Patricia J. Parsons

Ode to the “Em Dash”

Posted on 12 Sep 202612 Sep 2026 by Patricia J. Parsons

I’m working on the second draft of my newest novel. I love working on second drafts almost as much as writing the first draft. (The less said about how much I love working on the subsequent ones, the better.) As I edit, I’m struck by a detail that should never have become a problem. It is a punctuation mark.

I’m not sure when I first discovered that I had a favourite punctuation mark. However, it was a revelation when em dashes began appearing in my writing decades ago, if I recall correctly.

Most people aren’t aware, but the em dash first appeared in the fifteenth century as a mark indicating the width of the letter “M.” It was, in fact, not even an invention created by grammarians to assist us in expressing our precise meaning, as most punctuation does. Rather, a printer gave us this handy little mark, which lets us replace parentheses, commas and colons. In my view, it also gives the sentence a different feel and, therefore, a different meaning.

I even did a YouTube video on this handy, well-loved little mark back in 2022 (when I still did that kind of thing), giving tips on my personal favourite punctuation marks. FYI, I’ve added it at the bottom in case you’re into these things.

So, you can imagine my horror at discovering that the em dash is now one of the ways editors and readers think they can spot writing created by artificial intelligence. How utterly simplistic. This horrific discovery then sent me on a mad chase to find my em dashes in my second drafts. I examine where I have used them and try to figure out whether parentheses or commas would be better. In almost every case, they would not. So, I’ve succumbed, like so many other writers these days, to incorporating the dreaded sentence fragment. Probably even worse. If you get my meaning.

Then, common sense dawns. I step back and realize that if anyone thinks any piece of writing wasn’t created by a human just because there are em dashes, then I believe we have a serious literacy problem. If, on the other hand, you love a story that also might have the odd em dash, used correctly, effectively and by design, then read it and love it.

I am not apologizing for my em dashes. I love them.

Backstory, Books, Writing

When a Fictional Character Starts to Feel Real

Posted on 10 Jun 2026 by Patricia J. Parsons

One of the questions that fascinated me while writing my soon-to-be-released novel, A Necessary Fiction, was this: what happens when a fictional character starts to feel more real than the person who created her?

Novelists have wrestled with versions of this question for centuries. We spend months or years (more like weeks for me, but who’s counting?) inventing people who don’t exist, only to find ourselves talking about them as though they do. Even as I write that statement, I realize that for me, they do exist, just not in the reality you and I live in day to day. Fictional characters become familiar companions, occupying space in our imaginations alongside people we know in real life. But these days, it seems to me, the line between fiction and reality is becoming increasingly difficult to define.

Social media has given all of us the ability to create versions of ourselves. Most of us don’t think of these versions as fictional, yet they are inevitably selective. We choose which photographs to post, which stories to tell, which opinions to share, and which parts of our lives remain hidden. Over time, the person who exists online can begin to take on an identity distinct from the person sitting behind the keyboard. This idea became central to A Necessary Fiction.

One of the novel’s characters creates an online persona that gradually attracts attention, followers, and influence. What begins as an experiment becomes something more complicated. The persona develops its own audience, expectations, and momentum. People react to it as though it were entirely real. In some respects, it becomes real. It influences decisions. It shapes relationships. It changes events in the physical world. The character who created it discovers something unsettling: once a story acquires an audience, it no longer belongs entirely to its author.

Writers understand this phenomenon well. Some might say that every book becomes a collaboration between author and reader. Still, in my view, before that can happen, it must be a collaboration between the writer and her characters. Readers bring their own experiences, assumptions, and interpretations, but so do characters. Writers tell their story, and then the characters further evolve in the minds of those who encounter them. Meanings that the author never intended begin to emerge

Online identities work in much the same way. We create them, but we don’t completely control them. Other people participate in their construction. Expectations accumulate. Narratives form. Before long, maintaining the story can become as important as living the life behind it.

This tension lies at the heart of A Necessary Fiction. This book is a literary thriller that explores not only the stories we tell others but also the ones we tell ourselves. It asks whether truth is always as straightforward as we imagine and examines how narratives can protect us, deceive us, and sometimes take on a life of their own.

Perhaps that’s why the title resonates so strongly with me. A necessary fiction is more than a lie. It is a story we come to depend upon. It may begin as something invented, but over time, it becomes woven into our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

The question is not whether we live among fictions. We all do. The more interesting question is this: how do we know when a fiction has become reality?

Creativity, Writing craft

Why Accidental Writers Often Tell the Most Honest Stories

Posted on 1 Jun 2026 by Patricia J. Parsons

Most people imagine writers as people who always knew. I suppose, in some ways, you might even say I was one of them because I wrote short stories in high school. But, like so many others who loved writing, the “Love” of writing wasn’t obsessive enough to propel me toward a career as a novelist.

So, not even the child with notebooks under the bed or the English major quoting Baldwin at nineteen or the aspiring novelist who introduces herself as “a writer” long before she has written anything worth is necessarily anything but an accidental author. The truth is that many of the most compelling writers arrive at writing via a circuitous route rather than the straight path we might assume. So where do writers come from?

They come from boardrooms, classrooms, newsrooms, hospitals, marriages, divorces, campaigns, courtrooms, and funerals. They become writers not because they spent their lives cultivating a literary identity, but because they eventually encounter something they can’t stop thinking about. I have long felt that this experience matters in writing, perhaps more than anything else. Taletn certainly isn’t enough… although it helps.

People who stumble into writing accidentally often spend years observing human behaviour before they ever attempt to describe it. They’ve worked with difficult people. They’ve watched institutions protect themselves. They’ve seen good people act selfishly and selfish people occasionally behave with astonishing grace. They understand that most human beings are not consistent enough to fit neatly into moral categories. In my experience, this changes how they write fiction.

Writers who arrive through life rather than academia are often less interested in performance. They’re not trying to sound like writers; rather, they’re trying to understand something. The writing becomes an investigation rather than an exhibition, and readers can feel the difference even if they have no idea where it comes from.

I think that there is a particular kind of dishonesty that creeps into fiction when the writer already knows exactly what he/she wants the reader to believe. Characters stop behaving like people and begin behaving like arguments—moral arguments that morph into preaching.

By middle age, most people have discovered that villains rarely announce themselves as villains. They rationalize. They justify. They protect their self-image. Even cruelty often arrives wrapped in explanations that make sense to the person committing it.

Fiction becomes interesting not when it delivers moral instruction (*gag*), but when it allows readers to inhabit uncomfortable ambiguity. A novel can explore revenge, greed, abuse, power, forgiveness, or corruption without issuing a sermon. In fact, fiction usually becomes more powerful the moment the author stops trying to control the moral outcome.

In my view, readers don’t want to be managed, but they do want the chance to recognize the truth of a story.

Accidental writers are often better positioned to provide that truth because they didn’t begin with a theory of literature. They began with experience. Something happened. Someone betrayed them. Someone disappointed them. An institution failed. A relationship changed shape. A contradiction became impossible to ignore. The writing then emerges from pressure rather than ambition.

Perhaps this is why some of the most honest fiction feels less like writerly performance and more like confession. OF course, that’s not necessarily an autobiographical confession, but an emotional confession. The writer is not standing above the reader explaining the world. The writer is standing beside the reader, trying to figure it out.

Ultimately, the healthiest and most honest way to approach writing may not be branding, but curiosity sharpened by experience.

I believe the best fiction rarely comes from people trying to prove that they’re writers. It comes from people trying to understand what happened to them—and to everyone else.

[originally published on my Substack, May 28, 2026]