, a brief spike of pain awakening the brain to the full horror of its situation. But he returned to the idle talk of his friends regardless, his own cigarette turning to ash between his shaking fingers and his labored thoughts scrabbling for foothold.

Silena was skimming shoulders with a stream of short-skirted traffic as she two-stepped up the pub stairs and towards the ladies' lavatory. Once through the candy-pink door she dodged women deftly repairing the paint of their faces, posing in frozen-faced groups for mobile phone pictures, sisterly passing the last few treasured scraps of toilet paper under rickety doors, and slammed her way into an empty stall and onto a cracked, likely germ-ridden toilet seat. Inside, she withdrew the smoking cigarette butt in one fluttery, frantic hand, using her unoccupied fingers to peel back the black skin of her man’s jacket and expose a sparsely fleshed forearm that was checkered with a myriad of faint pink lines, a few raised and fat with collagen like some awful infestation of worms. For the briefest of seconds she merely teased her skin with the cigarette, choosing an unmarked spot between its many self-embellishments to stimulate the smallest surrendering of flesh and agitation of cells. And then she stubbed it violently, forcefully, in fear of losing her incentive, and it was done, or rather undone, since four years of recovery were rendered quite irrelevant in that instant.

Downstairs a thirty-something woman sat amongst her cackling work-mates, smiling thinly into her gin and tonic as men's names spilled messily around her from wet, smudged lips - a list of their dream mates, Danny from I.T., that bloke we met in Majorca, Brad Pitt and Vin Diesel and oh my god that guy at the bar, have you seen him? All the while a voice in her head murmured in increasing urgency and tempo the name of her own dream lover, unchanged but unuttered since childhood; it was, quite unequivocally, Judy Garland.

Behind the drink-splattered, bled and sobbed upon bar, a fresh faced, apron-wearing man dried glasses with a glazed, stupefied expression on his face. He was remembering the exact moment the life leeched from his mother’s eyes precisely two weeks before, turning them into two depthless marbles in the face of a human wax dummy, carefully arranged on a bed of sweat dampened sheets and useless, spiraling tubes.

At opposite ends of the bar, each equal in their irritable efforts to get the oblivious bartenders's attention, are a young girl and an old man. She is contemplating the nature of the drink she will order, for this solitary decision is a miniature pre-preemptive  to a much more momentous one she will have to make later in the week, regarding the small body secretly forming inside her stomach. The old man is remembering how the face of a German soldier caved in under the butt of his gun, stalling his blundering retreat home with yet another drink for fear that that 70-year-old mess of blood and brain matter may materialize on one of his grandchildren's faces.

Silena again took to the stairs, this time with a slow, deliberate place, oblivious to a girl attempting to contain her own vomit as she shoved past to the ladies' lavatory. She did not feel the worn carpet under her shoes for she was levitating, a changed woman lit with an inner relief, with the serenity of the recently exorcised. As she reached the last step her eyes locked with a man forcing his way through the pub doors in an burst of icy air and nicotine odor; Paul.

For a second his brain was wracked with recognition and he approached her with the intention of saying something quite pivotal; but by the time they had reached one another this thread had slipped from between his fingers and fallen away into the intoxicated recesses of his mind. Now she was just a pretty girl with a peaceful, alluring smile on her lips.

That night they would hastily assemble a paltry, rickety bridge across their existences, across the vacuous gulf that is the human condition, and embark on a white-knuckled crawl to one another. The chit-chat, the exchanged nuggets of meaningless information and points of mutual interest, the coy side long glances and brushes of skin, these were the boards, the hammer and nails used to forge their bridge, to advance them past last-orders and into the chill night, to drive them through front doors and onto the bed of whoever's home. And although in the morning they would both race to precede the others rejection, her gathering her things to leave, he pretending to be asleep, in their fleeting merging of flesh and sensation, in the frantic clash of bones and the uncontrolled mingling of voices, they each found a moment's relief. They were the lucky ones.

Rae Gellel is a 23 year old Londoner with a Creative Writing degree and no idea what to do with it. She works with animals by day and writes by night, wondering if it's really possible to create a great work of fiction in cow-print pyjamas. 

