How To Fail At Dialogue: The Realistic Method

Eigen foto Licentie Categorie:Afbeelding voedsel Categorie:Afbeelding cacao (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One day, my friend Sharon told me, "Carol, you are so cute. Do you know how often you use the word 'basically'?"

This horrified me. My sweet, and generally sarcastic, friend told me of a vocal tic I'd developed. She also confessed she didn't want to say anything because she knew I would quit using the term. I didn't fail her expectations.

When we write dialogue, we need to make our characters sound like a real human being, but as in every portion of writing, we must make it interesting and let's face it, our daily dialogue is usually mundane.

Here's an example:

"Hey, Neil, want some hot chocolate?"
"Um. Yeah. Okay, I guess."
"Want the mint flavored or plain?"
"Um, okay. Plain I guess."
"Here you go."
"Thanks."

Are you asleep yet? I am.

Good dialogue contains all elements of good plot. So how do you convey realistic dialogue without becoming banal?

1. Avoid vocal tics--the errs, ums, ahs--even when showing the hesitation of the character.
2.  If a pattern of speech is necessary, use it sparingly. If I used the word 'basically' continually, it gets annoying. However, if this helps characterize me, use it--sparingly.
3. Include only essential information. Don't ask if another character wants hot chocolate unless that action is essential.
4. Use dialogue to characterize. In my snoozer above, why is Neil drinking chocolate rather than coffee--every character drinks coffee.
5. Make sure dialogue advances the action, the conflict, the themes. If it doesn't, ask yourself why the reader needs it
6. Make the character interesting. Even if the character is a dullard, why do you include him or her in the scene? Give us an emotional reaction to him.

 Here's my dialogue rewritten following the above rules.

"Want a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, Neil?"
"Shouldn't you have that figured out by now?"
"Do you want mint or plain?"
"Uh-duh."
"We're out of plain, basically."
"Neil? Neil? Why aren't you answering me?"

Although no one will nominate the above dialogue for a Grace, Christie, Critics' Circle award, you can see the tension, the characterization, the conflict beginning to build. In my novels, I would sprinkle the word basically throughout the work, but never in the degree I used to use it in real life. Basically.

What dialogue idiosyncrasies drive you nuts?

The Bible Garden: The Easter Lily

I know the Easter lily is not native to Israel, and is a difficult cultivar for our region, but with Easter less than a week away, I want to devote this post to one of my favorite flowers. The Easter lily is the third most popular seasonal plant. It follows the poinsettia and chrysanthemum.


Never does an Easter pass without one of these on my table.


In Christian legend, lilies:

• are sometimes call "The Apostles of Hope"
• are said to have sprung up in the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ's blood hit the ground
• are also said to be the product of Eve's tears when she was banished from the Garden of Eden
• are seen as a symbol of purity

Horticulturally:

• Lilies originated in Japan
• They had been grown in Bermuda until disease wiped them out
• Most of our bulbs now come from the southern Oregon/northern California coast
• To prolong their blooms, remove the anthers before the pollen forms
• Keep cool, relatively well watered

You can plant your lily outside. Up here, I've had some re-blooming, but never to the glory of the potted plant.

Lilies, with their scent and milky purity are among my favorite flowers. What are yours?

How to Fail at Dialogue: The Tennis Method

You've heard it said,  use action beats when creating dialogue--avoid the ubiquitous said. Great advice when done properly, but when overused, the reader gets a stiff neck as though watching an over active tennis match.

A popular series, I won't mention any names, became a hit despite overusing interrupting beats. The author's dialogue ran something like this:

“Want a Coke?”Collin took her glass. "You could have a ginger ale."

“Another Scotch.” Torie propped her head in her hand. "That's what I really want.".

“Torie.” He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve had enough. How about a ginger ale?”

“Come on, Collin. I only had…” She smiled to win him over. “Three?”

“Try five. At least by my count." He nodded toward the dining area. "Who knows who you conned out there?”  ”

“S’your job to give me drinks.” She stood on the chair stretcher. “’Specially as I’m paying good tip money for ʼem.”

“Torie, you’re cute and fun, but not like this.” Collin turned away, smiled. "Have a coffee."

“Then I’m outta here." Torie sat. "Where’s my keys?”

“No keys, Torie." Collin wiped the bar. "I’m calling a cab for you.”

And so on and so on. With no variety and many unnecessary beats, we lose the sense of the dialogue and get whiplash. So what does an author do? Easy.

1. Use beats, but vary them as you do sentence and paragraph length. Some are longer, some are shorter.
2. Intersperse with straight action. If the action is essential, then devote a paragraph to it.
3. Make the action necessary. I've read plenty of books where people are nabbing cups of coffee and gripping coffee pots so frequently, I'm surprised they have any glassware or ceramic cups left. Additionally, the characters toss smiles and quirk eyebrows ad infinitum. They begin to appear as marionettes, not humans.
4. Find something other than eyebrows and mouths to move. It is true we concentrate on the face, but the constant lifting of eyebrows or quirking of smiles gets tiresome. I rarely note someone's raised brows.
5. Don't be afraid of said. Dialogue, like action and narrative, needs to be included for a reason. In a heated debate, the words are what humans notice, not the actions. You can use no beats, just words. Occasionally, to just clarify who is speaking at the moment, use a said. It worked for Hemingway (But, don't use it as often as he did), it can work for you.

Make your dialogue vital, and avoid the tennis match. Your readers will thank you for it. How do you make yours work?

