Can we talk? – Writing effective dialogue

Well it’s been a while since my last post.  I’m hard at work on my latest book and my priority is to get it finished.  Once it’s done, I’ll have a treat for you.  I’d like to do a write along with anyone whose interested, and I plan to do the whole process from start to finished – from the initial planning stage right on through the revision process, so if anyone is interested please subscribe to my blog.  I’ll let you know more once I firm up the dates for when I want to start.  I plan to do it over a three-month time span, which means the first draft phase will take about five weeks.  The book I’m planning on doing will be about 300 pages (75,000 words) so if you want to write a longer book and still tag along with me, it may take you a little longer than five weeks to do it.

Anyway, on with today’s post.  I’d like to talk about dialogue today.  Dialogue is something that I love writing.  It’s always come easily to me, and I find sometimes in my rough drafts some of my scenes are only dialogue.  In order to write good dialogue you have to develop an ear for it.  Some writers have a natural ability to write dialogue, and others have to work at it.  I have some tips on how to develop your ear for dialogue and what purpose dialogue should serve in your writing.

Listen to people talk

The best way to develop an ear for dialogue is to talk and to listen.  Interact with people and pay attention to what they say and how they say it.  When writing dialogue you want it to sound natural, and the best way to do that is to listen to how people really talk.

You can also study well written TV shows and movies and listen to the character’s speak.

Cut to the chase

In a novel dialogue serves a specific purpose, which is to move the story forward, to show information about your characters and to create tension.  In order to do all these things, you need to cut out the small talk.  In everyday lives we talk a lot about nothing.  Making small talk between friends and acquaintances is how we get to know each other, and in everyday life it isn’t boring.  Reading pages and pages of small talk is like watching paint dry.  So keep the “Hi” “How are you” and the “How’s the weather” to a minimum in your story.  Failure to do so will cause your readers to either bleed from the eyeballs or to throw your book across the room, which we don’t want.

No info dumps please

An info dump is a lazy writer’s way of force feeding information to the reader.  Don’t do it.  Especially don’t do it in dialogue.  If both characters are talking and they both know information that the reader doesn’t, don’t contrive to have them talk about in dialogue.  Find another way to get the information to the reader, and better yet find a way to show it instead of telling it.

Read your dialogue out loud

You should be doing this anyway with any of your writing, but it is especially important to do it with dialogue.   Dialogue is meant to be spoken, and what looks okay in written form, may not sound the same when said out loud.  If you know you have a problem with stilted dialogue, this is a good trick to help you find out what bits of dialogue work and which parts don’t.

Mix dialogue with action

You don’t want to have talking heads, which is two character’s talking and not doing anything.  I’m guilty of doing this because I love to write dialogue and sometimes I’m afraid that if I stop and think of how my character’s are moving while their talking, that I’ll lose the thread of the conversation.  What I do now to combat this, since I know it’s a particular failing of mine, is I write all the dialogue I want to use out before I start the scene.  I do it as part of my more in-depth scene blocking (which usually happens write before I write  scene).  That way I get what I want my character’s to say out and when I write the scene I refer to it and can mix in actions in with the dialogue.

Furthering your story

As I mentioned earlier that your dialogue pushes the story forward.  If it doesn’t do that, cut it.  Your story will be much stronger for it.

Well that’s all I have to say about dialogue.  I’m still plugging away at my current work in progress, but I think sometime next week I’ll put up another post about showing vs telling, so stay tuned for that.  And I’ll give out some more information about the write along.

Until then, happy writing.

Make Your Characters Believable

A few posts ago I wrote about creating characters, giving them goals, fears and baggage.  This is a good starting place but is it enough to create believable characters?  I would argue that the people in your book are the most important element needed for good story telling.  Plot, theme, use of language all have their place in good writing too, but without believable character’s to carry the weight of the story, not even the most clever turn of phrase will be enough to turn bad writing into good writing.

You need to turn your character’s into human beings that the reader can identify with.  They may not like the character, but as long as you write your character in a manner that is believable, then your reader will identify with them and they will become real.  The way to make your characters human is to tap into their emotions.

Our emotions is what makes us human.  Even the most stoic individual has feelings and thoughts that make him or her unique.  You need to tap into this aspect of your characters to breathe life into them.  I have a few techniques that I use in my own writing that help me do this.

