The beginning of the new year brought me writer’s angst, flashes of hope here and there, and news of a very busy work schedule.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Sign Language Interpreter in real life. One of the challenges in my line of work is that I can’t interpret what I don’t know. That means, for the next several months, my brain will be steeped in outside reading materials to help carry me through my schedule. What that doesn’t mean is a full stop on writing.
I am, however, taking a brief hiatus from my Wednesday’s Word of the Day challenge.
I love that writing exercise (and maybe I’ll jump back into it sooner than I anticipate), but I also love my day job…for obvious reasons (that monthly paycheck and, oh yeah, health insurance). So, here’s where you come in. You keep this blog alive just by reading, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what types of posts will keep you coming back :
I can’t make you take the poll, but it is anonymous. And, even if you say “Thank god for the hiatus,” I’ll still love you.
I pride myself on being a quiet observer: in a church pew, during a staff meeting, behind a muffin and a steaming cup of coffee in a cafe. Most days, it takes me a long time to warm up to any conversation. But, stick me in front of my laptop (and smack-dab in the middle of rewriting a story) and suddenly I’m all talk.
At least, that’s what I’ve noticed lately with my work-in-progress. The early drafts of my novel were heavy in exposition and light in conversation. Now, I have a clearer vision of the plot, and I know my characters better. And, dialogue comes easy for me. The problem is that once the characters start talking, I let them go on and on. In rewriting another section last week, I noticed a whole page of chit chat. All that character banter started to tug at my writer’s gut, which suggested I should to rethink my use of dialogue.
Nathan Bransford posted on the Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue, in which he pin points one area of concern. He says, “A good conversation is an escalation…Characters in a novel never just talk. There’s always more to it.” In all writing, each character, scene, and piece of dialogue must move the story forward. I practice that in my short stories and flash fiction. But, in this novel rewrite, much of the dialogue I’ve written just fills up space. Though realistic, it reads flat and doesn’t necessarily propel the story.
Janet Fitch (author of White Oleander) has her own post, entitled “A Few Thoughts About Dialogue,” where she carries this idea of flat conversation even further. She says, “Dialogue is only for conflict…You can’t heap all your expository business on it, the meet and greet, and all that yack…If someone’s just buying a donut, nobody needs to say anything.” Then, she throws in a quick example of unnecessary talk: in response to a character asking, Want a cup of coffee? she writes, “No. I don’t. Ever.”
I’m guilty of that kind of dialogue: in the span of one chapter, my characters have discussed getting a cup of coffee or tea twice. That’s a lot of “coffee talk.”
Many writers think a story should be largely narrated, in the manner of classic literature. But here’s a good rule: fight the urge to narrate…A story should consist of one scene following another, connected by narration.
I don’t want to nix half of the conversations in my novel just because I want to avoid too much talking. So, how do I find a balance between dialogue and narrative? After reading Bransford, Fitch, and McCarver, I found three different techniques:
From McCarver’s article: Find a particularly long narrative section and see how it might be broken up into more of a scene with dialogue.
After reading Fitch’s post: Find a section in the story where the characters have a whole conversation, and then cross out the dialogue that is commonplace. Because, as Fitch says, “A line anybody could say is a line nobody should say.”
From Bransford’s post: If the dialogue does carry the story forward but still feels “thin,” look for places to add gestures, facial expressions, and/or any details from the scene that enhance that section. Bransford says, “gesture and action [are] not [used] to simply break up the dialogue for pacing purposes, but to actually make it meaningful….”
How do you balance your story with narrative and dialogue? Do you talk too much?
It’s Wednesday’s Word, and you know what that means: write something – an essay, poem, or flash fiction – based on Wordsmith.org’s word of the day and post it by midnight. Past pieces from this fun writing exercise can be found under Wednesday’s Word on the sidebar to the right.
A New Year generally brings a fresh start, a positive outlook, a host of promises to do better, be better, feel better. But, for me, just days after the festivities ended, I hit a wall.
from www.MeetSusanDavis.com
It wasn’t writer’s block as much as it was the feeling of writer’s plateau.
This thing isn’t really going anywhere, I thought. “This thing” being that one story still sitting in someone’s slushpile, that novel I’m trying to write, and bla bla bla. I bet you know the drill.
No writer should sit in that place too long. As writers, we often hear we should write for our readers. But some days, we have to write for ourselves. Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and time for my biweekly tête-à-tête with Wordsmith.org. If I didn’t commit to do this thing every other week (for my own darn good), I’d still be sitting in that cesspool of doubt, trusting a shiny quarter to decide my fate:
Heads I quit, tails I don’t quit. Three out of five. Okay, five out of seven. Fine, seven out of ten.
Never trust a quarter. Besides, I don’t really want to quit. I just want to move forward. And, the best way to do that is to write.
Today’s word:
primrose path. noun. A path of least resistance, especially one that ends in disaster.
As they say on Twitter, #amwriting now.
*****
Steady, Girl
Peter poured the coffee and handed a cup to his wife, Sharon. “Quitting would be easy,” he said, “but then what would you do?”
“I’d go back to knitting dishrags and Yoga every morning and reasonable bedtimes,” Sharon said with a huff.
“Okay. But, you’d be depressed within the month.” Peter kissed her forehead and picked up his briefcase for work.
“I’m already depressed,” she said.
“Nothing worthwhile is ever easy,” he told her, and he promised to check in on her at lunch. Then, he shut the door. Sharon shuffled back to where her laptop waited in sleep mode.
She drummed her fingers on the desk.
She jiggled her mouse. The screen lit up, but her muse didn’t.
She studied the pattern of the glaze on her coffee cup, the one she bought from that little pottery shop in Pueblo years ago.
“My new mojo!” She’d told the Potter, as she handed him twenty dollars.
“Big enough to hold three cups of coffee in one, and sturdy enough to work you through a dozen bestsellers,” he’d said when he’d given her the change.
She’d read more than a dozen bestsellers since then, but she hadn’t written one. She stared out the window next to her desk and watched a brown spider weave a whole web in the corner — one short length of silk at a time.
If only it were that easy, Sharon thought, to start at the beginning, jump to the end, and then fill in the middle. “Spiders never get writer’s block,” she mumbled, and she tapped on the window. The spider scurried to the side of the pane. It bobbed and then folded into a small hole in the wood.
Sharon sighed and wrapped her hand around her cup. As she tipped it to take a drink, she noticed a line across the rim. She held the cup away from her to get a better look.
Yes, she thought, a crack. A hairline fracture, really, but still!
“Ha!” She told the spider, who had ventured back out of the hole but had not yet crossed her web. “No wonder!”
She poured out the coffee and tossed the cup into the recycling. She rifled through the cabinet for a clean cup – a plain one without the distraction of glazing or a logo. She put on a fresh pot of coffee. Her mind whirled, her fingers tingled.
Something was definitely brewing. *
~
* I’m not sure what this story has to do with primrose path, so much, but there you are, anyway. And, I think I feel better.
know. That means, for the next several months, my brain will be steeped in outside reading materials to help carry me through my schedule. What that doesn’t mean is a full stop on writing.