Cashews, Chaos and an Ill Wind, a short story by Maureen Bowden

Last year, Laura next door’s mum ran off with the manager from Argos. Her dad lost the plot and it wasn’t much fun for Laura, so we invited her to our house for Christmas. It changed her life.

After dinner Nanna fell off her chair clutching her belly and howling. We called an ambulance, and Auntie Kathleen, Drunkle Sid and Drunkle Jack said they’d go with her. Drunkle Jack put his arms around Laura and me. “You wanna come, girls? It’ll be a laugh. You never know who’ll turn up in A&E on Christmas day.” So, we all piled into Auntie Kathleen’s car and followed the ambulance.

The paramedics wheeled Nanna, still howling, into a curtained cubicle. The rest of us sat on a bench in the waiting room. A small boy ran amok, yelling, “Yeeeooow,” with a vomit bowl on his head.

His mother, with a smaller girl on her knee, said, “Shut up, Kyle. People are sick in here.” She turned to Auntie Kathleen. “What’s up with the old lady?”

 “Taken poorly after dinner: too many sprouts.”

“And vodkas,” Drunkle Sid said.

Auntie Kathleen changed the subject. “What brings you here?”

“It’s Kylie. Stuck a cashew nut up her nose and we can’t get it out.” She cuddled the toddler on her lap, “Can we, Sweetie?” Kylie sucked her dummy and pulled clumps of stuffing out of a hole in the neck of a one-eyed Igglepiggle.

A draught of December air hit us as two bikers came in, dragging an unconscious third to the reception desk.

Laura gripped my arm. “Hannah, it’s ‘The Sons of Chaos.’”  One had a shaved head, forked-tongued reptile tattoo on his neck, and ‘Snake’ embroidered on the back of his jacket. “Snake’s the president,” she whispered. The other had a mass of curls and enough facial hair to stuff a cushion. His embroidery said ‘Jango’. The sleeper had a waist-length ponytail. We couldn’t see his name. He was lying on it.

The receptionist looked at the nameless one. “He’s drunk.”

“Very observant,” Snake said. “We guessed that when his legs stopped working.”

“What’s he been drinking? Spirits? Beer?”

“Yep.”

“Which?”

“Both.”

“We reckon,” Jango said, “he took more than his body could process, and the excess settled in his legs.”

The receptionist’s expression left sarcasm a mile behind. “Undoubtedly.” She clicked her laptop. “Name?”

“Tails,” Snake said.

“Is that his first name or surname?”

“It’s just his name.”

“What’s on his passport?”

“Why don’t you ask him when he regains the power of speech?”

“Who’s his GP?”

“Don’t think he’s got one.”

“Yeah, he has,” Jango said. “The one opposite Argos stapled him up after the machete accident. Remember?”

Laura called to them. “That’s Doctor Gahooly. He gives my dad his Prozac.” Snake and Jango turned around, and Christmas started looking up.

Snake sauntered over to us. “Room for a little one?” He squeezed his six-foot frame next to me on the bench. Jango left Tails on the floor and began getting acquainted with Laura.

I heard Drunkle Jack whisper to Auntie Kathleen, “I don’t like the look of this, Kath.”

“Oh, they’re only bikers. They’re okay,” she said. “One of ‘The Hellfire Stalkers’ works in Argos.  He changes all my broken stuff, no bother.”

“Bloody ’ell, Kath,” Drunkle Sid said. He reached behind me and prodded Snake. “Hey, Worm.”

I dug him in the ribs. “It’s Snake.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “Snake, lad, is it true there’s some of your lot up country called The Sheep Shaggers?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Drunkle Sid’s always like this.”

Snake grinned. “Hey, Acid. You gotta smart mouth.”

Drunkle Sid nudged Drunkle Jack, “Hear that, Jack? I gotta biker name.” Drunkle Jack looked scared.

“You wanna prospect for us, Acid?” Snake said.

“Does that mean I can fight the rozzers?”

