by Joseph Lallo

I have been writing for more than a decade now. As a self-published author, one of the great benefits is the capacity to put out a far greater volume of writing. Indeed, many self-pub business models require rapid release. Now, there are many ways to achieve this level of output. The easiest, and least desirable, is to simply not care much about your output. Write fast, skip revisions, and cross your fingers. I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO THIS! It takes a very skilled, and very lucky, author to produce quality work in this way.

Another way is to simply keep your butt in the seat and just churn out the words, polish them, rinse, repeat. This is, broadly speaking, the ideal method. But it takes more time, dedication, and discipline to manage this than many people have to offer. I certainly struggle with it.

However, I have good news! There is a middle way. If you care about quality, but don’t have the capacity to write the amount of raw, polished output you’d like, then you just need to learn to find a use for every scrap of writing you do. If no idea is wasted, you’ll be amazed how much your creative output increases.

There are a number of ways this can be done, but I’ve come to call my method “The Bad Idea Exercise.” And the flowers that have grown out of that particular pot of fertilizer have taken a number of forms. But to get them growing, you must prepare the soil.

Transplanting the Seedlings

This is the simplest part of the process. What you need to do is create a folder wherever you keep your clippings. This can be one folder for everything, one per series, or even one per title. The important thing is that it is quickly accessible. I like to have a file already waiting for me in the folder for a new series, even if it is blank. The fewer obstacles or delays, the better. This file will be most important during two phases of writing:

Brainstorming and Revision

During brainstorming, in theory, every idea you don’t pick during the ideation process could go in the bad idea file. I personally like to keep it to the ideas that had some merit, had some meat on the bones, but were disqualified for some reason. Maybe they were too simple. Perhaps too complex. Maybe too out of character for the intended cast, or too inappropriate for the tone of the setting. Whatever the reason, if I liked the idea but couldn’t make it work? Into the bad idea file.

On the other side of the drafting process, you’ll want to have the file open and ready during a revision. If you run into a conversation that goes on too long, or a dynamite line that's just not right for the moment or the character? Clip it out and drop it in the file. I find this actually helps streamline the revision process.

It is a lot easier to kill your darlings when you know what you’re actually doing is transplanting them into a place where they will potentially be the star of another tale.

It won’t take long to start to collect a healthy pile of dislodged lines and scenes. Now you just need to wait until the right moment to make something of them.

Raising the Crop

So you’ve just finished a book. You’re looking for some inspiration. Now’s the time to dive into that bad idea file. If you’re like me, you’ll find that the fragments inside fall into one of a small collection of categories.

First are the kinds of ideas that are either too thin to carry a full novel or too problematic to finish out a lengthy plot without hitting a hitch. These are ideal candidates for short stories.

The first two years of my Patreon releases were entirely composed of ideas that I’d deemed unworkable for longer stories.

While a cool idea might run out of steam if you try to push it past 50,000 words, it is not unreasonable to make a short story that is all premise.

Saving the Seedlings

A few thousand words exploring the concept, ending with the implication of adventures to come, is a great little nugget of a story. And if a plot concept is doomed to run face-first into a brick wall, you can simply wrap up a short story before the unfortunate connotations come along. Many love stories wouldn’t work as a “happily ever after,” but they can certainly work as a “happily for now.”

If I’m going to champion this technique, I should show my receipts. I’ve written quite a few fantasy stories, and dragons are a particular favorite topic. For better or worse, my primary fantasy series, The Book of Deacon, is one of my more serious settings. If I have a goofy, gaggy idea, I might not be able to use it in the Book of Deacon without it clashing. And let me tell you, I’ve had some wacky ideas for dragons.

Creating Alternative Stories

On one particular occasion, I became fixated on the concept of dragons with non-standard hoards. As adorable as it would have been to include a scene where Myn (my main dragon) starts raiding bedrooms, it just isn’t a good fit. So into the bad idea file it went, half a scene about a big dragon who hoards pillows.

Flash forward a few months and I needed an idea for a Patreon Short for the month. There’s the pillow hoarder scene. Divorced from the Book of Deacon setting, it needed context. How does a dragon even get pillows? It’s not like pillows big enough for a dragon are just lying around. He must have them custom made.

