How To Write Good Dialogue

                                                    

I'm a dialogue junkie. The first thing I look for when I read a novel is quotation marks.

 If I don't see any by page 2, I'm out of there. I like to be inside my characters in a scene and see, the way it looks and smells to them. You learn this by constantly describing people and scenes in your mind all day, wherever you go. When you meet someone with a characteristic you can use, describe them in your journal. When you write dialogue, you are the character, playing out the scene.

Most people use clichés when they speak, according to their culture. I live in the South, and one of my favorites is, “He’s a hard dog to keep under the porch.” “Back in the day” is used too much. I save it for people I don’t like. When teenagers are relating a conversation, they often start with, “He goes…” and then, “I go…” I like to give pet expressions to my characters. The sheriff’s wife in my book, Maddie’s Choice, is a loud, buxom woman who ends a lot of her sentences with “So to speak,” and has Maddie doing it sometimes.

 Since I write women’s lit with romance, I create, first, a female and a male main protagonist, and I’ll probably write in each one’s point of view, which means I have to know the character intimately before they speak—be in tune with the emotions governing their speech, as well as their background and culture. How do they feel at that moment? Okay, here’s a for instance from my romance, Maddie’s Choice, set present day, at an Arkansas cattle ranch.

Maddie Taylor is from New York, a successful writer of romances and has inherited half of the ranch.  She’s just driven in and is greeted by a very unfriendly crowd of cowboys. Clearly she’s not welcome. We’ve already met her in New York so we know how she’s looked forward to living on a ranch, yearning for real friends. Disappointed almost to tears at their attitude she loses her temper and explodes into a rant. Feisty Maddie has a smart mouth. Her speech will reflect her background as a successful writer, educated, with a large vocabulary at her command.  She’s just been told Uncle Gid said she’s some Bimbo who just wants to take the money and leave.

Fueled by anger, she planted her bright red boots solidly, put her fists on her hips, and raged, “Whoever implied that is a sexist, judgmental, bigoted ignoramus who doesn’t have a clue, and has no business giving opinions on subjects about which he knows nothing. Where might I find this paragon of Western wisdom so that I might enlighten him?”

“Right here, ma’am. You have somethin’ to say to me?”

The deep voice came from right behind her, full of challenge, loaded with sarcasm, and entirely too close. She turned and looked into the eyes of Mister Sex, himself.

“I’m here to stay. Now, deal with it.”

“Well, hell.”

This is Gideon, the other half-owner, who has decided not to like her, although she excites him. He’s street-smart and his speech reflects his gender. When he’s at a loss for words, he often says, “Well, hell.”

The following are snippets from a conversation Gid has with Pete, the grizzled senior citizen, foreman of the ranch for years and surrogate dad to young, orphaned Gideon. By now we know that Gideon is a damaged war veteran with PTSD and although yearning for love, is afraid to get close for fear he’ll hurt someone. In this scene, Gid is sitting alone in the barn, depressed after another argument with Maddie, nearly drunk from a bottle of wine. Pete enters.

“Gid, what are you doing here? I thought you were with Maddie?”

Gideon gestured with the bottle. “Here, it’s some wine I found I the kitchen.”

Pete accepted the offer and took a drink. “Jesus,” he gasped, coughing, “what is this stuff?”

“Chardonnay. Maddie bought it for the party. She says New Yorkers drink it.”

Pete grimaced. “It wouldn’t be my poison of choice. Hell, I don’t like grapes on a bunch, why would I like ‘em in a bottle? Guess it gets the job done, though.”

Gid got to the point. “I don’t know a damned thing about women.”

“Women are different ‘n men,” Pete agreed with a nod.

“Ain’t that the damned honest truth?”

Gideon goes on to explain his latest dust-up with Maddie, his confusion, and despair. Pete tells him his problem.  “Hell, boy. You’re already half in love with that woman.”

“I don’t believe in love. People don’t have it in them to give. This man-woman thing is all about sex. There’s no such thing as love. How would you know, anyway?” He raised the bottle to his lips “You’ve been married to Bea for more’n fifty years. Do you love Bea?” It took a lot of wine for him to find the nerve to ask that. A man his age shouldn’t be ignorant of such things.

Pete thought a bit. “In the morning I wake up, in this warm place that Bea and me made, with her curled up against me, holdin’ on to me like I was the most important thing in her world. No matter how my day goes, I know she’ll be there when I come home. The thought makes the day worth living. That’s how I know.”

I could have left the tags off all Pete’s speech because his words were so different from Gideon, but they serve to pace the scene, so I left some on. 

Don’t be afraid of making your men human. There is a film I watch every time it is on TV that does this to perfection. As Good As It Gets, with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. The men bare their souls to each other in a heartfelt way that makes them no less men. The realization that men speak differently when they are among their own was pioneered by Paddy Chayefsky, a brilliant playwright of the 1950’s and his breakthrough play Marty (1955). His style was termed “kitchen realism.”

In this book Gideon’s army buddy shows up with the DEA when Maddie is kidnapped, right before a gun battle with the local drug-smuggling motorcycle gang. Gideon’s army friend is Australian. That needed a lot of research into Australian slang. At the end of the last scene, after the gun battle, when Maddie’s life has been saved by an Angus bull, he remarks, “If the bikey comes good, he’ll need a new set of knackers. That bull made a mess of him.”

You can read a sample of Maddie's Choice at http://www.amazon.com/Maddies-Choice-Joyce-Zeller-ebook/dp/B00EW1LOP8/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449868219&sr=1-5&keywords=Books+by+Joyce+Zeller

Point of View -- The Last Word

Point of view is something all beginning writers struggle with. It is simply a matter of letting the reader know who they are in the story. Imagine you are playing a role in a film. This is who you are, this is what you see, and this is how you feel about it, and what you understand is going on in the scene. How you choose to convey all this to your reader, to make him part of the story, is the point of view. You have to decide how you’re going to do this. There are a lot of choices and it can get pretty confusing. In the last two blogs I’ve only told you how I’ve dealt with this, with some success, with two of them, Interior Monologue and Omniscient. I’m also a beginning author, not an expert and only sharing my experience.

Most of us write in third person POV. You pick out your main character and see the action through their eyes. You let the reader know in the first line or two of the chapter who that person is and can establish how they feel about themselves and the world around them. This is where “show, don’t tell” comes in. You don’t say: “she saw him and was frightened.” You say: “The menace reflected in his eyes and the way his fists clenched made her heart pound.”

The good news is that there is an expert who has written a series of books that not only explain POV, but the entire craft of writing. Her name is Dr. Angela Hunt. There are seven short, easy to read books in the series titled, Writing Lessons From The Front. The first book is about plot, the second about creating characters, the third about point of view, the fourth is titled Tracking Down the Weasel Words.

Weasel words? All beginning writers do it. We use too many words to describe a scene or make a point. A very wise mentor of mine, Dusty Richards, who is a member of my writing group and has published at least a hundred and forty western novels, puts it this way, “You have to have something happening on every page.” Dr. Hunt tells you how to find all those extra words and get rid of them to keep the action flowing.

The fifth book is Evoking Emotion, or how to keep your readers hooked on reading. She tells you how. The sixth book is Planning and Process, or all that stuff you must do before you get around to writing, and the seventh book is Tension on the Line. You have six seconds to hook your reader on the first page and you have to keep that tension going throughout the book. This might be the most important book in the series, but you need them all if you’re going to be a writer.

The entire series is very affordable as e-books, but if you can choose only one, make it Point of View. Dr. Hunt’s easy, conversational style not only takes the mystery out of the subject, but gives you the freedom to experiment using more than one point of view in a scene or a chapter.

In my western romance, Maddie’s Choice, I used two POVs. Maddie is from New York, a writer, and she has a smart mouth and a sense of humor. Gideon, the male protagonist, is a bitter, disillusioned war veteran, suffering from PTSD. His voice and approach to Maddie’s shenanigans keeps the pace and the humor flowing.

Learn the rules, understand the reasons for them, then go your own way. Rules were made to be broken, as Dr. Hunt says.

Point of View--What is it and who cares?

I had enormous trouble with Point of View when I began writing. There is a rule in fiction writing that every word has to be in somebody’s point of view—in other words how the main character in that scene is experiencing the moment. My critique group despaired that I would ever “get it,” but the truth is, unless you write in POV, you’ll never get published. Editors won’t read your stuff. If your fame equals Nora Roberts or Tom Clancy you can write anyway you choose. For the rest of us, near the bottom of the food chain, if you don’t follow the rule, you’re spinning your wheels.

To complicate matters, there are many Points of View. Your only recourse is to know them all, and then you decide what to use. I’ve never read an explanation that made any sense, so, for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try to explain them all in simple, understandable fashion, with some examples.

We’ll start with my favorite—the one you are never to use—which I use all the time. It’s called Omniscient, but I like to call it Authors, because it is you, the writer, invading the narrative with comment, or simply writing the scene with no one else in it with a point of view.

Example: “Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived dragon.” That is your voice, telling a story. I used Omniscient as a beginning for Christmas For Annabel. I wanted to clue my reader in that this was going to be a fairy tale with Christmas Magic and a happy ending, so I used it in the prologue. To Whit: “Imagine, if you will, on a cold frosty night, an all but deserted downtown city street. It is a few days before Christmas, and all is quiet.” It sets the scene for a modern love story.

I used it sparingly in Maddie’s Choice. A scene in the first chapters of the book has Gideon, my troubled male protagonist, and Maddie, my irrepressible female, having dinner with two ranch hands and Gideon’s two young nephews. They’ve been telling silly knock-knock jokes and laughing while Gideon sits glaring. He leaves the table to go to his office. I end the chapter with: “They spent the next half-hour cleaning up, talking companionably, and occasionally laughing, unaware that Gideon listened from his office down the hall, wishing he were part of it.” This is my reader’s first hint that here is a lonely man, needing love.

John Steinbeck, my favorite author, was a master of this, but he wrote when omniscient was allowed. In his novel, Sweet Thursday, Doc, a marine biologist, one of the loneliest persons you’ll ever meet and the main character, is conversing with a girl he picked up in a bar, trying to get her interested in octopi.  Steinbeck interjects: There’s no need for giving the girl a name. She never came back . . .” Wow. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about her and him?

If you still don’t get it, e-mail me at author@joycezeller.com and we’ll talk.

One last example from a novel that, as my agent, Jeanie Liaocono would say, is waiting to be published. To set the scene: the guys are playing poker in one of the motel rooms; the girls are having their own party down the hall that has gotten way too loud. A harried manager has summoned the guys to do something about it. “Lloyd’s concern for Penny sent him to the head of the group hurrying down the corridor. The noise from room 112 bounced off the walls. Like a posse of vigilantes, ready to storm the gates, the men advanced.

Booyah!”

The last word is author intrusion, and will probably be booted by my editor, but it was fun writing it.

Next week: Interior Monologue, the one you have to know before you get to Third Person, Single Point of View.

Secrets to Writing Fiction

My writer’s group, The Northwest Arkansas Writers, to whom I owe any success I’ve had being published, held a conference a few weeks ago, which I attended. There were two things, especially that I took away. One was from the lecture given by member Dusty Richards, the foremost writer in the Western Genre today, with over a hundred twenty books to his credit.

He was discussing chapters. His first advice: Never simply end a chapter. Always add a hook, or a sense of what is to come, so your reader won’t put down the book, but turn the page and continue. Good advice. Go back and check your work in progress to be sure you did that.

The second advice is really a writing technique. He says it is his secret to being so successful, but he willingly shared it:  Start each chapter with a strong sense of place, so the reader knows where he is, but don’t mention the name of the Point of View Character until you must, for clarity. Use the pronoun ‘he,’ or ‘she,’ as long as possible before you say the name.

For instance: He looked around and saw unfamiliar landscape, dry, dusty, empty of life. He was lost.

 Or: She felt the sun as the clouds cleared, revealing the tops of the mountains. Her soul was filled with happiness. What does this do? It brings your reader into the scene. The reader becomes the character and starts living the story. When you have your reader truly hooked, mention the character.

This next comes from member Duke Pennell, owner of Pen-L Publishing, editor and publisher of the e-magazine, of Frontier Tales. Duke@Pen-L.com. His advice: What publisher’s want, is not only someone who has obviously worked to perfect their writing skills, but someone who is easy to work with. Make the corrections. Don’t be a drama lemon. Take criticism gracefully, at least until you’ve carefully considered it. Just might be the publisher or editor knows more about what is good and what sells than you do.

Second: Remember that, although writing a book involves creativity and talent, once you’ve sold the book, you’ve become a businessman, not a writer. Publishing is a business. It means return on investment. Take it seriously, learn marketing and social media, take your publisher’s suggestions and do what you can gain readers.

 It was a Saturday well spent. I even sold a book.

I Want To Write A Book--How Do I Begin?

     I belong to several social media groups along with published authors and those waiting to publish. The conversation, all on the Internet, very often turns to questions like: How do I start? In the case of the more optimistic it will be, I'm almost finished with my book so how do I find a publisher, or an agent?
     Understand, I'm on the writer's side. I think everyone should be writing something to keep their mind sharp and stir the adrenaline. We are losing our ability to speak. Live conversation is almost a lost art. Cellphone gibberish is the rule of the day, and the only way you learn to talk is to read and write; otherwise the words won't be there when you need them, and you do need them--to explain your problems to tech support or your doctor, to straighten out your cable bill, to convince your boss you're a budding genius. If you don't think the right words are important, read my blog on the last election.
      Learning how to write a book is a lengthy and sometimes painful experience, but if you do it in the company of a writer's critique group, you will learn how to say the words. It won't happen overnight.
     So what makes me think I can offer advice? Well, I've been at this for fifteen years, attending a writer's critique group once a week, ten months of the year. My mentors taught me to write. I sold my first novel, a Western romance, Maddie's Choice, this year after fifteen years of trying and five completed novels. That is par for the course. You will probably write five books before you sell one. There are cases of instant success, but I'll bet those authors, up until they took pen to paper, led interesting lives full of conversation and varied experience, so it was stored in their brain, ready to come out.
     My first rule. Find a writer's group in your area which meets often, where you will be reading several pages of what you have just written. You will listen to the experienced writers tell you what's wrong and you will make notes and change your manuscript. That is how you learn. There are a bunch of books you can read, but nothing works like a published author telling you what's wrong.
      Pay attention. You will have to learn 'point of view,' and 'sense of place.' Those are what happens when you start a chapter or introduce a character, and they are not negotiable. You will learn that some words, like 'as,' or 'seem,' and probably 'just,' are not used. No more than three 'was' words a page. Do not use the same verb twice on a page. If she looked at him once, the second time she'll glance.  Watch out for sentences that start with noun/verb. Two or three to a page.  This might sound a little nit-picky, but it identifies the novice to an editor instantly. Above all, you will hear, "show, don't tell," every time you read. It is a matter of craft and you will learn it or never get published.
     Get acquainted with Writer's Digest and Writer's Magazine.
     Rule two. Understand the task before you. There are 250 words to a page, 70,000 to 80,000 words to a novel. Yeah. There has to be a lot of stuff going on to cover that ground. You WILL type your manuscript in 12 point type, double spaced, Times Roman font, one inch margins all around. Since most editors use Microsoft Word, it saves a lot of time if you do, too.
     Finally, when you have a finished product, edited several times to make it perfect, you will start the dreary job of writing the dreaded synopsis and query letter and begin submitting to hundreds of agents and publishers in the hope that somebody out there thinks you might have something of value to say.
     If you get this far you'll run smack into "platforms," and social medias, and blogs and web pages. That's for later. If you find out what you're expected to do once you've managed to write the book, you'll never start.
Good luck, and let me know how you're doing.