Category: 2016

Dialogue - Part Three - The Boring Stuff (or how to punctuate and where to put things).

8/28/2016

One other thing I see a bunch when working with young or newish writers is issues with dialogue punctuation and formatting - so I thought I would give a quick overview of the how to's of dialogue.

PUNCTUATION
Periods
"He stole my hat," Laura said.
Notice how the period turns into a comma.

Question marks and exclamation marks
"He stole my hat?" Laura asked.
"He stole my hat!" Laura shrieked.
Notice how the question mark and the exclamation mark remain in the sentence and do not turn into commas.

Moving stuff around
Laura said, "He stole my hat."
Notice the double capitol - both at the beginning of the sentence and at the beginning of the spoken dialogue.

Action after period
"He stole my hat." Laura wiped a tear from her eye.
"He stole my hat." Laura smiled.
"He stole my hat." Laura raised an eyebrow.
Because all these things are actions, they are not a way of speaking and become their own sentences, which means you must end the dialogue sentence with a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark.

Action stays with the speaker who does the action
"He stole my hat." Laura smiled and pressed her lips to the mirror she held in her hand.
"Oh my!" Jacqueline exclaimed. "Sassy!"
Laura spun, grinning, arms extended, mirror flashing gaslight.
"What is your next move?" Jacqueline asked.
Laura let out a trilling giggle. "Oh, he's going to get it. You'll see."

That's about it. Pretty simple but often messed up. Good luck to all you writers. Keep up the good fight and have fun out there!

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Dialogue Part Two

8/16/2016

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Hi writing fans!
I've been reading a lot of student written stuff lately as well as comics (I'm so addicted to comics it's getting expensive) and I've been thinking a lot about dialogue tags. You know the part where you write She said. John screamed. Mary huffed like a kettle about to shriek.
Yeah, those.
They can get pretty out of hand with all the metaphor and similes that sometimes the tags can take away from the writing. But I get it. Writing He said over and over again gets boring. She asked and She yelled, aren't much variation either.
A lot of teachers tell their students to only use the tags Said, Asked, and Yelled. They do this to keep the bad metaphors away from their student's writing. But the kids want their characters to express themselves and those three options are very limiting. So instead of making arbitrary rules that even the pros don't follow, how about we learn how to use tags effectively?
First off - the really horrible line, "Get away from me," Mary huffed like a kettle about to shriek - doesn't tell us much about Mary. In my mind I'm picturing a kettle, which isn't really what the line is about. So instead of making this super creative, but not too effective tag about a kettle, let's focus on Mary. What does Mary look like while she's saying this? What is her facial position, head tilt, and body language? Is she stiff with fists clenched at her side or is she leaned back, relaxed, with eyes darting down to the person she's speaking to's crotch?
CONSIDER THESE:

"Get away from me," Mary huffed like a kettle about to shriek.
"Get away from me," Mary huffed, body stiff, hands white balls against her thighs, a scowl slitting her eyes.
"Get away from me." Mary huffed, letting her shoulders brush the wall, foot shifting in the dust, even as her eyes darted meaningfully down to his crotch.

Out of the three dialogues (which all say the same thing), only the second two actually give us something the reader's brain can work with - stage directions. Stage directions show what the character is saying outside of their words. It gives us the unspoken dialogue that a witty metaphor or simile may not.
In comics the stage directions are shown through images, the dialogue is in bubbles, and there isn't any tags. Think of your writing in this context. Use your tags to form images, to show the reader the unspoken dialogue, the attitude of the character, and to move the plot forward.
Help the reader see your characters and not a kettle. Thanks for reading!

NEXT TIME: How to punctuate dialogue.

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Dialogue - Part One

8/9/2016

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Dialogue is something I've always been told is my strength. I think that's because I started my writing life with scripts. My first big success was having my play produced when I was seventeen - so I've been focused on moving plot forward using dialogue for quite a while.
The thing that new writers often don't understand about dialogue is that it's not really how people talk. It's how we would like them to talk (especially in those romantic or heartfelt scenes). Real life dialogue is full of umms, and ahhhs. It's full of repetition and shorthand. Much of it doesn't even stay on track. The conversation meanders through many half conversations. People get interrupted and never return to the topic.
Fiction dialogue, be it in plays, movies, or prose, needs to do what all writing needs to do - push the plot forward or show us a new aspect of character. It has to be directed by the speaking character's goal and motive. Why is the character saying this? What do they expect to get out of this conversation? How is what the other character or characters saying impacting what is said? And even more importantly, what is being left unsaid?
Dialogue in fiction is duel - even if the two parties are friendly. Each person wants to achieve something and that want will create the conflict you need in your scene to push the plot forward. Real life conversations are only sometimes a duel. A good deal of the time neither party really wants anything other than to have a conversation. At most they might want to look good. The really juicy conversations are the ones that end with a phone call to someone else to vent about how the person you were just talking always seems to want something.Every dialogue scene in fiction should be that kind of conversation.
Dialogue without purpose slows pacing to and dilutes the plot. So write tight and make every word in dialogue count. Make every word a highly calculated jab, dodge, or weave and you will have dialogue that your readers will praise for being so "real".

Next time - Dialogue tags.

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Dialogue - Part Three - The Boring Stuff (or how to punctuate and where to put things).

Dialogue Part Two

Dialogue - Part One

Kim Firmston

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