So now, rather than kidnapping princesses, he’s kidnapping tailors and seamstresses. And instead of plundering gold and jewels, he’s plundering fancy cloth and feathers. A few more minutes of gap-filling and I end up with a tale of a knight who sets out to slay a dragon but ends up starting a business selling garments the army of tailors make out of his worn-out pillows. All from a few sentences that I ditched from another story.

Here’s another one. I wrote an urban fantasy about a guy whose shadow is replaced by an other-worldly creature (Shards of Shadow). In early drafts of the book, I had the POV bouncing back and forth between the human and the shadow from the very beginning. It quickly became clear it would make for a better story if our hero and the audience witnessed the reveal of the specific nature of his problem at the same time. But now I had all of these scenes from the shadow’s point of view that no longer fit in the story. I clipped them out and put them in the bad idea file.

Marketing Material

Once I was in a lull in releases for that series, I popped open the file. A little more connective tissue and I had a side story that explained one or two minor curiosities in the first book and built heaps of character for the shadow. Because it was a companion to the already-released series, I didn’t have to do a bunch of redundant setup or description. Now I had a fun little tale that could serve as something like a newsletter sign-up perk. Something like this that requires knowledge of the story, is always useful to reward fans of the series who want just a little bit more.

And this reveals one of the hidden superpowers of this technique. Scenes built from the bad ideas clipped out of a story still have the DNA of that story. This makes them prime fodder for marketing material. Mid-story stuff is great for newsletter sign-up perks, as I said. They could also be sent out as newsletters, or used as blog content. Things cut from the prologue, abandoned flashbacks, or cut backstory can be free reader funnels to post or release and attract people to the series. But it is always wise, before sending these things out to paying customers, to see if they’re actually ready.

Ripening The Fruits

None of this is worth doing if it fails to produce a story people want to read. As traced out in the earlier examples, the secret to filling out a story fragment to a full story is asking the questions a reader would ask and making sure either the answer is available or the mystery is enticing. Who is this character? Why are they doing what they’re doing? If these answers aren’t contained in the story, and they aren’t the sort of thing the reader can figure out from the in-story clues, then you’ll have to build that out. Likewise, you need to learn about their goal, their stakes, and the challenges/obstacles/villains along the way.

Satisfying Conclusion

The other thing to consider is if the story reaches a satisfying conclusion. This can actually be the most complex part, because “a satisfying conclusion” is not the same as “the end of the journey.” One of my stories that has been a hit with the fans was built up from the abandoned idea “what if post apocalyptic robots, but nice?” This was the actual phrasing in the bad idea file. It was a concept I nixed from Big Sigma, and it ended up as a story called Wasteland. The story ends with things looking up, and the possibility of our heroes finding other survivors. It feels like the beginning of something, not the end of something. But it is the beginning of something the reader can imagine. It isn’t a cliffhanger, it is an open door. And that’s the kind of point that can end a story without the reader feeling cheated. … Provided something happened along the way.

Planting Possibilities

This is actually another example of something that’s trickier to pinpoint about a short story than it is about longer pieces. Part of what makes the previously mentioned conclusions satisfying is if they are the result of satisfying actions or investigations within the story. While I stand by the statement that a short story can essentially be all premise, that premise has to unfold the first few layers of an enticing mystery.

Planting a pile of possibilities in the mind of your reader, with just enough information to give their imagination something to tug at and play with, is meaty enough to satisfy. Describing a bunch of interesting things but not giving the reader something to do with them? Probably not. So you can follow the standard three act structure: get the character stuck in the tree, throw rocks at them, and get them down again. Or you can spend your word count giving your audience a palette and filling it with beautiful colors of paint, then hand them a paintbrush and send them on their way. Either will work, but the real trick is knowing when you’ve hit the mark.

With any luck, you’ll get used to the process of sprouting dubious clippings into indubitable blossoms. And then there’s the endgame.

