by acflory

In an autobiography, the author is the story so there is no such thing as 'too much'. In fiction however, the author's presence can sometimes become too obvious, to the detriment of the story.

I don't know about you, but when I read fiction, I want to be carried away to another place and time. I want to meet new, larger-than-life characters who do things I could never manage myself. It's just me and the story.

When the author intrudes, however, all I get is 'aren't I funny? aren't I cool? aren't I clever?' To which my answer is inevitably...no. I want to read the story, not the author's ego fest.

'But how can we not be part of the story?' you ask. 'Everything we write ultimately comes from us!'

And that is true. Every thought, word, and deed that we write about springs from how we see ourselves and the world around us. That part is inevitable. Even when we write about things that completely contradict our personal values, those values were still the point from which we diverged.

Infusing our values

To give you an example, in Vokhtah I created an alien culture in which every creature was some degree of sociopath. As someone with a wee bit too much empathy, I was constantly having to edit out the bits where my instinctive response made them too 'nice'.

Most of the time, however, we infuse our values into our work without even being aware of it. That's simply how we see the world.

Two famous works of fiction that illustrate this point beautifully are Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens created a hero who sacrificed himself for another, an act of nobility that still brings a lump to my throat. By contrast, Ayn Rand created a character who was noble because he embodied the ideals of capitalism.

As a 'progressive', I found myself arguing with Ayn Rand the whole way through the book. Nevertheless, the story was persuasive enough to make me question my own, long held views and beliefs.

The power of persuasion

Why were both stories so persuasive? The answer is simple. Both authors genuinely believed in the values and world view they presented in their fiction, and Readers responded to it.

That ability to persuade is the super power we authors wield. But only if we allow the story to be front and centre. If we project too much of ourselves into the narrative, it stops being a work of fiction and lurches towards autobiography, or worse, a dry treatise on philosophy, neither of which is particularly persuasive. Or immersive.

Yet isn't that precisely what fiction is supposed to be all about?

So how, exactly, do we create stories that are both persuasive and immersive?

One technique which has been done to death in writing circles is ‘show don’t tell’. In theory, the author is supposed to let the Reader see, hear, and feel the action for herself. I have no problem with the theory, but the implementation is often too painful to read. I don’t want to know every. single. trivial. boring. detail in a scene. I don’t want to know every time the protagonist scratches his rear, or rubs his nose. I only want to see-hear-feel those things that are important to the story!

Relatable characters

Another thing authors could do is to avoid first person POV [point of view] unless they are sure they are not going to fall into the trap of identifying with the protagonist. Sadly, that is very hard to do when you’re constantly writing ‘I did, I saw, I felt, I thought...blah blah’. Even with the best of intentions, many writers end up creating a character who is the version of themselves they want others to see.

I cannot tell you how many stories I’ve read in which the protagonist is facing a life-or-death fight, and instead of focusing on the fight, he thinks about things that make him appear ‘cool’. Blasé quips might work for Han Solo [Star Wars], but it rarely works in books.

The opposite of the non-heroic hero is the earnest protagonist who is so busy being ‘honest’ that he/she comes across as a self-indulgent navel gazer. Curiously, seeing the protagonist from the inside this way usually highlights the flaws in his/her character without revealing many endearing characteristics. As a result, the Reader is given few reasons to care about the character.

Problems with point of view

In fairness, I have to say that first person POV can be done well, but it isn’t the easy option so many new writers think it is. If anything, it’s the hardest. ‘Me, me, me’ issues aside, in first person POV, the protagonist can only know what he/she sees directly. That means the author has to get very creative in order to present vital information that the protagonist cannot know. That’s hard.

Of course, third person POV is not immune to these pitfalls either, it’s just a bit easier to avoid them. Instead of having to write everything from the perspective of one character, the writer has the option of presenting information through the eyes of multiple characters, each of whom ‘sees’ a different side of the story. It’s a great technique, but the danger is that the author will get carried away and go head hopping.

For those who don’t know, head hopping occurs when the point of view keeps jumping from one character to the next, often with no way for the Reader to know who is doing/saying/thinking what. Instant confusion. Confuse the Reader enough, and they will fall out of the story. And you can’t be persuasive if the Reader gives up and stops reading, can you?

The story comes first

I don’t believe in hard and fast rules when it comes to writing because what works for one writer may not work for another, and the difference between the two is often very subtle.  The only thing I would say with any certainty is that the story must come first. It’s not just a vehicle for us to tell the world what we think. Good stories have a life of their own because they transcend what one person, the author, may think, and instead say something important about all people. 

Good stories are universal.

Have you discovered too much of an author’s voice in a story? Do you notice point of view plays into author intrusion?

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About acflory

acflory is a science fiction writer from Australia who's passionate about technology, politics, psychology, pets, biology, gaming, music, and food. All of those passions seem to end up in her writing which is an eclectic mix of hard and social science fiction. Hard, because everything she writes about is based on some fact, no matter how obscure, and social, because she loves to explore what it means to be human, even when she's writing about aliens.

Find her on WordPress, Amazon, and YouTube

Top Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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?

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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.

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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