Dialogue - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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15 Writing Virtues

Many people believe you aren’t just stuck with the way you are now, that you can better yourself by persistent act of will. I’m one of them, but let me just focus on self-help as it applies to the writing of fiction.

Benjamin Franklin was an early example of someone who developed a program of self-improvement. His method was to list thirteen virtues along with a brief description, then he would set about to focus on one virtue per week. Franklin actually kept a log of this, giving himself a black mark on days he fell short. Presumably, by focusing on one virtue at a time, it did not mean he was abandoning the others during that week.

Examples of his virtues include:

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s list of virtues, I’ll offer some virtues of writing fiction. I’ve grouped them into ‘process’ virtues dealing with how you write, and ‘product’ virtues dealing with aspects of the manuscript itself.

The Poseidon’s Scribe 15 Virtues of Fiction Writing

Process Virtues

1. Productivity. Fill hours with writing, not researching or time-wasting activity.

2. Focus. Turn off your inner editor during the first draft.

3. Humility. Seek other trusted people to critique your work; be receptive.

4. Excellence. Only submit work you’re proud of.

5. Doggedness. Be persistent in submitting to markets; be unshaken by rejections.

Product Virtues.

6. Relevance. Ensure your work passes the ‘So What?’ test.

7. Appeal. Hook readers from the first paragraph.

8. Engagement. Put your characters in conflict with something or someone; make the story about conflict resolution.

9. Empathy. Create vivid, engaging characters.

10. Action. Weave logical, interesting plots with appropriate causes and effects.

11. Placement. Provide clear but unobtrusive descriptions of the story setting, without overshadowing character or plot.

12. Meaning. Ensure your story’s theme explores eternal human truths.

13. Style. Seek your own voice, then follow it.

14. Communication. Ensure your characters’ dialogue is appropriate and advances the plot. (Mentioned here, here, and here.)

15. Skill. Salt your tales with symbolism and appropriate metaphors.

Your list would likely be different. One way to go about it is to examine critiques of your fiction you receive from members of your critique group, from editors, etc. Are there repeated criticisms? Turn them around and express them as a positive affirmation or goal, not as a negative to avoid. Those goals represent things to work on, and would be on your own list of virtues.

George Carlin fans would likely point out to me that there’s no such thing as self-help. People who get their list of virtues from their critique group, or from this blog post, aren’t exactly engaged in self-help, since they got help from others. Moreover, if beginning writers truly helped themselves get better, then they didn’t need help. Witty gags aside, it can be a comfort to a struggling writer that there exist methods for improvement, but all I offer is a framework for starting; the writer must shoulder the burden of actually doing the work to improve her writing.

I’d love to hear if you’ve found my list useful, or if you’ve developed your own list, or even if you’ve embarked on a completely different method of improving your writing. Let me know in your comments to this blog entry. For now, back to improving his writing goes—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 12, 2013Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Giving and Receiving…Critiques

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving, so I thought I’d discuss critiques of fiction manuscripts. Last time I did so, I said I’d let you know how to give and receive critiques. My critique group meeting 2 experience is based solely on twenty years of being in small, amateur, face-to-face critique groups; not writing workshops, classes, or online critique groups; so the following advice is tuned to that sort of critique.

First of all, to give the critique, keep the following points in mind:

Read the submitted manuscript straight through once, and just note where you were “thrown out of the story” for some reason. Jot down why and come back to those points later.

Re-read the manuscript again. You could mark some of the grammar or spelling problems, but don’t concentrate on those. The author wants you to find the bigger stuff.

Where there are stand-out positives (“Eyeball kicks” in TCL parlance) note those and praise the author. The word critique should not have solely negative connotations. A positive comment from you could keep the author from later deleting a really good description, metaphor, or turn of phrase.

Be clear and specific in the comments you write; avoid ambiguity.