The Best Worst Case

Hopefully I’ve illustrated the value in hanging onto your “bad” ideas and gussying them up. It’s a profoundly efficient way to increase your output without greatly increasing your workload. Once you get the knack of it, you’ll start steadily generating juicy little short stories for all sorts of purposes, from marketing to reader rewards. And if you’re like me, some of those ideas will swell and mutate into novellas or full-fledged novels. But there is a scenario you should be aware of. As you mature as a writer, the number of bad ideas produced by any given session may start to dwindle. And as you get better at utilizing those scraps you’ve been filing away, the file will start to empty out. So there is the chance you’ll end up with an empty Bad Idea File. But I’m prepared to say without fear of reprisal that any given tactic that leads to the worst case of “I’ve run out of bad ideas” is probably a pretty safe bet.

Do you have a Bad Idea File? What do you do with scenes you don't use? How do you free your darlings?

* * * * * *

About Joseph

Joseph R. Lallo took a crooked path to authordom. He was educated at NJIT, where he earned a master’s degree in Computer Engineering, and paid his bills in the world of Information Technology until Sept of 2014, when he finally became a full-time storyteller. The international bestseller The Book of Deacon defined his early career, and he has since written dozens of novels, short stories, and novellas. These include the critically acclaimed Steampunk series Free-Wrench and the thrilling sci-fi adventure saga, Big Sigma. 

Outside of writing, he has co-hosted multiple self-publishing podcasts over the years, including the Six Figure Authors podcast with Lindsay Buroker and Andrea Pearson and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast.

Top Image by David from Pixabay

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by Sandy Vaile

Dialogue is a powerful tool in fiction because it enables readers to get to know characters without the author telling them how to feel or information dumping what they need to know.

In fact, speech predates written language by tens of thousands of years and is ingrained in our daily lives, so use it to its full advantage to develop characters, advance the plot, increase pace and create tension.

This article will help you write believable dialogue that communicates vital information succinctly, to have a positive impact on the story and captivate readers. When speech rambles unnecessarily, is overly stilted or sounds forced, readers are unlikely to connect with the characters and may even skim over the dialogue.

We’ll look at what dialogue is, what makes it impactful, and how to write it concisely and authentically. 

I absolutely love dialogue because it…

• Breaks long passages of narrative with dynamic information (showing).
• Enables readers to get to know characters on a personal level.
• Offers an opportunity to imply subtext through associated actions and tone.

But it’s not always easy to write succinct speech that rings true, i.e., is relevant to what’s going on in the story, suits the character, and doesn’t feel like it’s forced.

What dialogue is (and isn’t)

Dialogue refers only to words that are spoken aloud by characters in our stories. It is highlighted with quotation marks (“) at the beginning and end of each group of spoken words.

A dialogue tag is text joined to, before, in the middle of or after dialogue, which makes it clear who is speaking. The most common being said.

Internal thoughts are a different matter altogether and their formatting will depend on the Point of View you are using.

What makes dialogue impactful?

The success of our characters’ conversations comes down to these three things.

1. It’s concise – Succinctly communicated what needs to be said to move the plot forwards.
2. It's authentic – Shows who the characters are, why they are there and how they feel about the situation and other characters.
3. It is purposeful - It needs to be there to communicate important information, like planting clues or revealing backstory, not merely to give characters something to do.

What makes dialogue concise?  

Just as we do when writing narrative, aim to say what is needed in the minimum number of words it takes to communicate clearly. Keep the speech focused on the point you need to communicate.

Although dialogue is the perfect place to let a character’s personality and speech patterns shine through, it’s not an excuse for them to ramble like we do during real conversations.

The truth is, natural sounding dialogue in a book doesn’t exactly replicate the way we speak.

If you listen to conversations, you will hear speakers:

• waxing lyrical,
• stopping mid-sentence as they forget what they’re talking about,
• changing tack when they suddenly remember something,
• butting in when they’re passionate about a subject,
• repeating themselves,
• using contractions, slang and colloquialisms,
• hesitating, stuttering, and tripping over all sorts of filler words and sounds, like ah and umm.

In a book we want to make dialogue sound realistic while getting our point across succinctly.

Examples

When including an accept, foreign language or colloquialisms in dialogue, the general rule of thumb is to be sparing, giving the impression of it through the way words are put together, rather than writing each word that way. Less is more; the odd word goes a long way to giving the impression of a language idiosyncrasy.

