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.

Using Real Experiences for Fiction

Life offers us the intriguing, the meaningful, and sometimes the extraordinary. Whether it is a conversation or a car crash, a writer will take these moments and commit them to paper. Recording them in a journal while they are still fresh is a good idea. Dumping them directly into your latest work of fiction probably isn't.

Admittedly, it will help you reach your daily wordcount (a HTWF Best Practice), but those words may be hard to reshape or extract during your rewrite. And, if you let them stand, they are likely to wound your story. Here's why:

• You're too close. Shouts are still whispers and whispers are still shouts. Half your brain is having a riot fueled by the survival chemicals. Chances are, whatever seems to make perfect sense to you now will sound like ravings further into the future. This is obviously true in the immediate aftermath, but big experience tend to be relived days, months, and even years after a life event.
• It's all about you. It is okay to write for yourself in your journal, but other writing is aimed at an audience. Ever notice how dreams that are vivid to you bore the heck out of people you tell them to? Until some time passes, it is difficult to put a real experience into a context that is complete and relevant to your readers.
• The voice is wrong. Your fiction-writing voice is not likely to be the same one with which you relate the story of your own life. This is especially true if you are working on a first-person novel. 
• The details aren't right. Just as you may struggle for the exact words in fiction, the details must be selected to serve the purpose of the story. Unfortunately, the details of a real-life event are not chosen. Unless you are very lucky, they will work against the narrative and weaken your story.
• Facts aren't true. Anyone who has spent much time in a writers group knows what I mean. Invariably, there are times when someone writes something that is wildly unconvincing, and then defends it by saying that "it really happened." Sorry. That doesn't work for me. Real life is full of coincidences and unexplained phenomena. Fiction needs to offer something more.
• You haven't had time to explore. For everything that really matters, our minds work in the background. This is why you often get the answers to story problems when you are not looking for them (all too often, in the shower where a pen and paper aren't near at hand). Events that shape us invariably shape our fiction. But not immediately. It takes time for the mysterious workings of the mind to rework them, highlight what matters, combine them with other experiences, and burn away the dross. And, once that is done and the experience return as story ideas, they need to be played with and rearticulated. Give the experiences time to ferment and age, and you'll end up with something fine, something that will thrill your readers. 

It may seem like a good shortcut to transcribe your life as you are living it. Without a doubt, people who have interesting experiences and who take the time to note them down do have a better chance of approaching their writing productively. But (unless you are a journalist or blogger) the advantage is in investments made for future work, not it cashing out immediately.

So save those moments. Capture them with all the authenticity you can and be sure to include context and your emotional responses. But be wary of introducing them directly into your fiction. If they really belong in your story, they'll force themselves in after your cooling down period.

How do you treat real-life events? What value do they bring? Have they ever led you astray? How long did it take for you to translate them into fiction that worked?

Bigger 9 - Getting Crazy

Algis Budrys once said that all interesting characters were certifiably mad. They are imprudent, action-oriented, and obsessed.

So are many writers. Some that I know terrify me with their stunts, extreme perspectives, and picaresque lives. The characters they meet in the real world compete with the best in fiction. It seems like a great advantage to a writer when they have friends who are available and ready to become memorable characters in their scripts and novels. If this is the kind of writer you are, congratulations. If you live long enough, you have the ingredients for bestselling fiction.

But maybe you're more like me. Not John Belushi. Not Hemingway. More Bob Newhart. Is there any hope for us? Can we create big characters?

Certainly, we can listen to our adventurous friends. When they introduce us to larger than life people,  we can bring all our powers of observation and storytelling to what we experience. It's not the same as being crazy, but it's a start.

What else can we do?

• Research - No matter how cautious you are, you can read about the range of human behavior. A book like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat will extend your knowledge of what is possible at the limits of the bell-shaped curve. If you are more daring, go where extreme people are. A friend of mine directs a drama group at a federal prison.
• Imagine - What would you do if your life (or a loved one’s) were threatened? Or if there were no social constraints? Or consequences?
• Notice blind spots - It is hard to recognize what you don't see, but it is easy to notice when others around you use circular logic, ignore the facts, and interpret reality in unexpected ways. Here's a tip: if you irritated, perplexed, or surprised by an opinion or justification, step away from your emotion and inhabit that peculiar mindframe. You may discover something valuable.
• Explore - Take an assumption or longheld belief and abandon it for a day. Take the opposite view of what you believe. Give the mad idea the benefit of a doubt and see where it takes you.
• Get to know people better - That mundane person at work? What is she hiding.
• Be prepared - When you happen upon an eccentric or bizarre person, don't waste the opportunity. Be ready with questions.
• Recognize context - Behaviors that are perfectly fine in one situation are nonsensical in others. Dancing at a party is fine. At a funeral Mass, not so much. Transpose what is normal and easy for you to relate to in one arena into another where it is uncomfortable, and then explore why a person might feel their behavior is necessary.

None of this may make you as crazy as your most adventurous friends, but maybe it will nudge your character toward certifiable, toward being authentic and unpredictable. And that will make your story bigger and more likely to reach larger audiences.

Draft 5 - Writing in the Fourth Person

I audited a writing course with John Casey, and he mentioned once how people seemed to be speaking more and more in the fourth person.

Fourth person?

Some conversations seem to consist almost entirely of quotes from movies, tv, and other media - the fourth person. John didn't make any disparaging remarks about this practice (he was talking to college students after all), but I have often recalled it when I've been trapped in a conversation that is almost devoid of wit and originality. Other people seem to be totally engaged as all the pop culture buttons are pushed - but why?

I am an advocate of getting words on paper quickly, of not worrying about getting every fact right, about filling out all the descriptions, or about writing scenes destined to be cut. Creator first, editor second. But with this license comes responsibility. When you get words flowing, it is easy to begin spouting shopworn, secondhand material. A little of this isn't fatal. Too much is, at best, a waste of time. At worst, it can feel close enough to right to lead to self delusion.

I have written whole chapters and complete short stories in the fourth person. Luckily, I was called on it, and I had the sense to admit my mistakes. I have a sixth sense for the "this is really easy" feeling now.  So good friends can help you.  (Note, the kind of plot borrowing that writers do all the time is not the issue here.)

How do you avoid this?

• Prepare properly by reaching for emotions before you begin to write. Acting techniques help.
• Make it a habit to take risks with your writing.
• Journal your own experiences and do primary research, so you have authentic material to draw from.
• After you finish an especially easy and painless session, make a note. Then look the next day to see if the work is shallow and lacks honesty.
• Imagine reading the writing ten years into the future, and see if anything is too much of the current era.

Writing in the fourth person can sneak up on you, but it is unlikely to be a persistent problem. Just being aware of the danger is usually enough to keep it at bay. In my experience, more people are held back by the fear of sloppy and lazy writing than by actually committing the fourth person to paper. With a few precautions, you can write fast without falling into this trap.