Tap into your own emotional experiences

Most of us live relatively “normal” lives.  My day to day life is relatively uneventful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The books I write are dark, violent and full of tense situations, which is the antithesis of my current life.  A common piece of advice given to beginning writers is to write what you know.  My interpretation on this piece of advice is to tap into the emotions you’ve experience in your own life and translate them into the situation you put your characters in, and feel what they would feel.  I’m going to give an example of what I mean by this.

In a book I recently finished, I wanted the characters to be driving on a long, winding road and discover their brakes had failed.  In order to write this scene I need to think back on my own life, to tap into the fear that would be present in a situation like this.  After giving it some thought I realized I had a situation in my own life that I could use to help me write the scene.  When my daughter was a baby, my brother was giving a ride home from a doctor’s appointment.  What we didn’t know at the time, but realized later, is that the brake lines on his car had corroded to the point where there was little brake fluid left.  While we were driving, my brother turned to me and told me very calmly that we had no brakes.  I knew I had to keep calm, because panicking in this situation wouldn’t do either of us any good, but inside I was terrified.  My baby was in the back in her car seat, and all that was running through my mind was what if something happened to her.  Obviously we made it home in one piece, but it was one scary car ride.  When I had to write a scene with my character’s in a similar situation, it came pretty easy since I could remember what being in that situation felt like.  You don’t need to have an exact situation occur in your own life if you want to put it in your book.  Think of a situation that you’ve been in where the emotions you felt reflect the emotions of what your character would feel in that situation.  We all know what it’s like to be afraid, what it’s like to be joyful and what it’s like to fall in love.  Use it in your writing and I’m sure you’ll notice a difference in how your character’s come across.

Using free writing reveal depths of emotion

Another exercise I use to help delve into the emotion of a character is free writing.  Free writing is the process of sitting down and writing without thinking for a certain period of time.  If I have to write a scene that I know is going to be emotional or difficult to write, I prepare for it before hand.  Before I start the free writing session I give a little bit of thought into who is going to be the POV character, and what situation they are going to be in.  I then set a timer for ten minutes and write about the situation from the character’s point of view.  I’m not talking about writing the actual scene this way.  What you want to do is feel what your character is feeling, you want to become the character for those ten minutes.  Clear your mind for that period of time, close your eyes if it helps, and write a narrative of the situation in the scene from the first person perspective (first person uses “I”).   It should almost be like an internal monologue of what’s going on inside your character’s head.  Once the timer has gone off, take a breath and read through what you’ve written.  You may be pleasantly surprised.  I like to print off what I’ve written and post it by the computer in preparation for writing the scene, and I usually refer back to it when I need to.  You may even find yourself culling bits and pieces of your free writing to use in the scene.

Become an actor

When writing about a character, it helps if you become that person while you are writing them.  When you character frowns, you frown, just so you are in tune with the physical sensation of being that character.  If anyone were watching me while I write I’m sure they would think I’d gone around the bend.  I sigh, I laugh, I growl, grit my teeth and sometimes I even cry.   I do all this to put myself into my character’s shoes.

These are some of the techniques you can use to help make your character’s more believable.  I hope you can use some of them to help you in your writing journey, or to even become a springboard for developing techniques of your own.

See you soon.

So you want to write a novel – part ten

Facing the Blank Page

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted to write in this post.  Starting a novel has never been a problem for me, blank pages don’t throw me off.  For me the blank page means endless possibilities.  The first novel I wrote started off well and every novel I’ve written since then hasn’t given me problems starting.  I run into trouble in the middle, when the writing starts to feel less like fun and more like work.   I realize that for some writers writing the first page, the first paragraph, the first paragraph or even the first word is daunting.   It’s a hurdle that has to be over come in order to get the damn book written.  Facing the blank page at the start of the book is similar to facing a blank page in the middle, so I’m going to outline a few strategies that help me get back on task and get the words out.

See your scene as a movie

I’m a very visual person, and before I wrote I used to paint.  I’m used to seeing the world as a visual space.  I can’t follow instructions unless there are pictures.  Here is an exercise you can do to help get the writing started.  You should already know what you want to write.  If you’ve done any outlining that I explained in the previous posts, then you should already know what your first scene is about.  This is half the battle as far as novel-writing goes, knowing what you want to write.  Re-read your scene plan, close your eyes and try to visualize what happens in the scene.  Pretend it’s a movie unfolding in your head until you can “see” what’s happening.    When you’re ready, put your hands on the keyboard, open your eyes and start writing exactly what you see unfolding in your head.

