Rewrite 7 - Fixing Dialogue, Step by Step

Most of the time, I love my dialogue as it goes onto the page. The characters come alive for me, and I can barely keep up with their chattering, and drafting is a pleasure. Occasionally, the characters get sullen, and I have to put words in their mouths. I struggle to meet my word count. Whether inspired or workmanlike, the pages never look wonderful when, after a cooling off period, I return to them for the rewrite.

I could get discouraged, but process saves me. I know from past experience that going through, step by step, I'll end up with pages that do the storytelling job. My process has changed over the years (and it continues to change). While I used to treat rewriting like an immersion experience, taking on whatever displeased me in each go-through, now I tend to isolate one concern at a time.

That discipline

• reduces confusion, 
• keeps me from missing things, and 
• helps to prevent the problem of having one repair knock everything else out of whack.

Here are the steps I use, in this order:

• Make sure something happens - Sounds simple, right? For scenes with little dialogue, this tends to occur naturally, but it is amazing how often dialogue does not move a story forward. And this is especially true if your characters are clever and charming. I do two things as a test. First, I title the scene. This forces me to think about it holistically as opposed to as a series of exchanges. Next, I add a subtitle that begins, "In which..." Anyone who has read a lot of older novels is familiar with these subtitles. "In which our heroine Beatrice steals Alexandra's locket." Beware of subtitles where a character "finds out" something or "insults" another character. Ask what finding out leads to. If she finds out her best friend has betrayed her, is she forced to flee Coventry? Ask about the results of that insult. Does Harold challenge Christopher to a duel at dawn?
• Make sure the scene fits - A great scene can be in the wrong place or in the wrong book. Look at the scene in context. If you've titled your scenes, line them up and see if the order makes sense and moves the story forward.
• Make the characters distinct 1 - Can you hear your characters voices? Is there contrast? Would you know who was who just by their perspective and choice of words?
• Check the narrative - I often short change the action, description, and reflection in the draft, so this is vital to my rewrite. It often puts me back into draft mode, forcing me to visualize the scene anew and to feel along with the characters. Once the narration is added, the pacing becomes evident and may need adjustment.
• Check the point of view - The scene looks much more complete now. Is the point of view consistent, or is there head hopping? Even more important, is the point of view character the one who has the most to lose as the scene proceeds?
• Trim the start and the stop - Most draft scenes start too early and end too late. I chop from the top first, removing any lines that are not essential. "Hellos" are deadly. When it is impossible to start the scene any later, I look at the ending. Sometimes the ending doesn't truly resolve and more must be added. But more often it dribbles on longer than necessary. Last line - cut! Next to last line - cut! Continue until the scene can't end any sooner.
• Eliminate on-the-nose - I need to write a whole piece on this. Basically, people are more interesting and reveal more character when they talk indirectly. Check out this nice ScreenwritingU article. Also, avoid at all costs and line that could be preceded by "As you know." Do not use your characters as shills to avoid your job of clear, well-placed narration.
• Check for clarity - Lots of words now. Lots of changes. Lot of opportunity for confusion.
• Make the characters distinct 2 - This is so important. Readers love to hear characters. Make sure they still are talking in their own voices.
• Clear out the throat clearing - "Um, err, well" People do talk like this. A little goes a long way. Fiction is not reality. It is enhanced. Clear out the dull stuff. Beware also of "real" dialect. I'm not gonna tell ya twice 'bout this.
• Eliminate the repeats - Yes, people repeat themselves. Yes, they echo back what the other person has said to ensure they heard properly or to change emphasis. No, you shouldn't do this (most of the time).
• Add the attributions - Make sure we know who is talking. "Said" is usually the best word.
• Read the dialogue aloud - Your ears will pick out the problems.

I'll note that this is not a recipe. I am not concerned if I drift away from the process or change the order. Since I often end up drafting new sentences, paragraphs, and scenes during rewriting, things can get crazy. But this process provides a fallback position when (as often happens) I get uncertain about what to do next. And it provides an excellent checklist to ensure that I've done the full job.

What about you? How do you approach rewriting dialogue and rewriting in general?

 

The Disrupted Writer - Fast recovery

Your planning is perfect. You've mastered distractions. You're writing every day. Then life gets in the way.

Writers are not immune to financial concerns, the ache of romance gone wrong, the agony of a child with serious illness, or the shock and grief of a death in the family. If they were, they would not have the experiences they need to move readers.

Disruptions happen. They are beyond your control. But how do you deal with them? I have already written about Reentering the Interrupted Story and how listing Ten Reasons to Love Your Story can reignite your passion for your manuscript. Either of these might suggest strategies you can use to get back into writing when you are disrupted. But there are other approaches (and perhaps you have a few to share?).