“No, it means you can mop up the puke.” Right on cue, Tails started to heave. A passing nurse grabbed the vomit bowl off Kyle’s head and shoved it in Tails’ face.

Kyle howled, “Mum, that man’s being sick in my hat.”

“Never mind, baby,” his mum said. “The nice nurse’ll get you another one.” The nice nurse ignored her and told Snake and Jango to haul Tails into an empty cubicle.

“Is he okay?” I asked when they emerged.

“Yeah,” Snake said. “They’ll let him out when he can walk.”

A mega-fart from Nanna’s cubicle was followed by, “Ooh that’s better.” Fumes of flatulence, with a hint of sprouts, drifted under the curtain.

The doctor popped his head out. “Trapped wind,” he said, holding a hankie over his nose.  “Out you come, Nanna. You can go now. Happy Christmas.”

Nanna toddled out and the doctor ushered in Kylie and her entourage.

“Poo, it stinks in here,” Kyle said. Nobody argued.

Nanna said. “Take me home, Kath. I could murder a voddy.”

“Hang on,” Auntie Kath said. “We can’t all fit in the car and the taxi drivers are bound to be drunk on Christmas day.”

Snake turned to Laura and me. “Why don’t you girls come back with us? We gotta party going on.”

“Can we, Auntie Kath?” I said. “It would solve the problem.”

“I suppose so. As long as you don’t end up like their friend with the excess in his legs.”

Nanna glared at Snake. “You look after them, boyo, or you’ll have me to deal with.”

“Don’t worry, Nanna. We’re not getting on the wrong side of anyone who can fart like that.”

“I’ll pick them up at midnight,” Auntie Kath said, “and they’d better be sober.”

Snake winked. “Walk right in. Our clubhouse is opposite the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.”

“I know. Che Guevara poster in the window and life-size cardboard cut-out of Cher in the porch.”

***

It didn’t last with Snake and me. His wife found out. She put him in hospital for three weeks. I ran for cover, but Laura became a biker chick: tatts, tongue piercing, the whole kit and caboodle.  She rides on the back of Jango’s Harley but she’s saving up for her own bike, and her dad’s still taking the Prozac.

Maureen Bowden is an ex-patriate Liverpudlian living with her musician husband on the island of Anglesey, off the coast of North Wales, where they try in vain to evade the onslaught of their children and grandchildren. She writes for fun and she has had several poems and short stories published. She loves Rock ‘n’ Roll, Shakespeare and cats.

Bit by Bit, a short story by Pauline Brown

I hate pyjamas because they eat you. No really, they do. While you’re alive. Jake’s pyjamas started eating him last year. Tiny bit by teeny bite.

At first I didn’t know it was the pyjamas. I thought Jake was just pretending – even acting like he couldn’t play football anymore, just so’s he could get off going to school. That was till Dad sat me down one day and started going on about the bad things that sometimes happen, and about love and keeping brave and stuff.

I asked Aunty Helen to be straight with me.

“It’s as if something horrid is eating Jake up,” she said. And even though she never said it was his pyjamas, I began to see they must be what she meant. Underneath I knew they were gnawing away at him, sucking the juice out from under his skin, leaving it all tight and grubby-white like the tops of Dad’s drums. I thought if we all stayed very still, we might just hear them nibbling and slurping away, but I could never get anyone to stay quiet for long enough.

“Take your pyjamas off, Jake,” I told him. “They’re eating you up.”

“Don’t be stupid, Stupid,” Jake said, and went back to Minecraft world.

“I don’t want to wear pyjamas any more. Please tell Dad to get me a nightie like Cassie’s instead.”

“Silly Billy,” Aunty Helen said. “You’re a boy. Pyjamas are what all boys wear in bed.”

Boys like Jake, I thought.

It was when Jake got moved to the yellow house with rainbows on the ceilings that I knew for deffo I was right. The place was full of kids whose pyjamas were eating them too. Even the kids that wore plain ones with no monsters or insects on them. Even the ones that pushed trolleys around with plastic bottles and tubes to pump the goo back into their skin.

