Writing Prep 8 - Getting Ready to Write Dialogue

Writers are sly. You have no secrets from them. They snoop and eavesdrop with no shame. I think of Henry Higgins transcribing Eliza's conversations while unobtrusively leaning against a column in Covent Gardens. She only knows he's there when someone uninvolved warns her.

Damon Knight once said that the best dialogue was like a conversation you'd strain to overhear on a subway. The operative word there is "like." Most literally transcribed conversations are tedious, lacking context and full of false starts and meanders. But the sounds of good dialogue are all around you. Regularly paying attention and noting what you've heard (and why it is interesting) will naturally feed your stories and make them authentic. As long as you don't get to literal.

A word about eavesdropping.  Don't get caught. Don't cheat, either. Most man-on-the-street interviews are deadly. Too many people scramble to sound reasonable on camera and grab the tired phrases they've heard on the news over and over again. And the creative editors in the news room seem to gravitate toward these, avoiding colorful language that might create risk. Stick with the familiar.

Even worse is what comes across in reality shows. That dialogue seems to be processed with malice aforethought. Talk shows? Blather. The attempts at conversation are grabs attention, not true communication.

So go to the mall. Go to a courthouse. Go to a ballgame. Go where people are relaxed and with friends. Or adversaries. One reason to hang around a long line of people trying to get a great price, get the best tickets, or be in position for festival seating is to hear them talk, especially when someone tries to jump the line.

Of course, if you know what your are writing and need to hear how teens or professors or cops talk, to do research, go where they are. If you don't fit in, don't draw attention to yourself and stay long enough so the people become acclimated to you. Seek out opportunities. Most communities have ride-along programs where you can sit in the back of a police car as the officers do their jobs.

When you interview people, pay as much attention to how they say things, the words they choose, as you do to the content of their answers. (It's a good idea to pay attention to body language, too. And I like to interview people while they are doing their normal work.)

It is helpful to listen with a purpose from time to time.  Isolate cadence, vocabulary, logic, emphasis, and accent. Look for patterns in evasion, going silent, or interrupting.

Acting lessons can help you to uses of dialogue, to sharpen your observational skills, and to learn the power of a pause. Improv training can get you to listen and respond quickly. It gives you chances to surprise yourself.

Tape voices and get them into your head. Then create new things for your subjects to say.

A lot of dialogue in stories is facile and cliche. You would never want to overhear it. If you want authentic dialogue that causes people to lean in to catch every work, you need to put in the time and effort preparing to write it.

Every Other Friday - Doug Solter Interview

Doug Solter went to college at Oklahoma State where he earned a B.A. in Radio/TV/Film production.
Doug started writing in 1998, and three years later his fifth screenplay, FATHER FIGURE, became a semi-finalist in The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Two more scripts ranked in the top 15 percent of the Nicholl Fellowships for two different years and his tenth script, RAIL FAN, became a quarter-finalist in the competition in 2009.

Tell me about your novel Skid:

My young adult novel Skid is about a teen girl racer from Oklahoma who travels to Europe to race in Formula 1. She starts as a test driver for a struggling German racing team and then claws her way up to competing for the world championship. Meanwhile, she wrestles with an awful secret regarding her father's deadly car accident while trying to make sense of her best friend's romantic feelings for her. And the stress of her new job isn't exactly helping.

What drove you to write Skid?

Growing up, I've always loved car racing. My dad would take me to SCCA races at the road-racing circuit near my home. (It's the Oklahoma track featured in the book.) I particularly fell in love with Formula 1 due to the excellent John Frankenheimer film Grand Prix starring James Garner. That planted the seed of wanting to write a story set in the world of Formula 1.

But, I didn't want the standard young-guy-is-mentored-by-the-older-guy type of sports story. When I switched from screenwriting to young adult novels, I saw this idea in a new light. What if the girl was a teen? I wrote a previous script version of this idea with a woman in her early 20's. But cutting that age by six years made a huge difference to the story and thus fueled the book. Please excuse the pun.

What were your biggest obstacles?

First was getting into the head of a teenage girl. Many young adult stories are told from the first person point of view, and I had to describe and interpret the world through a restricted point of view of a girl. So I had to summon whatever acting skills I possessed to make that POV feel real. 

Second was getting the teen voice down. Teens are very smart. They know if you get them or not. Usually an adult talks down to them or tries teaching them how to be or how to act. When you write for a teen audience, you have to look at them as equals. You can't go in thinking, “Oh, they're only kids,” because that's NOT how they view themselves. 

You must also put aside all your adult experience and write from a view point that looks at the world with shiny, new eyes, ready to dive in because death is somewhere out there at infinity. Teen characters don't have this prepackaged wealth of experience that adult characters have coming into a story. As an adult, it's easy to forget this.

What are your productivity tips?

Write every day. Or if you must skip a day, feel guilty about it. Even if it's just for an hour. Write. You'll get more accomplished than most people who wait for “inspiration.” Inspiration will fail you. I'm convinced that the Writing Muse lives under a pile of work, and she only comes out when you're slugging it out with your story. She might give you the idea in a shower, but she doesn't like helping you write it unless you're fully committed to the project.

