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Becky Levine, Voice and Dialogue

My last post was about balance, and all weekend long I fought to maintain it. Despite the swings back and forth between sane and not, I completed several writerly tasks without driving my family away.

I rewrote a few more chapters in my WIP, I punched out drafts for two posts, and I read more of Becky Levine’s book, The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide.

Becky Levine wrote her book with two goals in mind: to share tips and strategies for critiquing the work of other writers and to help the reader apply those techniques to his or her own writing.

I love Becky Levine’s down-to-earth writing style.

Unlike the evil antagonist in my mind, she doesn’t judge her readers when she discusses the elements of storytelling that a writer should know – but might not know – well enough.

Take, for instance, point of view. I know it, for the most part. But when I got to the chapter on point of view and read “close third” versus “distant third,” my personal antagonist pounced on my moment of insecurity.

“You should get this part, easy,” she hissed. “If you don’t you should go back to writing 101.” Then, she skipped off into darkness and left me with my head hanging.

Levine is much more gentle. She doesn’t assume the reader’s knowledge, one way or the other. She simply drops in a reminder about the differences between each point of view and moves on.

She goes on to explain that while point of view helps us determine who narrates the story, voice brings the narrator to life:

When I read a book where [voice and point of view] are strong, I come away certain that, if I met the story narrator on the street, I would recognized him or her. And it wouldn’t be the color of her hair and eyes that would look familiar, it would be her personality. If I stood and talked to her for a few minutes, I would be able to state the book where I’d “met” her before. When I experience this feeling, I know that the author has created a truly distinctive voice (p. 82).

Browse through a host of writer’s blogs, and you’ll find plenty of posts on voice and attempts to uncover the mystery behind creating that strong voice in writing. After reading through more of Levine’s book, I honed in on one way I can strengthen my narrator’s voice in my WIP: dialogue.

Dialogue moves the story along, breaks up long narratives, and aids in character development. Levine calls dialogue “the multitool of fiction.”

When you look closely at [it], you’ll find tools for character, plot, setting, voice, you name it (p. 91).

Voice, there it is. But, Levine doesn’t mean just words bubbling from a character’s mouth. Dialogue beats (as she calls them) reveal meaning behind those words, insights into a character’s personality, or the tone of a conversation.

Dialogue beats are the words and phrases surrounding a character’s spoken words (p. 95).

For example, here’s a piece of dialogue from one of my past Wednesday’s Word posts with, what I think, is a dialogue beat tacked on the end:

“Carry Millie for 50 yards as fast as you can. Whoever crosses the finish line in the least amount of time wins the grill!” Her mother clapped to get the crowd going.

What strikes me about the importance of dialogue beats is not so much how they enhance a narrator’s voice. Misuse of dialogue beats can skew the point of view or clutter the scene with too much information.

My WIP is written in close third person point of view (pow – take that, evil antagonist. Get thee back to thy dark corner). Dialogue and dialogue beats are crucial in creating that strong narrative voice for my story. Which means, as I finish rewriting this draft (and then return to the beginning again), I must keep an eagle eye on every aspect of the dialogue I write.

Looking back, today, through a few old posts of my own to find an example of dialogue and dialogue beat, I couldn’t keep my mind off of voice and whether or not it clearly showed through in each post. As painful as it is to read back through old pieces sometimes, I love seeing the work through a wiser eye. I gain that wisdom through reading the works of authors like Becky Levine.

On a side note, we writers woke up on the same plane of thought this morning, with dialogue on the mind. I saw a few other links to posts on dialogue come across Twitter.  Here’s one on “dialog tags” (Behler Blog’s term for dialogue beats).

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Flash Fiction – in a Flash!

You might not believe this.

When I woke up this morning Dot’s email with her Wednesday’s Word piece sat in my inbox.

At 7:02am.

I forgot to mention yesterday that Dot didn’t want me to send her any word from my magic word bag a day or two ahead of time. She wanted to attempt the Word of the Day challenge like I do – wait until the Wordsmith sends his word out into cyberland, then write like mad.

So, when I crawled out of bed this morning, opened my laptop, and saw her story, my mouth fell open.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say commitment and dedication, and a fervor for writing. Amazing!

And, I don’t just mean her quick turnaround. Wait until you read her story….

*****

From Wordsmith.org, Today’s Word:

bread and circuses

MEANING:
noun: Things intended to keep people happy and to divert their attention from the problems.

ETYMOLOGY:
Translation of Latin term panis et circenses, from panis (bread) + et (and), circenses (circuses). The term originated in the satires of Roman poet Juvenal (c. 60-140). Circus refers to the circus games, such as chariot races, held in the Roman times. The term has been loan translated into many other languages. In Spanish, for example, it is pan y toros (bread and bullfights).

USAGE:
“Madrid has set up a series of summits that look a lot like bread and circuses for a domestic audience at time of economic misery.”
John Vinocur; Still Waiting for a Brave New Europe; The New York Times; Jan 4, 2010.

——————————————-

Judy opened the suede covered octagonal box, lifting each of the origami flaps – ocean blue and ponderosa green and solar yellow – as if the touch of her delicate fingers would burn them. Leaving behind a scar so ugly that no one would ever bother look inside again. And look inside was the point. Just a glance, a peek, no lingering. But if the entry point was marred then no one would come.

Each pointed flap laid open on the royal purple satin tablecloth, splayed as a ripened sunflower at the end of August. She moved forward, resting her belly on the edge of the table and peered over the box’s edge. There was the hat, just as she left it.

She felt comfort in knowing there had not been others since her last visit.

