Aging, Changing and Dialog

NaNo: 3,974 / 50,000 words

This weekend's Ad of the Week sent me scrounging for my copy of  When Harry Met Sally.  Turns out I don't have one.  Bummer.  But, Netflix had it in their "Watch Now!" stream-on-demand selection, so I watched now.  Happiness.

I was a teenager when I first saw that movie.  Probably thirteen or fourteen.  I followed it.  Pretty much.  Mostly I was amused with the very 80s-ness of Meg Ryan's wardrobe.

Watching it again this weekend, I have a brand new appreciation for the writing.  What I think is really amazing about the writing is that Nora Ephron managed to capture the conversations you have when you're in college and the conversations you have a few years after you were in college.  That the dialog stayed true to the characters, and the characters didn't change drastically, they just grew up a little bit.

I don't think I'm properly expressing my awe.  Let me put it this way: I was watching the first 15 minutes and I was like this is such a stupid and narrow minded conversation that they're having and then I shook my head but it's exactly the kind of thing you discuss when you're 22 and you think you know everything there is to know.  And then I was hooked.

And it got me thinking about the difference between a character changing and a character aging.  Because I don't think the characters change as much as they age--aging being a kind of character change that's less drastic, slower ... glacial.  And how comparatively difficult aging is to write well without seeming inconsistent.

Opening with Dialog

Last night I sent off a draft of "Ten Days" to the MFA workshop group. Doing so had my stomach in knots. I keep wondering was this the right choice of story? And then I think of course it was, you fool, it was the only one you could finish in time! Still I hesitated. Did another read through. Found stupid, careless mistakes (the repeated line from merging two paragraphs together that I forgot to edit out). Reread the ending again. Took out a line. Added in two more. Removed one of the new ones, brought it back. Toyed with the strange verb tense of those new lines. Does that work? Made it one paragraph. Broke it back into two. Broke off the last line trying to see if the if its place really was with the last paragraph or if it could stand by itself.

About the time I "reattached" the last sentence for the third time I figured I was beyond the point where tinkering was actually going to help the story and just hit send.

Nothin' I can do 'bout it now.

What a great relief. For the moment. I'm sure I'll freak out about it in a week's time when I'm actually being workshopped.

But I am happy to say that the story did not open with dialog.

On that note, I'd like to revived the previous blog category: Notes on Craft

Recently, Nathan Bransford did a couple of posts over on his blog about opening with dialog. First he did a poll of readers "How do we feel about novels that begin with dialogue?" The results pulled in at about 77% "depends" -- possibly because the other options were "love" and "loathe." Then he put in his two cents. Basically that requested partials that started with dialog were the easiest to quickly give a thumbs up/down to. But he didn't address the reason why that was actually so easy to do -- he only attributed it to the fact that a bad writer cannot hide behind opening dialog because the dialog will fall flat as it's the hardest thing to write.

Why really is it so easy to pass on novels that start with dialog? Because it disorients the reader.

When a reader starts reading a story that reader has no idea what he is getting into. It's like walking into a dark room where tiny spotlights are slowly coming on all around him. The spotlights come on at the same pace in most stories (at the speed the reader reads) but what they illuminate is always different. The writer that can quickly shine light on things that tell the reader where the hell he is will have a more comfortable reader, and comfortable readers want to stay put and explore more. Uncomfortable readers want to get the hell out of the room.

Dialog rarely explains place, setting, time of day, time of year, indoors, outdoors, cafe, bedroom, man, woman, teenager, cowboy, republican senator ... yes some of those things can be hinted at in dialog but hints aren't spotlights, they're more like lesser shadows.

Worse than those hints is the fact that a story that opens with dialog gives the reader nothing concrete until it gets to the "tag" the he said she said at the end of the line. Before that point we don't know who's speaking. It's a disembodied voice sounding from the heavens.

Which is why we can spot "bad" opening dialog so quickly. Because almost all of it is bad.

