Dialogue Envy

February 25, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Books on how to write dialogue often suggest we listen to people talk. Sounds like good advice, but have you ever truly listened? “We . . . um . . .  we, like . . . you know . . . we stammer and like we repeat ourselves and um . . . you know.”

Even when we speak coherently, we don’t converse. We lecture. We tell long, boring, convoluted stories. We interrupt others and talk over them. We use clichés. We tell jokes that take forever to get to the punch line. None of which helps us write dialogue. If characters in books talked the way we talk in real life, who would bother reading? We want our characters to sound like us, just not talk like us. We also want their conversations to be witty, to the point, and conflicted.

Many authors seem to think bickering is a way of showing that conflict, or maybe they think it is witty and to the point, but it isn’t. At least not for me. I find it distracting, especially if the two bickerers are supposed to be a romantic couple. The more they insult each other, the less it seems like foreplay and the more it seems like plain old-fashioned meanness.

Last night I watched But Not for Me, a romantic comedy written by Rob Lipton, starring Clark Gable, Lilli Palmer, and Lee J. Cobb. And I got dialogue envy. Every word those three spoke shimmered brightly. When the romantic couple got together at the end, even though they’d been in conflict during the entire movie, I could believe they were in love.

Watching the movie, I discovered a few things about Lipton’s writing. He did not write dialogue that rambled, going nowhere. He did not write dialogue that distracted from the story; it was the story. And he most assuredly did not write dull dialogue.

Now if only I could figure out what he did write, rather than what he did not!

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Books Are Not Movies

February 21, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Many writers see their novels as movies, picking a cast to portray their characters, visualizing scenes as they would play on the screen. But books are not movies. A movie set can be seen in an instant and does not detract from the action, while a long passage in a book describing that same scene postpones the action, making today’s readers impatient. (Action in a novel, as I am sure you know, is any forward motion that fosters change in the characters: dialogue, physical interactions, even a simple touch of the hand.)

Nor is a book a movie script. Some novelists are so enamored with envisioning their book as a movie that they omit descriptions altogether. They tell their story mostly by dialogue, which leaves readers untethered, “like water, willy-nilly flowing.”

If two characters are having an argument, for example, it is necessary for readers to know where it is taking place. An argument in a pub is different from an argument in a bedroom, but they don’t need a long description of the bar or the bedroom to get involved with the characters; a few significant details will anchor the scene in their minds. A detailed set is necessary for a movie’s verisimilitude, but those same details negate a novel’s illusion of being true. Do you stop in the middle of an argument to note the contents of the room? If you do, you lose not only your focus, but the argument as well.

Even a short descriptive passage can negate the illusion if the object or setting described has no significance to the story. A lamp may be placed on a side table in a movie set for no reason other than the set designer liked the way it looked, but if an author spends many words describing that same lamp, there has to be a reason. Perhaps it is a source of contention between characters. Or perhaps one character will bash another over the head with it.

So, if you visualize your novel as a movie, don’t describe everything you see. Describe only what is important, (what is important to the characters or to the story, not what is important to you as a writer) and then . . . ACTION!

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Humor Metamorphosing into Horror

February 20, 2008 — Pat Bertram

My work in progress, a tongue-in-cheek apocalyptic novel, is metamorphosing into a horror story. I study my words trying to figure out where I went wrong, but they seem to be behaving properly. Does this mean that I am losing control of my story? No. The problem is in the details.

Plausibility in a story depends on the accumulation of consistent, accurate details. Those details are even more important for a fantasy than they are for other types of books, such as police procedurals. An author of a police procedural can summarize or even skip some of the boring details. After all, any person who reads crime novels, follows detective shows on television, or watches documentaries about modern forensic techniques knows many details of a criminal investigation, and can fill in the blanks. For example, early police procedurals gave details about taking fingerprints from a suspect, but today most readers know how fingerprints are taken, probably even had one taken for a driver’s license, so few authors waste words on that particular detail.

On the other hand, only the author of a fantasy knows all the details of his or her world. For those details to seem real, the characters must act consistently with their history, experiences, and psychological profiles.

Although I might find it incongruous and therefore amusing to have a saber-tooth lion spring out of a dark alley in modern Denver, the character experiencing this is not amused. To him, it is unimaginable horror; therefore, to the reader who is experiencing the world through the eyes of the character, it is also horror. A character who finds an attacking saber-tooth lion to be funny is not a believable character, unless somehow I can make the reader believe that the character will react in such a way, which still proves that plausibility is in the details.

