Dialogue: 4 Easy Ways to Improve Yours

There are a variety of mistakes to be made with dialogue. Thankfully, none of them are life-threatening. If you make them your neighbors won’t find you unconscious on the floor of your study and have to call 911.

These mistakes should still be avoided, however. They show up in most of the stuff I read by new writers. And they sometimes (cringe) show up in my own first drafts. But that’s before I have gone in after them, Bowie knife clenched between my teeth. (It’s a red pen, really, but I like to pretend.)

The first one of these boring little tension ruiners is dialogue that is too direct, as in the case of these two characters who meet in the break room where one of them is using the copier:

“Hi, Sandy. How are you?” Crystal put her papers in the copier and pressed start.

“I’m fine, Crystal. How are you?” Sandy walked over to the copier.

“I’m okay. I’m busy today.”

“Oh, you’re busy today? Me too.”

Blah, blah, blah…you get the idea. Who gives a hoot about these two chicks, right? This exchange doesn’t tell us anything about what’s going on inside these characters’ heads. It’s all surface. They sound like robots. And there’s no tension in their exchange. Tension comes from conflict. Conflict in dialogue is attained by showing that one character wants something that causes the other character to resist. Like this:

Man: “I think we should move in together.”

Woman: “I think you should put your shoes back on. Your socks stink.”

Okay, admittedly I am writing this late at night and am possibly a little punchy from lack of sleep. But you can see what’s going on here, right? He wants to talk about moving in together, and she doesn’t. They are in opposition.

To write interesting dialogue you must first know your characters, and you must understand what their motivations and desires are.  And then you must thwart them, as soundly as possible. And, while you’re at it, if you can amuse your reader or arouse some other unexpected emotion in them, so much the better.

So…dialogue should have conflict, and be interesting or amusing.

Another dialogue mistake I often see is the dreaded information dump:

“Hello. My name is Sam Brown and I have been sent by xyz detective agency, where I am the top P.I. to investigate the murder of the beautiful stripper who was killed here late last night when nobody was around to hear her screams.”

Ugh, right? Wouldn’t Sam be more interesting if he was portrayed as a cool cat with an air of mystery about him? And some of this could certainly be given to the reader as exposition or description. Like this:

A man in a black suit stepped into the back room of the strip club. Taking care to avoid the congealing pool of blood on the floor around the body, he withdrew an ID from his breast pocket and flipped it open for me.

“Sam Brown, xyz agency.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the girl on the floor. “Beautiful girl.” He flipped his ID closed and it disappeared back into his pocket. “Family’s hired me to find out who ruined her day.”

Leaving your reader wanting to know more is rarely a bad  thing. It’s what keeps them turning pages. We don’t have to front load every detail into a scene. Just give them enough to keep them reading, and to avoid confusion. More than that is too much.

So…have conflict and interest, but don’t spill the beans.

The third dialogue mistake I see in manuscripts is all dialogue, and no description or exposition or internalization. This can work for a while, but when it goes on for pages and pages, it’s boring. Not even Hemingway could pull this off. So, unless you are better at dialogue than the Grand Poobah of dialogue himself, best to steer away from endless dialogue. Give the reader some info about who’s speaking, what’s going on, and why the reader should care.

Lastly we come to the use of tags.

Some writers feel these should never be anything other than he said, she said. That we should never say she yelled, or he whispered, he whimpered or she cried. I don’t agree. I do think these should be kept to a minimum, however. And well written dialogue can make these sorts of tags unnecessary. But sometimes they are okay to use, and as long as they are not excessive I think most readers are fine with them.

No tag at all is the best option, as long as we don’t lose or confuse the reader. One of the best ways to accomplish not using a tag is to use an action to identify who is speaking:

“I think you should put your shoes back on. Your socks stink.” Jezebel held Fred’s shoes out to him.

“Won’t you at least consider moving in together?” Fred reached for his wingtips.

For the next few lines of dialogue you could get away without identifying the speaker. We are following their conversation and the opposing sides are enough to tell us who is speaking. But after several lines it is a good idea to add another action to verify for the reader who is speaking. If the reader has to stop and try to figure it out, that’s bad. We’ve lost her, and the flow is interrupted.

You could even add something to this scene by giving the reader a peek inside one character’s head. Like this:

“I think you should put your shoes back on. Your socks stink.” Jezebel held Fred’s shoes out to him.

“Won’t you at least consider moving in together?” Fred reached for his wingtips. He knew he should have done a more thorough search for the Camembert he’d dropped down the couch last week.