Look for the following story elements and comment if they’re not present or they’re weak:

1. Strong opening or hook

2. Compelling, multi-dimensional, non-stereotypical protagonist with human flaws

3. A problem or conflict for the protagonist to resolve

4. Worthy secondary characters, different from the protagonist, who do not steal the show

5. Vivid settings, not overly described

6. Consistent and appropriate point of view

7. Appropriate dialogue that moves the plot and breaks up narration

8. Narration that shows and doesn’t tell.

9. A plot that builds in a logical way, events stemming from actions that stem from understandable motivations

10. A story structure complete with Aristotle’s Prostasis, Epitasis, and Catastrophe (beginning, middle, and end)

11. Appeals to all five senses

12. Active sentence structure, using passive only when appropriate

13. Appropriate symbolism, metaphors, similes

14. A building of tension as the protagonist’s situation worsens, followed by brief relaxing of tension before building again

15. An appropriate resolution of the conflict, without deus ex machina, resulting from the striving of the protagonist, and indicative of a change in the protagonist

If your group shares comments verbally, do so in a helpful, humble way.

You think all that sounds pretty difficult? Ha! It’s much harder to receive a critique. When doing so, here are the considerations:

Submit your work early enough to allow sufficient time for thorough critiques. Be considerate of your group members’ time.

While being critiqued, sit there and take it. No comments. No defensiveness. Just listen to the honest comments of a person who not only represents many potential readers, but who wants you to get published.

So, when it comes to critiques, is it better to give than to receive? In contrast to most gifts, it’s harder to receive them, but it’s still a toss-up which is better overall. But perhaps both are just a bit easier for you to deal with now, thanks to this post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 30, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Sorry, New Rule. You Can’t Do That!

In the original Star Trek TV series, there’s an episode where Captain Kirk invents a card game called Fizzbin in which he makes up the rules as he goes along. The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes featured a game called Calvinball which may never be played by the same rules twice.

If you’re a writer of fiction, you might consider yourself to be playing such a game, too. According to W. Somerset Maugham, “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” With apologies to the famous novelist, I’d say the game has too many rules to memorize and they change with time, according to the tastes of readers. Only by playing the game well can you can make money selling books.

You might try to emulate great writers of the past and imitate their writing styles, in an effort to achieve success. Bad idea. The rules were different in their time. Let’s cover some of those former rules.

1. Take all the time you need to create a vivid description, to ‘paint’ with words. Writers of the 19th Century and earlier used extensive portrayals to convey the appearance of a scene or character, multi-paragraph descriptions abounding in adjectives. That worked well in an era without movies or TV, but readers won’t wade through such long-winded descriptions today.

2. Adverbs exist for a reason; use them. Authors once used adverbs with abandon. Adverbs modify adjectives or verbs and often end in ‘ly’ like ‘crazily.’ These days it’s considered lazy to use too many adverbs, a sign you didn’t take time to select a powerful enough verb.

3. Demonstrate your skill as an author in your narrative paragraphs; dialogue only interferes with that. At one time, fiction was mostly narration, with occasional dialogue. We’re now in an age of character-driven stories, and readers want characters to talk more. No long, boring narrative paragraphs, and less narration overall.

4. Incorporate a rather dull character who needs everything explained to him (even things he already knows); that’s a clever way to explain things to the reader. There was an era when authors could use this technique even if it strained the conversation a bit. These days, that’s no longer tolerated and there’s even a term for it–As You Know, Bob or AYKB. AYKB’s are tempting, an easy trap to fall into even if you make every effort to avoid them.

5. Bring the narrator in as an entity the reader can trust, as one who helps foreshadow future events. In a bygone past, writers could have the narrator speak directly to the reader. And now, Gentle Reader, let us discover what Annabel must be thinking about this latest development. That voice could be used to foreshadow future events in an ominous tone. Little did Frank know, but his secure life would soon be altered forever. Understand, it’s still okay to use foreshadowing, but do it with subtlety, and not with the narrator speaking to the reader. Today that’s referred to as narrative intrusion.