The writing has to be friggin brilliant to do it and do it well, and the content has to trigger such a response in the reader that the reader is okay with the disorienting voice from the heavens. To established that kind of trust that quickly -- to achieve a "good" dialog opening -- is statistically ... statistically it's not worth trying. And in the meantime it's mean to toy with your reader that way.

250 word Dialog Challenge

So Nathan Bransford is offering this 250 word dialog contest over on his blog. He's even gone so far as to give it a name, The Preposterously Magnificent Dialogue Challenge, and an acronym, TPMDC.

I've entered, along with 300 of my closest friends, and this isn't even the halfway mark of the 48 hours during which you can enter. That man has set himself up for a hellsalotta reading.

All these bloggers are coming out of the woodwork for the shot at a critique from a real live agent. Which is better than a critique from a dead agent as they tend to mince words and ruin egos.

It would be a real kick in the pants to win/place. But I know damn well I have nothing at a point where a critique would help it. Then again, a deadline is a powerful thing. And if the deadline is "finish and edit X letter or X chapters before you lose your privilege" then I might just find the energy to work through the night. Which shouldn't surprise anyone: it's how we all survived college, ya?

Up Next: Lit Journal Q&A

Written Accents and Stuttering

Notes on Craft

In follow up to last week's dialog tags post I have a question I was asked about how to write out accents and stuttering in works of fiction.

Generally, I'd say less is more and that instead of spelling it out like it sounds you can always tag it as he stuttered, Dick slurred, Jane hiccuped. In a conversation on the topic I suggested this same point, which I was rewarded with the immediate fluttering of another party admonishing us to watch the number of tags you use!

*Sigh*

See the dialog tag post for the reason why this made me want to bang my head against a wall or -- more satisfyingly -- bang someone else's head against the all. Tags aren't the enemy; the enemy is a writer that can't use tags well.

Let's start first with accents:

Pick your battles. Writing out everything phonetically can be overwhelming, both to the reader and the writer. Or you could end up with Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Are Watching God where even the narration is phonetically spelled out form of dialect. But the less ambitious of us -- and especially those of us who are not native speakers of a dialect -- should probably pick smarter battles.

I've heard introductions of characters say things with tags (yes tags!) like he rumbled with a soft brogue. I've also seen a sentence following the dialog where the narrator comments on the hint of a Slavic accent or the character's slow drawl or perhaps that his clipped accent made him difficult to understand -- all of these done without actually attacking or modifying the spelling of any of the words in between the quotation marks.

If there are certain phrases a character would use be sure to throw them in: the Irish are fond of saying that's grand, for example; ken instead of know is associated with Scottish speech; and a Frenchman is certain to catch himself yelling merde! long before his brain even considers that the word in English is shit! Although in defense of Canadians, I'd like to suggest not attempting to write a Canadian accent unless you've spent enough time in Canada to know how it really sounds. Most people who think they know end up writing dialog that reads like a cartoon character. And on that note, the British, Canadians, Michiganders, and the fine people of Minnesota (along with others, I'm sure) all use the word eh? as a question form akin to the French n'est ce pas?

So now that we've chosen our battles with accents. What about stutters?

Someone sent me this example:

“No-o-o it won’t-t-t be. Sh-sh-she has gon-n-ne too fa-a-ar-r. Too far, Dan-n. Too far-r.”

Woah. First off I'd pare down the length due to repetition. Then get rid of any stuttering that doesn't occur on the first sound of the word just because it's distracting to read even if this is how someone actually stutters. I can't say it enough, that it does not matter if this is true to life, because if a reader thinks it's over the top then they won't believe it as fiction or as real life.

That said, if you have a stuttering character, and they stutter all the way through your story then you might just want to give them one or maybe two sounds they can't produce. We'll get the picture. We'll even think it's worse than it might be.

If it's a stutter out of fear or shock, then those little dialog tags are here to ease things over without using too many of those little dashes. She gasped out, or, my fave, she tripped over her words.

