Action Verbs for our Character S

   Reading a lot of books lately, looking for ideas to improve (among other things) my rendition of dialog. One of things I've noticed, some of the better dialog has verbs that just don't fit quietly into context. However, context doesn't always need verbs that clarify. So, the verb can provide a twist, color, emphasis or it can say something about the speaker. In the novel, The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, many characters are uneducated and their verbs are often wrong tense, archaic, or slang. But sometimes they can deliver volumes. The example I read a few minutes ago first caught my eye because I thought I'd spotted a typo. First a little background: John Brown's "army" attempts to repel the advancing militia.

"They powered the militia with balls and drove 'em back outside the gate."

    The Good Lord Bird is full of these. Or should I say, "the text is powered with these verbs."

   While I'm on the subject of dialog, I have to say it ain't what it used to be. I forget exactly why I started reading The Forsaken Inn by Anna K. Green, first printing 1889, but it was probably about dialog. Specifically, identifying the speaker. I expected Green would carefully identify each speaker and she did so. I spotted something I had never noticed before, dialog frequently separated from a long introductory paragraph. She would end the paragraph with a colon and follow with a blank line.
   What I didn't expect was her variations using quotation marks. The novel started with double quotation marks at the beginning and end of dialog. That was expected. But then, her dialog started with a double quotation mark and ended with a single quotation mark. The next variation was even stranger. The narrator's introduction to a new scene, situation or even a speaker-identified paragraph, would start with a double quotation mark but wouldn't end with a quotation mark of any kind.
   In Ms Green's defense I should point out that her novel has had, at different printings, three publishers. With the first two she was at the mercy of typesetters but with the third she was in good hands, Project Gutenberg proofreaders.

   "Stay thirsty, my friends."