6. Find clever new ways to express your ideas. As centuries of writers did this, many of the word combinations they used were so good the first time, they got used again, and re-used many times over. And became clichés. Now you don’t get to use those clichés, unless you add some twist on them. Go think of your own clever word combo that might become a future cliché. This rule didn’t change, but sorry, you can’t use the same tired clichés.

7. Ease into your story by introducing the reader to the setting, time period, and major characters before any action occurs. Readers in those times had nothing to compete with books for entertainment, and had the time to curl up near the fire and read a cozy story by its light. Times are different. You must grab your reader by the throat with a first sentence or paragraph that demands attention. It’s called a hook, and stories without a good one stay un-bought.

So, are you up for a game like Fizzbin or Calvinball? May the best writer win! Unfortunately, the game’s rules aren’t known by you or—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 25, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Is Fiction Dialogue Different from Plain Old Yakking?

Dialogue through verbal speech is as important to your fictional characters as it is to us flesh-and-blood folks, though for somewhat different reasons. For both fictional and real people, speaking is the most common form of communication, and communication is, of course, not only vital but is something we humans do a lot.

However, real people engage in spoken dialogue for only a few reasons, and among them are:

to inform
to persuade
to establish a relationship
to argue
to direct or command

When our fictional characters talk, it is for these reasons, too, but also several more. This is due to the difference in their situation. For example, we often speak ‘off the cuff’ without much preparation or forethought; characters never do that, though they seem to. Characters only exist due to the efforts of an entity called a ‘writer,’ of whom they are unaware. They exist solely for the benefit and enjoyment of another entity called a ‘reader,’ of whom they are also unaware. So dialogue between characters also serves these purposes:

to set the scene; that is, help the reader ‘see’ the scene
to establish a character’s personality
to advance the plot by introducing or heightening the conflict
to create suspense or add tension
to remind the reader of previous events or characters
to foreshadow future events
to provide easy-to-read ‘white space’ in between narration paragraphs

Most of the time, fictional dialogue is accomplishing many of these functions at once. That might seem a daunting task for the beginning writer, and you may be wondering how you’ll ever write dialogue that does so much. As an author not too far removed from beginner status, all I can say is, I’m told the task gets easier with practice, like any good habit.

Now that we’ve covered the differences in purpose, let’s cover the differences in form between real and fictional dialogue.

In the first place, fictional dialogue is less dull. As much as we try not to be dull in real life, much of our conversation is, frankly, boring. Fiction can’t afford to be dull, so leave out all the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ of real speech. Cast out all the little pleasantries like ‘how are you doing?’ ‘fine,’ etc. Ever notice fictional characters rarely say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye?’ Now you know why.
Fictional characters shouldn’t have as strong an accent as real people, at least as it’s depicted in written dialogue. Whether your character is from the deep South, New England, or speaks English with a strong foreign accent, don’t attempt to replicate every word by spelling it as your character would pronounce it. Just do that with a couple of words per sentence at most. Your readers’ imaginations will do the rest, and you don’t want to make it difficult for them to decipher your prose.

And that’s it. In other words, fictional dialogue isn’t too different from everyday speaking, at least on the surface. If it were significantly different, readers wouldn’t find it believable. It’s only beneath the surface where fictional dialogue serves purposes beyond what’s going on in real conversation. Here are three links to great articles giving helpful guidance about fictional dialogue: here, here, and here.

“Hope you enjoyed my blog entry on how dialogue is different from plain old yakking. Feel free to leave a comment whether you agree or disagree,” said—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 8, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Speaking of Dialogue…

Yes, I know I’ve written about aspects of dialogue before, but it’s time I tackled the subject in general.

First, why do fictional works include dialogue at all?

The most important reason is because people talk. A lot. If you’re writing a story about more than one person, chances are they’ll have something to say to each other.
Also, dialogue is a great way to show the reader things about your characters. More on that below.
Without any dialogue, your story would be uninterrupted narration. Dialogue helps to break that up.