Puts a whole different spin on what’s happening, doesn’t it? Poor Fred. His feet don’t really stink. He’s just a shoddy housekeeper.

Still…I don’t think Jezebel should move in with him. Maybe it’s the wingtips.

So, to recap: dialogue should have conflict and should never be mundane or boring. It should not be used to give too much information. It should not go on and on for pages without any description or action to break it up. And should not distract us with the overuse of tags.

Dialogue should also move the plot along and give the reader insight into the characters. But if you master the four techniques I’ve suggested, then the rest will follow.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
                                                                                                                                                                                          Ernest Hemingway

 

Writers: What things bother you when you’re reading dialogue? Is there anything you find distracting?  What dialogue situations cause you problems in your own writing? Do you prefer writing dialogue or descriptive passages? How do you know when you have the balance right? How do you feel about the use of tags?

Going Deeper

Pat Conroy

Since the moment I cracked open my first Pat Conroy novel many years ago I have been a fan. The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides: these are great classics. Long delicious reads filled with lyricism and passionate description.

So when my friend, writer Char Bishop, loaned me her copy of Writer’s Digest  (she always shares them with me – so generous – but that’s Char) and I discovered it had an interview with Pat Conroy inside, I raced home and devoured it.  (It’s the May/June 2011 issue, if you’re interested. The interviewer is Lynn Seldon.)

Much of the interview is about Pat Conroy’s marriage to writer Cassandra King, author of The Sunday Wife. It’s a peek into the home life of two writers cohabitating. Interesting stuff. But one question was asked that produced an answer from Mr. Conroy that sent my little writer brain into paroxysms of ponderation. The question was a simple one: If you could each give one piece of writing advice, what would it be?

Mr. Conroy’s reply? Go deeper.

Now, sometimes when I read a famous writer’s advice I scratch my head, mumble something profound like, hmmm, and then move on. But this response made me have to put the magazine down and take the dog for a walk – one of the activities I engage in when I have to do some heavy thinking.

Because I knew exactly what Mr. Conroy meant. It was a light bulb moment for me. I knew following this advice would make Sword of Mordrey better. And I wanted to go over the novel in my head and find the places where ‘going deeper’ would achieve that.

Were there places in my novel where I could go deeper into what my characters were thinking and feeling, and why? Could I bring this out, not just in their interior monologues, but in their behavior and reactions, as well?

And not just my characters, but the medieval world I’ve created too. Are there places where I can show more? Maybe in just a few brief words that suddenly make the atmosphere gritty and visceral and get right up in the reader’s emotions? I knew I had to seek those places out too.

By the time I got back to the house I realized I would have to do yet another full rewrite. Not a fun prospect on the surface. I’ve already done so many. But as I sat at my desk the following morning those two words still strobed in my head like a lighthouse beacon. And the mists were beginning to clear.

Writers, what does ‘going deeper’ mean to you? Are there places in your WIP where you could go deeper? How do you identify them? What do you feel the overall effect would be on your novel? And more importantly, on your novel’s readers?

Blogtopia!

7 Blogs You Shouldn’t Live Without

I am frequently impressed by how good some other folks blogs are. Sometimes it’s just a particular post. But often it’s everything they post, as in the cases of both Julia Munroe Martin and Melissa Crytzer Fry. Both writers of high-caliber who take time to write thoughtful pieces. Currently Julia is doing a blog a day, a production which astounds me. That takes a lot of commitment –even just to do it for a month (as she is). And Melissa loves the desert where she lives and writes, and delivers it to us in wonderful photos with themed posts to accompany the visuals.

Kristen is a woman with a mission. But she doesn’t forget that while she is gathering folks to her, she must give them something of value. In Kristen’s case it is a promise to amuse them.

This young writer reminds me of an  Appalachian Reese Witherspoon. Self disparaging and tender, Jolina writes with unpretentious abandon and straight from the heart. If you want to laugh till you wet yourself check out her post where she describes the day she offered to deliver a friend’s payroll to the bank.

Leah writes and lives in SoCal, with her husband and daughter Sophie. Her blog is a riotous rainbow celebration of color, the photos a visual candy jar of images and light that never fails to lift me up.

Writer Natalia Sylvester’s blog is one of my favs. No matter what topic she chooses, her thoughtful writing is cool and lucid, like a deep clear lake in the mountains.

And lastly (but not leastly) Christine Grote’s beautiful photos and writing.

What are some of your favorite blogs?                                                    

Photo by writer and photographer Patricia Cox

The Pit and the Pendulum

of Self Publishing

Vincent contemplates doing something drastic after reading an unedited novel.