Let's take the bad effects of disruption one by one and look at what you might do:

• You're delayed - Here there is a difference between a five-minute phone call and a three-hour stay in the emergency room. The more severe the delay, the more a challenge it will be to your discipline. Go back to your plan, even if you do not have time to complete it. Add some words to your manuscript as soon as it is possible.
• Echoes distract you - Even after a disruption is over, the situation may continue to run through your mind, or you may be overcome by the emotions. Acknowledge that the disruption is not necessarily over when you return to your writing desk, and it may need more time that you suspect. But replaying the situation may not be useful. In those cases, try doing something to transition yourself. You might, for instance, write a letter to one of your characters about what you just went through (and then write their response).
• Your idea falls apart - Is there anything more frustrating? Sometimes the structures your minds produce are exquisitely delicate and they evaporate with a knock on the door. Taking a deep breath to dispel the natural distress is the best first step. The next is to begin reconstructing immediately, even if you can only snatch at fragments. Like dreams, these concepts get harder to bring back with time. If it still feels like a complete loss, forget reconstruction and get to work immediately on something different.
•  You lose your enthusiasm or confidence - I sometimes thing being a writer or taking on a challenging work is a spell cast upon me, and an interruption can break that spell. Sometimes, coming back from this is just a matter of using the Reentering or Ten Reasons approaches noted above, but sometimes I need a pep talk or "proof" or a new attitude that gives me permission to work on a "lousy" project or do a lousy job. Okay. Tomorrow, things will be better.

Of course, a disruption may be so big it becomes the new normal. If you lose your job, it will take time to secure a new one. If your house burns down, you can't move back in a day later. In many cases, getting back to work will mean recommitting in the face of what your life is, as opposed to what you still believe it should be. (Which is not to say that you should "get on with it" immediately. Major life events are owed their time. You can't rush through the equivalent of Kübler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief without paying a price.)

Once you recommit to your writing, you need to reassess the work in terms of who you are now. Life events have a way of changing priorities. Finally, you need to rework your plans to reflect time available, opportunities, new options, and changing processes.

Overall, your response to disruptions is within your control. You only become derailed for a long period of time if you allow yourself to be. Sometimes, your recovery will be slow and begin with small things. Sometimes, you'll find a way to jump back in with more energy and commitment than ever before. I think of Ray Bradbury, who said that a day without writing was a little death. He lived this sentiment, when, after a disastrous stroke that left him unable to type, he began dictating stories as soon as he was physically able to.  If you are determined to write, nothing can stop you.

Creating a Writing Process Diary

Last time, I wrote about how you can become more productive through the use of documented processes. Many writers simply follow processes they find in books and courses–and there is nothing wrong with that. A book like Save the Cat has pushed many a writer toward success.

However you may find that you want to have a reference that

• includes your own ideas,
• provides the potential for grabbing and adapting insights from a variety of courses and articles, and
• provides the impetus for regularly improving your craft.

For this, I recommend creating your own reference in the form of a writing process diary.

Many people create such diaries in electronic form. I like to use a blank notebook section off into different stages of writing (pre-work, drafting, rewriting, etc.). I make my entries in pencil and leave extra space so that it is easy to read new steps or to make corrections. I put the processes in the order that I normally use them. And, in each case, I make sure that everything is clear by writing in full sentences and including specific references. In addition, this diary is where I include comments and measurements of success. My specific entries may include:

• The name of the process
• A brief description
• The date it was added
• Its source with a complete reference
• My current assessment of its value
• An estimate of the “cost” to me (which may be in terms of how much time it takes for me to execute this process and how much preparation and energy might be required)
• My level of mastery of the process
• What I call the “fun index”

Once I have these elements documented, I find that I almost always end up breaking up the process into smaller steps. This is one of the biggest values since a major process, like using backward logic, may seem overwhelming. The smaller bits I settle on usually seem doable, even the most challenging days. Besides becoming bite-size, the smaller steps are more easily adapted and tuned for my needs.

Of course, many of the processes I find elsewhere already have step-by-step instructions, which helps me to adopt and adapt the more quickly. But I never see these as complete and final until I have both tried them out on a real manuscript and practiced them to the point where I have a level of comfort and confidence. In fact, my first step toward mastering any process is to put it in my own words. Somehow translating it helps me to integrate new process into my practices.

So there you have it—a process for documenting processes. This may seem fussy and overdone. Certainly, I don't take every process and break it down and documented to the extent defined here. The point is to make things easier and not harder. There is no right way to do this. There just is the way that provides the most benefits for you. So, adopt, or discard as you please.