Every Other Friday - Kristan Higgins interview

Today, How to Write Fast begins a series of interviews with productive writers – and we are starting with a bang:

Kristan Higgins is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author and two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America RITA Award. Her books have been praised for their "genius level EQ, whippet-fast, funny dialogue and sweet plots with a deliciously tart edge" (USA TODAY). She lives in Connecticut with her heroic firefighter husband and two extremely advanced children, one shy little mutt and an occasionally affectionate cat.

Tell me about SOMEBODY TO LOVE. 

SOMEBODY TO LOVE is my ninth romance and tells the riches-to-rags story of Parker Welles, a single mom, as well as a children’s author with a hefty trust fund. When her father loses all her money in an insider-trading deal, Parker has the summer to flip the one asset she has left: a decrepit house in the coast of Maine. Coming to help her is the last person she wants around—her father’s attorney, James Cahill. But her back’s against the wall, and she can’t turn away his help, so there they are, stuck in a 900-square-foot house, her son off with his father for three weeks… I defy them not to hook up.

What drove you to write SOMEBODY TO LOVE? 

I’d been thinking about Parker for a while; she first shows up as the best friend in THE NEXT BEST THING, in which she gives sage advice and seems quite content as a singleton. I wondered what she’d be like if I took away that trust fund and mansion, as well as her book series, with which she has a love/hate relationship.

What were your biggest obstacles? 

Blending the casts from the two previous books was a challenge, as well as making sure that a new reader wouldn’t feel left out if she hadn’t read those two previous books. The other obstacle was staying true to the things I’d set up in the previous book; I had this great idea for Parker’s relationship with the father of her son; then I reread THE NEXT BEST THING and thought, “Nope. Can’t do it. It’s just not true.”

What are your productivity tips? 

Turn off your wifi. We teach ourselves to have ADD with wifi, I think. I also keep a weekly page goal and almost never miss it. Daily can be tough; if you commit to 15 pages a day but then have a sick child or need to get other things done, it’s easy to feel discouraged. Weekly allows me to have a life outside of writing while still keeping my eye on the prize, as it were.

Write a Letter to Your Character

When the juices aren't flowing, try something different. One piece of advice I heard is get your character drunk and ask him/her all the questions you have. Sounds like fun, if you can tie your brain up in those kind of knots.

A simpler tactic is write a letter to your character. I like to provide advice, warn, and ask questions. I do this in my own voice. Sometimes, as I articulate these things outside of the context of the story, I get a flash of recognition. The character would not listen to my advice. My warning would only make things worse. The answer to the question would be unexpected.
 
Or write a letter about your character. Here, I write to someone I know as if the character is a mutual friend. "You won't believe what a mess he's gotten himself into this time." I work hard to write in a way that would keep my friend interested and engaged, and that usually reveals what might keep readers interested and engaged. This is actually the easiest tactic to use, and it takes on the most life if I make a good choice on who to address the letter to.


Or write a letter from your character. This is the trickiest. It involves getting into your character's head in a different way and writing in the character's voice. It doesn't always work for me. The best results I've had are when the character has gone silent. (My characters talk to me all through the writing - do yours?) Sometimes, I find out why I'm being given the cold shoulder. Sometimes, the character forgives me and gets back to work.

Dear Peter

Bigger Stories 1 – Larger than life characters

Sherlock Holmes is everywhere. Not just in the wonderful stories that Conan Doyle created, but in a whole new world of Steampunk Holmes (Downey’s movies), in contemporary London Holmes (Sherlock, with a twitchy Benedict Cumberbatch) and in a contemporary U.S. Holmes (Elementary), not to mention the wonderful Mary Russell books (by Laurie R. King) that begin with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

What does this have to do with a writer’s productivity? The equation for productivity is not words over time, it is audience reached over time. (This could translate to fame and fortune, but might not. We write to communicate. But I will accept finagle factors reflecting intended audience.) Create a character like Holmes (or a powerful concept or a page-turning plot) and more people will read your words. In other words, don’t go mild, go strong. Push what you have as far as it will go.

Note 1: Bigger is not always better. Subtlety has its place. So does reason. The clowns of talk radio and TV’s battling ‘bots of BS are plenty BIG, but they do not serve public discourse. I would prefer that they not be as big as they are. Your character should, in the final draft, be sized to your intent.

Note 2: If you go too far, you can always pull back to something that is more reasonable. Going the other direction, from a reasonable character to one that is striking or even epic, isn’t likely to happen. Dial down, not up.

In one of my all-time favorite writing guides, Writing Novels that Sell, Jack Bickham, wrote about how characters are seen through a glass darkly. They only come across the way the writer sees them if you exaggerate. One of his most successful characters emerged when he pushed a description to ridiculous levels to make the point to a class.

In a draft, you can’t go too far (because no one has to see it but you).

·      Would I notice my character if he/she walked past me on the street?

·      Is his/her fatal flaw remarkable and painful?

·      Does my character’s humor or absurdity make me chuckle as I write?

·      Would any other writer love to write a story featuring my character?

·      Is my character the best/worst at anything?

Of course, once you have a hero/heroine that lights up the room, you need to work on the villain. In fact, the villain may be more important than the protagonist. (Here are some nice tips on creating the antagonist.)

The first step to a Bigger Story (and making your writing time really count) is creating larger than life characters. Don’t be afraid to go too far.