Since I am writing to my specifications and not to a publisher’s, it does not matter whether I am writing humor or horror. That the details are consistent and accurate within my story world does matter, and of that, I am in control.

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Blogging is Morning, Writing is Evening

February 19, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I was afraid that when I got involved with writing my new novel I would have to stop blogging, but here I am. I discovered that blogging and writing are two entirely different types of composition, using different parts of my brain, so one does not supersede the other.

Blogging is my morning writing, which I do on the computer. It is linear, logical, and entire of itself. The beginning and ending not only bracket the body; they reflect each other like sunrise and sunset or birth and burial. Because I keep it short, knowing how difficult it is for some people to read online, I can see the article all at once, which makes reblogging easy. (If good writing comes from rewriting, why shouldn’t good blogging come from reblogging?)

Writing is my evening composition. It is linear and logical in that every reaction I write is preceded by an action and every action is motivated, but the process of writing is anything but logical. A hand/mind connection comes into play at night when I sit in a cocoon of light, pen in hand, paper before me, that doesn’t seem to apply during the day or when I am at the computer. That is the time when magical things happen on the page, when subconscious ideas come to fruition. Sometimes the ideas come slowly and the words come hard, in which case I go to bed early. Other times my hand can’t form the words fast enough, and I lose the idea. Those nights I go to bed early, too. But sometimes, oh sometimes, the ideas come, the words flow, and the night goes on forever.

Of course, when morning comes, my linear mind takes over, and I chuck some of that immortal prose into the trash. But I do keep a few of the pages, rewrite others, and the story grows.

I write for myself, more so now that the possibility of never getting published is finally sinking in, but who do I blog for? Myself, too. This journal is a message from the blogging part of my brain to the writing part and if it pays attention, my writing should improve. At the very least, I am developing a database of writing hints for when I (or you) need help.

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Our Prose is Immortal Prose — Not

February 18, 2008 — Pat Bertram

Who decides if your dialogue is meaningless, you or your readers? You may believe that what you are writing is immortal prose, but if your readers don’t agree, then perhaps it’s time to rethink parts of your story. Getting rid of long descriptions is easy — go through the passage, pick out one or two telling details, and scrap the rest. Getting rid of inane dialogue is harder. You know that all the information you are giving your readers is important. The problem is, they don’t know that what they are reading is vital to the story. All they know is that they are bored.

Dialogue is not conversation; it is action and as such must propel the story forward. To keep your dialogue from hindering the action, from stopping the forward motion of your story, it must be in conflict or it must help define your characters, preferably both.

According to Sol Stein, author of Stein on Writing, you should examine every bit of dialogue. Ask yourself the following questions: What is the purpose of this exchange? Does it begin or heighten an existing conflict? Does it stimulate the readers’ curiosity? Does the exchange create tension? Does the dialogue build to a climax or a turn of events in the story or a change in the relationship of the speakers?

Once you have determined that the conversation is conflicted and does propel the story forward, you need to look at every line of the dialogue and ask yourself: Is it fresh, colorful? Is it the cleverest thing the character can say?

Writing is not life. In life, most of us cannot come up with that clever quip when we need it; it comes to mind (if at all) late at night when no one is around to be impressed. Your characters don’t have to suffer from that malady because they have you and your late night epiphanies on their side. You can change their words as often as necessary to get it right.

And get it right you must. Good dialogue makes a reader keep reading. Bad dialogue, no matter how crucial to the story, makes readers go in search of other amusements. Because, face it: to readers, our prose is not immortal, it is simply entertainment.

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Describing a Winter Scene

February 17, 2008 — Pat Bertram

One of the most common reasons people come to my blog is to find out how to describe a scene. A subcategory of that is how to describe a winter scene. I can tell you one thing: you do not learn how to describe a winter scene by Googling it. You go outside. Stand still. Observe.

When writing about a place, we have a temptation to describe it all at once, but it’s more effective to begin at a distance, then 100_0876bmove in for the smaller details. So there you are out in the snow and cold. What is the panoramic view? What specifically do you see in the distance? What sounds are coming to you from far away?

Bring your focus in a little closer. Pick out a few details from the middle distance. Now bring your focus in to your immediate area where all your senses come into play.

How do you feel? You are probably shivering because you thought you’d be outside for just a minute and didn’t put on a coat. Make a note of that and whatever else you feel. Touch the ice or snow or slush. Is there anything you can say about it besides its temperature? If not, forget it. Everyone knows what cold feels like.