There are several points to bear in mind as you write dialogue:

Each conversation should be significant. It should support and advance the plot.
Use dialogue to illustrate aspects of your characters. Show your readers your character’s wants, backgrounds, attitudes, values, emotions, and thought processes. Since dialogue requires two or more people, you’ll also show their relationships with each other.
Gender can factor into dialogue. There is a tendency for women to speak horizontally – to use conversation to establish the degree of emotional closeness and, once established, go from there. The tendency for men is to speak vertically – to discover through conversation where each stands in a hierarchy, and, once established, go from there. These are just common tendencies, not firm rules.
If you write a character’s dialect (the way they deviate from Standard English), be careful not to overdo it. A word or two in each sentence is sufficient. Avoid dialect that readers could construe as an insulting stereotype. If you’re inventing a new dialect for a non-existent culture or world, do it with care so as not to confuse your readers.
Speaking of not confusing readers, that’s essential for dialogue. At a minimum, readers need to know who’s speaking. Ensure you use separate paragraphs for each character. Give each character her own “voice” or “tone” identifiable through her word choice to help the reader distinguish one from another. Use “tags” like ‘Charles said,’ or, better, ‘Charles said as he holstered his blaster.’
Dialogue should convey emotion. People are emotional and fictional people even more so. Avoid using dialogue just to convey information. Changes in emotion from mild to strong during a conversation can be quite effective.
For more authentic dialogue, listen to real people talking. In your writing you shouldn’t write exactly the way you hear it, though. Do include the cadences and the shortcuts based on assumptions about what the other person already knows. Don’t include the “um’s” or the tangential trivia.
Don’t overdo it by making your story mostly dialogue. That’s just talking heads. Readers want thought, and especially action, too.

Please leave a comment and let me know if this helps you write better dialogue. Also comment if you think I left out an important aspect of dialogue; I’m certain I did. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this example of dialogue:

“Who’s that handsome and ingenious guy with the excellent blog advice?”

“He calls himself–

Poseidon’s Scribe.”

May 27, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

What He Said About ‘Said’

“Today’s blog post is about the word ‘said,’” said Poseidon’s Scribe.

“What is there to say about ‘said?’” asked Blog Reader, who hoped to write fiction someday.

“First, ‘said’ is the most common type of ‘dialogue tag’ used in fiction to indicate who’s speaking,” said the Scribe. “However, many budding authors worry about overusing that word, so they substitute other words.”

“I don’t believe that,” asserted the Reader.

“It’s true, but the fact is, ‘said’ is pretty much invisible. You can’t overuse it,” said the Scribe. “People pass right over it as they read.”

“Well, I declare,” declared the Reader.

“Still, there is something even worse than that,” said the Scribe.

“What’s that?” the Reader asked, questioningly.

“Modifying ‘said’ with an adverb.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” the Reader said unthinkingly.

“Use of adverbs in that way is termed a ‘Tom Swifty,’ from the Tom Swift series of books about a young inventor. The authors of those books occasionally sought to modify ‘said’ with adverbs. Not only are they examples of bad writing, but Tom Swifties have given rise to an entire brand of humor. There are examples here and here and here.”

“Okay, please stop listing links,” the Blog Reader said haltingly.

“Look, there are at least four things to remember about writing dialogue,” said the Scribe, “and the first is to be very clear about who’s talking. Don’t leave your readers wondering about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you go on for several lines of dialogue without tags–“

“Like we’re doing now, you mean?”

“–the reader can lose track of who’s speaking.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do. Especially when there’s more than two characters or when they have similar styles of speech.”

“Are there any times you would use several lines of untagged dialogue?”

“Oh, yes. That technique can heighten the drama of a scene, build it up to a climax. As each line of dialogue becomes shorter and shorter, your readers will naturally sense the tension building.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“Really certain?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Sure?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, I think I understand that,” said the Blog Reader. “You said there are four key points about dialogue. What’s the next one?”

