Wednesday WordPlay: He Said, She Said

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Try writing a scene that consists entirely of dialogue.

He said:
She said:
He said:
She said:
He said:
She said:
He said:
She said:
He said:

See if you can convey everything your reader needs to know with the dialogue alone.

Next, rewrite the scene, adding dialogue beats. You may find that your dialogue changes. Try conveying some of your characters' thoughts through their actions or their observations instead of their words. Do your characters need to say as much, now that the reader can see more of what's going on?

Top Five Tips for Revising Your Work

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When it comes time to revise your work, where do you begin? It's important to remember that almost nothing comes out perfectly the first time. It takes a lot of trial and error to find the words that work best to tell your story.

Here are some places to start with your revision:

1. Vary your sentence structure. Text is more interesting and more dynamic when it is unpredictable. It becomes quite boring to read a series of sentences that are very similar. Consider:

I walked into the store. The clerk smiled at me. He reached for his notepad. I said hello to him. He said hello back.

vs.

As I walked into the store, the clerk smiled at me. He reached for his notepad. When I said hello to him, he said hello back.

2. Circle your verbs. Make sure you have chosen the best action words in every sentence. Did your character speak, or did he declare? Did she climb the stairs, or dash up them? Did he lean against the wall or did he slouch? Small changes make a big difference in the way your scene reads. Vivid verbs help create a more vivid mental picture for your reader. Consider:

picked up vs. grabbed vs. snatched vs. plucked

ate vs. munched vs. chewed vs. gnawed

smiled vs. grinned vs. smirked



3. Watch your adjectives and adverbs. Do this, too, while you are focused on verbs. If your character "walked slowly," maybe he "plodded" instead. It is usually better to use a strong verb (dashed) than a weak verb plus an adverb (ran quickly). Consider:

whispered vs. said softly

sprinted vs. ran hurriedly

smacked vs. hit hard



4. Read out loud. Find a quiet room and read the piece aloud to yourself. If you're comfortable, read it out loud to someone. You will be surprised how different it seems from reading in your head. You will notice parts that are slow, or sentences that don't make sense. You can also catch moments when your word choices seem awkward, or untrue to your narrator's voice.


5. Try everything. Trial and error in revision is a very important process. If a possible change occurs to you, try it. Don't delete your old version, in case you change your mind, but do give the new sentence, paragraph or scene a chance. Who knows--even if it seems strange at first, you may end up loving it! If you don't, you can always go back to how it was before, and you'll feel more confident than ever in your creative choices.

Friday Forum: Writing Routines

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Writers are creatures of habit, and once we find the places and tools that inspire us most, we tend to stick to them.

Do you have a spot you like to write? Are you a coffeeshop junkie? Do you hit the library? Is it the quiet of your own bedroom that inspires you?

Some of us type like our fingers are on fire, while others of us love the feel of a trusty old pen or pencil in our hands. Do you use a computer or a notebook for your writing?*

(*Okay, now it ooccurs to me that laptop computers are sometimes called notebooks...but hoepfully you know what I mean!)

Tell us about your writing routines!

NaNoWriMo

It's November 1, which means today's the start of National Novel Writing Month, affectionately referred to as NaNoWriMo!

During the month of November every year, writers of all stripes from all over the world come together to do what we love: Write, write, write!


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NaNoWriMo participants set a goal of writing an entire 50,000-word novel (approximately 175 pages) from beginning to end in just one month's time. It's a huge challenge, but lots of people enjoy the community feeling of writing alongside friends.

When you join NaNoWriMo, you get to:

• Choose a username for your account
• Track your daily word count and upload your writing
• Log in and chat with other writers for encouragment
• Be part of an exciting movement of creative people who just want to write their hearts out

I've tried NaNoWriMo twice now, and I never made the 50,000 word goal. (I eventually finished my novels--just not in one month!) For me, it's still fun to try. Maybe for you, too.

Check it out!

Wednesday WordPlay: Scary Stories

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 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.