Revised example:

"Sh-she's gone too--" Jane hiccuped "--far. Too far."

We still get the idea without being beaten over the head.

But you know what else is a wonderful tool for all of this? Internal dialog.

Wait, I hear groaning, I hear someone nagging me about that "show, don't tell" maxim. To that I say: internal dialog is showing! ... if done right.

A narrator thinking another character's accent is sexy would be telling, unless it was used as a starting place for showing the turmoil her realization of her attraction brings with it. Accordingly, the character who stutters while thinking that she hates it when she cries so hard she stutters is a little too obvious. But if she hates that she stutters because it makes her look weak, and she hates appearing weak because of such and such, well then you've got some inner conflict going. And inner conflic is sexy.

Up Next: New Fiction Friday

Dialog Tags

Notes on Craft

I've been blogging seriously for six months now and I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride and I'm discovering roughly how much I can do and perhaps what I shouldn't bother doing. All this is to say that I'm hoping to make Notes on Craft a regular (weekly) feature as a means of discussing writing and working with questions I'm getting from different sources.

Today, it's dialog tags in narrative.

Example:

"Good morning," said Jane.
"Where's Spot?" asked Dick.

In these cases said Jane and asked Dick are dialog tags.

Talk to any armature writer who is starting to take themselves seriously and they'll tell you two things about dialog tags: that their eighth grade English teacher made them use a million different synonyms for "said," and that she was an evil, evil woman.

Lay off Mrs. Sobota, okay?

She wasn't evil. She spent 35 years teaching 13 year-olds, that alone should qualify her for sainthood. Do you remember yourself at 13? Even the "good kids" were little shits. And she wasn't stupid either. She was expanding your vocabulary, something that -- as a writer -- you should be overwhelmingly thankful for even if you don't write phrases like he exclaimed, -gasped, -sighed, -whispered, -grumbled, -bellowed, -bugled, -commanded, -pleaded, -pouted, or -pried with frequency.

So now that we've forcibly removed the English teacher from you shitlist, let's address the real issue: the use of the dialog tag.

Sometime in your first writing workshop you'll have a discussion about tags. Namely, someone will tell you that you don't have to tag each line of dialog with she said, or worse, each line Jane said. (We just get sick of hearing proper names again and again.) And you'll discuss how these tags should be used like spice not sauce with the caveat that a speaker needs to be IDed if the reader can't figure out for himself who is doing the speaking by the time the line of dialog finishes.

If you read Hemingway short stories there's almost no tags. To the point where I get lost. Do you want to pare down this far? That's your choice, but I'd rather there be less Hemingway-wannabes in the world not more.

A quick witted writer walks out of the workshop with some tricks for formatting (new speaker = new paragraph) and for throwing in action instead of tags (follow up dialog with a separate sentence about the speaker doing something, particularly if this is more than a two person conversation). But we still have a beginning writer who thinks tags are evil, wonders if anyone understands which character is speaking, and (still) hates his English teacher.

I'm here to say it's lies! All lies!

It's just a tool. Don't revere it as necessary -- it's not like putting two spaces at the end of sentence which (yes!) is still necessary -- but do not fear it either. It's a technical tool which needs to be used with finesse so that it fades to the background.

Fades to background not disappears completely.

In Margaret Atwood's piece Alias Grace she tags every line with either he said or she said. Every line! Each one of them! And she didn't use quotation marks or other standard quotation punctuation either! But the whole conversation was entirely readable.

Why?

She let us know who was speaking with that little he said tool and the fact that he never -yelled or -bellowed or -bugled let us completely overlook the fact that we were being told every fifteen words who was speaking. It was there so much, within a well developed pattern and structure that it no longer mattered. The eye skipped over it and went straight for the content surrounding it.

So, yes, be judicious with -stating, -sighing, -singing or -stuttering, but know that if someone is nitpicking your dialog tags then what you might want to look at is the quality of the dialog and the narrative. Why isn't there enough interesting content there to help those tags fade to the background?