“Keep it interesting,” said Poseidon’s Scribe. “Humans are social animals and love to talk. Your readers want to hear your characters talking, and they have a preference for dialogue over narration. But they don’t want to be bored, so keep dialogue interesting.”

“And the third key point?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said the Scribe. “It’s related to the second point. Use dialogue for dramatic purposes, to show characters at their moments of strong emotion as they grapple with the problem that represents the story’s conflict. Minimize the use of dialogue just for providing information. That’s called info-dumping.”

“Which is what you’re doing now,” said the Reader.

“True, but we’re having a real discussion, not a fictional one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Poseidon’s Scribe held up his right index finger. “There’s one last point I want to make about the use of ‘said’ in dialogue. If you’re still worried about repeating ‘said’ and you doubt my point earlier about readers skipping over it, then substitute some type of action, or movement, or description.”

“What do you mean?” The Reader’s brows furrowed.

“Instead of using ‘said,’ have your character do something while speaking.” The Scribe swept his hand to indicate motion. “After all, people really do things while talking. They don’t just stand there.”

The Reader nodded. “I see what you mean. But what do I do if I have a question about this later?”

“Just click on ‘leave a comment’ below this blog entry. See it down there?”

“Yeah, there it is. Well, thanks for everything!” The Blog Reader smiled.

“Don’t mention it,” said–

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 8, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Coming to Your Senses (in Your Writing)

If Poseidon’s Scribe suggests you incorporate an appeal to all five senses in your writing, that’s not exactly original advice. But why are writers told to do this? And how do you go about it?

The reason for using all the senses is to make your scenes more vivid, distinct, and real for the reader. You’re trying to take your reader away from her world where she is sitting and reading a book, just sweep her away to your made-up world. We speak of “painting a picture” in writing, but it should be more than that. It should be a multi-sensory experience. It’s like a Star Trek transporter machine that can move a person in an instant to a different location for a full immersion experience.

Artists, too, often bring the senses into their work. This is “Still-life with Chessboard (the Five Senses)” by the 17th Century painter Lubin Baugin.

Each of the senses has certain properties. Although they are obvious from lifelong experience, let’s think about each one from a writer’s point of view.

Our primary sense is sight, and that’s usually the first way a character perceives his surroundings. Human sight is most especially tuned to moving objects, so characters notice them first of all. Depriving a character of sight using darkness or interfering objects can heighten tension.

Hearing is our secondary sense, and also has a long range. Characters can hear things around corners and thus detect them before seeing them at times.

Smell has a strong link to mood and memory, and thus can provide a great opportunity for the reader to understand the point-of-view character’s temperament and background.

Taste is coupled to the sense of smell. Letting a character experience food and drink in a scene can enhance the overall impression for the reader. Remember that characters can learn things by tasting even non-food items, such as deciding whether a liquid is water or oil, for example, when gathering evidence.

The sense of touch is probably the most intimate. It’s the only sense without a specific organ, and the only one we can’t block out except through numbness.

If you open up your writing to appeal to all the senses, you’ll find a wealth of new adjectives at your disposal. There are many great descriptive words that apply to the non-sight senses. These sensory descriptions should be used with purposeful ends in mind, though. You’re trying to advance your plot, reveal character attitudes, or set a scene, not to demonstrate your knowledge of the senses.

Through practice you can improve the perceptiveness and sharpness of your senses as well as your ability to write better sensory descriptions. It’s just like improving any other skill. I’ll have more to say about that in a future blog entry.

I should caution you not to overdo it, though. Modern readers dislike, and often skip, long paragraphs of description. It’s best to sprinkle your sense-based descriptions in small chunks between and among character thoughts and dialogue throughout the scene. This avoids overloading and boring the reader, and also gives the reader occasional reminders about where the characters are and the state of their surroundings.

