Our audiobook story, so far

My first audiobook is coming out soon! I've had people ask about the process, so here's a quick sum up about our journey so far:

I decided to try making an audiobook for my standalone book, Mira's Griffin. I figured I would test the waters, if you will, with a standalone before I committed to a whole series.

First, I used acx, which is amazon's audiobook branch. I chose a sample from my book that included dialogue from most of my characters, especially the ones with accents and that needed special effects (mind-to-mind speech, in this case). I put it up for audition. ACX asked me to provide the age, gender, accent, and style of the narration I'd like, and showed my book to those. Two people auditioned within the first week or so. I chose the best one, Talon David, and we exchanged some messages, making sure that we got along and could work well together, before I made it official. 

I chose royalty share for our payment option, which means that the royalties we earn are split 50/50 between the two of us. You can pay a narrator outright, but it will cost many hundreds of dollars, so you'll have to be certain that you can sell enough books to cover the cost. And, of course, you can do it yourself, if you have the equipment and are willing to learn how.

I, as the author, was in charge of setting a date. I looked at my publishing schedule and sent Talon a large range, asking when she thought would be best (communication with your narrator is super important). She told me how long she thought it would take, I added on a couple weeks just in case, and we were ready to go. I sent her a pronunciation guide for some of the words and names unique to my fantasy world. 

While she was recording, I did the cover. I made my own cover for Mira's Griffin, so it was pretty easy to adapt it to audiobook. The cover for audiobooks needs to be a perfect square, and they require that the bottom right corner be left without important information in case they want to stick promotional information there. 

After she submitted, I listened to the whole thing and wrote down a few things that needed to be changed, and sent it back. It's really cool to hear the story come together--and it's also important to remember that it's not going to sound exactly like me, and that's okay.

I put my book up for audition on May 3, 2021, and right now it's being reviewed by acx. It should be available for purchase sometime near the end of the month, so all in all, it took about 3 months. It's been a great experience so far. We'll see how it goes!

Plot Structure Systems

 

When I first started learning about story structure, I first adopted the model made by Christopher Booker in "Seven Basic Plots" (a fascinating but extremely lengthy read). Once I started looking at other plotting systems, I noticed a lot of similarities. It bugged me at first, because I'd already learned one set of terminology and didn't want to learn another. But if you look at it, the systems are all very similar to one another. 

Most of these plots have, at their base, the seven-point story structure. These are the bare bones that make a story work, and a huge variety of authors use it. 

KM Weiland adds details about the key event and inciting incident. She has a ton more interesting information on her website, from how to integrate a character arc into this system, to how Marvel movies use (or don't use) structure in their movies, to archetypal character arcs based on a human's life cycle. It's all fascinating stuff!

I wanted to break down story structure further, so I took the typical three-act story and broke each act into parts. This takes a long novel and breaks it up into manageable pieces. With the overall picture managed by this outline, my creative mind has more space to work on emotion, theme, growth, detail, and other aspects of writing.

Save the Cat uses different terminology, but still, many of the points line up. It was originally designed for screenwriters but adapted to novels. Save the Cat has more specific story advice and details than the other methods.

Seven Basic Plots divides all stories into seven different categories. These are plots, not genres, and different examples of these can be found in most traditional genres. All seven plots follow a basic pattern.

The Hero's Journey is much older than these methods but is still in use today. It follows a specific type of story, one that is often used today.

There is more information out there to dive into. This blog gives an excellent rundown of several different methods of organization.

Feel free to compare the information and make your own guidelines--or simply wing it. Have fun!

Story Structure for kids (and other beginners)

I've been writing stories since I was a young child, yet I didn't publish my first story until I was 28. That's about twenty years of practice before my stories were ready. I learned by trial and error and developed skills slowly over time. 

The biggest issue with my early stories was that they had no structure. I just wrote whatever came to mind. After a lot of practice, I finally developed a feel for how stories needed to progress. I only discovered story structure after I had written my first book, The Spectra Unearthed, yet that one does fit the beats of a structured story. 

Note: The color coding matches up to my system, which I will discuss later. Note that I have three shades of blue in the middle when I should have only two.

Again, it took me twenty years to get to that point, and about four years of working on that one book. Some authors still write by instinct, and their stories still end up having structure even if they don't do it deliberately. Personally, I find that story structure lets me write faster, and my stories turn out better.