It would be exhausting to read something like this:

“Hey, Mary, you gunna git ta doin’ them chores any time soon? ‘Em dishes fairly walkin’ out a door wit’ou’ ya.”

Colloquialism:

“Did y’all never see a woman drinking beer before?”

Foreign words:

“I’ll see you in three weeks, au revoir.” Sally called, picking up her suitcase and blowing him a kiss.

Edit out most repetitions, filler words and sounds that don’t enhance the dialogue’s meaning. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t include some of these things. After all, we do use them in speech and they can be useful to convey a particular sentiment, like umm for hesitation or oh for surprise. But don’t go overboard and rely on them in place of pithy conversation.

Examples

“Hey, wWhat do you want for dinner, Jane?” Brian called during an ad break in the football game.

“Well, I had a big lunch. Umm, how about … I fancy trying that new Thai restaurant on the corner.” On her way down the hall, she reached for the menu that had arrived in the mail that morning.

What makes dialogue authentic?

Conversations sound authentic when they reveal who the speaker is below the surface, which enables readers to get to know characters on a personal level and understand how they feel in that moment.

What you want to avoid (except in rare circumstances where it’s a specific character trait) is characters sitting around talking to themselves. Most people don’t do this often, so it tends to come across as an inexperienced writer forcing information upon readers in an unnatural way.

Unique character voice

Each character should have a unique voice, not just so readers know who’s speaking, but to express who the character is, where they came from, their opinions, specific dialects or colloquialisms, and their attitude to what’s happening in the story at that time.

Authentic speech is about the words a character chooses and how they put them together. Most people use contracts a lot, i.e. I don’t like that, rather than, I do not like that.

Use speech to reveal different aspects of their personality.

• Are they the kind of person who speaks before they think or considers each word carefully?
• Do they trip over their words or speak eloquently?
• Do they avoid certain subjects or wear their heart on their sleeve?
• Are they a jokester, extrovert, solemn or belligerent?

Don’t force dialogue

Forced dialogue (also known as on-the-nose writing) happens when:

• We include information that is out of context, i.e., not relevant to what’s going on in the story at the time; or
• It isn’t written the way that character would actually speak.

It’s common when we need to reveal backstory or critical information but don’t work to make it sound realistic.

Examples

Forced:

Ruth backed away from the paddock gate. “As you know, Ben, I’m afraid of horses.”

If Ben already knows this about Ruth, she wouldn’t be explaining it. Instead, show her fear through the narrative and her spontaneous reaction to seeing the horse.

Natural sounding:

Ruth backed away from the paddock gate, behind which an enormous white stallion pawed the ground like a wild bull. “Hell no. I’m not going in there!”

Subtext

There is always subtext surrounding authentic speech. Thoughts and feelings that are implied rather than spoken. When we have a conversation in real life, we naturally assess the situation; reading facial cues, body language, actions and tone of voice to understand how the other person feels and what they want. Even what they might be hiding.

We’ve all seen chick flicks where the heroine professes her love and her partner is silent. That silence reveals more than words; he’s clearly not the man for her. Or had a friend who changes the subject every time the conversation turns to childhoods. Even if you don’t know why, you can deduce certain things from what people aren’t saying.

Within and around dialogue, layer in details about:

• How the character got to this point?
• Why they are driven towards their current goal?
• Where they are and what’s going on around them?

Examples

“The dog’s dead,” Mary stated matter-of-factly, as though Sooty hadn’t been her best friend through childhood and loyal companion during her cancer treatment.

I hated the way putting on a brave face meant her not showing any emotion. Ever.

“How did it happen?” Anne chokes back a sob.

“Bloody Dad. I’ve told him a hundred times that he backs out of the driveway too fast.”

“Oh no! Is he coping okay? How about Fluffy? They were best friends.”

We learn a lot about these sisters from this short exchange. Far more than the words alone tell us.

• Their family pet is dead, and the remaining pet is going to miss them.
• Mary previously had cancer and is dedicated to putting on a brave face no matter the situation.
• Anne is more emotional and thinks about how this will affect others.