What do you smell? Taste? Perhaps a low-pressure system is keeping the car exhaust from dissipating and it is so thick you can taste it. Or perhaps the smoke from wood burning stoves is choking you, and you can taste it in the back of your throat.

What do you hear? Cold engines idling? Birds calling? Children laughing? Ice crackling?

Finally, what do you see? Focus on the small details. Are dead leaves or blades of grass poking up through the snow? Are there mice or deer tracks? Is a perfect feather lying at your feet? Is a nest visible in the bare tree branches?

When you have absorbed as much sensory information as you can, you are ready to write the scene. Resist the urge to string together adjectives — too many can diminish the power of your description — and resist the urge to use everything you learned. It is better to pick one or two exceptional details that give an impression of the whole rather than attempting to describe the entire scene. Most readers today do not want to sit through long descriptions. They want to get a quick sense of the place and then move on to the action.

Better yet, couple your description with action; give it movement. Have snow crunching beneath running feet. Have a character dodging around a stalled car. Have the blood of a victim staining winter-dry leaves.

Most importantly, if you can’t think of a single original thing to say about the scene, don’t describe it at all. Why waste your time and your readers’ by telling them what they already know?

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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On Writing: Rocks, Rocks, and More Rocks

February 14, 2008 — Pat Bertram

There are no bad drivers on the road. All drivers consider themselves to be good drivers, because whatever skill they possess — fast driving, adhering to all traffic rules, weaving in and out of traffic — that is their measure of a good driver. Writing is the same. We use our own skills to determine what is or is not good writing, hence we are all good writers. But some skills supersede opinion: the basic elements of story telling, for example.

The granddaddy of all story elements is conflict. Without conflict you have a story statement, you have a description, you have meaningless dialogue. What you don’t have is a story.

Because of the contests I have been involved with, I have been privileged to read the first chapters of many books by new authors. I’m sorry to say that most of them couldn’t hold my interest. Perhaps reading a chapter or two is not a fair way to test a book, but it is the only way. As readers, we need a book to capture our interest at the beginning then give us a stake in the story and its outcome so that we continue reading. Otherwise, we put the book aside and forget to come back to it.

Most of the new writers offered rebuttals, trying to prove me wrong. To them, their first chapter was important: it set the scene, it introduced the characters, it gave vital information. Perhaps that is all true, but to me, as a reader, the chapter was meaningless. I didn’t know the characters, didn’t care about them, developed no interest in them because there was no conflict. Unless characters want or need something, have something they care about, we don’t care. And if the characters get what they want or need without working for it, we don’t care, either.

Even if your first chapter has no other purpose than to set up the story or to introduce characters, it still must have conflict. According to Donald Maass, agent and author of Writing the Breakout Novel, there should be some conflict on every page. Sometimes authors use arguments between characters to show that conflict, but unless the argument changes the character in some way, no matter how small, the argument comes across as verbiage. If the argument is important to the book, then make it important by tying it to the characters needs and wants or move it to a less crucial part of the book.

One author described a story as getting a character up a tree, throwing rocks at it, then getting it down.

So do yourself and us readers a favor. Get your character up in that tree in the first chapter and throw a rock at it. Then we’ll read further to find out what happens next. That’s all we want. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks.

Lack of good driving leads to road rage. Lack of good writing leads to reader apathy. Both conditions are dangerous.

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Learning to Write by Reading

February 13, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I learned to write by osmosis. I used to read more good books in a month than most people read in a lifetime, and the elements of storytelling seeped into my soul. I still have to work at writing, probably more so than writers who took classes or who are naturally talented, but I have an instinct of what works and what doesn’t. The problem comes when I try to put what is in my mind down on the page, which is why I later augmented the osmosis with reading books on how to write and edit.

A friend also learned to write by reading, but not by osmosis. She rips apart the books she adores, literally tears out the pages. Sometimes she types a passage from a book (like Cormac McCarthy’s landscape passages in All the Pretty Horses) then types over the passage with different settings, different entities within that setting, different verbs, different moods, but keeps the rhythm of the words. She learned well. Her stories have a lyricism that rivals the best of Ray Bradbury.

And no, I won’t tell you who she is. People give her flak for mutilating books. But, as she says, “A book that shows no evidence of ever having been touched is probably not very touchable to begin with.” I’m sure those authors whose books she rips apart to learn from would be thrilled to know how much she appreciates their work. I know I would be, but I doubt anyone will ever try to emulate my prose. It’s utilitarian at best (mostly because I edit out any metaphors and lyricism that end up on the page. Unlike my book-mutilating friend, I have no use for them.)