 Nine steps for a simple story

Today I gave my kids a nine-step formula for writing a structured story. I had them write down one sentence per step. When I write, I use a similar formula, though for me, one step equals about three chapters.

1. Who and what is your character? What do they want? Why are they interesting?

2. What will happen to your character? (passive) 3. How does your character choose to change? (active) They choose to interact with step #2. 4. Who or what is stopping your main character? 5. What does your character learn about themselves and the world? 6. What can your character lose? What will happen if they don't win? 7. What goes wrong? 8. What happens when your character faces what's stopping them in step 5? 9. How has your character changed?

Half steps for a more advanced story

For more advanced writers, you might want to add half-steps in between some of these major beats:

2.5: What was your character's life like before the story? 3.5: What is your character's new life like now that they have chosen to change? 4.5: How does your character react to their troubles? 5.5: How does your character prepare to face their troubles? 6.5: What convinces your character to keep trying? 7.5: What hidden strengths can your character draw on to rise above everything that went wrong?

Next, my kids and I looked at KM Weiland's Story Structure database to learn how stories that we already know and love fit our model. We used Harry Potter 1. I've also used the movies Frozen and Aladdin.

(More advanced) My structure system

I used my own story structure system to come up with those nine steps. Many different authors have come up with different story structure systems. They all have similarities, but some of them use different labels for the same point. I started using KM Weiland's model, but soon adapted it for myself. 

Here's a quick overview of my system:

I took the three acts and broke them into eight pieces. Each piece has a specific job and ends in a specific "beat" (which I defined in the steps above).

Look at how my "climax" beats align to the steps/questions from earlier:

1. Who and what is your character? What do they want? Why are they interesting? (Characteristic Moment/Hook)

2. What will happen to your character? (Key Event)

3. How does your character choose to change? They choose to interact with step #2. (First Plot Point)

4. Who or what is stopping your main character? (First Pinch Point)

5. What does your character learn about themselves and the world? (Midpoint)

6. What can your character lose? What will happen if they don't win? (Second Pinch Point)

7. What goes wrong? (Second Plot Point/Low Point)

8. What happens when your character faces what's stopping them in step 5? (Climax)

9. How has your character changed? (Resolution)

Story Structure in The Spectra Books

For my first few Keita's Wings books, I used story structure to turn a messy rough draft into a publishable story. Now I also use it to create an outline before I start writing. I update my outline as I go to help me keep track of where I am in the story and what I need to do next.

Here are some of the finished outlines for some of my books (some of them are cropped to remove spoilers).

Mira's Griffin:

Keita's Wings series

These are color coded instead of labeled by section. Act 1 is yellow, Act 2.A-B are green, Act 2.C-D are blue, Act 3 is red, and I colored the resolution yellow as well.

DreamRovers

I broke up each chapter into scenes for DreamRovers to help me keep track of the three point of views. 

Yes, I am a bit obsessed with spreadsheets.

Story structure is a huge topic and I hope this is useful. This is an amazing age when more information abounds if you wish to search for it. Have fun!

My Writing Process

 I've probably written about my writing process before, but it's an ever evolving, ever refining thing. Right now, I'd like to describe the stages that a story goes through before I publish it.

This is the system I use. It works for me, and it's fast--I can publish at least a book a year, start to finish, with my method. But this is a very individual exercise, and everyone works a bit differently. You'll want to adapt what you learn and come up with your own.

Step 1: Daydream. This is where I do my "pantsing". I watch it in my head like a movie, and throw in whatever seems appealing. It's a mess, and that's fine. Most likely, I'll eventually tire of it, and the whole story moves to "the compost of my imagination". Ideas get recycled and reused in different forms. Eventually an actual story emerges, ready for the next step.

Step 2: Outline. I'll make a form with the basic story structure, which I've adapted from KM Weiland's blog. I'll fill in just a couple lines for each major beat. (Key moment, inciting incident, first plot point, first pinch point, etc.)

This is for a book I have yet to write, and it will change a lot before it's finished. That's perfectly fine.

Step 3: Rough draft. I usually do this for NaNoWriMo or in that style. I'll use the outline as a rough guide, so I know where I'm heading next, and then just get all those words out, unedited, unpolished. If I realize that an earlier part needs to change, I'll go up and make a note, right in the document. I may even stop and do some brainstorming (stream-of-conscious typing about the story) or write notes and suggestions to myself.

