Writers in the Storm

By Tiffany Lawson Inman

In theatre, dialogue is king. It is the lifeline of the story.  Character's lines bouncing back and forth between each other.  Confiding, conspiring, commiserating, coercing, or caring.  Dialogue works to create emotion, conflict, show character, and it always moves the dramatic action forward.

It seems that in fiction writing, dialogue isn’t seen as being as important as it is in theatre.  Although I think I should be. You should too.

When I write, dialogue comes first.

When I read, dialogue had better woo me.

When I edit, dialogue is one of the main factors between flop and fabulous.

The purpose of dialogue sometimes gets lost with writers.  They save it till last, rush through it because they are unsure of themselves, don’t put enough in because they are unsure of themselves, or worse,  the writer thinks it’s easy because it’s “the same as copying down a conversation.”

Do not fall victim to these dialogue blunders.

Dialogue is just as important as every other aspect of fiction writing.

           

Refresher, reminder, recount of the purpose of dialogue:

• Show character.
• Show conflict.
• Show voice.
• Show action.
• Show backstory
• Show story.

Who doesn’t think character, conflict, voice, action, backstory, and story are important to fiction writing?  A show of hands?

Didn’t think so.

Here is an example of dialogue that really wooed and wowed me.  I was wooed because I can tell the author took her time and thought about each word of this dialogue, it was not slopped together. I was wowed because of the amount of tension, character, relationship, and voice oozing from this little scene. You will see what I mean.

In the example I’ve taken out everything but the dialogue, so you can see how strong it is on its own. In the style of a theatre script. After, I will dramatically dissect the scene for you to get a closer look.

To note: When I edit, I will pull out all dialogue to analyze, separate from the other pieces of writing craft. To see how well the conversation is built. Because of my background in theatre, I look at the scene as if it were in a play.

Short background on the example scene from Darkness, My Old Friend, a book written by the lovely and absolutely full of talent, Lisa Unger.  Eloise is a widowed psychic. Ray, retired detective, is her long time friend and ex-lover. They both have somewhat sad pasts, and are still drawn to each other. Here, they talk about an active case from one of her visions.

Before we start, the key to not letting the character names distract you: don’t read them. Keep them in your periphery and concentrate on the lines. It might take a second to get used to it.

            Ray:  Where were you? Out partying with your new best friend, Jones Cooper?

            Eloise:   Not exactly. Do you want to come in?

            Ray:  I thought you were retiring?

            Eloise:   Vacationing is not the same thing as retiring, anyway, what choice did I have? I    couldn’t just let him drown.

            Ray:  I thought you had a policy about speaking your vision but not getting physically         involved. You know, after what happened in Kansas.

            Eloise:   I changed my policy, just this once.

            Ray:  Because of Maggie Cooper?

            Eloise:   Maybe. (pause)  What about your visit with Claudia Miller?

            Ray:  She wouldn’t talk to me. And the Holt house? I poked around in there some. The       place is a nightmare. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

            Eloise:  Some boxes stay locked.

            Ray:  I guess you heard.

            Eloise:  About Michael? Yes, I heard.

            Ray:  You knew all along, didn’t you?

            Eloise:  I suspected.

            Ray:  She told you.

            Eloise:  She hinted.

            Ray:  This is ugly work, Eloise.

Dramatic Dissection:

            Ray:  Where were you? Out partying with your new best friend, Jones Cooper?

            Eloise:   Not exactly. Do you want to come in?

            Ray:  I thought you were retiring?

            Eloise:   Vacationing is not the same thing as retiring, anyway, what choice did I have? I    couldn’t just let him drown.

I see: Friendship. Joking banter. Candidness. Honesty.

            Ray:  I thought you had a policy about speaking your vision but not getting physically involved. You know, after what happened in Kansas?

Now Unger shows us a little more meat to their relationship.

Ray asks a hard question. He presses her a little bit.  Not to be mean, but because he cares. Something terrible happened in the Kansas situation and he doesn’t want her to get hurt again.

            Eloise:   I changed my policy, just this once.

She is acknowledging his concern and not fighting back.

            Ray:  Because of Maggie Cooper?

He presses further by using a name that will hopefully make her pay attention to what she is doing. Just an extra nudge to make his point.

            Eloise:   Maybe. (pause)What about your visit with Claudia Miller?

