Wednesday WordPlay: Scary Stories

Image: Freedigitalphotos.net/luigi diamanti

 Happy Halloween!

Today's writing challenge is to get SPOOKY! Write a short story that includes at least one of the following elements:

a creepy old house with a very unusual tenant

 OR

 

a ghostly visitor from another era

 

OR

 

an inanimate object that suddenly takes on a life of its own

 

OR

 

a trick-or-treat outing gone very, very wrong

 

Bwa ha ha ha ha!

(Oh, that was my evil laugh. What? You couldn't tell?)

 

Top Five Tips for Writing Dialogue

"Dialogue is tricky business," the author said.


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"Why?" asked her blog reader. "What makes it so difficult?"

"So many things." The author scratched her head, wondering where to begin. "Here, let me give you some pointers on writing dialogue."

1. Listen to real people talking. Dialogue on the page is a lot different from dialogue you hear in real life, but listening closely will still help you. Notice the cadence (rhythm) of different people's speech. Notice how some people repeat the same words and phrases a lot. What does their word choice tell you about them?

2. Eliminate unneccessary pleasantries. When you run into your friends in real life, you probably say hi every time. You might not need to have your characters do the same. Your scenes will quickly become boring if every conversation begins the same way:

        "Hi."
        "Hi."


3. Don't overuse character names. "Why not, Kekla? Isn't it a good way to remind the reader who is speaking and who is being spoken to, Kekla?" Well, sure, it can be. But if your characters are constantly using each other's names in dialogue, it won't sound very real.


4. Use beats to break up long passages of dialogue. Beats include tags, like "he said" or "she asked," but they also include actions, thoughts and descriptions that writers insert to break up the dialogue. Tags and beats give the reader more information about the characters.

"Let's go."
"Okay. Where?"
"Same place as usual."
"Aweseome."

vs.

"Let's go," Shawn said. He grabbed his backpack.
Eric picked up his satchel. He was ready for an adventure. "Okay. Where?"
 "Same place as usual." Shawn slid his arm into one strap, and turned toward his friend.
Eric grinned. "Awesome."

Often, if you are using beats well, you don't even need a tag. (Notice, I only use "said" once in the example above.) The reader can usually follow your characters' back-and-forth for a few lines.


5. Stick with straightforward tags. Beginning writers often try to make their characters seem more interesting by jazzing up the bland "he said" tag to something like "he grumbled," or "he muttered," or "he cried." If you do it occasionally, this is okay. But make sure you really, really need it, and don't overdo it! Also, be careful not to use words that don't really mean speech, like "he laughed." It's okay for a character to laugh, choke, or gasp while speaking, but you would punctuate it differently:

"I can't believe you did that," he laughed. (NOT GOOD)
                            vs.
"I can't believe you did that." He laughed. (BETTER)
                            vs.
"I can't believe you did that," he said, laughing. (ALSO OKAY)

                            OR

"What?" he gasped. (NOT GOOD)
                            vs.
He gasped. "What?" (BETTER)

(Think about it: you can't actually speak while gasping. Really you can only do them one right after the other.)

Monday Musings: Who are your favorite authors?

I'm always intimidated by this question, because it seems there are way too many great authors and books to possibly name. I love lots of books, and lots of authors, and now that I know a lot of authors, too, they have become my friends. I don't like to pick and choose.

But, I get this question so very often, that I decided I need to have an answer. So here it is. I will tell you five books that I love, for five very different reasons:

1. The book I read in middle school that stands out most in my mind. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor. It was the first book I read that had black characters in it, and dealt with black history. There are scenes from this book that still come to my mind so vividly it's like they're happening in front of me. This book sparked my interest in writing historical fiction, and looking back on that experience as an adult was part of what made me want to write The Rock and the River.

2. The book I've re-read most often throughout my life. Okay this is cheating, because it's actually a combination of seven books: The Harry Potter series. Probably Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the single volume I've read the most times, but I can't be sure. I discovered the series when the fourth book was still new, and I read the first three in rapid succession, ran out and bought the fourth and then re-read them all again just for fun. Then I re-read them when each movie was coming out, and then I re-read them when each new book was coming out. But at least once I cheated and didn't go all the way back to the beginning, I just started with Prisoner of Azkaban (my favorite) because I didn't have time to do the whole series read. But just typing this has made me want to start from the beginning all over again!




3. A book I recently discovered and positively devoured. Please Ignore Vera Deitz by A.S. King. My favorite thing about this book is that it includes a talking pagoda. Which is awesome. I'm looking forward to reading much more of her writing.

Friday Forum: Scary Stuff

Image: Freedigitalphotos.net/luigi diamanti

In honor of Halloween, store windows around town are decked out with ghouls and goblins, cobwebs and witches.

 In the bookstore, you may find a special table displaying horror titles, creepy mystery fiction and other scary stuff.

The question that's on my mind this week is simply: Do you like to be scared?

What's your pleasure when you want to be petrified? Scary books? Scary movies? Haunted houses?

Teens Writing for Teens

Here's a site to check out: Teens Writing for Teens, a blog managed by two young writers, Rachel "Race" Mercado and Linda Ge.

The bloggers introduce themselves HERE, and their site posts interviews, reviews, reflections and other content about what it's like to be teens who write.

Check it out!

Wednesday WordPlay: Start with Setting

Where your story happens matters just as much as who it happens to. Even if a scene seems like it's all about the characters, and it could happen almost anywhere--at school, in a bedroom, on the sidelines at a football game--but the interaction is going to be different if it takes place in these locations.


What sounds do your characters hear? Why are they in that place? Do they want to be there? If not, where would they rather be? What do they see when they look around? How does the air smell? What is the temperature?

Today's challenge is to use a specific environment to create scenes. Choose characters you know, or make up some new ones, and follow them to at least three different places.

Here are some locations to choose from. Write a scene set:

                 in a child's bedroom

                 under the bleachers in the football stadium
                
                 on the shores of a small lake

                 deep in the woods

                 in a stranger's driveway

                 in an airplane

                 in a foxhole

                 on a cliffside

Top-Five W's (plus an H)

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Surely you've heard of the five W's: who, what, when, where, and why. Reporters make sure to include answers to all of these questions in a news article, so that readers will understand every aspect of what happened. Writers, too, need to be sure they have a handle on the basics in each story.

Ask yourself:

1. WHO? Who is the story happening to? What is your main character's name? If you are writing in first person, have you found a way to let the reader know who "I" really is? What do you know about this person? What does she like? What is he good at? Who are is friends? What does she want more than anything?

2. WHAT? What is going happen to this person? Will it change her life? Will it put his life at risk? What will he or she do next? The nuts and bolts of any story start to develop when you ask yourself what else could go wrong? What would your character do about it?

3. WHEN? Does your story take place in the past, present, or future? What specific year? Who is the president? What are the styles? Be sure to consider small questions, too, like what day of the week it is. What time of day? It will matter for what your characters are doing, what the light is like, if they're out past curfew, or up earlier than usual. Time details matter a great deal when you are describing the world your characters inhabit.

4. WHERE? Does your story take place in a small town? A large city? Outerspace? On an oceanliner? In each scene, are the characters indoors or outdoors? In a place that's familiar or unusual? Try to see the world through your characters' eyes--what do they see and smell and touch?

5. WHY. This is especially important. What is motivating your characters? What makes your hero want to save the world, or rescue the princess, or run into the burning house to retrieve an object? What are his or her defining traits, that make him or her act they way s/he does? What is holding her back? What makes him rush forward, even when he's afraid?

Oh, and about that H. HOW do you use these W's in your writing, you ask? Well, that part's up to you!