Step 4: First draft. I take the mess that is the rough draft, look at all the notes I've made, and turn it into something presentable. This is the stage that takes the longest. 

Being me, I'll also make all kinds of spreadsheets to help me keep track of where the story is and what needs to happen next. Here's the one from my DreamRovers series:

Step 5: Get feedback. Some of these steps will be going concurrently. I'll be submitting chapters for beta-readers before I've finished the whole first draft, for instance.  I have three main beta-readers right now, plus at least one stranger to my style/world, if I can find one. Reading out loud might happen anywhere in the process. It's great for catching plot holes as well as mistakes. My kids enjoy being my test audience. Both the beta-readers and my kids act as motivation to get that next chapter done on time.

Step 6: Polishing. This will include making changes that I've found, as well as incorporating advice from the feedback I've received. This will take several drafts.  

Step 7: Proofing. I'll make the cover and do the formatting, then order a copy of a physical proof from amazon. This will allow me to pick out mistakes and make changes that I wouldn't have noticed in another format, like a screen.

Step 8s and beyond: Publish! And market like crazy. But that's another topic... 

If you'd like to check out the finished results, you can find my books at www.thespectrabooks.com

I hope you find something useful here. Enjoy!

My Writing Process

Every author and writer has a different process for drafting and editing. They go through a different number of drafts or stages before getting to the book you see on the shelf. This is my process:

1. Rough Draft

Usually I use NaNoWriMo to get this draft down, though in grade school I used a notebook for the same effect. For the rough draft, you are not allowed to stop and edit. You have to churn out a certain number of words a day, and it's not going to be pretty. It's a mess that you cringe to think of anybody ever looking at. It might even include passages like these (from a yet untitled novel about griffins):

 Tyra rolled her eyes. “What about the other women in the vale?”

“Aren’t any. White Leader’s a top hunter. He gets first pick of humans, and until Runa he always went for males.”

#It seems like all this explanation should be earlier. Or maybe not.

His other two picks were both men, tall and strong. Both were fishermen. Name1 had a wife and two youngsters at the village. Name2 was older, with his four children all grown. None of them spoke to each other. 

The chain that had been attached to her collar lay in a corner.

Edit: she’s still wearing it.

Tyra examined it. 

A girl screamed again. Tyra was getting tired of the screaming, though her heart had sped up again without her permission. (I counted the word 'scream' ten times in this section).

Since I am not allowed to edit, I sometimes go back and add a line explaining the changes that I'd like to make. Occasionally I include several paragraphs brainstorming how this section ought to go, or outlining what I think should come in the next couple sections. The rough draft has no chapters, but I do have heading titles to help me find the sections quickly.

Again, the rough draft is for nobody's eyes but mine. If you're working on NaNoWriMo, congratulations! You've got a start! But please please please do not assume that you have a full publishable story on your hands. Yes, amazon will publish it for nothing, but it gives indie authors a bad name.

Ahem, coming off the soapbox...


2. First Draft

This draft takes the longest, often several months. I start by listing out every scene in the novel with a few key words. For example, here's the first chapter of The Spectra Uprooted:

Part 1: Introduction 

Chapter: Harvest Festival 

Wrestling match 

Eating 

First raid: numbers scare off raiders, Bract worries they will be back

Zuri is brought in/Keita’s identity revealed 

“captured” by grasslanders

I move these clips around into chapters and add in a few lines for scenes that I think ought to be added.  My goal is to have the story build to a climax in each chapter, with all of the scenes in that chapter adding up to it.  Once I've got this guideline, I fill out the scenes that I've described that still need added. Also, because I'm slightly OCD about page numbers, I keep track of chapter length on an excel sheet, which I've already described. I also make the changes that I noted during the rough draft. 

When I'm almost done with the first draft, I go back to the beginning and read each character's voice as if I were doing an audiobook. This helps me make the characters' dialogue distinct from each other.

By the time I am finished with the first draft, I have a decent story that I am willing to share with beta-readers. The plot and characters are in place and in order. Going over each scene allows me to rewrite most of it, so some of the more awkward prose gets corrected.