One word answers always tell us more than the one word. “Maybe” tells us she isn’t ready to tell him he is right…but he is probably right.

I added a simple pause to show the length of time passing between her lines.  In the book, there is a physical moment between Eloise and Ray, two sentences worth, and then she speaks again. The silence is like an unsaid exclamation point. It means she is acknowledging Ray’s point and it is emotional, even now. There is an emotional shift between her two lines.

Her second line after the emotional shift is not on the current subject, she might as well be saying: “End of topic. I get your point. Moving on to the issue at hand.”

            Ray:  She wouldn’t talk to me. And the Holt house? I poked around in there some. The       place is a nightmare. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

He is sharing information in this line, but he is also accepting her push to move on to the next subject. It is also a gesture of understanding and respecting her feelings.

Notice how much he crams in here. His tone completely changed. Almost nervously. As if he is afraid he overstepped his friendship bounds with the moment before.

Ray is sharing specific information, even though it sounds haphazard. As you see in the next lines, he is looking for an answer.

            Eloise:  Some boxes stay locked.

This is a HUGE showing line.  It’s up to reader discretion if she is speaking about the fact that the woman he went to interview wasn’t forthcoming with any information, or if she is still talking about the Kansas situation.  One or the other or both, they all show an increase in tension and a big hint to the reader that not everything is on the surface.

            Ray:  I guess you heard.

            Eloise:  About Michael? (no reply)  Yes, I heard.

These two lines could have been said like this:

            Ray: I guess you heard about Michael?

             Eloise: Yes, I heard.  

But Lisa Unger wanted to show more than just a traditional question/answer.  Ray is saying something else when he doesn’t insert Michaels name into his question. He’s leading her on a bit, letting her fill in the blank. An interesting tactic to force her into admitting something without going through the motions of a handful of question/answers.

This produces tension. Thank you, Lisa Unger!

Eloise:   About Michael?  (no reply) Yes, I heard.

She answers the question with a question, which really isn’t an answer. Her half-hearted attempt to dislodge guilt from his questioning tactic.

When he doesn’t answer, she knows he is waiting for a real answer. She chooses to use the same word he used in the question, “heard.”  She doesn’t disclose any more or less information, therefore trying to softening her guilt again.

            Ray:  You knew all along, didn’t you?     

Only after she gives up the answer, does he make an official accusation.

            Eloise:  I suspected.

            Ray:  She told you.

            Eloise:  She hinted.

Look at the cadence and weight of these lines. So much is being said in these seven words!

            Eloise:  I suspected.

 Eloise tries deflecting his accusation again.

Ray:   She told you.

Ray is not conceding. And not using any backwards interviewing techniques anymore. He is telling her not to distort the facts because he knows the truth.

            Eloise:  She hinted.

Finally she gives in and tells the truth, but even in doing so, she tries to stay out of the dirt, with another sidestep. It could have been written like this:

            Ray: She told you.

            Eloise:  Yes, she told me.

This doesn’t show character and relationship as well as the original version, does it? Nope.

Hinted instead of told.

            Ray:  This is ugly work, Eloise.

Truth be told, I’m not sure if he is talking about the case, or if he is saying he doesn’t like the fact that they are forced to play this word game as a consequence of their involvement in other people’s indiscretions. Especially when they are such close friends. Either way, the line holds emotion.  He uses her name here, instead of at the end of one of his accusations above (which would have been a sign of increased anger.)  Here, the use of her name softens the line.  It’s almost a plea for continued friendship and honesty in any upcoming conflicts they might be up against.

Gosh, I’m glad I didn’t post one of her high tension scenes. This blog would’ve ended up being 20 pages long with all of the fabulous insights I could pull from that dialogue.

I know it seems daunting to want to stand next to Lisa Unger in the bestselling dialogue arena, but it can be done.

Here are a few building blocks to get you started.  Remember they can and should be used for high and low tension scenes.  Every chunk of dialogue is important.  These building blocks should be reviewed before, during, and in the editing phase of writing the scene.

This list is just the beginning. The waters of learning how to write dialogue run deeeep.

• What are your POV character’s goals walking into the scene? List them.