***

I think Dad is a bit sad that I’ve stopped wanting his bedtime stories, and that I always say I can turn my light out for myself. But, you see, he mustn’t know how I’ve cut my pyjamas into shreds, or how every night I eat another bit of them. Tiny bit, by teeny bite.

First prize in third quarter’s competition 2014

Cedric - A Cautionary Tale for Poets by Donald Nixon

He claimed to be the national bard

and leader of the avant garde.

He wore a wide poetic hat,

wrote obscure verse and kept a cat.

All rhyming verses made him sneer,

gave pain to his poetic rear.

He grimaced, his expression stoic,

when faced with couplets called heroic.

Only sonnets could be worse

for he despised all formal verse.

He boasts of knowing all the great;

claims Carol Ann to be a mate,

and when he’s high on half a shandy,

calls Sir Andrew Motion  - Andy.

One day in search of something new,

he sought a subject at the zoo.

He  mused and heard a lion’s roar,

he thought a potent metaphor.

‘Be careful, sir,’ the keeper said,

‘The lions have not yet been fed.’

But  Cedric paid no heed at all

and wandered through the lions’ hall.

His mind full of his opening lines,

he just ignored all warning signs.

A beast called Laurie shook his mane

when Cedric poked him with his cane.

The lion tried a practice munch,

then swallowed Cedric for his lunch.

The Zoo Board took a PR line

and by the lions put a sign.

It states in fancy copperplate,

CEDRIC, THE POET LAURIE ATE

First prize for the third quarter of the humour verse competition 2014

The Voices in Your Head by Anne Stormont

Don't ignore the voices in your head, write them down and let them speak...

The word voice is one of nuanced meaning. The term covers a broad range from the literal to the figurative, and it's often about more than what is uttered.

The voice is so much more than the ability to make meaningful sounds. It's a complex process and it's a complex concept. It begins as the inner voice, as thought coded into  language, which may then be given external expression.

At its most literal voice describes the facility to make purposeful and meaningful sound in order to communicate. It's fast, economical and dynamic and it requires the active engagement of the listener in order to be interpreted, understood and responded to. The human voice is a way of giving thought and language verbal expression, but it doesn't have to involve making sound.

Soundless use of voice is possible. The use of sign language by the deaf is testament to that. Watch, or take part in, a soundless, signed conversation and you'll see that 'voice' is still very much present. This fact helps to underline that voice is more than noise-making. Indeed even the spoken word is rarely used on its own and is often enhanced by the silent voices of sign and gesture. And, for both speakers and signers, there's the whole other voice of body language.

Just think of the difference between a voiced phone conversation and one that takes place face-to-face and you'll see how layered the human conversational voice is. And that's just the start.

From earliest history, humans have given voice to their inner thoughts and not simply by speaking. From cave paintings to modern art; from body painting for war and ceremonial purposes to the twenty-first century craze for multi-purpose tattooing; from the earliest signals of drum-beat, ram's horn and pipe, and to the symphony orchestra and pop, rock and rap; from tribal chant to opera and hip-hop; from classical and experimental theatre to blockbuster movie; And from stone tablets and camp-fire storytelling to e-books, the inner voice has many routes to outer expression.

But this is a magazine for writers. So whilst acknowledging all of the above let's turn now to words, to words written down and given voice by the writer, to words that are crafted to stick.

The narrative voice of the writer, when used well, can and should be as powerful and versatile as the musical or speaking voice. It will have its own tone, timbre, rhythm and range. In non-fiction, it will proclaim the purpose and content with clarity. In fiction, the voice will convey plot by building content, tension and resolution; setting by building atmosphere, mood and environment; and character by building personality, age and gender. Whatever the genre the voice should strive to be eloquent, erudite and entertaining.

And, as in music and the spoken word, the narrative voice will also use pause and silence. This allows the reader to reflect and thereby will convey much that is powerful and significant.

The process of creating and employing the narrative voice is mysterious and magical. It's a sort of inexplicable alchemy. Anyone who has undergone any kind of talking therapy will know that you often don't know what you think about something until you say it out loud. A thought may be subconscious, but voicing it brings it to the conscious mind. We all make sense of our lives by voicing our personal stories.