Turn off your internal editor

Sometimes the problem is wanting to find exactly the right word to put down on the page.  If you are writing a first draft, this will stop you dead in your tracks.  The first draft is meant to get the meat of the story out of your head and onto the page.  Your internal editor is the enemy of the first draft.  It’s that critical voice in your head that tells you that everything you are writing sucks.  You need to send her (or him) off on vacation until you are done your book.  Revisions work well with your internal editor on board, but you will not get to the revision stage of your novel is you don’t get rid of her now.

Write anything

If you find it impossible to write the first scene in your book, write a different scene and go back to the first scene later.  There is nothing to say that you have to write your book in the order it’s going to be read. 

I hope what I’ve shared with you has helped.  Keep in mind is everything can be re-written, but you cannot rewrite nothing.  So get your words down and get the book out of your head and onto the page.

See you soon.

So you want to write a novel – part nine

Here we are again.  It’s been a while since I posted anything, a full-time job and trying to get the novel I’m working on finished has eaten some time.  In my last post I talked about making a chapter plan.  What I usually do after the chapter plan, is do a scene plan.  How much planning you need to do at this stage depends on how many scenes you plan to have. 

Start with your first chapter.  What do you want to have happen?  How do you need to break this up into scenes to get you to your goal for the end of the chapter?  When I’m doing my scene plan I give myself just enough detail to know what it is I need to write.  A paragraph is plenty. 

When planning a scene I usually figure out whose POV (Point of View) the scene is going to be written in.  This not cast in stone, and if you find after you’ve written a scene that it would be better in someone else’s POV, then make that change.  

I also decide what I want to have happen in that particular scene, where my starting point is and where the end point of the scene is.  I usually include what the POV character is feeling in addition to what I want to have happen.    As I said before a paragraph should be sufficient.

Continue in this vein until you have a scene plan for every chapter in your chapter plan. 

In the next post we are ready to start the actually writing of the novel.  I’ll talk about facing a blank page and how to get started.

See you soon.

So you want to write a novel – part eight

More planning

Well we’re almost there.  Just a little more planning to do and you can start your book.  Yesterday I talked about making a list of the main plot points in your book.  Today we are going to expand on that and come up with a chapter plan. 

You should know by now how many chapters you are planning on writing, now it’s time to break down your story into chapters so you have a plan which will make writing the book easier.  You can make this plan as detailed or a brief as you want.  Things to keep in mind while making this plan is to be flexible.  It’s not carved in stone and as you start writing your book, you will find that the direction of your story may change.   When I do my chapter plan, I have a one to two sentence blurb for each chapter.

When I’m planning a book, I have a brainstorming session and try to think of events and situations for each chapter that build toward each plot point.  The beginning chapters are usually easier to plan but take your time and try to come up with a tentative story line for your entire book.  Take it in baby steps and work toward each plot point.  The middle will be the most difficult part of this process. 

If you find it too difficult to plan the entire book, just try to plan out at least the first four chapters.  Once you get close to the end of those chapters, go back to your chapter plan and plan the next four.  Most beginning writers run out of steam once they hit the third or fourth chapter, so doing some preliminary planning will make the process of writing a little easier. 

The format for your plan can be however you want.  You need to discover what works for you.  When I do my chapter plan, I make a list of each chapter and I put my main plot points where I think they will fall in the book first.  I then come up with events in each chapter that build to the plot points.  This can be an involved process if you have to do a lot of brainstorming, so take your time.  If you need to go over the teaser paragraph to refresh you mind on what you want the story to be about.

So your homework is to come up with your chapter plan.  If you cannot come up with an entire plan for each chapter, plan for at least the first four.

In the next post I’m going to discuss breaking down the chapter plan into a scene plan.

Until next time happy writing.

