fiction Archives - Page 6 of 43

July 24, 2013July 23, 2013

Writing Memoir: the Side Effects of Telling the Truth

“There is a ripple effect each time a memoir is published, and while the memoirist cannot fully prepare for it, he or she should expect it.” ~ Anthony D’Aries in Writing Lessons: Memoir’s Truth and Consequences

Several years ago, I was pushing my daughter in the stroller while on a walk, and I came upon a story. Near my house, I passed a young girl sitting on her front steps. She was skinny, maybe thirteen. She looked bored. Then, I heard people I can only assume were her parents yelling at each other inside the house, their voices loud enough so that every word resounded as clear as the intonation behind it. I slowed my pace and gave a tentative wave. When the girl glanced up at me, I thought I saw the faint trace of a black eye.

At first, I kept on walking, doubting myself but wondering. Then, I turned around and asked if everything was okay. She looked at me like I was crazy. Like everything going on around her, behind her, and in spite of her, was just another day in Normal. Parents argue, they yell. This young girl waits it out.

Impressed by the image and by her indifference (and maybe by a little of my own guilt in walking away), I wrote “Red Velvet Sunday.”

Later, I had the opportunity to read that story on the radio, and I shared the link to the episode with family and friends. Even though the story was fiction, someone close to me said they hoped the story wasn’t born out of real life experiences. “Not a bit!” I said, completely surprised, and I wondered what they and others might think if I did write bits and pieces of truth.

When writing memoir, facts are set down easily enough; it’s everything in between—and the potential effects afterward—that presents the challenge. Andrew D’Aries warns the memoirist in his quote above, but a write can only prepare for so much.

I’m talking truth in memoir at Write It Sideways this week in a post that’s generating some great discussion. I hope you’ll stop by and leave your thoughts.

Writers love dialogue.

Read it here: Telling the Truth in Memoir: More Than Just Facts

*Photo credit: biberta on morguefile.com

June 5, 2013June 4, 2013

Published!

The road to publication requires persistence, and patience. This is true whether you’re on the editing side of the table or the side of writers writing. Then, submitting. Then, biting nails, waiting and hoping and anticipating.

Last week, COMPOSE, a new literary journal online, released its first issue. As Assistant Editor, I participated in the behind-the-scenes work that comes with putting a journal together–not an easy task. As Suzannah Windsor says in From the Editor, “the challenge [of creating a literary journal] is greater than just finding some writing and publishing it. The challenge—if a journal is to be successful—is to go beyond the ordinary, to create something that stands out for its content, design, community, and professionalism.” This first issue looks amazing, and I couldn’t be more proud to be part of COMPOSE.

Just as exciting, I lived through the writer’s side of journal publication by having one of my short stories chosen to appear in the inaugural issue of COMPOSE. I worked on this particular story for a long time, and Tamara Pratt, one of the Fiction Editors, gave me wonderful feedback that helped make my work stronger. Thank you to her and Suzannah for giving my story a home.

I hope you’ll take a look at the journal as a whole. And, if you’re partial to fiction, take a peek at my short story, The Saint of Lost Things.

Then, if you like the look of the journal (and I think you will), consider submitting your own work.

May 30, 2012May 30, 2012

You Talk Too Much: Balancing Dialogue and Narrative

I’ve just returned from a trip home to Texas. I took with me plenty of pens and paper, books and ideas; once I touched down and hooked up with family I hadn’t seen in years, though, everything but the loving fell to the wayside.

So this Wednesday, I give you a re-post of an old post on a topic that never gets dull: dialogue versus narrative.

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 rethink my use of dialogue.

Beware: dialogue abuse.

Nathan Bransford posted on the Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue, in which he pin points one area of concern:

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.”

But, careful with the exposition.

Sam McGarver, in his article, “10 Fiction Pitfalls,” (which appears in the May 2010 issue of The Writer) talks about too much weight on the other end of the writing scale: :

Entertainment today is visual—movies, television, the Internet, cell phones. To compete, fiction must also be visual, using scenes, action, description and dialogue to show a story, rather than narration to tell it. 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, but I don’t want to go on and on with narrative and put readers to sleep.

So, what to do?

After reading Bransford, Fitch, and McCarver, I found three different techniques for balancing dialogue and narrative:

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?

Photo credits: lovelornpoets on Flickr.com