• Do they change throughout the scene?
• Have you written enough emphasis around the change, or left it understated for more intrigue?
• What are your non-POV character’s goals walking into the scene? List them.
  • Do they get in the way of the POVs goals? Decide if the interference should be exaggerated or underplayed.
  • What story moving information are you going to share in the scene? List it.
  • Make sure character and voice are different for each of the characters in the scene. Drag out your character sketches!
  • Think about the rate-of-speech, attitude, word usage for each character.
    • Do they match the character, the moment?
    • Differ from each other?
    • Show Highs and Lows?
    • Show the correct emotion for the scene?
    • What kind of changes or sacrifices will be made inside each character through this dialogue?
      • Remember to show these inner changes through voice, action, body language, and dialogue.  Don’t leave it all up to internalizations.
      • How is your POV character affected by the conversation?
        • Did it raise the stakes?
        • Change them emotionally?
        • Motivate a new direction of action?
        • Make sure this dialogue scene moves the story forward. It cannot be chitchat just to be chitchat.  These conversations must show the reader something new and move story forward!
        • Look at the placement of your scene within the structure of your plot.  Is it in the best location to heighten tension?
        • Keep in-mind, characters are not always forthcoming with every detail of information. Or with their true emotion, depending on the situation, of course.
          • Think about the tension of the scene and the theme of your book.  How your characters share and use information is a big player in storyline conflict.
          • Where will you add subtext?
          • Leave a few reader questions open at the end of the scene to draw intrigue and tension.
            • Ask yourself what is left for the next time these characters speak.
            • Through every line of your dialogue, ask yourselves, “How can you show character, conflict, voice, action, backstory, and story without using that much exposition?”

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            Thank you very much for joining me for the last Friday of the month here on WITS! I hope you took notes!  Comment below and share which authors have wooed and wowed you with their dialogue. As per usual, if you comment, your name will be in the hat to win a free spot in one of Tiffany’s future online courses offered through Lawson Writer’s Academy.

            If you are hankering for an in-depth workshop on dialogue (learning HOW TO implement everything on the above list and more more more) I’ll be teaching a month long workshop online for LWA in fall/winter. Follow me on twitter @NakedEditor to see what’s happening and when. New workshops taught month at Lawson Writer’s Academy check it out!

Workshops taught by Tiffany Lawson Inman:

• ·         From MADNESS to Method: Writing Oscar Worthy Characters!  
• 77 Secrets To Writing YA Fiction That Sells!
• ·         Triple Threat Behind Staging A Scene
• Fighting in Fiction
• Directing Dialogue

**These courses will be taught at least twice a year. You won’t miss out!**

Want to learn from me in person?  I will be presenting a workshop at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference this year. Registration is open!

You can find Tiffany at her website , info-packed-blogs starting up in late summer.

Tiffany Lawson Inman (NakedEditor) claimed a higher education at Columbia College Chicago. Here, she learned to use body and mind together for action scenes, character emotion, and dramatic story development. She teaches for Lawson Writer’s Academy and presents hands-on-action workshops. As a freelance editor, she provides story analysis and editing services.

Please Welcome Mario Acevedo to WITS - he's a best selling novelist and instructor over at the Lawson Academy, so you know he knows what he's talking about! Here he is:

Mario here: I’ve been invited to share a little of what I know about writing tension and conflict.

Let’s first ask ourselves why we read fiction? For a vicarious kick, to get what we usually avoid in our lives: DRAMA.

When we say a story was good drama, that means we got a lot of entertaining tension and conflict.

Tension and conflict, what’s the difference?

Tension arises from apprehension and expectation. We’re given details to set our nerves on edge. For tension to work, there must be a set-up. If you want to scare your reader, there must be a build-up of emotion. Otherwise, when you unleash the fright, there is no context. It would be like randomly mentioning the punch line of a joke and expecting a laugh.

Conflict is the discordance between competing agendas. Notice I didn’t mention ideas. It’s not enough that your characters have different ideas, they must act on them, through an agenda, a plan of action.

TENSION

A great way to show tension is through descriptions using scene-based imagery. This means that you describe the scene in a way that presents the emotion you want to project.

For example: A woman wears red lipstick. In a comic narrative, you might say her lips were clown red. In another scene, the same woman wearing the same lipstick, the color could be described as blood red. Those simple adjectives can dramatically change our expectations of the scene. One is funny, the other, filled with malice.

