Q: A member of my writers' workshop said that contractions should only be used in dialogue, not when expressing characters' thoughts. Are there any rules on this? -Linda

A: Maybe there’s a rule written down somewhere. I don’t know.

What I do know is that if somebody told me not to use contractions anywhere except in dialogue, I would never listen to that person’s advice again. It’s nonsense.

The most important rule of all is to write the smoothest, most seamless prose you can. Write in such a way that nothing hits the reader’s ear wrong or tears them out of the story. Contractions make the language more economical – by avoiding them you’d end up sounding pretty awkward and wooden, I would think.

How could you not? Deep down, you know which rules to follow and which ones to break. This one you break.

Q: What is the consensus of whether to use "real names" in a fiction novel? For example, my book is about a terrorist organization, very secretive..can/should I use their real names, even though the things they do in the book may or may not be true? Or should I make up a name that's close enough to theirs that people recognize it as them, or should I just steer clear and create a totally new fictitious name for my terrorist group in the book?

Also, what about entities like "Union Carbide" (out of business but recognizable) or even FBI and CIA when they didn't actually do the things I say they did, in the book? -Paul

A: If it were me, I’d use fictitious names for the terrorist groups. (There are so many of them, anyway, with similar recurring themes in their names.) I’d probably also use fictitious names for corporations. The FBI and CIA and the like, I’d just use those real names, because there you’d probably be asking the reader to suspend too much disbelief.

Q: If the quality of each work is relatively equal, how is a writer to know the difference between the work that is suitable for submission and those that should be left for another time due to its personal or emotional nature? -Matthew

A: If the work is truly equal, I don’t know why you shouldn’t send it out into the world, even if it’s something very close to you. That closeness might make it the best thing you’ve ever done. But if that closeness has compromised it in some way, then yes, that’s something you might want to hold onto, to give yourself a chance to see it at some distance sometime in the future.

How do you know the difference? You really can’t, not on your own.

You need someone you can trust to tell you. I hope you already have someone like that, somebody who is reading your stuff and letting you know if it works. If it’s not, I hope that person respects you enough to hand it back to you in shreds. If I didn’t have somebody doing that for me, I’d be lost.

Steve Hamilton