And what is so terrible about ripping a book apart to learn from it? Worse things happen to books. Like burning.

I helped out at a book sale once, and dozens of boxes of category romances were left over. The librarian asked if I had a woodburning stove. She said, “These books burn well, that I know.” I was shocked. Even crappy books I wouldn’t read if they were the only books left in the world are sacred to me. After the sale, I got to wondering what else could one do with books that have no resale value. Throw them out? At least if they are used for fuel, they would serve their purpose. Aren’t cheap romances all about getting people heated up?

(For the record, I have never, will never burn a book. I never even tortured one, though once I did throw a book against the wall because I hated the ending.)

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Another Boring Blog by a Make-Believe Author

February 12, 2008 — Pat Bertram

When writing my previous novels, I didn’t bother with the underpinnings. I had an idea of where the story began and where it ended, but other than that, I wrote the story as I thought of it. I didn’t pay attention to the timeline; the days flowed one into the other without regard for weekends, holidays, or phases of the moon. (If I needed a full moon, I simply wrote one in, even if it was astronomically or lunarly impossible.) Invariably, though, in the second half of the book, I would get confused as to where I was and how everything fit together, and I’d have to stop writing while I figured out the timeline. Light Bringer was the worst because I had several characters whose activities needed to be coordinated, and I couldn’t hold everything in my head or even on a written chart. I finally set up a bulletin board, wrote a brief description of each scene on a card, then arranged and rearranged them like a puzzle until I got it worked out.

To keep that from happening with my current work in progress, to be able to track the story from the first scene, last night I set up a calendar for the hypothetical year of my story — the year the world ends. Even though I will not name the year in the book (at least I don’t plan to) I decided it takes place in 2012. That gives me a year to write the book, a year to rewrite it, a year to sell it, a year for the publisher to get it ready (I can have my dreams!) and still have it take place in the near future.

Perhaps it isn’t necessary to use the calendar of an actual year, but so much of reading occurs in the subconscious. Readers register details that don’t impinge on their conscious minds; they hear echoes of duplicated words and phrases; they get an uncomfortable if they feel that events couldn’t have happened as portrayed. So, it’s best for us writers to stick with reality when possible, especially when writing fantasy. (And, in the end, aren’t all novels fantasy?)

This morning I Googled phases of the moon for 2012, wanting to make certain my moon won’t be full or new at inappropriate times. I found the chart I was looking for. I found something else, too, something I had forgotten. The Mayans believe that the world will be end in 2012. Life imitating Art? Art imitating Life? My muse (or my memory) playing tricks on me again?

If nothing else, it tells me I did the right thing by setting up the underpinnings for my story this early. If I hadn’t, I would never have made the connection, and it might add an interesting dimension to the story, consciously or unconsciously.

As to the title: I must be a make-believe author if I couldn’t couldn’t come up with a more interesting title than that. Hope I do a better job writing my book!

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Writing is Like Riding a Bike — When You Fall Off, It Hurts

February 10, 2008 — Pat Bertram

I started writing my new novel a couple of nights ago. After almost a year of tweaking my finished novels, entering contests, critiquing and being critiqued, I wasn’t certain I’d ever be able to get back into writing again. But, according to Suzanne Francis, author of Heart of Hythea: “Writing is like riding a bike. When you fall off it hurts . . . No. Wait! I meant — you never forget how to do it!”

She is correct on both accounts. I didn’t forget how to do it, and it hurts.

Writing is painful for me. I have a hard time getting the words to say what I mean; they always seem to come up short. That first night I spent four hours writing; the next morning I chucked it all in the trash. I know I’m not supposed to do it that way. All the books on writing say that it is important to get the book out of one’s head and onto paper or into the computer before doing any editing, but I need to know where I am coming from and where I am going. For me, a good or at least an adequate beginning is necessary. So last night I rewrote the beginning. Not great, but it will do for now.

And I remembered why I write, despite how painful it is. I love the planning, the figuring out, the tweaking. I love having a character take up residence in my head, having it become real to me. I love creating a new world, even if — especially if — it is simply a reflection of the world that exists outside my window. I love finding the perfect word. I love having it all come together into a cohesive whole.

So now I have a reason to write. I have the beginning of my new novel. And, although I have not yet written it, I have the ending. Now I just need to figure out how to get from here to there.

I can hardly wait to see how I manage that!

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