SASSY, SNARKY, SMARTY PANTS

When I went through my Mom's papers, I found my third grad report card. Wow. Did that bring back memories. Teachers would write a comment on the back of the report card.

That year, my teacher had written: "Joan talks too much in school."

OMG. Yes, I had an unfortunate habit of saying what I thought. I looked at the world around me and always came up with a Dorothy Parker-type comment.

While this gained Ms. Parker the rep of being a biting sophisticated wit, it gained me the reputation of being a sassy little girl—a smarty pants as adults said back then.

I really wasn't trying to be funny. I was just making observations about the people around me and the things they did. To me, it was interesting and often funny.

Unfortunately, adults thought otherwise. Trust me, the often snarky words that came out of my mouth weren't considered  praiseworthy by my teachers or my parents. 

Looking back on it, I realize my observations were often more adult than childlike because of the sophisticated Golden Age comedies I watched on TV.

Most of those came from playwrights who'd written the story originally as a Broadway play.

Our local library had books filled with those Broadway play scripts. I didn't understand a lot of what I read, but it was definitely informative. LOL.

MY SNARKINESS: BACKGROUND FOR DIALOGUE

Those old movies ad the Broadway plays I read embraced dialogue. If you ever watch the classic films Bringing Up Baby or Pillow Talk, you'll notice the dialogue is out of this world!! What they say, how they say it, and when they say it is absolutlely perfect.

I think this is why I love writing dialogue—especially for heroines who are armed with an arsenal of sass and aren't afraid to use it. All my books—romantic comedies and romantic suspense—have a lot of dialogue, and I love writing it.

Readers often tell me that they laugh out loud at some of the conversations between characters.

In JUST ONE LOOK, I really got into the dialogue. My heroine Psychologist Jennifer Monroe uses words, innuendo, and sexual tension to twist her hero Gynecologist Dr. Matthew Penrose into a pretzel.

A lot of the dialogue in my books is stuff I’d love to say, but never do—maybe because I still hear the voices of my teachers and my parents telling me to think before I speak so I don't sound like a smarty pants.

That's what I do now. I think before I speak and usually come up with a good half-dozen of sarcastic, amusing retorts, but I place those words in the mouths of my characters.

TAKEAWAY TRUTH

I prize being a sassy, snarky, smarty pants now because in my opinion and in my books, sass is an art form.

Need a laugh? Read JUST ONE LOOK, a book that proves, "Seduction and sex can be pretty funny—especially when both sides play dirty in this battle of the sexes!"

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