The Process Shall Set Your Writing Free

Process sounds antithetical to the creative process. What  could be more bruising to creativity than rules and required steps? And yet, most professional writers have developed detailed, regular routines, and, chances are, your favorite stories were created within an organized framework. (To see an example for process, take a look at Rewrite 3 - Structure, Structure, Structure.) Some of the rewards of using established processes provides are:

• Commitment to regular practice - A fundamental aspect of writing routines is putting the time in, day after day. Not only do these minutes and hours add up, but they keep your tools sharpened. No one would expect a musician to take a week off from practicing and return immediately to concert quality. Writers are just as vulnerable to getting out of shape if they skip their sessions.
• Bite-sized chunks - When you have a process, you can break it down into pieces that are small enough to avoid being overwhelmed.
• Paths to mastery - You can only master a writing approach if you 1) specify it and 2) evaluate it.
•  Reference points for experimentation - You can only break up your routine if you have one. And you can only get future value from trying something new if the new approach can be evaluated against a standard and then integrated into your routine.
• Freedom from dithering - In July I wrote about how dithering wrecks productivity (and its solutions, such as choosing your task the day before and understanding why you dither). Established process point toward the exact work you should be doing the next day, so they help you move from dithering to deciding.

Now, I am the first to admit that you don't mess with what's working. If your muse sits down next to you and begins dictating an extraordinary story, it is not the time to say, "Excuse me, I'm doing the grammar check on chapter five today. Could you come back tomorrow?" (Although, I probably would get to that grammar check as soon as the muse slipped away.) But structure, once all the grumbling and resistance is over with, usually enhances a creative endeavor.

I'll go further and say documented processes, which obviously can help productivity, provided permission and direction for creative work by distracting and satisfying the critic in your head. In my next post, I'll provide some suggestions on how to document your approaches in a way that provides focus, while helping you to innovate and improve.

What are your go-to processes for writing?

Does structure inhibit or free your imagination?

Post Mortem for a Writing Project

What went right? What went wrong?

In the lab and later in consulting, I was taught the value of looking over a project when I completed it. Asking a series of specific questions after finishing a work of prose (novel, short story, article, script, speech) can also be valuable, and it is a great way to gain efficiencies that will help you be more productive.

When you do a post mortem presents interesting choices. I like to do them after I've sent a manuscript into the world, when there is potential for a check coming back. But you can do a post mortem just before you submit it to a critique group or when you decide to shelve it or when you decide it should be shredded.

A good post mortem starts with the question at the top of this post. Begin with the positive, so you don't fall into a guilt spiral. Even the most disastrous work has some successes, and it is easy to forget them unless you intentionally call them out. On the other hand, what went wrong may be driven by the actions of someone else, but you can always look to yourself for a deeper understanding of where you may have let the wrong person in too soon, pressed the wrong button, or signed up to work with the wrong people.

Beyond these general questions, here are the specific ones I use when I do a post mortem.

• Was this project worth my time? Did I make the right choice in taking it on? I have at times become enamored with a second rate idea. At other times, I've accepted an assignment that was a drudgery. Bad choices in both cases (except the time I did a tedious assignment at ten times my normal rate).
• Did I succeed in what I intended to do? Did I explain something, illustrate a theme, create an emotion, or bring a fascinating character to life?
• Did I succeed in bringing the ten things I love most to my audience? (I always list the things that make me passionate about a project before I begin it, and often as a step along the way. I'll write more about this in a future post.)
• Did I find a practice I should adopt or did I vary a current practice in an interesting way? This is often where my process book gets a new entry or a reliable process gets retuned so it becomes more effective. It was a post mortem that added text to speech as a part of my regular proofing process.
• Did I learn a new skill? Did I try something new? You don't get better if you don't put into practice what you learn and find opportunities to stretch. One of the hardest things I did was write a novel from a single point of view. All the energy I got from switching between different characters and leaving them in cliffhanger situation was gone and I had to find new ways to build tension -- ways that have served me well since.
• Did I go off course? Sometimes a yes here means I wasted time -- time I might save in the future. Sometimes going off course is a good thing.
• Did I leave something undone or underdone? No poem is finished, it's abandoned, right? If I had more time, what would I work on and why?
• Was I the right person to do this project? A tough but necessary question. There are many works I admire that I would make a hash of.
• Is there an aspect that I'm not ready to do yet? On the other hand, if I keep at this writing thing, I may be able to write scenes and arguments that are currently beyond my grasp. I met a writer who, every year or so, wrote from the point of view of a black man. (He is white.) These attempts ended up in a drawer. Then I read a story where he pulled it off brilliantly. He had developed empathy and knowledge because of many years of trying.
• Did I improve as a writer? I hope the answer is always yes. Truthfully, it isn't. But I keep asking.

These questions represent a mix that leads to positive and negative answers, and answers that probe the art, the craft, and the professional processes. Together, they encourage me to grow and learn. I write the answers, and I take a hard look at what I've written. This work doesn't count as my writing for the day, but it is essential to my productivity.

Have you ever done a post mortem of a writing project? Has it helped? Do you use different questions?