The Talkies, Part 2

Yellowhammer

Story is all about characters and plot/theme, and a writer has to be intimately knowledgeable about both in order to write good dialogue. As in life, character personas must undergo change as the story moves forward, and dialogue is a great way to give readers insight into those changes. 

I love writing dialogue because it keeps me in the character's head. For dialogue to sound real, I have to know my character well enough to speak as she/he would speak...using words and syntax that fits the character's background. And I do read my dialogue out loud after I've written it, but not right away. I usually wait a day or so and take a fresh look at it. 

Through dialogue, writers can give the reader some sense of the characters' emotions and their attitudes toward each other (anger, sarcasm, humor) without "telling." Here's a brief example using an action clue: "'You're wrong,' he said with a sneer." The action/nonverbal clue, "sneered," helps the reader interpret the emotion and attitude of the character. (By the way, "'You're wrong,' he sneered" is incorrect because "sneered" isn't a verbal tag.)

A quick exchange of dialogue (no dumping backstory) is a great tool for pacing. It breaks up grey blocks of narrative and keeps the reader moving through the story. I personally tend to use shorter exchanges between characters because I happen to love Robert B. Parker's style. The words, the length of the sentences, the punctuation are all excellent tools to intensify danger or sexual tension.  

I also like that because dialogue is written in the present tense, it's an active experience that draws the reader into the scene and into the plot—which is exactly where you want the reader to be.

That's all for now.  You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to do the same. 

cj

PS:  Stop by my Facebook author page and tell me what you think.  http://www.facebook.com/CjPettersonAuthor

PPS:  The bird photo by Jeff Johnston is a Yellowhammer flicker, the Alabama State Bird.

The talkies, part I

Cedar Waxwing

First, I want to thank Kathleen for sharing her techniques with her wonderful series. She is so right: nothing improves writing more than writing more.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about dialogue and offer up a few things I've learned about what's makes dialogue good and what's makes it bad. Part I of this two-part conversation is about the bad—the things that can distract a reader and deter agents. These "no-no's" are in no particular order.

It's not news that non-fiction writers employ a lot of lovely narrative text to enthrall their readers while fiction writers use more dialogue. The white space of frequent paragraphs makes for a faster read and moves along the plot of a novel. Unfortunately for either author, dialogue is not as easy to write as one might think.

Something that writers often have trouble with are the tags that go with dialogue. I know the tag "said" seems so totally overused that you might think it's distracting. Unless it is abused by using it in every sentence, the opposite is true. Readers glance over it, only taking note of who is speaking. On the other hand, exclamatory tags (screamed, yelled, etc.) can distract readers from the actual dialogue and can slow the pacing. Readers have to hesitate a moment to register the word. Plus, the author is telling the reader, rather than showing them by the action, the words, or the situation. Don't want to keep using "said?" Inserting action and non-verbal cues can help a reader understand what's going on. I'll talk about those on my next blog. A quick note about dialogue between two characters: Since a two-character dialogue is an especially fast-paced tool, put in a he-said/she-said tag about every fifth line or so to help the reader keep track of who's speaking.

If you're writing a period piece, i.e., set in the 19th century or in the 1950s, and unless you mean your story to be satire, it is imperative to use the language of the times. There are websites that can give authors the idioms of different eras. Look up "how to speak..." or "19th century vocabulary," et al., on your favorite search engine (as I did in the examples below) and verify any wording that seems suspect. Let's face it, a 19th century character just isn't going to use the words, "Have a nice day." Also, be true to your character's personality and heritage. Is your character from Alabama or from Brooklyn? There is huge difference in speech patterns and word usage, and neither of them is formal. Authors must get into each character's persona, and each will be different. So, be sure to write dialogue the way your character would say it.

Which brings me to phonetic dialect. Overuse of phonetically spelled dialect can make reading and understanding the story so difficult for some readers that they put down the book. You can  show that a character is from a different place or time by the words they use and how they phrase their sentences. In Ireland, a flashlight is a torch; an elevator is a lift. The American reader will understand the meaning of the words by the context of the dialogue. No phonetics required. For those writers in love with dialect, perhaps they might consider using a bit of phonetic dialect, particularly at first, then going to grammar/sentence structure.