And the same can be true of voicing a written narrative. A character's actions or a plot development can sometimes surprise even the author. An unvoiced thought or idea can appear voiced and out there on paper, almost without the conscious engagement of the writer––now that's awesome.

What is also awesome about narrative voice is its potential effects on its readers. Of course, not everything that's written has life-enhancing and life-changing significance, but even relatively lightweight literature can enhance a life by simply entertaining the reader. The possibilities for a strong narrative voice to inspire, motivate and educate are endless. Just ask any political dictator who uses censorship as a means of control if you're not convinced of the power of the unfettered voice.

Words are affective and effective. Words stick. Writers use their narrative voices to give action to those words. And actions speak even louder. So get using those voices. You never know what they may achieve.

Anne Stormont is an author-publisher. She can be a subversive old bat but maintains a kind heart. As well as writing for this fine organ, she writes fiction for adults – mainly of the female-of-a-certain-age persuasion – and for children. She blogs at http://putitinwriting.me  – where you can find out lots more about her.  

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace

Lorraine Mace gives some punctuation and grammar tips in response to readers’ queries.

Niall from Luton gets confused about quote marks and asked for some advice: I see some people use quote marks like these ‘ ’ and others use the ones that look like this “ ”. How can I find out which ones to use and does it matter?

As you’ve shown in your email, there are two different types of quotation marks: single and double. Double quotation marks are now used less than they were in the past, but some magazines and publishers still favour them over the single marks.

The best way to decide which to use is to check the house style of your target market to see which they prefer. If you’re planning to approach a magazine, finding out which they use is as simple as opening a recent copy and looking at the content.

However, if you are planning to submit a manuscript to a publisher or agent, very often they will have their desired formatting style on the submissions pages of their websites. If the guidelines don’t stipulate one or the other, I would simply use the style with which you feel most comfortable.

Do bear in mind that whichever marks you use for direct speech, you would then use the opposite quotation marks to quote 'speech within speech'.

Example:

‘I’m praying Jack hasn’t started drinking again. When he left this morning he said, “I’m going to the supermarket.” That was hours ago and he should have returned by now.’

The double quotation marks show that someone is being quoted word for word. If you use double quotation marks for the main speech, use singles for the ‘speech within speech’.

Other uses for quotation marks:

Idiomatic expressions, for example: He was always referred to as a ‘pain in the neck’. Note that when quotation marks are used in this manner the full stop or comma comes outside the marks, but if quotation marks are used for dialogue the full stop or comma comes inside the marks.

When quoting the title of a magazine article: ‘The Generation Game’ in Spanish Magazine, March 2007.

(The above answer was partly taken from The Writer’s ABC Checklist)

Michaela from Huddersfield has sent in an interesting question about using natural sounding speech: I recently had a short story critiqued and the person who commented on my writing said I was making a mistake when I wrote my character was sat at the bar. I don’t see what’s wrong with that – it’s how the character speaks. In fact, he didn’t pick up on almost the same words in dialogue, so I’m now even more confused.

This is a case of narrative versus dialogue grammar usage. In dialogue, we can use all sorts of incorrect grammar, because it is, as you pointed out, how the characters speak. However, in narrative (where no one is speaking) using exactly the same construction would, in most cases, be incorrect.

I’ll use your query term in the following example.

Dan sighed. “I don’t know why Jane got so upset. I was sat at the bar minding my own business and her mate came on to me. I didn’t start it.”

In the above paragraph, it’s fine to say I was sat because it is in direct speech and is in keeping with Dan’s character.

However, if we change things around a bit, so that we only have narrative, we cannot use the same construction because it is grammatically incorrect. We can only use Dan was sitting or Dan sat.

Dan was sitting at the bar…

Or

Dan sat at the bar…

To summarise: in dialogue you can use incorrect grammar, as long as it is in keeping with the way the character would speak, but in narrative you have to ensure the grammar is correct.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, was published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending

The fourth in the series, Looking for a Reason, was released by Crooked Cat Publishing on 28^th October.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com