A while back I announced I would be reviewing books for my blog. I’ve met many wonderful writers via Twitter and my blog and received a nice little pile of books to review. A delight to someone like me, who loves to read a good book.

Most of these little tomes are self-published. I was a bit leery about that, but also excited, because I love helping others. And a good book review can do a lot for an author’s sales. However, in the course of reading these self-published books two realizations dawned on me:

Most of them are first drafts.

And none of them are professionally edited.

This came as a shock to me. Because each of these books have their own websites. And the authors attached to them are, without exception, nice people who are writers. They have blogs and are active on Twitter and Facebook as writers. So as I flipped through these books I wondered, do these folks read? And if so, do they not see that their ‘novel’ is not:

1. formatted like those they read

2. as long as those they read (in most cases)

3. as polished as those they read

Because one’s experience as a reader would inform one of these things. Wouldn’t it? Or are we blind when it comes to our own work? And if we are blind, then wouldn’t this be all the more reason to have our work edited by someone else? Preferably a professional?

I’m a little saddened to find this is the state of affairs. In the course of belonging to the writers groups I do I have had opportunity to read a few novels that were either destined to be self-published (their authors said) or were in fact, already self-published. And I always found them disappointingly amateurish and terrible. The results of the high and unrestrained excitement of a month of NaNoWriMo, or some such. But, these were all from authors with no internet presence; people who were isolated in their writing, or who had perhaps never written anything prior and had no training in it.

So I didn’t expect to encounter quite the same from these internet savvy folks who have so much more ‘going on’ for them as writers.

I won’t be doing reviews of these books, and I now have gotten myself into the unfortunate position of having to tell these writers why. Sure to be a morning of uncomfortable email writing, especially since I like the writers as people. But I won’t say a book is good if it is not for whatever reason. I cannot recommend a book that was a trial for me to plow through. And it is upsetting to me to have to dash anyone’s feelings.

Here are the main issues I found with these self-published novels. This first category concerns formatting:

1. No indents. (Really? You didn’t know you were supposed to indent at paragraphs?)
2. Not properly setting dialogue apart, where it should be, and/or indenting it.
3. Double spacing at the end of every sentence. (I have seen this on manuscripts over the years. The writers always insist it’s proper. It’s not. It’s an old fashioned typing habit. And it looks really odd in a printed book.)
4. Sometimes using quotations for dialogue, sometimes not. Sometimes using single quotations (within the same body of work) instead of double quotations—for no apparent reason.
5. Whole pages without a single break or indent, sometimes with dialogue buried in it.
6. Sometimes italicizing thoughts and sometimes not.

Ignoring these basic rules of English grammar makes the reading very difficult for the reader. Is that what you want the reader to experience when reading your book? Difficulty and distraction?

These next issues concern points in the actual writing that a good edit would have pointed out to the writer:

1. Using the same word many times within a paragraph.
2. Using too many adverbs or adjectives. (Which weakens our writing)
3. Using the same adverb or adjective repeatedly on the same page.
4. Excessive wordiness
5. Unedited dialogue which would read so much better if tightened up.
6. Rife with clichés.
7. Punctuation missing or improperly used.
8. Words misspelled.
9. Words missing.
10. Typos.
11. Undeveloped plot points which could/would have been developed in subsequent rewrites and would have made the plot more interesting and complex and surprising.
12. Under-developed or flat characters. (Again, this could be remedied by rewrites.)
13. No sensory description whatsoever. Sight? Sounds? Smells?
14. An imbalance between exposition, summary, action and dialogue.
15. Word count too low to be considered a novel. (Is 45,000 words  now a novel? When did that happen?)

People, don’t let the rush to say you’ve published a novel make you publish something less polished, professional and complete than the novels published by traditional publishers. Right now the pendulum is swinging toward self-publishing. But experience has taught that trends always swing back and reach some point of equilibrium. Where that will be nobody knows. One thing I know for certain: I do not want to see the high standard of literature turned into something shoddy. Please keep our body of literature up to a standard we can all be proud of and enjoy. If you have the time and money to hire someone knowledgeable to build a website for your self-published novel, why not spend the same time and money on getting it properly written, edited and formatted?

If you don’t, I will venture to say, you will never be taken seriously. And your novel will not become a classic that outlives you and is read and loved by many.

And isn’t that the goal?

(I will still be reviewing novels for self published writers and traditionally published writers alike. The only change in my review policy is that I will request a first chapter from any self published writer prior to agreeing to read the entire novel.)

A great link to basics of manuscript formatting: here.