3. Prose Draft

The prose draft mostly involves cutting extra words to make the story flow better. Red flags of words to change include could and 've had to, -ly adverbs, passive voice, etc.  I like to use prowritingaid for a free analysis of my first few pages, looking for problems that I'm likely to find in the rest of the work. After working on the computer, I request a physical copy from Staples, where the extra words are more obvious. Here's a page from The Spectra Uprooted:

This copy can also be shared with beta-readers. I can leave it with friends to add comments.

After I make the changes I've marked on my physical copy, I format to the correct page size and add the maps, acknowledgments, and other material. Once this is done I start working on the cover, which means that I can't make any more major changes without risking a change to the cover's spine width. My beta reader and I go over it one more time and then I request the proof copy.

4. Proof copy

There's nothing so exciting as getting the proof copy in the mail! At last, it looks like a real book!

Now I get to read the whole thing, pretending I'm a reader. I also circle small changes and especially typos that need fixed. I might have to add a label to the map or make sure all the fonts match. And, if I'm designing my own cover, I check to make sure that's working (if not, I have to order a proof all over again, which is not fun).

Timing:

From start to finish, this process takes about a year to complete. I choose my own due date when I first start writing, usually my angel baby's birthday (September 5th). That gives me time to work on marketing and side projects and preparation before NaNo comes around again. 

So, there's my writing process. What's yours?

2021 Note: The books I used as samples are now published. Mira's Griffin changed quite a bit since those snippets! Keita's Wings (the new title for my first series, of which The Spectra Uprooted is third) is now complete. I've written a new blogpost with more information about my writing process, along with changes I've made in the past four years.

Excel for Writers

One afternoon my college roommate, an accounting major, found me pouring over an excel sheet. “You use excel?” she asked incredulously. 

“Yes,” I answered. “It’s useful for writing.”

She still stared at me. She didn't seem to believe that a wildlife conservation major with a perchance for fiction would be using the same program she used in her classes.

Excel can be a useful tool for the writer. In fact, I was using it as early as middle school for keeping track of my characters (and their Pokémon—this was 2000).

Here are some of the ways I use excel for writing fiction. Some of these are influenced by genre. I write fantasy and create my own world, so I need to keep track of more information than, say, a romance writer might. Others are useful no matter the genre.

Names

“How do you name your characters?” comes up frequently in writing circles. I am something of a name enthusiast. I read name dictionaries and online lists for fun, and when I come up with one that fits my story, I add it to my name excel sheet. In The Spectra series, I go for names with meanings that tie in to that character’s clan. For instance, characters from the Cole clan have names meaning fire or red. The columns go across the top and then I fill in the information about each name. I include a column for “bearer” so I know if I’ve already used the name.

This way I can sort the names by gender and/or clan to help me narrow down the perfect name for my character. For instance, if a new male Sprite character appears, I can scroll down the alphabet to ‘S’…

And I’ve got a whole list of possibilities.

Timeline

I also use excel to keep track of the history of my fantasy world. At the top, I have a column per year (around 300 years). This way I have a quick reference for births, deaths and marriages; important events in both kingdoms and characters’ lives; and the reigns of kings. I broke them up by clan to spread things out. It may be chaotic for someone who doesn’t know the world, but I can find what I need and that’s what’s important.

Characters

Have you ever read a series where one of the characters switches middle names between books? What about eyes that change color? Annoying, right? A character sheet on excel can be a great way to keep all those little details straight, especially for minor characters. You can add whatever details are most important to you. Here’s an example of mine (by the way, I hid the columns for spouse and children—too many spoilers!). I can sort by book in the series or parents/birth order if I’m looking at a whole family.

Chapter Length

This is a tool I use to help with pacing. I keep track of the name and number of each chapter, and then copy down the page numbers from my table of contents. This calculates the length of each chapter for me, so I can determine if parts are too long or two short, and compare one book in the series to another. Yes, all of the Keita’s Wings books have the same number of chapters—I find it a useful tool for book length, but if this is unappealing to you please don’t. I can be OCD about some of these things. The different colors on the chapter names are groupings I find useful, based off of characters and setting.

Agents and Reviews

I’ve also used excel to keep track of agents and reviewers that I’ve contacted about my books. For reviewers, I listed their name, website, when I submitted to them, and what response I received (information has been removed for privacy). I colored the rejections red and the accepted invitations green:

I did the same thing for agents before I decided to Indie publish, which also included columns for hints I’d dug up about the sort of books they were looking for.