Ecclesiastes 11:2: How to be Profligate

Corrugated (Photo credit: Andrea Kirkby)

"Be generous: Invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns.  Don't hoard your goods; spread them around. Be a blessing to others. This could be your last night" Eccl 11:1-2(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)

Like corrugated warts, storage barns have cropped up all over the countryside. People have so much junk, they now need to rent these pleated sheds to hold it all. If these hoarders are anything like me, those buildings hold cheap Christmas decorations (especially strings of lights with one burnt bulb so none on the string light), stuffed animals and worn-out sheets that have a few good uses left in them. Few hold the treasures you see discovered in Storage Wars.


How about you?  What would happen if you were to die tonight? Remember that old guy in the New Testament who built bigger barns to store all his goods? Didn't come to a good end.

_6300258 "Shed" (Photo credit: spootonium)

Why not try something decidedly un-materialistic? Give it away. Be generous. What can you gain?

• Space in your study
• A happy friend or neighbor who really needed that thingy
• A write-off on your taxes
• A few extra bucks for not having to rent/buy a:
• storage shed
• an addition to your house
• a bigger house
• in a bigger house, you'd have to rent a U-Haul to haul it all from the old place to the new
• in a bigger house, you'd have to buy more stuff to fill up the spaces.

Ecclesiastes is a tremendously happy book of the Bible. If we're profligate with God's blessings, great joy will fill us. 

How do you cast your bread on the water?   

Key to Failure in Writing

Proud As A Peacock

I loved the Dixie Chicks. Their sound crossed the line between old-time country and the contemporary. The use of the fiddle, the guitar work, the entire package worked for these classically trained musicians. Perhaps success came too easy for them and handed them their key to failure.

They should have understood their genre. Country fans love the USA and conservative values (mixed too frequently with whiskey and guns...but I digress). Repeatedly, the group bashed the United States.

No public feud breeds good publicity. The Chicks constantly bashed their colleague Toby Keith.

They'd be caught in a transgression, chastised, then apologize and repeat their errors. They thought they were too good to fail. But it wasn't true.

Perhaps the same could have been said about  Lindsay Lohan, Oscar Pistorius, Lance Armstrong, Rehoboam, Absalom and Saul--to name a few.

Hans Holbein d. J. - The Arrogance of Rehoboam - WGA11598 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What they suffer from, destroys our chances of a successful writing career.  

How? So glad you asked. It could probably be summed up in the battle cry:

 "What do they know?"

Have you given place to any of the following?

• several critique partners say something doesn't work. You reply, "What do they know?"
• too much is marked up in your sample critique, so you discard the whole thing.
• an editor wants you to change something--maybe a scene a bit too graphic for your audience. If you refuse, you are asking, "What do you know? You, of course, have a better handle on it.
• you're so good, you have no need to spend good money on courses--and what do the free ones, like those offered at ACFW have to offer? You know the material as well as the teacher.
• which brings me to the next point--you tell the instructor what he/she is doing wrong--how much more successful your way is.
• since God gave you the story, any changes will ruin the message--maybe even bring down His wrath on the one who refuses to accept it.
• you refuse to enter contests and see what seasoned authors and editors have to say because one judge, one time, was harsher than necessary.

I hate to say this, but I'm a good one for publicizing my foibles, I've been guilty of much of this. Do you know of any I've missed? (Of course, not about me--but useful for the general writing population.)

Platform Building: How to Fail

Image via CrunchBase

You got that coveted three-book deal with Penguin. You know that to ensure success, you have to build a platform, that is find potential customers. So you fire up your twitter feed, add people onto google+ and have exceeded one thousand friends on facebook. You set up HooteSuite, and you think you're in business.

English: Google+ wordmark (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But you fail. Why? Maybe it's because you:

1. post the same feed to all your social networks, so those who are linked to you see the same message over and over and over again.
2. highjack the feed with post after picture after re-post. Have you ever had a friend who constantly calls, texts, drops by? Can get tiring
3. never respond to anyone else's posts
4. never show the personal side of your life--just your livelihood

Image via CrunchBase

Platform building isn't about spamming the world. Until you're Jerry Jenkins, Justin Beiber or Julia Roberts, no one will care that your latest YA romance about poltergeists has just been released, unless the reader is a fourteen-year-old girl who followed the Twilight saga. Maybe.

Case in point. I run this fabulous blog. When I check the traffic sources viewing it, I discover only people from facebook or from search engines read it. Never from other social media sites. With my twitter and google+ accounts, I do what I said not to do. I only post that I have a new blog up, and the end result is no traffic.

However, on facebook, I interact with my "friends." I read the posts, laugh at the jokes and respond. Many of these people have become, if not real friends, more than just names. Those people visit the blog from time to time. And when I'm really lucky, share it.


Think smart about networking. Simply seeing your name scroll by will do nothing to build your platform.

What other things do we do that fail to build up our network?

Ecclesiastes 10:3: Ten things like folly

A Little Folly

"Dead flies putrefy the perfumer's ointment, And cause it to give off a foul odor; So does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor" (Eccl. 10:3).

My house sparkled. The floor spread before me, spotless, nary a speck of dust lay on my highly polished furniture, and sunlight sparkled through pristine windows. I inhaled deeply. And what did I smell? A dead rodent.

My country house had been plagued by one varmint, or maybe two. I tucked d-Con behind the plumbing under my sink, and a tiny mouse must have eaten deeply, the crawled into the walls and died.

The results? No matter how my house gleamed, the stench of decay ruined the effect.

What is a little folly like?

1. one tiny stain on a white shirt
2. a speck of lettuce between your front teeth
3. a smudge of mascara under the eyelids
4. a small crack on the driver's side windshield
5. cheap perfume in a crowded opera house
6. one dollar overdrawn the day before payday
7. one hair in your vichyssoise
8. one flu virus
9. a grain of sand in your running shoes
10. forgotten antiperspirant on a job interview

Can you add to this list? How are these things like folly?