Dialogue

The regularly scheduled IWSG post is being interrupted to bring you the following important information about the letter D ...

Should writing dialogue be hard? We all speak everyday ... right? So, why would it be hard to write?

Well, partly, because if you are writing "everyday" dialogue, your readers will be bored to tears.

Don't believe me?

Then think about what literary agent, Donald Maass, wrote on the topic:

"In real life most of what people say to each other is drivel. Transcripts of genuine dialogue, as in police wire taps, is a chronicle of halting, disjointed, nonlinear incoherence. Really, it's a wonder that we understand each other. Dialogue in novels is, thank goodness, unnatural. The author has time to think it through" (THE FIRE IN FICTION, p.190).

What do you think?

Is writing dialogue a challenge? Do you agree with Maass?

Editorial Note: Please consider giving a book or a buck to the BOOK DRIVE for teenagers! If everyone from the AtoZ Challenge gave a single dollar ... we'd have a huge donation for this high school library. My goal is to donate 500 books (plus monetary contributions). So far we've raised $30. CLICK HERE to help out! THANKS!!

Extreme REVISIONS - What Would YOU Do?

I know writing "the end" on your first draft of a manuscript is pretty exciting ... but certain elements of the revision process thrill me just as much. It's like working a jigsaw puzzle ... but certain parts of the picture change during the process and you must adapt and move with it.

Quite awhile ago (sorry, I can't remember when or where) I came across a writer's blog that featured pictures of her revision process: pages spread out on the floor and taped across a wall. I remember being shocked and thinking, "Sheesh! That looks like a LOT of work!" So, I never tried that approach for myself. ha. Why work? Writing is supposed to be fun! :)

However, I've been in the trenches revising and revamping one of my manuscripts. And I needed a new approach. I needed to see the conversations between the main character and the "bad guy" in a new light. I needed my brain to process the information differently. Find something ...

And I remembered those crazy pictures of pages taped to a wall.

So, I printed out all of the conversations between my main character and three other characters (one is the real bad guy and two are potential bad guys to keep the reader guessing). I even used different colored paper to help me quickly spot who was participating in the conversation.

And I taped them to the wall:

It took a long time to print the pages out, and it took a long time to tape them to the wall.

I doubted the process and the time invested, but I went through the WHITE pages first ... twice ... and it wasn't until the third pass that my brain clicked and saw the words in a different way.

I had a big AHA moment. YAY!

I quickly started to scribble modifications in pencil. And then I grabbed a blue highlighter and started to write the emotions on the pages in big letters so I could stand back and see the progression of the relationship. I used red stars to mark certain types of moments and yellow stars to mark others. Then I attacked the colored pages.

My kids came home from school and their eyes bulged out ... they thought I'd gone a bit crazy! ha.

This morning, I went through the pages on the wall again and was thrilled to realize how well everything now flows. Success!

Was it worth the effort? Absolutely.

Will I do it again ... only if necessary! :)

What's your most extreme method for revising?

GASP! - Conversation Overheard

The letter G is for GASP!

Okay ... my regular followers know I like to eavesdrop ... really, who doesn't? Truth!

Wednesday, I had to pull my daughter from school for an orthodontist appointment (a-whole-nother story). While I was walking from the parking lot to the entrance of the school, I eavesdropped on the two teenage boys walking behind me.

Conversation caught in the middle:

Guy with two ear rings: Can't he drive you?
Guy in purple jacket: No! My brother can't drive anywhere now.
GWTER: Why?
GIPJ: The last time he drove he killed someone.
GWTER: What!?
GIPJ: Yeah, but it's no big deal. It wasn't his fault.
GWTER: Who died? Someone in his car?
GIPJ: No. The other guy who hit him.
GWTER: Died?
GIPJ: Yeah. He was on a motorcycle, and he hit my brother's car.
GWTER: Is your brother in trouble?
GIPJ: No. Worst he'll get is involuntary manslaughter. But, it wasn't his fault.

GASP!

Seriously? Someone is dead and GIPJ was only focusing on the fact that it wasn't his brother's fault.

It makes me wonder if our teenagers are desensitized to death and violence. They see so MUCH more of it than previous generations.

I wanted to turn around and shake him.

When we reached the doors, I held it open for him so I could get a good look at his face. He was not joking. His face was sad. Maybe that's just the way teenage boys talk, or justify in their heads, or avoid emotion; but OH. MY. GASP!


Are teenagers desensitized to death?

Conversations Overheard

One of my favorite things is judging high school speech competitions; and frankly, volunteering is one of my better character traits (these are few, so I must make note). Before I bloviate, let me get to the good stuff.

An interesting quirk of mine is I love to eavesdrop, especially around teenagers.