Moneys

Now here’s the sheet that my accounting roommate would approve of! Where is money going and where is it coming from? It’s important to keep track! At the end of the year I move the total costs, total profits, and year total to another table so that I can compare years and look for patterns… and do taxes (shudder).

What, you don’t think I doctored the profits, do you?

Word Count

I must admit, I had to get my husband’s help to set this up. I participate in NaNoWriMo each year, and one of the most motivating parts is entering your wordcount into their tables and graphs. So we put together a table that can give that same motivation throughout the year, with adjustable goals (let me know if you want a copy and I can email it).

Not Excel, But Still Useful 

Here are a few other useful files I keep for my books that are not on excel:

Calendar:

I chose to use ‘Word’ for the calendar, but excel would work just as well. This helps me keep track of the dates in my story. I have to make sure that events are realistically spread out, especially when my characters are traveling!

Oh look, I left out a few death dates...

Family Trees

Main character Keita meets her cousins and other relatives in several of the Spectra books, so keeping track of them all is important. This information is on my excel timeline as well, but it’s handy to see them grouped by family in a linear, visual way. I have one of these for most of the major characters (including Keita’s mother’s side of the family on a separate sheet).

Maps

I have a ‘master map’ which shows the entire Spectra continent and all important places. This helps me get traveling dates straight (see calendar) and lets me visualize where the characters are and what directions they are facing. When I publish a book, I take the relevant section of my master map and turn it into an insert for the front of the book. Here’s the map that was included in book 3, The Spectra Uprooted: a map of the kingdom of Spritelands, and a small inset of the whole continent.

Various computer programs can be a real asset to your writing. These are the ones I’ve found the most useful. Feel free to try out any new ideas and let me know how they turned out!

My Mother Loves People

My mother loves people

the way people love chocolate

or kittens or movie theaters.

She smiles, meets their eyes, learns their names,

and speaks with sunshine in her voice.

Her easy words would be wrong on my tongue.

I love people differently.

I see a stranger. I prepare to speak

But...

What if they are offended?

What if they feel obligated to listen

when they are bored, uninterested, don't care?

Perhaps I should not risk

their happiness for my desire to connect.

Any words may give awkwardness, offense, even pain

but if I offer love

people can choose which to receive.

So I smile, meet their eyes, learn their names,

try to put Mother's sunshine in my voice.

The words are not easy but I practice, I try

because we love people,

my mother and I.

Wordplay: The Two Stages of Writing (And Why They Are Fun)

A friend of mine told me that she had considered asking me to talk to her second graders about writing, but decided against it because I write for teenagers.  I actually wrote my first story in second grade. I still have a copy of it (and enough memory that I can read between the lines to know what I meant to say). Since then I have been thinking about what I would share with younger kids. I've written a post already about why I write stories, including to communicate and to practice writing skills. I think younger children would also benefit from the habit, so I decided that I would share that writing stories fun, and how to do it.

Playing on Paper

Writing is done in two stages. Most people have a favorite, but both of them can be fun. The first stage is called drafting, otherwise known as playing on paper. Watch kids play. They take a few toys or objects that catch their eye, assign them characters, and then make them react to each other in different ways. They don't stop to wonder what comes next. They're endlessly adaptable, easily throwing in some new idea or character and seeing what it does to the story. I can still remember the first time I switched from pretend play to daydreaming: just playing inside my head without the toys to illustrate (I believe it involved some kind of Robin Hood adventure). Perhaps you still daydream. The same patterns apply: you take some interesting characters, some interesting ideas of things that might happen to them, and you throw them together and see what happens.

The first stage of writing, drafting, is to put those kind of stories down on paper. Play with it! You can start with characters (you and your friends, your cats, your favorite toys, even your favorite tv characters if you want), or you can start with the plot (that just means the things that happen to the characters, like 'they go to the zoo' or 'somebody is going to be captured and need rescued'). You may not know where you're going, or you may have an ending in mind, or you might have a list of things you want to cover. All of those are fine. Don't worry about spelling right now. Don't worry about grammar or word choice or all those rules you learn at school. At this stage, the only rule is to have fun with it!

