My post comes from Susan Carroll's The Courtesan. I wanted to talk about her style via grammar because I think she is one of the best I've seen at it, so I'm going to use a few examples.
First, the way she uses ellipses is a rhetorical strategy of hers in an attempt to make the reader go along with the character at that time. She tries to bring the reader into the same actions and frame of thought using grammar. She uses an ellipsis in dialogue when a character trails off, when a character trails off in thought, or in exposition to create suspense.
Suspense finally resolved: In the book, one of the main characters has gone through a lot of crap to find out the name of a man who attacked his love interest, and finally, she delivers the name to the character and readers: "His shadow enemy now had both a face and a name...Danton."
Trail-off in dialogue: "Ask me for anything else and I will be happy to keep my promise, but as it is..." She trails off because she's bracing herself for Remy's anger.
Suspense: The main female character is the company of the man that attacked her years ago and she doesn't know it. Added to that, the drink is poisoned "It--it is all right," she rasped. "As you said, it is a foul night. Perhaps you should pour me another drink. Just one..." This ends the chapter and the next chapter goes on to the female character's hero, so readers are left wondering what is happened.
I don't think these ellipses are necessary to create these rhetorical situations, but I love that she does use them in the manner that she does. When I see the ellipses at the end of chapter, the sight of it just fills me with more suspense. It's a visual teaser to add to the mental teaser. Also, in dialogue, the ellipses let's me know it's a trail-off and therefore leaves no room for confusion, allowing Carroll to mimic real conversations that are choppy and scatter-brained, like real life, without having to explain any of that. For instance, she doesn't have to say, "Gabrielle trailed off" the ellipsis she used says it all. The same goes for her em dash use.
She uses this to signify cut-offs or interruptions in dialogue or in thought.
"This never was any place for you--"
"I saw Gabrielle." Miri cut him off. "She was crying."
In this example, Carroll tells in her dialogue that Remy was cut off, but by using the em dash instead of a period or comma, I already knew that. A comma would be too weak to represent an interruption, and a period could not represent one at all because a period represents an ending. So, I like that she uses em dashes for these reasons. Also, the ellipsis would be too weak as well to represent an interruption. It's perfect for those trail-offs she uses them for. Carroll also uses em dashes when she is narrating in third-person about what a character is doing or thinking and an interruption occurs; like, someone comes crashing through the door. By using these grammar marks for the reasons she does, I think she captures real-life instances of trail-offs and interruptions. Her prose in these scenarios flows well because of these grammar choices. Some authors would chose not have as many trail-offs and interruptions or would stumble around representing them with words, but she does very well with her grammar marks. See, grammar can be stylistic and say so much more than they're given credit for.
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