A huge no-no is using dialogue to insert large amounts of backstory or giving the character a long, uninterrupted narrative. Uninterrupted speech doesn't happen in real life, unless you're at a podium. Someone will interrupt and ask a question or make a comment. Backstory is best inserted in small bits and pieces, over a period of pages or even chapters. That way, the reader is kept wondering and questioning and turning pages. Also, don't use dialogue to repeat information that the reader already knows. If you've introduced your character as a policeman, don't, a few lines or pages later, have another character say, "Oh, you're a policeman." If there is a need to remind your reader, it'd be more natural to say something like, "How long have you been a cop?"

Finally, read your dialogue out loud after you've written it. Does it sound "natural?" Listen for sentences that are too complete. Would a 20th century character really say, "Please take a seat. I hope you find the food adequate?" It'd more likely be something like, "Sit down and eat. Hope you like it." Take a look at all those "uhs" you've inserted to show pauses...delete them. You might speak that way in real life, but don't put it on the written page. "Uhs" definitely slow your wonderful pacing.

Next time, I'll go into the things that make good dialogue important.

You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I'll try to the same.

cj

PS:  Jeff Johnston's photo is of a cedar waxwing flipping up its luncheon berry, taken on Dauphin Island, AL.

If you're in the Mobile, AL, area, Jeff is presenting a class on photographing "Backyard Birds, Bugs, and Blooms" on Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Call Calagaz Photography at 251-478-0487 for more info and to register. 

Kathleen Thompson, M.F.A. - 3rd in Series

Kathleen Thompson shares a piece she wrote in the MFA workshop and some of the notes that go with it. Thank you, Kathleen, for your insights and your willingness to share your exciting trip, the MFA program, and now some of your Southern memories.

I had submitted a discussion on the possibility of writing/not writing a memoir. Ellie suggested she’d like to know more about a mention I’d made of Daddy and his putting me on the back of one of our large mules when I was a child. She wanted to know more about mules, so, I used the technique of adding to: I gave her mules in my page of revision.

 

We stayed in that house until I finished seventh grade. It is that time period that I wrote about in my first novel. In that house I remember listening to the radio, picking corn from the red field, watching Mama butcher a hog, eating two-fist sized Alberta peaches from our tree in the backyard, devouring watermelon hearts and abandoning the rest of the hillside of green striped beauties as a break from picking cotton in the adjacent field. I remember Mr. Hatchett and my poetry notebook, and, yuck, starting my period. I remember periods the way you remember grit in spinach salad. I remember elastic sanitary belts with little metal pieces with teeth to grip the sanitary napkin and the absolute dread of having a bloody spot leak through on my dress. And I remember mules.

The mule was an essential part of the small farm. Only a few landowners we knew had tractors to plow with, and one must cultivate the fields in order to plant and harvest crops. Without a mule one could not pull the wooden slide to transport bags of fertilizer to the various fields. Without a mule one did not have transportation except on foot. It was especially handy to have a mule and wagon to bring dry corn and fodder to the corn crib from a remote field.

We owned two big mules, but I remember only one name, George. Our mules were not pack mules, but big mules. I’m not sure of their breed (all mules are technically a mixed breed and do not produce offspring) but I remember how high a mule’s back is for someone about nine years old. It loomed as large as the sixteen-hand Tennessee Walker my husband owned in the 80s. My daddy hoisted me up on George’s bare back once to give me a ride—the first time I knew heights would bother me. Daddy had stopped George in front of the house with a load of guano in sacks on a slide to take to the corn field down the road. Probably he stopped to get a  drink of water from the well on our back porch.

Daddy’s directives to George were at once a plea and a command, and most of the time they escalated into a holler: giddap, gee, haw, whoa. The old saw about mules is true. Daddy could be heard for half a mile trying to keep him in line. That was one thing Daddy did well: he could plow a straight row. The vision of a field plowed into rows and furrows before the planting on the gently rolling hillside is a painting etched into my memory in the pinks and purples of sundown. Daddy in his long sleeved, sweat-soaked work shirt, holding a line in each hand, pulling back on the bit to guide the mule; George, sweaty and stubborn, swishing  horseflies away with his tail. The long straight rows curved over the hillside. Row after row of upturned red Alabama dirt with Daddy walking behind in a furrow. Daddy in denim overalls patched at the knees, raveling out at the bottom, his high top work boots run over to the outside of his heels. Daddy and his smile when he saw me, his Katarat, coming across the field, bringing him a fresh quart fruit jar of well water which he would guzzle down in one breath. And it was widely known that Jude Smith (he only had one name Jewell and somehow Jude became his nickname) was the best gravedigger in Tuscaloosa County. He could size it up and get the ledge for the casket just right without any tools except his shovel. He got plenty of practice digging the graves for four of his babies.