Hot tip for checking dialogue authenticity.

You can more easily hear the authenticity and flow of dialogue if you read it aloud. Hearing the words as the characters say them will pick up whether it sounds too formal or casual (for that character), or forced. If it’s difficult to read aloud then it’s going to sound awkward in the reader’s head too.

Using the “Read Aloud” function under the Review tab in Word is another way to hear how the words on the page sound.  

What makes dialogue purposeful?

When characters speak, it must be for a reason. Not because the author wants to fill space or force information onto the page. There must be a reason for the character to communicate with another character.

Eliminate chit chat

Eliminate mundane chin-wagging. It might be a part of real conversations, but if it isn’t adding value for the reader, then cut it. You don’t need to include every part of a conversation for it to be meaningful.

Examples

People may greet one another when first meet, but you don’t need to write every “Hello, how are you?” and “I’m well thanks. How are you?”. Get straight into the meaty parts. The reason the dialogue is there.

Likewise, characters don’t always have to say “Goodbye” when they hang up the phone. It’s implied.

There are no hard and fast rules about how much dialogue to use. It comes down to personal preference and whether characters are alone or with other.

When you add dialogue to your story, don’t get so focused on what is being said that your forget what’s happening around them. The narrative around dialogue should be put to use to help readers picture the whole scene including the setting, character movements, and mood.

Does your dialogue ring true?

Dialogue is a wonderful way to add immediacy to a story and make readers feel more involved in the lives of characters, It gets characters out of their own heads and actively participating on the page, which is way more interesting that the author telling readers how to think and feel.

It’s worthwhile taking the time to make speech concise, authentic and purposeful. Make every word count.

WITS challenge

Search your manuscript for places where your character is alone and reveals information through internal thoughts. Try putting them with another person and rewrite the scene with dialogue.

I’d love to know if you feel this improves the scene.

Bonus: Bring your readers closer to your characters with Sandy Vaile’s free Distancing Words to Avoid Guide.

* * * * * *

About  Sandy

Sandy Vaile is a motorbike-riding daredevil who isn’t content with a story unless there’s a courageous heroine and a dead body. She is an internationally published author, writing romantic-suspense for Simon & Schuster US, and experienced fiction coach, supporting aspiring authors to write novels they are proud to share with the world (and which get noticed by agents, publishers and readers), through coaching, courses and developmental editing.

Having a writing coach is like having an industry expert in your back pocket, to hold your hand through the writing process and act as a voice of reason when you’re standing on a ledge. Sandy’s exclusive Active Storytelling Method helps authors find the hidden gems in their manuscripts and make them shine.

Connect with Sandy Vaile on her website or social media.

Image by Mircea - All in collections from Pixabay

by Diana Stout, MFA, PhD

The day started out like any other. I sat at the computer prepared to continue writing a first draft for a new book, but that day turned out to be unlike any other.

The Writer's Block Day of Infamy

That day, writer's block paralyzed me for 10 ½ straight hours, the screen blinking at me the entire time. Taunting me. But, I wasn't about to quit. I couldn't. I was on deadline.

Looking back...

Many times, writer’s block had ruled my life. In those times, I would file, organize, clean, or perform any of the usual writer's block avoidance activities. This time, however, I just sat there. Avoidance that day wasn't allowed.

Thus, my ability to stare turned into an art form.

Until that time, I never doubted the existence of writer's block. I had always called it by name. Notable authors wrote about it. Nearly every month, the two most popular writing magazines would feature an article about how to avoid writer's block. If these experts were writing about it, it had to exist, right?

By the end of that horrible day, I vowed writer's block would be gone, never to show its ugliness again.

Magical Moment?

The next day, I sat down facing that same blank page. Minutes later, I decided to skip over it. I'd write the next scene instead. And, I did. Quickly and easily.

By the end of the day, having written a healthy pile of pages, I knew something magical had just occurred. But what? I began questioning the existence of writer's block and started researching it.