Check out this great example of creating tension in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Here his detective Phillip Marlowe enters the greenhouse of his millionaire client.

The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed on the plants. The light had an unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium tank. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the fingers of newly washed dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.

Pick out the descriptors: Thick. Wet. Steamy. Larded. Unreal greenish color. Nasty, meaty. Fingers of newly washed dead men.

I don’t know what boiling alcohol under a blanket smells like but I’m sure it’s not pleasant.

What sensation do we get? One of dread. A foreshadowing of danger. It’s a brilliant allegory to the moral cesspool that Marlowe is immersing himself into. We know this is not going to be a nice story with nice characters.

CONFLICT

As I had mentioned, conflict implies action. The characters need to have competing agendas. Notice I didn’t say opposing agendas. You could have two characters on the same side (police buddies, for example) and while they may be striving for the same goal, they both have different ideas and methods getting there.

Although I said characters, conflict can be between the internal desires of a character, or between the character and nature (or God or society).

Conflict manifests itself when the opposing characters reveal their agendas, often through dialog. Let’s look at this excerpt from Fated by S.G. Browne.

In cases like this, it helps to get some good advice, and I know Honesty will always be candid and confidential. She’s kind of like a therapist for immortal entities.

Honesty lives on the Upper West Side in a three-thousand square-foot, two-bedroom flat on the top floor of a six story building with a view of Central Park. From the couch in her living room, I can see the North Meadow through the picture window.

“But if I talk to her,” I say, “won’t that encourage a relationship?”

“Is that a problem?” she says.

“Well, isn’t fraternizing with human women against the rules?” I ask.

“Whose rules?” says Honesty. “Your rules? Jerry’s rules? The rules of emotionally unavailable men?”

“Is that a multiple-choice question?” I ask.

Honesty lights up another cigarette, then takes a long drag, leans back in her chair, crosses her legs, and says, “Are you afraid of intimacy?”

The thing about Honesty is that she’s passive-aggressive.

What are the competing agendas? Fate wants permission to have a relationship with a mortal human. Honesty wants Fate to admit to his desires and act on them. We can tell that neither character cares very much for the other.

Here’s a simple exercise that uses internal conflict to establish tension. Write two complementary sentences, one as the set up and the other as the twist that establishes tension.

For example:

I am an honest man. But I need this money.

What is the conflict? The collision of two different agendas. One is to maintain your integrity, the other, for whatever the money may bring: food, medical treatment for a child, payoff extortion, etc., What is the source of tension? Our expectation that you are doing something against your principles and that will lead to trouble.

Remember, your readers want drama. Give it to them using tension and conflict.

Twist that emotional knife.

I’ll be teaching a class with the fabulous Lawson Writer’s Academy, Fang It To Me: Writing Vampires, Fantasy, and the How-to’s of World-Building, June 4 - 29, 2012.

The curriculum includes material prepared especially for this workshop by some of the best fantasy writers in the business today: NYT bestsellers Carrie Vaughn and Kevin Hearne; Colorado bestsellers Carol Berg, Jeanne Stein; horror master Stephen Graham Jones; king of the dystopian sci-fi thriller Warren Hammond, plus Jaye Wells, Michele Bardsley, Diana Rowland, Nicole Peeler, Carolyn Crane, Kat Richardson; plus YA authors Jackie Kessler and Mark Henry. This much knowledge might make your head explode!

Thanks for the opportunity. Remember: nothing gets written until you BICHOK--Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard.

Mario Acevedo is the author of the bestselling Felix Gomez detective-vampire series and his most recent novel is Werewolf Smackdown. You may find Mario at his website, his blog (with Jeanne Stein,) and at Facebook.

Stop by and say hello.

We're so excited here at WITS. The amazing teacher and writer, Shannon Donnelly, has agreed to be a monthly contributor! Read on - you're going to be excited too! Here's Shannon:

The great thing about ebooks is you can keep changing the cover. The bad thing about ebooks is you can keep changing the cover. It becomes a lot like putting on a new outfit--you're not really sure if the new one is a favorite because it's great, or just because it's new. I'm hoping this evolution for my book, Paths of Desire is heading forward.

The first cover was very much an experiment in making something from other things. I love the pose and the sunset, but while I also love silhouettes, these didn't "read" well to readers. The ship is also a touch out of period, and that bugged me.