Daddy married a pioneer who never traveled much outside her birthplace in Fayette County, Alabama. Mama’s daddy had twenty-seven children by two wives and Mama was the oldest of the second bunch. She would sometimes catch a ride to Tuscaloosa (we never had a car) and then a Greyhound Bus over to Columbus, MS, to see her sister, Aunt Luvenia. Giving childbirth to twelve probably seemed like peanuts to her. Butchering a hog that looked as big as an elephant to me, scalded and hung up with a rope from a tree limb was a thing she was known for in the community. The single long distance trip she made was to visit my sister Ree when she moved to Charleston, SC, with her new Air Force husband. We packed so many people into my brother-in-law’s green Chevrolet that Daddy vowed never to take a trip that far again. There was my brother-in-law, Ralph, his wife and my oldest sister, Ann, Judy their child, Daddy, Mama, me, and my sister-in-law Bernice and her two babies who was going to visit my brother J. B. also stationed somewhere near Charleston. We were like canned sardines.

 

So that is one suggestion I have for you: clarify what you’ve written by adding specific details. The second is to be a stickler for pointing out changes that would benefit the writers in your group. But avoid being negative. It serves no good purpose. Let the ending of my workshop serve as something of an example.

I cried when I read my revision to the group. Nothing new about that—I tend to be nostalgic and quick to tears. But Ellie cried with me and reached out her hand to me. Such an affirmation from our leader! Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

 

I’m not suggesting you blubber the way I tend to do. In fact, I heartily suggest that you not do that. But you get the point. Go home, and start writing about whatever it is you’re supposed to be writing about! Nothing improves writing more than writing more.

 

 

Kathleen, I couldn't agree more. 

Mahala

 

Kathleen Thompson on Spalding's MFA Workshop

Kathleen Thompson, M.F.A. continues her insights on her Paris trip and writing.

 

The structure of the Spalding MFA brief residency workshop is worth talking about. You may not ever attend a formal workshop but it’s easy to emulate the procedure in your critique groups. Alabama’s own Hudson Strode, first professor in the Southeast to have a novel accepted in lieu of a thesis used a similar model. You would simply do this on a smaller scale. Each workshop has one or two mentors, depending upon size of the group. Most critique groups have a facilitator.

 

Louella Bryant, author of several children’s books and more recently a creative nonfiction work, While in Darkness There is Light: Idealism and Tragedy on an Australian Commune, led our cross-genre workshop. I already hold an MFA in Fiction and have two poetry chapbooks published and one full-length poetry book, plus I’ve written two novels and a collection of short stories in manuscript form, so it was logical for me to study cnf, right? Well, what writer do you know who is logical? Of course, there was no logic in it, no more logic than you’d find in the colors of a tie-dyed shirt, except that I’ve had several personal essays published during the past year, and it suits me to write short true pieces.

 

A few weeks before the workshop, participants receive what is termed the worksheet. It consists of 20-25 pages of work from each participant. These pages may not be published work, nor should the work be brand new, but should be edited as well as the writer can manage on his own. Each participant is required to read and annotate the pages once, to read the pages a second and third time, and finally to write at least one-half page of comments or suggestions about each piece. This is the most thorough consideration of her work a writer could hope for, except for the one-on-one she will receive from her mentor during the remainder of the semester.

 

Sena Jeter Naslund is the Director of the Spalding writing program, and she sets the tone and philosophy of the workshop and teaching: be positive, be generous with praise, yet, be objective with suggestions for improvement if you think improvement is needed. On opening night of each residency she always says, “Your competition is not in this room. It’s over in the library.” It is a known fact that if you start a critique with a negative comment, the rest of what you say will not be heard. It’s human nature. So the student whose work is last in the worksheet is the first to start the critique and everyone chimes in with what they perceive as the strengths of the piece. Following that are suggestions for change. Finally, the author is allowed, not to argue his points, but to clarify any huge misunderstandings or ask questions of the group.

 

That final step in the one-hour critique is the weak point of most groups I’ve been a part of. Authors, if given half a chance, will defend what they’ve written and how they’ve written it until the group grows long in the tooth. That seems so strange to me. In this case group members have paid good money to be in the workshop so it behooves them to accept as much as they can and at least consider the suggestions. A mentor at Spalding said it well, “Trust the impulse, but question the suggestion.” As the author you are always free not to do what is suggested to improve the work, but as the author you would be smart to take a second look if more than one person is confused after reading the same portion of your manuscript. It is always the author, and only the author, who will know what kind of ointment to apply to the ailing lines. Sena told me once that you should think of revision not only as cutting away material but also as adding to the material. Clarification is good either way.

