Listen up! by Eric Beetner

 Do you have any tips for making dialog more realistic? And for making it pop?

My number one tip for anyone seeking to make their dialogue more realistic is simply this: Listen.

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Go places and listen to the way people talk. Hear the difference in how two people who know each other well speak versus two strangers. Listen to the difference in people with different power dynamics like a boss and employee. Hear how that employee talks when the boss isn’t around. Listen to regional dialects, little sayings, inflections, word usage. Every part of America, and indeed the world, has its own bespoke idiosyncrasies. 

If you take the time to listen to the voices of someone like your character, or from the same place, then you will hear that unique voice you can use to make your characters read authentically.

But you don’t want everyone to sound the same. Be aware of making characters unique. Some people use filler words (like, y’know, um, uh) and some don’t. Some people stutter or refuse to use profanity. Any little quirk like that can make that character sound unique even in a sea of other dialogue. Embrace it. 

And don’t be afraid of letting your characters speak incorrectly. We don’t always follow rules of grammar in our speech, and even on the page and with the most ruthless editor, it can be more forgiving. I know plenty of people that never quite put a period on a sentence. They drift off with a “so…” or “and…yeah. Y’know?” You can use these quirks to your advantage.

If you do your listening, you’ll find that often people switch tenses during a story. You can use this in dialogue and it still reads clearly, where in prose it might not.

If someone is telling me about how they almost got in a car crash on the way to our lunch meeting, real-world dialogue might sound like:

“So I’m on my way over here and this, like, red van comes out of nowhere and ran a red light. I swear, he almost rammed right into me and I’m like, “Dammit!” And I slam on the brakes and skid for, like, ten feet. When I finally came to a stop I was only a foot away from the curb and a guy on a bike. He looks at me like, “woah, dude” and I’m like, “You saw that, right?” So yeah, that’s why I’m late. It was crazy. But I’m okay, so…”

Tenses change, POV changes, there are sentence fragments. A whole lot of rule breaking, grammar-wise. But in dialogue it reads so that you can hear it in your head in a true sounding voice.

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If you listen not just to the sounds of voices or the specific word choices, you’ll find that people don’t often lay out exactly what they’re thinking or even their meaning in what they say. We tend to obscure and hide much of what we mean, letting facial expressions or implications do much of the work. This keeps your dialogue from sounding like exposition. We don’t narrate our lives to our partners in every day life. We let them fill in the gaps, and a writer should be comfortable doing that, too. Focus on what is not said and find the ways to get that info across in non-dialogue driven ways. Dialogue can be the thing that elevates your story or makes it sound uniquely you, but it can also be a crutch to dole out story points and over-clarify your plot. Most false-sounding dialogue falls into this category. Someone simply laying out what would be obvious to anyone in the scene.

“That door is closed!”

Yeah, no kidding, Sherlock. Anyone in the scene could tell that and the writer’s job is to put the reader in the room with the characters. So dialogue that sounds like scene description is bad dialogue. Dialogue shouldn’t force a reader to look somewhere or focus on something about to happen, or recount something that has just happened. Let it go, because the person in that scene sure would.

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If you plan on writing about a specific region, do your homework. Don’t rely solely on a Hollywood version of dialect. Language is ever-evolving and even in the most specific regional dialect, words and phrases are falling in and out of favor. Keep up with the new slang, the stuff that would mark someone as older or younger, as a native or a tourist.

Simple things like dropping a g on words like singin’ or fishin’ have a way of showing up in our heads as dialect already. Chances are you read both those words with some sort of southern drawl. Same as if I have a character call something ‘wicked pissah’ you might read that in a Boston accent. 

Going too far or overdoing it can end up working against you, though. An actor can go into a cartoonish version of an accent on screen and the same happens on the page if you insist on typing out every accented word phonetically. It reads as caricature, not character, so use sparingly. Once a person is established in an accent or a speech pattern, the reader does a lot of the work for you. 

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So get out there and do some eavesdropping. Bring a notebook and makes some notes, or maybe do some recording on the sly. Watch news reports from certain areas to hear how locals speak. Watch documentaries. Soak it all in and then you’ll be free to reproduce it on the page and it will play out in the reader’s mind in a colorful display of unique voices to populate your stories. The readers will thank you for it.

I Don’t Hear Dialogue the Way You Do—So I Write It Differently

  

Do you have any tips for making dialogue more realistic? And for making it pop?

Most writers are told to focus on voice—cadence, rhythm, the way a line sounds. That works for many people. It’s just not how I experience dialogue, and that difference shapes the way I write it.

If I had to translate my approach into practical advice, it would be this: don’t rely on dialogue to carry emotion by itself. Build the conditions that make even simple lines feel charged.

I came to that approach out of necessity.

I have profound hearing loss, though not in the decibel range for vowels, which would have affected the way I speak. What I often miss are high-frequency consonants—S, F, TH, K, and T. Translation: conversation can feel like solving a puzzle in real time. I rely heavily on lip reading and body language. In crowded spaces, where I can’t track every face, I miss things—punchlines, shifts in tone, entire turns in a conversation.

Over time, that changes how you interpret speech. You stop trusting sound as the primary carrier of meaning. You start reading everything else: posture, distance, pacing, silence.

English adds another layer. It’s not my first language, and it’s not where my emotions naturally live. As an associative synesthete, I experience languages differently—English registers as gray to me, while Spanish feels mustard yellow, Italian green. English is stress-timed, irregular, often unpredictable and chaotic. I had to memorize how words sound rather than intuit them. So I don’t experience English as inherently expressive. I experience it as neutral material.

