By Ginny Wiehardt
Updated June 05, 2016 Your first draft of a story may be messy, with a lot of unnecessary words and phrases. You'll probably find that as you edit your dialogue, it will become more succinct. Try to think in terms of speech patterns, and less about storytelling through your dialogue. Listen to how people talk, and pay attention to what your characters are already familiar with. For your dialogue to be realistic, both the characters AND the reader need to believe it. In general, keep sentences short. Oakley Hall, in The Art and Craft of Novel Writing, offers the rule, "One thought at a time and keep the lines short." Most people don't talk in perfectly formed, complex sentences. For example, in this passage from Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," note how short and simple most of the sentences are: "When I left, he drank rat poison," Terri said. She clasped her arms with her hands. "They took him to the hospital in Santa Fe. That's where we lived then, about ten miles out. They saved his life. But his gums went crazy from it. I mean they pulled away from his teeth. After that, his teeth stood out like fangs. My God," Terri said. Paring down your sentences may not be enough, however. Chances are, there'll be scenes you wrote for yourself, to get to the next part of the story. Cut any unnecessary dialogue. If it doesn't build character or advance your plot, edit it out. In the Gotham Writers' Workshop guide to writing fiction, Allison Amend explains it this way: "The realism of good dialogue is something of an illusion. Readers of fiction have a higher expectation for dialogue than the conversations of real life. Fictional dialogue needs to have more impact, focus, relevance, than ordinary conversation." A conversation about the correct route to take when driving, for instance, is extraneous if it goes like this: "So I think we should take Elm all the way to Lincoln," Mary said, the map spread across her lap. "Is that really the best way?" Mel asked her. "What if we hit traffic?" "But it's Sunday. We'll be fine." There's no tension and nothing necessary is revealed here, so there's no reason to include this scene, though it is true to life. Presumably, these characters are on their way to something important: why not fast-forward to those key scenes, and leave out the logistics of getting there? On the other hand, if the scene were to reveal something about Mel and Mary's relationship, something that mattered to the plot, we would keep it: "Why aren't we taking Elm?" Mary asked. "Did I ask your opinion?" Mel said, switching lanes a bit too quickly. "When you drive, you can pick the route. But I'm driving, so I'll pick the godd*@n route." "Fine, fine," Mary said. With a sigh, she reached over to switch on the radio. "If you'd ever let me drive, then maybe I could," she said under her breath. For more, go to How Do People Talk in Fiction? where you find information on how to edit your sentences so they sound like real dialogue, use dialogue "correctly", and learn more about when to use dialect.
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How to write a novel: 25 rules by Matt Haig 1. Never be in awe of your own style. 2. Writer's block = writer's indecision. 3. Write anything at first. Francois Sagan said 'I have to write to begin to think.' So do you. 4. Right now, forget about money. It eats imagination. 5. The first page of your first novel is the most important thing you will ever write. 6. Know that you won't win the Booker Prize. Fact: no-one has ever won the Booker Prize apart from Hilary Mantel, and you are not Hilary Mantel. 7. A first draft is the beginning of the end. But the end lasts for ever. 8. It isn't the words you choose to use. It's the words you choose not to use. 9. Adverbs dilute. 10. Raise your effort. Lower your expectations. 11. Ignore discouragement. You'll never know real negativity until you tell people you are writing a novel. The last thing a human who spends their day selling home insurance in an office that smells of egg sandwiches and despair wants to hear is that their old school-friend is going to be an international bestselling author. So ignore them. All of them. Well, except that latter-day Malcolm Bradbury, Katy Perry: 'Make 'em go, oh, oh, oh/ As you shoot across the sky.' 12. The 'track changes' function is the greatest miracle since the wheel. 13. Write as though your mother will never read it. 14. Forget about what you want the book to achieve. Think about what you want the words to achieve. 15. Be ship-shape. An ocean liner might be big, but all the screws need to be tight. Or you end up drowning. So, y'know, observe each sentence as if it was the only one. 16. It's OK to write about people you know if you change the names. 17. If you write about a dog, and the dog dies, you are in trouble. 18. Jeanette Winterson once told me to change the phrase 'epiphanic moment' to 'moment of epiphany'. That is the single greatest piece of advice anyone has ever given me. 19. Write the book you most want to read. That will be the best book you can write. 20. If you write in the first person people will think that the views of that person are your own views. Don't let that stop you writing Hitler's fictional autobiography. I just thought you should know. 21. Read Graham Greene. He infects you with greatness. 22. The hardest bit of writing always comes at the 30,000 word mark. Keep going. After 50,000 the hill slopes in your favour. 23. Read it aloud. You'll notice more mistakes that way. 24. Love is the most important ingredient. Love of words. Of your characters and their flaws. Of truth. You are playing God, but it has to be a loving God. 25. Enjoy it. There is nothing as exciting in this world as roaming the beautiful wilds of the human imagination. There really isn't. What I like most about writing and what I think other writers like the most is knowing you can create a character, place, or event that didn't exist ten minutes before. Writing is a sense of power in that you control everything on the page. After time and work when you see that character develop, it is an awesome feeling. It is easy to get lost in this fake reality. Writing is a rewarding experience for me. Writers are somewhat different I suppose in their personalities, I know I am, but I like how different I am and I like how different other writers are. I love to use my imagination and that's what all of us writers do, I thrive on it, as I am sure you do. So to all my writer friends, keep creating. I am happy to announce that earlier this week I signed a publishing contract on my third novel It is titled, “The Symphony of Life,” which is the sequel to my first novel Shop Side. It will publish sometime next year. Please keep an eye out for it. Have a good Wednesday….Keith
DISGUSTED BY FOOD?
What's the one food you refuse to eat? Whatever it is, it's probably because you don't like the way it tastes, not always because it contains ingredients suspected of causing cancer or because it was picked by farmers wearing Hazmat suits. Yet, there are still a lot of foods that fit that description on store shelves, and food industry insiders, who know what goes on behind the scenes, refuse to eat them. We polled some of those insiders—people who know the business and work daily to evict pesticides, genetically modified organisms, animal cruelty, social injustice, and unhealthy foods from the food supply—to find out what they know about the dark side of "convenience" foods and what they will eat. Take note so you, too, can avoid the worst of what grocery stores have to offer. Click ink below to see 50 foods you should never eat. www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/50-foods-you-should-never-eat/ss-BBodjvN?li=BBnba9O |
AuthorKeith Kelly currently lives in Rio Rancho New Mexico. Archives
October 2020
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