Here's a conversation overheard in the judges' lounge (these guys were probably 19 yrs-old):

"Dude, you judgin?"
"Yeah. You?" Brown Jacket Guy (BJG) asked.
"Yeah. Dude, you still with your partner?" Hairy Leg Dude (HLD) asked, clearly not realizing it SNOWED. He wore SHORTS.
"Nah. She went to BYU. I went to Basic."
"Oh. BYU. That's bad."
"Those guys down there are players." BJG said.
"She was hot." HLD lounged back and crossed his hairy legs.
"Judge any hot girls today?" HLD sipped his water bottle.
"Actually..." BJG smiled. "I judged O.O. and this one girl was --"
"Remember that competition last year and those --"
"Yeah. That was chill." Both pause.
"What are you majoring in?" BJG asked.
"Electrical Engineering."
"That's a lot of math."
"Yeah, but I'm keeping it all balanced," HLD said.
"How?"
"Our frat parties at least four nights a week."
"Dude."
"Yeah. Friday classes are tough cuz Thursday's our biggest drinking night, but it's chill."
"You think ballots are out?"
"Maybe."
HLD and BJG left to check the ballot table.

Seriously.

Why were these guys judges? Shouldn't they have been out developing their fuliguline skills, raising rabbits, or sharpening their basic training blades? Yup, that's a bad habit of mine: judging others unfairly. Maybe they *were* good judges.

And, I have a secret to confess... while sitting there, I pretended to read. I even turned the pages.

Crusader Challenge #1: complete. And I did it in only 251 words.

Can you find the lie?

CRAFT: Dialogue

Let's spend this week discussing the CRAFT of writing.

Monday: Dialogue
Tuesday: Conflict
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Editing
Friday: Voice

Dialogue.

A year ago, a wonderful agent read part of a WIP that I was really struggling with and offered the following advice: 

 "[This] is a more pedestrian beginning, but I don't think that more dialogue and talking means a scene and action, necessarily, because the dialogue really is very day-to-day, boring stuff."

This was very helpful, because it made me realize that while I was trying to write a realistic scene, it was boring. Just because the dialogue is accurate and realistic, doesn't mean we need to waste words on the page relating the obvious.

THE FIRE IN FICTION by Donald Maass:

"A common downfall of many scenes is dialogue. The characters talk, talk, talk, but scenes spin in circles and don't travel much of anywhere...The process of stripping it down and finding the tension in it can be revealing. It can help define the purpose of a scene" (pages 60-61).

Grab a section of dialogue from your current WIP and ask yourself the following questions:
1. Why are your characters talking to each other?
2. What's the purpose?
3. Are the lines bogged down with unnecessary dialogue tags?
4. Is there a source of tension in the dialogue that moves it forward, making the reader want to turn the page?

Here's another great exercise suggested by Donald Maass (paraphrased and shortened by me):
1. Select a two-person dialogue scene from your WIP.
2. Strip out all dialogue tags (he said, she said) and incidental action.
3. Rewrite the dialogue entirely as an exchange of insults.
4. Rewrite the dialogue with rapid fire exchanges with each response only 1-5 words.
5. Rewrite the dialogue with only one character speaking and the other responding with non-verbal gestures.
6. Without referring to the original WIP, rewrite the scene using the best of the results from this exercise.
THE FIRE IN FICTION page 78.

Here's a previous post on dialogue: Listening to Teenagers

Were any of these tips helpful to you? What is your best advice for writing great dialogue?

Listening to teenagers

So... you think you want to write a book for young adults, huh?  Many agents say when they receive sample pages, they skip ahead to the first lines of dialogue. Many writers struggle with realistic dialogue - especially teenage dialogue.

To make things more challenging, teenage boys converse much differently than teenage girls. Truth! ha.

Girls are SO dramatic, in actions and in words.  Boys, on the other hand, can be very flat. Ah, yes... both are the stereotypes, but stereotypes exist for a reason.

Here's a conversation that occured between my son and another teenage boy yesterday. We were moving Mitchell into the dorms of a local university for a summer work program sponsored by the Idaho Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Mitchell leaned against the wall while he balanced a paper plate in one hand and a potato chip in the other.  He surveyed the group of boys and girls mingling and eating. Mitchell popped the potato chip into his mouth as a guy about his own age, maybe a year or two older, approached him and asked, "So what's your vision problem?"

Mitchell finished chewing and answered, "I can't see out of this eye." He used his thumb to indicate his right eye.

"Oh," the other boy nodded his head and squinted. "Cool." Then he shook his head and corrected, "I don't mean cool you're blind. I mean cool."

"Yah," Mitchell smiled. Both boys laughed. "How 'bout you?" Mitchell asked.  The other boy went on to explain how his right eye didn't work at all and he had no peripheal vision with his left eye.

... Could you imagine two bubbly outgoing girls having this same conversation? Maybe. Maybe not.

Lucky me, I get to spend this entire week observing and listening to girls aged twelve to eighteen. I'm in charge of thirty girls at girls' camp. YAY. (exclamation point intentionally left off... jk)  I plan to listen carefully and observe their interactions. I may even take a couple of notes. Then I plan to write lots when I get back into town.

I do have a book to finish.

Back to work!

Oh, by the way, have you heard any great dialogue between teens lately? Do share.