As always, I welcome your comments on this topic. From what I’ve seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt, this concludes another blog entry by–

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 8, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Just Thinking to Myself

The title of this blog entry is a little joke to remind me not to ever do that in my fiction–state that a character is “thinking to himself.” How else would he be thinking?

But the broader question facing us today regards how a writer should convey a character’s thoughts. To get your fiction published these days, it’s important to be able to let your readers know the thoughts of your point-of-view character. Fiction, as I’ve said before, is about the human condition, and a large part of the human experience requires thinking. In fiction, we expect to find a protagonist dealing with one or more conflicts, and a large part of understanding her struggle is to know her thoughts.

Thoughts reveal a lot about a character. Often thoughts are more extreme and emotion-packed than spoken words. In the cases where a character’s thoughts are just as restrained as his speech, that tells the reader this character has a great degree of self-control. A character that “speaks his mind” likely does not have much tact in social situations.

It’s rather strange that English has quotation marks to indicate spoken dialogue, but no analogous, standard symbol for a character’s thoughts. Without such a standard, practices vary:

“I sure could go for a hamburger,” Steve thought.
I sure could go for a hamburger.
Steve thought about how much he wanted a hamburger.

The first example with the quotation marks seems to have fallen out of favor. It’s potentially confusing, since a reader could assume the character is speaking out loud, until the tag–Steve thought–appears. Some say the second example with italics has run its course and is not recommended. It may also lead to potential confusing ambiguity, since italics are also used for emphasis, or sometimes to indicate foreign words.

As for me, I prefer italics. I like how italicized words leap out and distinguish themselves as different. When used to indicate thought, they really help the reader separate “dialogue” from thought and narration. I suppose the knock against italics is they can interrupt flow.

Although the last example reads just like narration, the tag “Steve thought” clues the reader in that the character is thinking. The use of standard text makes for a smoother read.

In my view, there are three guidelines you should follow: (1) stick with the publisher’s guidelines, if known; (2) avoid confusing the reader; and (3) be somewhat consistent through your story in the technique you use.

There are some other helpful blog post articles on this topic here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. As you’ll see from reading through them, there is general agreement, but some differences. What are your thoughts on representing a character’s thoughts? I welcome comments.

That’s another fine blog post I’ve written, thought–

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 1, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

10 Reasons to Keep a Writer’s Journal

From my lengthy “do as I say, not as I do” file comes this item–keeping a journal. I decided to blog about this topic to kick-start myself into restarting this important habit. So read on if you like, but this entry is meant to persuade me.

Steve, I know you’ve kept journals in the past, but you’ve fallen out of the habit and out of practice. You’re also now denying yourself a journal’s many benefits. Yes, you kept secret “event”-type journals about each of your children’s activities as they grew, and gave the journals to them when they became adults. Yes, you’ve kept “log”-type journals of writing progress, including daily word counts and submission status. Yes, you still keep a computer file of story plot ideas that occur to you. And yes, you write this blog.

But you’re not doing the type of journaling that could improve your writing. You should keep a private writer’s journal, Steve, and in David Letterman style, here are the Top Ten reasons why:

10. If you keep your journal in your computer it can be multimedia, including video clips and digital images.

9. A journal can be a handy place to track your writing progress, by noting word-count per day, and by noting what stories you submitted to which markets, and what the response was. This particular journal use is so important, I’ll devote a future blog post to it.

8. You’ll remember things better. The brain stores stuff in one place when you sense it, another place when you talk about it, and another place when you write it. That “wet computer” between your ears is pretty good about cross-linking such storage places, so writing a journal will improve memory, whether or not you review previous entries.

7. It’s a place to note things you may use in your writing — bits of dialogue, descriptions of people, gestures, facial expressions, descriptions of settings, and interesting words. When you encounter anything of interest during the day, note it in your own words. If you like the way some other writer phrased things, write that in quotes and note the source; you can paraphrase, but not plagiarize.