In Control

If you are writing just for yourself, you might stop after drafting, and that's okay. In fact, if you love your story enough you may never end and just keep going as long as you can. Some people don't like the second stage, which is called editing, but I do. If you want other people to read what you've written and understand what you mean, if you want to make your story the best it can be, if you want to turn it in to a teacher or publish it into a book, you're going to have to edit.

Editing might be my favorite. When you're drafting, you write down everything as it comes to you. The story itself is in charge. When you edit, however, you are in complete control. This is a great feeling, because no one truly feels in control in life. You''re working by your parents' rules, or the school's rules, or society's rules, or the bank or the country's rules (yes, even grown-ups feel this way). Editing is when you work by your own rules.

Of course, if you are writing this story for a certain reader, you will have to pay attention to their rules too, but I don't like to think of it as following their rules. I've studied grammar and read lots of books about writing, and when something makes sense I adopt it as my own. Now it's not the book's rule, or grammar's rule. It's my rule, and I get to enforce it.

Different people do editing in different ways. If you are writing a story by hand, your first edit will be either copying it into a computer or copying it into a new notebook. You'll probably make changes as you go, deciding that some things could be phrased better to make more sense. That's great! The more times you go over it, the better it will be!

So, writing is fun! You get to play and imagine, be in control, make new friends, express yourself, and unlike play and daydreaming, you'll be able to go back to it whenever you want and enjoy the story all over again! Keep practicing, keep learning, keep reading others' stories. If you keep working at it you may become an author. Or you may decide not to, but those writing skills will be helpful in your life. At the very least, you can look back at the things you wrote when you were younger and be able to understand and remember how things were. And I think that's well worth the effort.

No Unnecessary Words

Sometimes I read books that I feel could be written better, and I want to run to the nearest computer and fix it, or at least write the author a very long, detailed letter. I had been thinking about this, and even started writing up an article of writing tips I’d gleaned from people smarter than me. Then I got a review that mentioned one of my faults, and I realized I needed my own advice as much as anyone. So, for me, and for anyone who might be reading, here are some compiled tips and quotes from some of my favorite sources to explain how to make good books better.

As I was collecting, I soon noticed a theme. Most of the things I wish other authors knew could be framed around a single quote, published in that Bible of writing books, “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. It is this:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary lines, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Here are some of the things I have learned…or at least heard… about making every word tell.

What’s the story about?

How many of you want to read this story?

Jenny was getting married. She loved her fiancé, and he loved her. She picked the flowers that she wanted. Grandma gave her the necklace she had worn as a bride. Mother chose the veil, and she herself found the most amazing dress. Everyone agreed that it was perfect.

If anyone keeps reading, it’s because they’re hoping the next line is:

She should have known something would go wrong.

The character defines the story. The plot defines the characters, and the stakes define the plot. What does the character stand to lose? If nothing is at stake, you have no story, and your character cannot grow. In Writing Magic, Gail Carsen Levine puts it this way: “Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up on a book and stop reading? Often, you don’t care what happens. What makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author’s cruelty. And the reader’s sympathy.”

On the other hand, having the stakes too high, for too long, is a problem I often find in the last book(s) of a series. From page one, the world is in jeopardy, the heroes are about to die, evil seems to be winning… If it starts out this way and never stops, the reader stops caring. Christopher Booker, in The Seven Basic Plots, explains, “As [the hero or heroine] face ordeals, or come under threat, so we feel tense and apprehensive. As the threat is lifted, we can relax. Our own spirits are enlarged… We feel a sense either of constriction, or of liberation. And in a story which is well-constructed, these phases of constriction and release alternate, in a kind of rhythm which provides one of the greatest pleasures we get from stories.”

Do you remember the graph that almost every Language Arts teacher draws in middle school? The one that shows the action of a story starting slowly, then gradually increase in intensity, spiking with a climax, and come crashing down for the resolution? It’s funny how many writers forget.

Dialogue

“Dialogue should reveal character or further the plot,” says author Tim Wynne-Jones. Dialogue should not do the grunt work of a narrative, fill in backstory, or tell the reader something that the characters already know. It also should not include ordinary conversations for the sake of “reality”. He explains, “Write dialogue that allows for a character to say what they might say if they had an extra twenty seconds before replying.”

Anne Lamott adds, “You’re not reproducing actual speech—you’re translating the sound and rhythm of what a character says into words. You’re putting down on paper your sense of how the characters speak… [What you record] should be more interesting and concise and even more true than what was actually said.”