So you want to write a novel – part seven

A cunning plan

In this post we are going to talk about the preliminary planning for your novel.  When I wrote my first, second and third book I didn’t plan at all.  I sat down and wrote those books from start to finish.  I finished these books, but the revision process was long and involved, and it took twice as long to write them as it does for me now.   With planning in the way I’m about to show you, I can get a first draft written in about one and a half months.  Where as before it took me a minimum of three months and sometimes longer to write a book with no planning.

The first thing I do to come up with my novel plan is make a list, in bullet point form, of the main things that happen in the book.  This is usually not a long list.  The idea is to come up with the big events that occur in the novel, usually the ones that revolve around your main plot.  You may have sub-plots in your book as well, but it isn’t necessary to plan these at this point.  What you want to do is figure out the main story line that is going to carry through the entire book.  It has to be something that can’t be solved easily.  You start with an inciting incident, which will be at the beginning of the book, and start the major plot.  Then you will have several occurences that have to do with this plot which raise the stakes for your characters.  You will have a crisis point at the climax of your story, and finally a resolution at the end of the book.

Also when I’m at this stage I determine a projected length for the book.  Usually when I start a book I either have a specific publisher in mind to submit to, or I use a standard word count that is acceptable to publishers for the genre I write in.  Once I know the word length, I determine how many chapters I want to write, and how many scenes per chapter.   I then determine the projected word length per scene in the book.  Here is an example of how this works.

For our example, we are going to write a book that is 75,000 words in length.  We decide that we want to have fifteen chapters in this book, with three scenes per chapter.  So in total we know that we need to write 45 scenes (15×3).  To determine the projected length of each scene we simply divide the total projected word count by the number of scenes, which works out approximately to 1,666 words per scene.  If you want to determine how many pages this works out to be simply divide the number of words per scene by 250, which is the average number of words on a page.  It works out to be roughly 6.5 pages.  We need to know how many scenes will be in our book in order to come up with a scene plan.  We’ll discuss the scene plan in the next post.

Your homework assignment for today is to determine what your main plot is.  You will need to make a list which includes your inciting incident, several plot points which will raise the tension, a climax and a resolution.  You will also need to determine how long you want your book to be and how many chapters and scenes are going to be in the book.

Up next – brainstorming and coming up with a chapter plan

See you soon and happy writing.

So you want to write a novel – part six (b)

In our last post we dealt with creating our protagonist, and in the case with the novel I’m using as an example, we dealt with the heroine.  If you are writing romance, you will need to create a hero for your story as well.  The process is the same for the hero as it is for the heroine.   You need to know what his goals are, what he fears, and what has happened in his life to get him to where he is at the beginning of the story.    With the hero, or if you are writing a non-romance book, it could be the antagonist of the story,  he needs to have goals that oppose the heroine’s or protagonist.  Your hero and heroine should be evenly matched.  If you have a strong heroine, then your hero needs to be strong as well.

In my story the hero Ben is raising his nephew (who is Taryn’s target).  His goal is to protect this child to the exclusion of everything else.  Ben has baggage, as we all do.  If you think of your characters as people they will have more depth.  Like everyone else, we are shaped and molded by events in our lives.  Ben grew up with a father who became increasing violent as he got older, which escalate into the murder of Ben’s mother, Ben fears that he has the potential inside him to become as violent as his father.  He refrains from engaging in long-term relationship because he fears that he will become his father.  Since I’m writing a romance novel, Ben will need to come to terms with his father’s behavior, and face his own fears in order to be happy.

At this point, after working on your main characters you should have a pretty good handle on what makes them tick.  Knowing their goals and fears will guide you in the outlining process, because you will throw your characters into situations that play on their fears, oppose their goals, and also there will be the action and reaction between characters as they both try to get what they want while avoiding what they fear.

I’m going to talk briefly about your supporting characters.  If you are writing a book with a villain, they should be as well-developed as your main characters.  Try to avoid having someone who is evil just for the sake of being evil.  Give them a reason to do what they do and act they way they act.

So your homework for today is to work on developing the other characters in your story.  Do the same as you did with your protagonist and remember they need goals, fears and baggage too.

Up next – planning your book

See you soon.  Happy writing.

Have a nice weekend.

It’s Friday and I’m going away to Toronto until Monday night so there won’t be any new posts until Tuesday.  We’ll pick up where we left off when I get back.

