CommentsDialogue really gets me going when I’m stuck, but I do have to be careful to keep the characters from running away with things — or from things. They’d usually rather have witty banter than face their problems. Here’s a delicious bit from “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield: >>> “Don’t be so polite. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s politeness.” Her forehead twitched, and an eyebrow rose over the top of the sunglasses. A strong black arch that bore no relation to any natural brow. “Politeness. Now, there’s a poor man’s virtue if ever there was one. What’s so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. On the contrary, being nice is what’s left when you’ve failed at everything else. People with ambition don’t give a damn what other people think about them. I hardly suppose Wagner lost sleep worrying whether he’d hurt someone’s feelings. But then he was a genius.” >>> I guess it’s more of a speech than dialogue, but it’s still a searing little soliloquy. Miss Winter bars no holds, and she wants you to know it. I love that book! I couldn’t open to a page without being drawn in again.  Darynda Jones says: “Dialogue really gets me going when I’m stuck, but I do have to be careful to keep the characters from running away with things — or from things. They’d usually rather have witty banter than face their problems.” Ditto a thousand times. I really have to wrangle in my characters sometimes. I do believe that too much dialogue that just rambles on for the sake of word count is a killer. Sometimes it is just too much. It’s hard to know when to say when, but practice makes perfect. I am really learning when to give my characters free rein and when to put my foot down. Cause in my world, they’re all a little nuts.  Elisa Beatty says: I enjoy writing dialogue so much (and enjoy talking so much, and hearing good talkers talk) that I have to rein it in and remember to include regular action. Maybe I should turn to screenwriting… *steps away from her keyboard now* Darynda Jones says: LOL, you never have to do that! Come back!!! I’m more like Tamara. I have too much internalization. I hope to master the snappy come backs and witty lines. I love the “Nice Dress. Take it off.” line. Wish I’d thought of that. I skimmed my WIP for any snappy dialogue. I guess it is very telling that most of my witty words are internal dialogue. The verbal dialogue isn’t cute out of context and needs set up of internalization or situation to frame it in perspective to be funny or awwww or zing. sigh.  Laurie Kellogg says: I love internal dialogue. Actually, I think Stephanie Plum has a lot of witty internal dialogue. I actually wish she’d say some of the stuff out loud. Darynda Jones says: I do that a LOT too, Kelly. I just got an amazing blurb from Kresley Cole and she loved my character’s “observations.” And I thought, “Oh, yeah, they are her observations.” They are pretty much her take on things around her, but I try to make them unique and unexpected. Like when an FBI agent flashes his badge then replaces it inside a pocket in his jacket, she thinks about how she needs a jacket with an inside pocket if she is ever going to be taken seriously. Most people would be thinking about the fact that an FBI agent just flashed his badge at them. And so on. Just weird little quirks not spoken aloud, so it’s internal dialogue. Which I love as well! Elisa Beatty says: That’s a great detail, Darynda…. I really, really, REALLY can’t wait to read First Grave!!!!! Darynda Jones says: Thanks, Elisa! I hope all this hype doesn’t disappoint. You know how you get a certain expectation and the real thing doesn’t live up to it. LOL. That would suck. Darynda Jones says: Eden, you could share internal dialogue as well!!! I would love to read some. But only if you feel comfortable. Here is a piece from my two heroes just before they meet their heroine. Caleb turned to his brother. “Ethan, why are we at a new age trinket shop?” And here is where our Heroine Wren runs to her friend Isobeau to try to sort the wicked mess her life is becoming. Before she could lock her lips closed, she told Isabeau everything. Well, almost everything. She left the part out about biting them and dragons and Queen of their people and. . . okay she left out quite a bit of stuff actually. The conversation focused on the fact that she planned to jump into bed with two freaking hot men, together, simultaneously, two at once, Dear Goddess, what kind of kinky freak was she? Oh and perhaps a little bit of talk about how someone wanted to kill her Still in draft form but working toward a finish. Oh, and they guys, well they aren’t from around here. Caleb tricks Ethan his twin in this scene. The lead in is in Caleb’s POV. Their shirts got messed up with blood when Wren fell through the stairs. So she offered them clean t-shirts from her shop. Of course, she didn’t have any idea the significance of the gift. Caleb chose one from the Highschool musical collection that says, “I come with my own background music.” take a look at what he gives Ethan to wear. (Again, I’m still in draft form but perhaps it’s getting there.) Ethan caught the shirt and held it up against his body. His expression shone with equal parts pride and horror. Obviously, proud that she would clothe him as in keeping with ancient custom of a mate pleased with their bonding selection. And horror. . . “She chose this for me?” The bright neon pink fabric was emblazoned with the words I believe and the image of a small blond woman in a short green dress with clear glittery wings. Caleb nodded turning away to cover his laugh with a cough. Darynda Jones says: What a cute scene, Eden! That may be in draft form, but I believe you are definitely on the right track. Cute and witty. Nice! Elisa Beatty says: Sounds really fun, Eden!! I love talking dialogue. There are so many great authors who do dialogue like a 1000 others can’t. SEP for one, IMO, but I want to use Harlen Cobern as my example. He writes white like no other. From: Fade Way by Harlen Coben The coroner looked up from the body. “What?” “Those plastic tits,” he said. “Myron noticed they were huge.” “Yeah, so?’ “How big?” “What?” “How big are they?” “You mean cup size?” “Yeah.” “I look like a lingerie manufacturer? How the F*** would I know?” “But they’re big right?” “Right.” “Really Big.” “You got eyes, don’t you?” Love it. Men and boobs. Sigh. Darynda Jones says: LOL, I love this example! Thanks, Autumn! Reminds me of a recent conversation I had with my DH. We’d just watched an underdog make it through his heat to the semi-finals of a speed-skating race. Afterward, he skated around the oval, pumping his fists and whatnot. I don’t exactly remember, because I was staring at his ENORMOUS crotch. I swear he’d smuggled a squirrel into the race, with as much mass that was jammed above the apex of his thighs. DH exclaimed, “Look at that guy!” “I know!” I said. “How’d he manage to skate so fast with that thing flopping around?” DH glanced at me, more than a little disgusted. “I mean his face.” He hit rewind, and this time I watch the guy’s expression. It’s insane, over-the-top — huge eyes, wide-open mouth, a look of wild disbelief. “Oh. That, too,” I admit, though I honestly can’t imagine how anyone could look at his face when there’s such a distraction down below. So, maybe women look at guy’s crotches? I didn’t think I did. I just…did. And I do, often, notice when a guy’s got a big (or frighteningly small) crotchal region. Women are just as gross as men, I fear. Darynda Jones says: LOL, Jamie. That’s awesome! Elisa Beatty says: Oh, hee hee hee hee!! (A squirrel!) I have to admit, I have a thing about those Norwegian cross-country skiers in the skintight red suits. In front of my children, I say things like, “My, how I admire them for their extraordinary cardiovascular conditioning!” But the, um, internal-dialogue version is rather different… Darynda Jones says: LMAO. That internal dialogue is tricky. Laurie Kellogg says: Snappy dialogue is the A-number one most important aspect of a book for me. It doesn’t have to be funny, just pithy and witty. I think the best dialogue is always during scenes where there’s an antagonistic element or disagreement between the characters. So the more intense the conflict, the better the dialogue is. Darynda Jones says: I agree! I agree, Laurie. I love it when there’s a great give and take between two characters that’s fresh and sharp and impossibly fast. Well-done dialogue is a biggie and can make or break a book for me as a reader. Okay, I have a question besides using a cretain word or phase by a character, how do you make each character’s dialog/voice unique?  Rita says: I find that comes from knowing my character’s history. Say the heroine is the youngest of six children and all her siblings are male she’s going to react and say things differently than if she is the youngest of six girls. Like if a drunk bully is harassing her and she has all sisters she may want to talk nice and get him to go away. If she has the five brothers she won’t say a thing, just pull out her taser and let him have it. Darynda Jones says: So true, Rita. Remind never to perturb you. Rita says: I have a lot of dialogue also. And when there are only two people in the room I despise dialogue tags. Like I’m not smart enough to know who is speaking? Geesh! I love that your herione does that. It makes her real. I’ll have to check these other authors out, Rita. Thanks.  Shea Berkley says: Sorry this is a hit and run, but I’m crazy busy today. I think it’s great we’re talking about dialogue. The only thing I think about when writing dialogue is making sure my characters world view is shown through how they speak and what they do. That’s what will separate their voices on the page. Darynda Jones says: Great insight, Shea. Thank you!
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Good morning, Darynda! One of the things I struggle with, and am consciously working on in my writing, is simply having a more effective balance of dialogue to internal thought for my heroes and heroines.
In early drafts, I tend to have way too many scenes where the hero or heroine is alone, thinking about stuff I need to reveal to the reader. It’s a constant fight for me to get these characters into a setting where I can reveal the information via dialogue instead!
Not that I mind writing ‘Lukas in the shower’ scenes, but…
LOL, Tammy. I completely understand. I am just the opposite. My first draft of a scene is often 98% dialogue and I have to go back and add internal thought, action, etc.
And you are right. It is about the balance! I think that we must take whatever we’re best at and weight too much of our mss with it. My strongest point is dialogue and I have to work, aka struggle, aka pull teeth, to get everything else onto the page.
And those Lukas-in-the-shower scenes certainly have their good moments.
Me too! My H/H are not thinkers, they are talkers.
It’s difficult to keep from returning to this device — the “alone in the shower and can’t stop thinking about X.” But turning it into dialogue isn’t necessarily better. I’m sure you do it skillfully, but I do hate it when it’s done badly, like when characters are only talking because the author needs to reveal some backstory or motivation.
Have you heard about Jack Bickham’s theory of “scene and sequel”? I’m pretty sure he’s the one behind it, though he also gives credit to his mentor, Dwight Swain. I read about it in Bickham’s book, “How to Write and Sell Your Novel,” a Reader’s Digest book, I think. Anyway, the gist of the theory is that any work of genre fiction is just a series of scenes and sequels. Scenes are action; sequels are reflection. Or to be more precise:
Scenes are “an active component of the story in which a character struggles against conflict to achieve a goal, often achieving a partial success that only seems to make matters worse. It is told moment-by-moment on a stimulus-and-response model with no summary. What occurs must have downstream effects that determine the course of the rest of the story.”
Sequels are “the story component that follows scenes in which the character who lost the most in the previous scene reacts emotionally, assesses his/her new options, makes a decision, and plots a new course of action, which leads into the next scene.”
So, your shower scenes may just be the necessary “sequels” to action scenes. It’s a natural way to write; most of us do it without thinking about it. But books that feel too fast-paced usually lack an adequate number of sequel components. Books that drag are usually all sequel, no scene — or at least, no real scenes with conflict and downstream effects.
Jamie, this is such a nice realization. My books are fast and I really have to slow them down with “sequels.” But I had never thought of it that way. Why they are too fast and why they are too slow.
Wow. I have totally learned something.
I love when that happens!
Thanks, you!!!
~D~