 

On the last meeting day of the workshop, each participant is asked to revise one page according to the suggestions given by the group. The digital world has changed everything. Ellie had us post our revised pages into Dropbox so that we could view them on our computers or iPhones with a code we were provided for Wi-Fi while in Reid Hall. It was amazing to see how the other seven students had incorporated our suggestions for change into their work, and what a striking difference it made.

 

 

Next week, Kathleen will share some of her writing and special techniques to make your writing pop.

 

 

 

Mahala

 

Kathleen Thompson on Writing in Paris

What a pleasure it is to add Kathleen Thompson's post to our archives. I've divided Kathleen's beautiful piece into her insights into Paris, Spalding University, and her writing, so you will have the opportunity to enjoy her piece and absorb her ideas over several blogs.

 

Kathleen Thompson holds an MFA in Fiction from Spalding University. She has three published poetry books and a truckload of unpublished fiction. Her novel Remembering Fire is listed in the top ten of the Tarcher/Penguin Top Artist Awards. I encourage you to read more about Paris at her blog at www.weldbham.com or www.wordspinningbykathleen.blogspot.com.

 

Writing (or Not) in Paris

Kathleen Thompson

Hemingway could not write about Paris while he was there but wrote about Michigan. He wrote that he hoped to write about Paris when he got back to Michigan. I wrote very little while in Paris in July 2012 for twenty-one days. I intended to. I promised an on-going blog for WELD. I promised a blog about writing to Mahala. And I had hoped to expand on the twenty-page worksheet I’d sent to the Spalding U. MFA workshop. But there was too much living to be done in Paris. Too much eating (can you spell macaroons and glace?); too much to experience for the first time (putting love locks on a bridge over the Seine with a grandson); too many art museums, too much talking to do with my soul mates who also write—not to mention the writing workshop. Toujours perdrix! Too much of a good thing. Literally, always turkey. 

 

 Heavy sets of double doors intrigue me along the streets of Paris—another opportunity for me to hone my speculation skills for fiction writing. I saw a few doors open into courtyards of homes or flats, but the doors I got to know best in July, two black doors at 4 Rue Chevreuse on the left bank, opened into a sunny courtyard with a rectangular rose garden in the center. One could write a dissertation on doors and gardens alone. On either side of the open courtyard were classrooms belonging to Columbia University and known as Reid Hall. Spalding University’s MFA in Writing Program would be meeting there for their ten-day summer residency.

 

Our hotel, the Trianon Rive Gauche, was located on the Rue de Vaugirard near the Parthenon and several blocks away from St. Michele and the Seine River. The Seine runs northwest across France for 473 miles and empties into the English Channel. What always confused me about the left and right banks of Paris was looking at the map and having the river look like a large horseshoe. Why not the top and bottom banks, or the north and south banks? But, no, confuse this Southern girl and call them the left and right banks. So here it is for you who have a similar confusion: it is the way the river runs, northwest, that dictates the left and right banks; once you’ve figured that out it’s rather simple. I could write this whole blog about the river and its locks of loves on the bridges, the book stalls that line the river, and its boat tours—ah, but we’re about writing here.

 

To get to Reid Hall, you could walk down Vaugirard, turn right on Rue de St. (son as in song) Michele and walk all the way down Rue de Champs Notre Dame, or Montparnasse, parallel streets, and then weave your way toward Reid Hall between those two streets. Or you could take one of several walking paths through the Luxembourg Gardens. We had transportation passes for the bus or the metro, but the walk through the Gardens was not to be missed. It was dizzying with its shaded seating areas, its various fountains, including patron saint Saint Geneviève who saved Paris from Attila’s Huns and ponds, and the profuse flowers.

 

It was a hot walk if you left the shade of the trees. Have you ever seen rows of trees shaped/pruned like shrubs? That discussion would take me to the Eiffel Tower and then I’d never get around to discuss writing. Air conditioning is no big deal in Paris but the cool, rainy weather that we woke up to on our arrival changed to something like an Alabama heat wave by mid-residency. So we were happy for third floor windows in Reid Hall, and sometimes a floor fan for comfort.

 

Writing. No more digressions. (Will be in next week's post.)

 

Mahala