So you want to write a novel – part six (a)

Casting the roles

When I’m writing a novel, after I have my idea sentence and my teaser paragraph, I take a look at who is going to star in my novel.  For myself, I find it is easier to do a plot outline after I know a little something about my characters.  In today’s post we will start with the protagonist, and since I write romance we will deal with the heroine in this post and the hero in the next post.

When I work on my characters I concern myself more with the inner workings of the character than their physical traits.  I usually make notes on hair, eye colour, height and build, and that’s usually all.  My main focus is how the character thinks, feels, what goals they have and what they fear.

From your teaser paragraph you should already know a little something about your protagonist.  We are going to expand on that knowledge to gain some insight into our character.  Doing this will make the character believable and it will also help you find a direction for your story.  As before I’m providing an example from my work.

Taryn: What we know

She is a demon, a slave, she’s tough, strong and protective of her sister.  I decided that someone with those traits wasn’t born a slave.  So as part of her back story I decided that her family was in hiding, and were part of the rebel forces trying to free her people.  She was capture when she was in her late teens.  Her sister remained in hiding until the beginning of the book.  Because she’s experienced slavery and all the horror that goes along with that, she would not want her sister to experience it.  One of her fears is not being able to protect her sister.  When her sister is captured, this plays on her fears and creates internal conflict for her when she realizes that to save her sister, she is going to have to kill a child.  You want your character to evolve over the course of your novel, and to change by the end.  A good way to accomplish this is to play on your character’s fears, and make them face what they are most afraid of.

Our character has goals as well, two of them.  We learned that her immediate goal is to save her sister.  A long-term goal for her is to kill her master and be free.  Keep your character’s goals in mind as you are writing your story, and be sure to give them set backs to achieving their goals.   Have one of your other character’s have opposing goals, which in turn generates conflict as each character tries to achieve their respective goals.

You won’t necessarily know once you start to write your book everything about your character.  As you are writing, you will learn things about your character that you hadn’t considered before.  That’s fine.  It’s just like when you meet someone in your own life, you don’t know everything about them until you spend time with them.  So ask yourself the following questions about your character.

What do they fear?

What are their goals?

What happened in their past to make them the person they are at this moment?

You could even set it up like an interview and have your character tell you their story.

In the next post I’ll go through the same process, but with the hero of my book.

See you soon.  Happy Writing.

So you want to write a novel – part 5

Expanding your idea

In the last post we wrote a sentence capturing the core of the story idea.  How are we going to turn this one sentence into a novel?  We are first going to write a teaser, similar to the one seen on the back of a paper back novel.  Don’t worry if you don’t know all that’s going to go into the book, that’s not the point of this exercise.  The point of this exercise is to see if your idea has the potential to be a full length novel.  Spend some time looking at the sentence you wrote and thinking about what you want your book is about.  Once you feel ready you can start on your paragraph.  At this point, I suggest no more than two paragraphs.  The trick again is to keep it brief, and only put in the information that is crucial to your story.  Like I did in my previous post I’ll be providing an example, from the same book. 

Taryn is an elite enforcer in the Under-realm, and the first slave to rise to such heights.  Above all else she longs to kill the demon who enslaves her and finally have her freedom.  She must journey to the human realm to assassinate the human foretold to bring about her master’s down fall, or watch her sister die a horrible death.  With her sister’s life hanging in the balance, she makes the journey.  She is determined to do what she must, until she realizes her target is a child, and Ben, the man who protects him, makes her long for a life that she can never have.

Now we know more about our protagonist.  We knew she was a slave, but now we know that she’s an elite enforcer, so she’s strong, tough and able to take care of herself.  We know that family is important to her.  She has two goals, a short-term goal of saving her sister, and a long-term goal of killing her master and being free.  We also realize that she isn’t a cold-blooded killer, because she finds it difficult to contemplate taking the life of a child, even to save her sister.  And we see the romance element of the novel, in the form of Ben.   So not only have we learned what we want kind of story we want to write, we’ve also learned more about our main character.  Not bad for one paragraph.

Now it’s your turn.  Try to expand your idea sentence into a paragraph or two.  Don’t worry about perfecting or getting it right the first time.  No one will see this but you.  This is a tool for you to use to get your creative juices flowing and to think about what you want to have happen your book.  And to think about your main character.

Up next…Casting the roles

See you next time.  Happy writing!