All through elementary school, I was taught to never use the word ‘said’. It took until college before I learned that this isn’t true. Said is a perfectly good word. All of the other tag words are like spices—they add flavor, but use them sparingly.

The quote is not the only important thing in dialogue. Gail Carsen Levine says, “There’s more to dialogue than just speech. Body language can communicate as eloquently as words, and sometimes more truthfully.”

Non-example:

“Hi,” he greeted.

“Oh, hello,” she answered.

“I saw you at the supermarket yesterday. I saw that you were buying a lot of food,” he noticed.

“Yes. I am having a dinner party tomorrow. We are having pork chops, mashed potatoes, and green beans,” she explained.

“I know that you have dinner parties every month. That sounds like a lot of work,” he commented.

“It is a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it,” she replied.

Example:

“I saw you at the supermarket yesterday,” he said. “What’s with all the food?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I decided to cook extra,” she answered. “It’s always good to have leftovers…”

He slammed down the cell phone he was holding. “Are you holding another dinner party without me?”

“I wouldn’t call it a party.” She tried a laugh, but it came out shaky. “I just invited a few close friends.”

“A few close friends,” he repeated. “And none of them are me.”

 

Fight scenes, which are basically violent dialogue, follow the same rules.

Non-example:

Mack punched the man in the face, and then ducked. Jack’s fist swung over his head, missing his nose by inches. Mack kicked Jack’s ankle and felt a satisfying thud. Then he grabbed Jack’s arm and twisted it behind his back. Jack yelped, struggling to break free. He got a hand loose and flailed. His hand bumped Mack’s arm with no effect at all.

Example (abridged from “The Storm Testament III” by Lee Nelson):

Again Storm instinctively reached for the whip end. Again the wiley snake was withdrawn before the young man could grab it. Beneath the bandana it was difficult for anyone to notice that the grin had finally vanished from Storm’s face….

As the dust settled, each man trying to tighten his grip on the other, Blackjack began to laugh again.

“What’s so funny?” hissed Storm through his clenched teeth.

“Just seems kind of crazy,” replied Blackjack after a brief pause to tighten his grip on Storm’s arm, “You and me killing each other just to put on a free show. Seems funny. Makes me laugh. Makes me feel stupid too.”

Beneath the bandana, Storm’s grin returned.

Description:

Who’s willing to admit that they skip over the big long descriptions of the setting? Or shuts a book that begins with the description of a sunrise? Or ignores the paragraph describing how a character looks and imagining them however they want?

In Word Painting, Rebecca McClanahan explains, “Description isn’t something we simply insert, block style, into passages of narration or exposition. Yes, sometimes we write passages of description. But the term passage suggests a channel, a movement from one place to another; it implies that we’re going somewhere. That somewhere is the story.”

Her book contains many excellent examples on the use of description. I’ll mention one: the power of description to set the mood and the emotion of the scene. This is a paragraph from my short story, The Stone Hand:

 Later, Reece said that both of them had done it. She didn’t believe him. In any case, her memory of the next few minutes was clouded with heat and noise, bright lights and acrid smoke. Then she and Reece were standing side by side in the yard while the house burned. Heat seared her face, and popping sparks screamed nine years of fury.

Tiny details make the difference, and the word choice can reflect the mood. A cloudy sky could be gloomy, pretty in swaths of purple, confining, swirling in frenzied anger, hovering near like a suspicious neighbor.

Non-example:

Sunny was short and willowy, with short blond hair and bright blue eyes. She was self-confident and usually happy but she had a mean streak, and a bad habit of spying on people.

Example:

A pair of bright blue eyes disappeared from the window. “All right, Sunny,” Keita called. “I see you.  You may as well stop sneaking around.”

The girl popped into sight without a trace of embarrassment. “Hullo, everyone,” she said, running a hand through her short blonde hair. A smirk was hiding in the edges of her smile.

 

Every Word Tells

I could go on. Backstory, flashbacks, themes, explaining the world and its rules… the same principle applies to all of them. If it moves the story forward, use it. If it does not advance the plot or reveal character, change it or take it out. This is something I’m still working on; I suspect I always will be.

References:

These are some of my favorite writing books, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to make their stories better:

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (some mature content)

Writing Magic by Gail Carsen Levine

Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White