The dress is also a little out of period. While it's not all that obvious, the waistline is low, meaning this reads as more of a Georgian era, which doesn't work for a book set from 1813 to 1817.

The fonts, here, too, were used to copy those on my other Regency romances. While the fonts read as "romance" I'm not sure they really gave me as much polish to the cover as I wanted. There's a whole art to fonts, and there's also a style--certain things come in and out of fashion. As with any other fashion, you can get too trendy and end up dating your cover (just look back at covers from the 1980's...or the 1960's!) You can also get too fancy. When in doubt, go with readable.

But you also need something that really sells the book. This wasn't it.

So it was on to the next draft.

For version number two, some elements stayed, some changed. Mostly it was about changing the couple. Again, silhouette was used--I had the idea that the suggestion of the couple would be cool. And, yes, it's nice, but still not as eye catching as I wanted.

Notice the pose is different--this is what I call the almost kiss. The dress is now period for the woman. And I really liked that moment before the kiss--that's what I think is always the best moment...the anticipation.

I'd call this a good cover, but it wasn't quite as slick as I wanted. It was low cost, so that let me get the book for sale so the book could actually finance how things went.

The silhouettes, however, while they were something I liked, did not really catch the eye. There's nothing here to really pop out. I also think the ship sent the wrong idea--it's a little too "piratey". I wanted the sense of a journey (as in paths, as in the story is about two folks and their journey into a relationship), but the ship is just too much Captain Jack (yes, Disney influences us all.)

And, yes, it was time to go onto the next version.

For the next cover, I went hunting and found Della Jacobs, who does great covers, as well as writing great books. The goal here was to get a stronger pose for the couple. I also wanted to keep the path/journey theme going on the cover, since that was the heart of the book. So this cover was born:

The outline on the lettering helped the text stand out, and the two different fonts also add a little more style. We still have that moment before the kiss on the cover. So I really liked this. But there was one problem.

When this cover is very, very small, the faded out couple tends not to read well (not a great thing for an ebook). It still looks good here, but on a page with a lot of other colors and art and text, the cover does tend to get lost. Sometimes understatement is great for your personal style, but not for a book cover.

What matters with an ebook is the sales numbers, and while the trend was upward, this cover wasn't giving me the numbers I wanted. So back on the hunt.

Searches led me to Hot Damn Designs. I browsed the covers and the stocks. And I liked the covers. The cost was within budget, too (always a consideration.) So I sent them information and selected some stock that I liked.

Kim, the main designer, sent back two options, and both were great.

The red automatically appealed to me the most--but then I like to wear red a lot, too. However, the pillows and the background had kind of a Belle Epoch feeling, which wasn't quite the historical tone I wanted. The hint of red hair also did not suit the dark haired heroine. So version 3B it was.

This also added in the tag line (not something you can see in the small version, but it's hinted at enough that someone might click to see a larger version of the cover. We still have, too, the anticipation of the kiss.

I also thought this gave the idea that the book is a hotter Regency historical. Since I've written shorter, lighter Regencies, some folks may expect that and may not like the sex in the book. But it's vital to the story and the characters, and so it's there. The cover had to say that.

It's too early to tell, yet, if the cover will do great. It's already doing better than the other two covers. But is it too much in fashion? We've lost the path feeling, so is that bad?  Does this now look like too many other book covers? Does it do enough to tell the reader what the book is about (other than two folks in bed?)

Covers have limited space, and an author always wants more--can you put in the travel, and the couple, and oh, yes, there should be a London stage (she's an actress,) and he's an explorer, so a map or compass would be cool. And with that you now have a cover with so much going on that it's impossible to see anything. But does this need more?

Time will tell. And maybe another cover will appear in a few months.

Shannon Donnelly's writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written."

Her latest Regency Historical Romance, Paths of Desire, can be found as an ebooks on Kindle, Nook and at Smashwords, along with her Regency romances, and her free novella, Cats Cradle. She has had novellas published in several anthologies, has had young adult horror stories published, and is the author of several computer games.

She lives in New Mexico with two horses, two donkeys, two dogs, and the one love of her life. Shannon can be found online at sd-writer.com, facebook.com/sdwriter, and twitter/@sdwriter.