The Origin of Writer's Block

After World War II, psychiatry became a popular and prestige topic. Edmund Bergler, a New York City Austrian psychiatrist, termed writer's block in 1947. Within the field of psychiatry, writer's block is tied to depression, anxiety, a sense of failure, pressure, a lack of inspiration, illness, and other common debilitating factors. Some theories that arose from the psychiatry field tied writer's block to perfectionism or the lack of ideas, even the loss of self-confidence. Sometimes alcohol was involved as a reason.

Also, procrastination became part of the discussion with added reasons for writer's block: finances and life-changing events, such as war, births, moving, deaths, weather-related disasters, divorce, marriage, and so forth.

Basically, writer's block and procrastination were deemed as either a physical or emotional issue.

Traits of Writer's Block

The more common excuses of writer's block that I hear writers using today are:

• I don't have enough time to write
• I don't have a good place where I can write: it's too [noisy, hot, cold, not comfortable, etc.]
• I'm not selling anything; I must not be a good writer
• I'm not writing as fast as [insert favorite author's name]
• I'm feeling [depressed, angry, stressed, sad, etc.]
• I don't know what to write about
• I'm distracted by [people walked by, social media notifications, smell of food, etc.]
• I'm not motivated

In the past, I've written in a closet, busy airports, bus terminals, restaurants, playgrounds, where temperatures were so cold, I was blowing on my fingers, or so hot, I put a cold washcloth on the back of my neck to cool off.

I've written piles of pages during all kinds of life-changing effects. Writing was a stress release, a pressure valve where I could let go of my feelings and thoughts. Sometimes, I was doing nothing more than journaling, performing a stream of consciousness writing with no idea of where I'd use the work.

So, if I'd been able to write during those life-changing events, what was the real reason for that 10.5-hour day of no writing?

That's the day, I realized that writer’s block is a myth. Writer's block is nothing more than being stuck.

The "Aha" Moment

Skipping where I had been stuck allowed me to continue writing with renewed passion and motivation for the project.

The real aha, eye-opening moment occurred when I got to the end of that first draft. That's when I knew exactly what the skipped scene needed.

That book taught me, too, that inspiration and motivation occur after I've started typing. The more I typed, the more passionate I became about the project.

Writer's Block No More: Moves You Can Make to Get Unstuck

Getting unstuck requires action. Let me repeat that.

Getting unstuck requires action!

Here are some suggestions:

• Skip where you're stuck; leave comments, thoughts, possible ideas. Then, move on. Don't come back to this empty space, this hole until you have finished the draft.
• Could it be that you don't know your characters well enough? Stop and ask them questions that reveal their true motives, hidden secrets, life-long desires, wounds, and flaws. Obtain deeper information. This action helps eliminate shallow characters, too.
• If you're a panster, stop and decide on an ending, which, like taking a vacation, will provide you with a destination, allowing you to write/move toward it. Sometimes knowing the ending and the main beats / bigger plot points (stops you want to make while on vacation) is all that's needed to get the story moving again.
• Not sure what to write? Start writing your thoughts about various topics and see which one generates more content and passion. Not only will you zero in on one topic eventually, but now you'll have the starts to several more topics for potential use later.

Getting stuck isn't about where you're writing, what tools you're using, or if your writing style is as a panster or plotter.

Getting stuck is always about character or plot.

You're stuck because you need to learn more, to dig down deep on either or both. Do that and you'll be on the writing road again, happily pounding the keys.

Have you ever experienced writer's block? What did you do to overcome it?

* * * * * *

About Diana

Dr. Diana Stout is an award-winning writer in multiple genres, a screenwriter, author, blogger, and writing coach who travels with a crowd: characters who each want their voice and folks giving voice from the other side.

Stuck for a few years on her novella series after publishing the first one, Shattered Dreams, last year three were published, one so far this year, with the last two soon to come.

So, she won't get stuck later, she's plotting out a historical Gothic romance due later this summer, and completing a writer's resource book so many have been asking for. Fortunately, since she's taught the subject in the past, there's no getting stuck on that project. You can learn more about Dr. Stout at her website, Sharpened Pencils Productions.

Do you struggle with procrastination? Check out her June 5-16, 2023 Master Class: Using (& Avoiding) Procrastination, limited to 25 people. Procrastinate on signing up and you could lose out!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay