Author Archives: Leigh Galbreath

Stop Talking and Tell Me Something: Using the Dialogue Scene

Character Craft & Skills First Drafts Leigh Galbreath Rewriting The Writing Life 2 Comments

Let’s face it. Dialogue is the bane of many a writer learning the craft. We overuse it. We unnecessarily pretty it up. Frankly, we overthink it.

The talking part isn’t really all that difficult. We all know how to talk. The only thing you really need to do if you’re having trouble writing realistic conversation is to listen to real life. A nice trick is to record a conversation between real people and play it back, writing it down word for word. Scenes from movies work well for this, too.

You’ll learn pretty quick that with spoken dialogue, less is more.

The truth is that most of the dialogue shouldn’t be spoken. The majority of communication between human beings happens through body language, part of that elusive phenomenon we like to call subtext. Even when we’re not talking, we’re still having a dialogue. In fact, people tend to believe a speaker’s body language over what they’re saying. This, I think, is why it’s so difficult to write a story only using dialogue. Real people need context to fully understand the meaning of what’s being said.

Think about it. You’re main character’s girlfriend is telling her about a conflict at work. While your main character is responding to the girlfriend as if she’s listening to every word in a tone that says she cares, she’s also watching a little boy play with a toy two tables down. Does your main character really care about what her girlfriend is saying? Not really, or she would give her complete attention to the conversation.

What about the protagonist who can’t keep his eyes off the gorgeous woman in red across the room, even though he tells his date he’s not interested in her? Which do you believe-the glances or the words?

Once you understand how this works, it’s a great tool to help you stay engaged in the writing and keep the words flowing. Let’s face it, it’s so much more interesting to write a scene where people are being active, and character’s talking to each other is the most engaging activity in most novels. It’s a fantastic source of conflict, especially when someone’s words don’t match their body language.

Take the first example above. Our main character isn’t really paying attention to her girlfriend, and the girlfriend knows it. She gets irritated and calls our main character on it. Maybe there’s someone at the table next to theirs who is paying a little too much attention even though he’s not saying a word. In the second example, the protagonist’s date isn’t stupid. She knows her man has his eye on the woman in red. And maybe that gorgeous stranger has noticed it, too.

You can do all kinds of things to kick-start a flagging plot by introducing a dialogue scene. It’s where the characters figure things out and mess things up. It’s where they proclaim love and outright lie. It’s where characters show themselves even when their words say otherwise.

Your story, after all, isn’t about car chases or sword fights. It isn’t about the nefarious scheme your villain has hatched. Your story is about the people dealing with all that, and people don’t live in a vacuum or always agree with each other. They don’t always act rationally or know what they’re doing, and while it’s possible to show this in narrative, that can get boring for you and the reader. Get one or more other characters in the room to show it through dialogue and bring the situation out of the character’s head and into the real world. You’ll be amazed what can happen.

Don’t Stop Now: Keep the Words Flowing in December!

The Writing Life 4 Comments

Alas, November is over. The craze to finish 50,000 words in 30 days is done. For those who finished National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with 50,000 words or more under your belt – Congratulations!

For those who didn’t reach their goal or weren’t able to participate in NaNoWriMo, that’s okay. But we do hope you got something done.

Recently, I heard an interview with Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files and Codex Alera series, where he gave out a very keen piece of writing advice. Writing is all about momentum. Even if you only write one word, the most important thing is that you’re writing.

It is so very true.

So, in that vein, we Fictorians would like challenge everyone to keep the momentum of NaNoWriMo going. If you won, why stop now? That book isn’t finished! If you didn’t, November isn’t the only month you can write like a madman-get that book started!

Thus, December is Keeping it Going month here at the Fictorian Era. All month, we’ll be focusing on ways to keep your writing flowing despite distractions, procrastinations, and plain old boredom. We’ll be giving you tricks and tips for productivity, ways to use craft to keep the words going, and we’ll be exploring the truth behind that pesky idea of writer’s block. Later this month, we’ll even be getting a visit from Dan Wells from the award winning Writing Excuses podcast and author of I Am Not a Serial Killer and Partials.

So, tell us, how did you do in November? Did you finish NaNoWriMo? If not, what happened? And be sure to stick around, and let us know how you keep the momentum going.

 

It’s Just So Wrong, But I Love It Anyway!

Craft & Skills First Drafts Rewriting The Writing Life 3 Comments

I recently read a business article about the fear of failure and how it stops us from being successful. The idea is that the single best way to improve is to try and fail, then take what you’ve learned and try again. Unfortunately, for most of us, we hate to fail at anything, for any reason. We want our words to come out perfect.

If you think about it, failure is what the glaring blank page represents, isn’t it? I mean, if we get right down to it, in most cases that’s what holds us back – this pesky fear of failure. We get so mired by the perfect way to say something that we end up not saying anything at all.

That’s why I like NaNoWriMo. Not because it gets us in the chair to write (which is great). Not because we at least can get close to finishing something if we never have (which is better). Not because it connects us to other writers who are all in this race to the finish with us (which is pretty nifty too). It’s that the experience teaches us to let go of the pressures we place on ourselves. It gives us permission to write anything-no pressure to make it spit-polish shiny, no looming expectation that it could be published one day. NaNoWriMo gives us a license to play. It gives us a permission to fail, which is amazingly freeing. The only goal is that 50,000 words.

Just write.

That’s it.

Writing the perfect book isn’t the point. The point is to be productive, and the only way to be truly productive is to set aside the need to get it right the first time. Editing can come later, after you’ve let the story sit for a little. I recently reread a NaNo book I wrote a few years ago, and realized it wasn’t half bad. Best of all, it’s a complete novel-something I probably wouldn’t have accomplished without letting go of the need to revise as I went.

Take it as a foregone conclusion that what we’re writing is imperfect. By knowing that, we can free ourselves from the fear of it. We allow ourselves to put our thoughts onto the page without judgement getting in the way.

Get it wrong. Make mistakes. Toss in that ridiculous action sequence. Ramble about backstory. Wax rhapsodic with a detailed description of how the living room reminds your grandma’s dollhouse collection. Don’t know the first thing about bazookas except that they are essential to your hero getting the girl of his dreams? Go for it! You’ll be amazed what comes out, and you’ll have plenty of time to fix it later.

Just write.

That’s it.

Get to it.

 

Inspiration is Nice, But”¦

The Writing Life 4 Comments

Everyone loves those moments of inspiration, when we get that light bulb flashing in our brains like a cop car in a high-speed chase. There’s nothing like those electric moments when it seems like the heavens open for us and the words write themselves. They are epiphanies that make life as a writer so magical.  They make us feel gifted and help us believe that we might actually have a shot at this crazy creative enterprise of writing fiction.

But, they don’t happen every day, do they? And you’ve got pages to fill and transitions to make to tie those multiple moments of inspired text come together into a cohesive whole. It’s hard when the muse has taken a coffee break and the fires of inspiration go cold. And to wait for that next inspired spark doesn’t get the words on the page, does it? Call it writer’s block, or a lack of motivation, those dry spells can really put the brakes on our egos and make us wonder if we really have what it takes to make it in the publishing world.

I’ll confess, I’ve been going through that second phase a lot lately. I suffer from periodic bouts of depression, and if you don’t know, that can make it really hard to be creative. Of course, my primary defense mechanism for fighting my depression is to wander off into flights of fancy that, when the bout passes, can make for some pretty cool story ideas. But most of this summer, I didn’t write a single word. Even getting a post up for this blog, at times, was a struggle. I started to wonder if maybe I should just put a cap on the idea of chasing that publishing dream.

But struggle doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. I don’t know about you, but there have been times when writing felt like pulling teeth. It felt forced and flat because the words just didn’t flow the way I thought they should. The prose fought me because I wasn’t in one of those inspired moments, but I had to soldier on to get the work done. The crazy thing is that, on re-reading those difficult patches later on, they tend to be far better than the stuff that flew out of my fingers.

So, here’s what I’ve learned. Maybe those moments of inspiration are just as fantabulous as they seem, and maybe the uninspired ones are hard, but we should never let our writing be guided only by inspiration. Love the gifts when they happen, but never let a reliance on those moments hamper our productivity, or make us doubt that we can or can’t do the thing we love-write a darned good story.