Using all three forms of communication creates a natural, conversational style. Description combined with occasional instruction, and punctuated with sound effects or exclamations: It’s how people talk.
Everyone should use three types of communication. Three parts description. Two parts instruction. One part onomatopoeia. Mix to taste.
Establish your authority,” Tom Spanbauer used to tell us, “and you can do anything.
If you were my student, I’d tell you to shift as needed between the three POVs. Not constantly, but as appropriate to control authority, intimacy, and pace.
Little voice gives us the facts. Big voice gives us the meaning – or at least a character’s subjective interpretation of the events.
The problem with loving so many people is that you lose so many.
Crying is right at hand when you see how everything you ever accomplished will end up as trash.
They always knew the phase of the moon, but seldom the day of the week.
For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you’re gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath.
Most guys are at fight club because of something they’re too scared to fight. After a few fights, you’re afraid a lot less.
A condom is the glass slipper of our generation.
I am profoundly vanilla.
OK, you are now firing a gun at your imaginary friend. Near 400 gallons of nitroglycerin!
If I had a tumor, I’d name it Marla.
I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection.
Now this is a chemical burn.
You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.
We look forward to getting you back.
No! Don’t deal with this the way those dead people do. Deal with it the way a living person does.
Oxygen makes you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you’re taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate.