I realize it’s been a while since I posted. It’s not because I have nothing to say, but sometimes it feels that way.
Every time I sit down to write, I’m aware of the latest news reports, talking about the virus that’s been plaguing our planet for almost two years, or the sad political commentary that surrounds the best efforts of science to help us alleviate the problem.
I also sit disturbed by the horrendous things affecting our climate right now, or the increasing amount of violence in our cities. Between the many crises it’s often hard to concentrate on writing.
I wish I had an answer for it. Unfortunately, I don’t.
All I can recommend is, for all of you who want to be writers, is keep writing. Take the many things you’ve already found here, and pull in elements from your own experiences in these hard times. It may not make the day any easier, but I can assure you, it will make your writing outstanding.
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Gentle Readers, my books have all garnered some terrific reviews. You can see all of them by using the Amazon link below. Check them out. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.
Bad dialogue signals the work of an amateur who has failed to grasp the mechanics of speech, while good dialogue illuminates your characters, moves your plot forward, develops relationships, and opens a window into the story.
However, creating good dialogue is hard work. It takes a lot of practice and patience but, believe me, once you’ve mastered it, your credibility as an author will improve tremendously.
“That is fantastic news,” he said happily.
Does that sentence look right to you? If it does, you have just fallen into the very common trap of actually telling your reader twice about your character’s feelings. “That is fantastic news” clearly conveys happiness, so why use the adverb “happily” to repeat it?
Explaining your dialogue like that can alienate and frustrate your readers. They’re intelligent enough to understand what’s going on, so don’t patronize them by highlighting the obvious.
Doing that also prevents your readers from getting to really know your characters on a deeper, more personal level. If you tell them that your character did something happily, all they will know is that your character was happy, which means nothing.
Consider the following: “I can’t believe it!” he said.
In this example, there is no dialogue explanation, which has achieved two things. First, it has tightened up the dialogue so the focus is now on what is being said, rather than how it is being. Second, readers are encouraged to imagine the character’s surprise, which helps them get closer to the character.
If you find that your dialogue needs explanation, then frankly, something is wrong with your dialogue.
Beginning writers tend to use adverbs to put emotion into their dialogue but, by doing this, they’re actually smuggling in unnecessary explanation. A powerful dialogue conveys emotion through what’s being said rather than how it’s said. If your character is sad, it is your responsibility to show this sadness and to show what there is about your character or his situation that makes him sad.
If you’ve written powerful dialogue, the last thing you want to do is draw attention away from it. Adverbs disrupt the flow, as they jump out at the reader and signal, if only for a second, that there’s a writer hard-at-work behind the scenes.
You may not like this, but it bears repeating. The verb said should be your go-to verb when writing dialogue. Said is an unusual word primarily because we interpret it in a very mechanical way.
In fact, when we see it, we typically gloss over it. It might bother you to use it, but the reader doesn’t even see it. Its unassuming presence allows readers to focus on what your characters are saying rather than how they are saying it.
Become a Student of Conversation
I’ve mentioned this several times before. Conversation isn’t merely an exchange of words. We also use body language to get our message across, so this needs to be captured in your dialogue. Sprinkle action into your dialogue to show intent and emotion in different ways.
A Note of Caution: Using action to make your dialogue more interesting is a useful technique, however be careful not to overuse it as it can also become very distracting for readers.
New writers often fall into the trap of providing too much detail in their dialogue. You want to be as realistic as possible, but you need to strike a balance between realism and purpose. Remember, dialogue should help move the story along, give depth and meaning to characters, and convey information.
If yours doesn’t serve any of these purposes, it has to go.
Read it Aloud
One of the best dialogue tips is to read your work aloud. Reading your dialogue out loud is your secret weapon to identify problem areas. It will throw up any issues relating to pace, punctuation and flow.
When you’re reading out loud, take note of where you stumble, or where you’re pausing unnaturally. Fix this. Take note of accidental rhymes or closely repeated words and edit them.
Listen to what you’re writing and who is saying it. Do the words match the character? If your character is an uneducated buffoon, make sure he sounds like it. If he’s a professor, make sure he sounds smart.
Rest assured, remember these tips and you’ll soon see improvements in your writing that will impress your readers.
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Gentle Readers, my books have all garnered some terrific reviews. You can see all of them by using the Amazon link below. Check them out. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.
When I was in high school and a teacher would give us an assignment to write an outline for a story we would then be charged to create, I’d write the story first. Then I’d go back and write the outline, just so I’d have something to turn in.
Even as a teenager I thought outlining was counter-intuitive to the writing process. But outlining is still taught as if it’s “the right way” to shape a story. You’ll even hear the importance of plotting out your story trumpeted at writing conferences.
I’ve always been one of those seat-of-the-pants writers and, over the last decade, as I’ve published five novels and two collections of short stories, I’ve found when I advise people to stop outlining and develop a more personalized, organic writing process like mine, I get strange looks and comments, as if my suggestion goes against some rule.
Well, if that’s the case, I invite you to the rebellion. Throw away your outline and uncover your story word-by-word.
Regardless of how many acts or scenes your story has, there are several things it needs to be complete. It needs an orientation to the world of the characters, conflict, an escalation of tension, a moment at which everything seems lost, and a satisfying conclusion which reveals a character or situational transformation.
Readers need to know what your character wants, but can’t get, and what he’s doing about it. Stories build through escalating tension.
So, forget what you’ve learned about stories building through “rising action,” as many popular plot graphs would have you believe. Simply making more things happen won’t ensure readers will remain interested.
Focus your attention at the heart of your story, and you’ll begin to intuitively understand what needs to happen to drive the tale forward. By letting your story develop organically, you’re delving deeper into the essence of what storytelling is all about.
You should think of your story as a contract with your readers, an agreement that you will entertain, surprise and satisfy.
Give yourself the freedom to explore the terrain of your story. Wander through your ideas and unreservedly embrace the adventure, because, without serendipitous discoveries, your story runs the risk of feeling artificial and prepackaged.
Every choice your characters make has an implication. Every promise made needs to be fulfilled. The more promises you break, the less readers will trust you and, often, when readers put a book down, that’s exactly why. They’ve stopped trusting you’re going to fulfill the promises you’ve made.
Organic writers are well-equipped to make big promises and then keep them. We’re never directionless because, as the story takes shape, we can always work on scenes that fulfill promises made earlier.
In good storytelling, you cannot know where a story needs to go until you know where it’s been, but you cannot know where it needs to be until you know where it’s going.
I know…it’s a paradox.
And that’s part of the fun.
I love Stephen King’s analogy in his book On Writing, comparing stories to fossils we, the storytellers, are uncovering. His analogy helps me stop thinking of a story as something I create as much as it is something I uncover, by asking the right questions.
The biggest problem with writing an outline is you’ll be tempted to use it. By that I mean you’ll get to a certain place and stop digging, even though there might be a lot more of that dinosaur left to uncover.
Continually ask yourself, “What are readers wondering about, hoping for, and expecting at this moment in the story?”
Then give it to them.
Draft the scene that would naturally come next. Go back and rework earlier scenes as needed.
What you write organically will often have implications on the story you’ve already written. If you find yourself at a loss for what to write next, come up with a way to make things worse, and let the characters respond naturally to what’s happening.
When you understand the principles of good storytelling, you always have a place to start.
Move into and out of the story, focusing one day on the forest and the next day on the trees. Follow your ideas, and stories will unfold before you. So, leave the outlining to English teachers.
Sit down and write, and let the rebellion begin.
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Gentle Readers, my books have all garnered some terrific reviews. You can see all of them by using the Amazon link below. Check them out. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.
Painting With Light 