6. Within the journal, you can find out which ideas don’t work. Admit it, some ideas only seem wonderful when you first think of them in the shower. Once you write them down, these great-sounding thoughts about plots, characters, settings, and scenes have now picked up some unsightly warts. Good thing you found that out before going too far with a dumb idea.

5. You can use the journal to solve story problems with such aspects as plot, character, motivation, hook, and the “so-what? problem.” In the private idea space of your journal, you can clarify the problem, brainstorm possible solutions, and examine each potential solution until best one emerges. You can use mind maps in your journal to do this. (I promise to write a blog entry about the use of mind maps to help your writing.)

4. The act of keeping a journal instills a measure of self-discipline about writing. Every time you walk into the room where the journal is (if you use the book-type handwritten journal) you’ll feel guilty if you haven’t written in it that day. Once the habit forms, it will nag your conscience until you make your daily entry.

3. The journal is a safe place to write, a “word sanctuary” where there are no criticisms, no nasty reviews. There you are free to roam with your muse discovering and charting regions of thought not suitable (yet) for public commentary.

2. Journal-writing helps hone the process of capturing thoughts into words. And that’s what a writer is all about. You might learn to write with greater clarity and focus. After all, it’s a private journal; there’s no need to write in a fancy, confusing, or euphemistic way.

And, Steve, the number 1 reason you should keep a writer’s journal is…

1. By exploring your inner feelings in a private journal, you might increase your self-awareness. It’s said that Gnôthi Seauton was inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, meaning “Know Thyself.” If you probe deeper into yourself and combine that knowledge with a better ability to convert thoughts to words, it should make you a better writer.

Perhaps you readers of this blog can comment on other reasons for keeping a writer’s journal, or about your experiences with journaling. Excuse me now while I go make a journal entry. Signing off here, I’m–

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 6, 2011Poseidon's ScribePermalink

As You Know, Bob…

Perhaps your name isn’t Bob, but this post could still be for you, if you’re a beginning fiction writer. One of the difficult parts of writing is creating believable dialogue, and one of the easy traps to fall into is called As You Know, Bob, or AYKB.

It stems from the writer’s need to convey information about the world of the story to readers who don’t know it yet. Dialogue between story characters might seem like the perfect opportunity to convey the information, since dialogue stands out more than long, narrative paragraphs. Trouble is, the characters are already in the story’s world, and already know about it.

Advertisers fall prey to AYKB too, often in radio ads. Frequently you hear ads like this:

“I really enjoy Company XYZ. Their product is superior to all competitors.”

“Yes, and I also like their friendly, knowledgeable staff.”

“And how about XYZ’s convenient location, right downtown at the corner of A Street and B Avenue?”

Advertisers have a limited time to convey information, and they know we pay attention to conversations more than we do to a single, blabbing announcer. Problem is, the conversation above is just plain stupid. People don’t talk that way. In fact, we listeners often feel so insulted by such ads that we start to wonder if Company XYZ’s product can be any good if their ads are so terrible.

The same situation applies to your fiction writing. Readers will be turned off if your characters talk like that; there’s plenty of good fiction by other writers they could be reading.

How do you avoid the AYKB problem in your writing, especially since it’s such an easy trap? Review your character’s dialogue and ask yourself if that’s something someone already in the story’s world would say. Is it realistic and believable? Get inside your character’s head and cut the dialogue down to only what the characters would really say.

Of course, you still have the information to convey. The best way to do that is bit by bit, with small amounts of narration or (better) action accompanying the dialogue. Use the minimum amount necessary for the reader to understand the world of the story. You’d be surprised how fast the reader will catch up and understand the world of the story with only teaspoonfuls of information sprinkled in from time to time.

AYKB is a well-known writing problem, and is part of a lexicon of writing problems known as the Turkey City Lexicon. If you search you’ll find several listings and explanations of the many entries in the lexicon.

Good luck in your efforts to strengthen the dialogue in your writing. And I can’t resist closing by saying: As you know, Bob, I’m —

Poseidon’s Scribe