Judy reached into the box and slid her hands under the brim, whose color was the same as the dimming table. The four sprouts of the hat, the same color as the exterior of the box, bounced and giggled as she lifted it upward and toward her head.

Should she put it on now? Or wait?

“How long?” Judy yelled into the other room.

“Not long.” Margaret replied. “The ticket sellers will be here soon. Followed by the ushers. Then the food handlers. Why?”

“My hat, is it ready?” Judy shouted back, her voice now breathy as the opening moment neared.

“Wait.” Then silence.

Judy lowered the hat back into the box but left the flaps open.

“What are you doing?” Judy asked as she entered the kitchen.

“Building hardtack boxes,” Margaret answered. “Practical and nutritious and they last a long time. You entertain and I feed. Okay?”

“Deal.” Judy continued walking through the kitchen then walked right out the door and down the steps to the lawn. Where. Her naked feet met the blades of grass – again – and they smiled. She continued walking until she reached the plastic covering they’d hung from the garage. The white length of Tyvek stretching from the roof’s overhang, across the pvc pipes duct-taped together to the opposite sides where they were tightly tethered by yellow truck rope. All very carefully done so as to not smash their attendees. Or each other.

For some reason that neither of the women understood, the county government gave them a grant to do their show. Judy the performer and Margaret the nurturer. Between them they kept the people happy and kept them out of trouble. The valley was hit hard with the downward spiraling economy and people started becoming just plain mean. Hoarding. Isolating. Not taking car of themselves.

One day, Judy was in the driveway with Billy. He had just started taking acrobat lessons from her a few weeks before, she remembers. They were stretching and doing handstands and back flips and this car pulled up across the street. They even turned off their engine. Judy was having Billy practice smiling when he was upside down which was, according to him, a nearly impossible task. The couple in the car started laughing after a few minutes, with giant smiles on their faces nearly to the point of tears.

Two weeks later Judy received the distinguished monetary grant award for performers whose work inspires others to “Just Be Happy.”

That was about two years ago now. And here they are again, except that they bought the house next door and it was currently under remodel. The goal was to finish the master suite and to make the unused child’s room into a guest area. Every visitor needs a little “me time.”

And now was Judy’s time. She skipped back into the house and into the room with the box with her hat. This time she lifted it onto her head. Then she checked herself in the mirror and ran through the kitchen and out the door. She would not have her guests upset – so she places the hostess with the mostess hat on her head and let the spokes bounce with each step back to the garage where she could help people forget their troubles, just for a day. Or an hour, even. Every moment counts. Every moment is important to the health and well-being of the individual which is important for the survival of the planet.

“You feed their bodies and I feed their soul,” Judy shouted toward the kitchen window, where Margaret was standing, shoulders up, hands pressed against the window’s ledge. And the faint beginnings of her smile.

“Y-up,” Margaret mouthed, since Judy wouldn’t be able to hear her, anyway. Best to save the vocal cords for the evening’s performance. Judy said she had a surprise for them all tonight. Margaret would wait, as she always waits. And be there with Judy’s hardtack when she was done. For now, she needed to get the first pan out of the oven, before it burned.

*****

Dot is a writer in the spaces between work and working out. Current projects are completion of a memoir and revision of a mystery novel, alongside writing short stories and poetry.

She blogs at The Writing Vein.

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Suspended in Time

Have you ever carried around a passage of writing by an amazing author and hoped that – maybe, through osmosis – one writer’s craft will meld into yours?

I can dream, can’t I?

I read a passage recently, in James Salter’s Light Years, that made me immune to the sounds of life at my house — kids running around, washer spinning, grandfather clock ticking.

Immersed in the life of a character so unlike me, I hung on each word as the images unfolded on the page.

Her father in distant Pennsylvania towns already had within him the anarchy of cells that announced itself by a steady cough and a pain in his back. Three packs a day for thirty years; he coughed as he admitted it. He needed something, he decided.

‘We’ll take some x-rays,’ the doctor had said. ‘Just to see.’

Neither of them was there when the negatives were thrown up before the wall of light, dealt into place as rippling sheets, and in the ghostly darkness the fatal mass could be seen, as astronomers see a comet.

…

The usual prognosis was eighteen months, but with the new machines, three years, sometimes four. They did not tell him this, of course. His translucent destiny was clear on the wall as subsequent series were displayed, six radiographs in a group, the two specialists working on different cases, side by side, calm as pilots, dictating what they saw, stacks of battered envelopes near their elbows. Their language was handsome, exact. They recited, they discussed, they gave a continued verdict long after Lionel Carnes, sixty-four years old, had begun his visits to the treatment room.

…

The Beta machine made a terrifying whine. The patient lay alone, abandoned, the room sealed, air-conditioned because of the heat. The dose was determined by a distant computer taking into consideration height, weight and so forth. The Beta doesn’t burn the skin like the lower-energy machines, they told him.

…

It hung there, dumb, enormous, shooting beams that crushed the honeycomb of tissue like eggshells. the patient lay beneath it, inert, arranged. With the scream of the invisible, it began its work. It was either this or the most extreme surgery, radical and hopeless, blood running down from the black stitches, the doomed man swerved up like a pot roast (pgs. 126-127).

Just words.

Black print on off-white paper.

Yet, the way James Salter wove them together had me frozen in time.

My husband asked me what was for dinner, so I had to look up from the page. But, the moments with Lionel Carnes, the doctors, and the machine stayed with me.

That’s what I strive for in my writing: storytelling that suspends the reader, and then leaves them with a lasting image long after the book is closed.

Amazing.

***

Salter, James. Light Years. New York: Random House, 1975.

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