That’s the foundation of how I write dialogue.

Tip 1: Treat dialogue as behavior, not performance.
I don’t write lines as if they’re being performed with perfect tonal nuance. I write them as actions inside a situation. A line of dialogue is something a character does, not just something they say.

Tip 2: Build the environment before the line.
Before characters speak, I establish a field for the dialogue to exist in—temperature, texture, movement. These carry emotional weight that tone of voice might otherwise provide.

For example:
“The subtle creak of the door… the slow hum of the overhead fan. The room was warm… almost hypnotic.”

By the time a character says, “Let me in,” the line already has charge. The emotion isn’t in how it’s said—it’s in the space it enters.

Tip 3: Let simplicity carry weight.
Because I’m not relying on vocal nuance, my dialogue tends to be compressed:

“Not that.”
“What?”
“Let me in.”

Simple lines become powerful when they’re supported by context, silence, and physical proximity. “Realistic” dialogue isn’t always about mimicking speech—it’s about capturing intention.

Tip 4: Translate emotion into physical sensation.
Instead of trying to render subtle shifts in tone, I map emotion onto the body and environment:

“Like pressing a question into his skin.”
“Taut as a wire.”
“Static before a storm.”

For me, tension, attraction, and conflict register as pressure, heat, distance. That’s more precise than trying to approximate how something sounds.

Tip 5: Use what isn’t said.
Because I often miss parts of spoken language, I’m very aware of absence—pauses, hesitations, silence. Those gaps carry meaning. Let your dialogue leave room for the reader to feel what isn’t explicitly stated.

This is especially true in crime fiction, where tension often lives in what isn’t said—interrogations, confrontations, moments where silence does as much work as speech.

So when people ask how to make dialogue feel real or make it pop, my answer is this: don’t isolate the words. Dialogue is one layer in a larger sensory system. Meaning comes from how those words interact with space, movement, and tension.

The line itself can be minimal. The impact comes from everything around it.

I Hear You

 

Do you have any tips for making dialogue more realistic? And for making it pop?

Writing dialogue is my favorite part of the writing process. Making it feel realistic can be the difference between a memorable character and one that comes off flat and forgettable. My best tip for writing realistic dialogue has nothing to do with the actual writing, but instead is happening everyday all day all around us. It’s the listening.

 Whether I’m on a train, bus, or walking through a park, I’m always listening, snatching up interesting turns of phrases and storing them away like treasure to be pulled out and used when the appropriate character emerges, much like a magpie.

When I’m watching TV or reading a book, or even listening to a music, I’m learning how people talk to one another who aren’t necessarily in my everyday orbit. I’m not just listening to the words they are saying, but also how.

I’ve heard TV rots your brain, but it also is a portal that can transport you to places you may not ever get to visit. Maybe you can’t hop a flight to Paris on a beautiful spring afternoon, but your TV can, or your bookshelf. And if you can’t go there in person, what better way to immerse yourself in language that can only expand your dialogue toolbox.

So, my hint to writing more realistic dialogue is, if you want your dialogue to feel authentic, however, you get there, go. To the places where you can hear and absorb the language you’re trying to represent. We’re all familiar with the term, write what you know. It’s almost the Golden Rule for writers. Why should that be any different for dialogue.

I wouldn't be caught dead in first-person by Faye Snowden

Which narrator do you prefer to write? To read? First or third? Which is more powerful? More trustworthy? Interesting? Easier to write? More fun to write? 

This week’s question reminds me of a burrito supreme with rice, beans, carnitas, sour cream, guacamole and fajita vegetables wrapped in a supersized flour tortilla and smothered in red sauce. There is no way you can eat all that in one sitting, so I’m going to slim it down some.

Which narrator do I prefer to write?

When I first decided to write a novel, I did what any self-respecting Capricorn project manager would do. I bought books on how to write a novel. One of my favorites was The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray. Soon others joined my bookshelf including The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery by the same author, and later How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. My first novel, which shall rename nameless because of reasons, was borne from the advice in these books. Due to my unabashed addiction to books on writing craft, these first purchases soon had friends including Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and more recently Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark (a new favorite).

Somewhere in the thousands of pages of advice I learned that one of the first things required in crafting a novel is to determine the point of view of your narrator. That broke my brain. For a moment I thought about going back to poetry because casting about for the exact and original and unexpected phrase to describe an ordinary sunset would be easier than trying to determine the POV. 

In those beginning days, part of me wanted to try first person, and I did for a while. But at the time I was already dealing with imposter syndrome. I was terrified that I would reveal a vulnerability that I wasn’t ready to share with the world, and someone would ask me in a sly voice, “When you say I in your book, you really mean you, don’t you?” Maybe it’s because the first ever short story I published was written in the first-person using experiences from my own life. After reading the story, a co-worker said to me, “Life must have been tough for you. Looks like you are doing okay now.”  Can you imagine? That’s like running into your boss in your neighborhood supermarket sans make-up wearing dirty sweat pants, and a t-shirt that says, “I’m a goddam delight.” Since then, I shun first person POV the same way I do 2-hour policy update meetings at work. (For the record, I own no such t-shirt. Trust me.)

Which is most powerful to write?

I do like first person because it helps you find the voices of your characters and their view of the world you’ve created for them. I like to think of voice in literature as clues to the narrator’s personality. You know something about them by the way they talk, the words they use, how long or short their sentences are, the rhythm of their speech.

Here are two examples of voice from short stories I have written.

From One Bullet. One Vote.

Willie Mae sat at the head of the Sunday dinner table wrapped in skirts and shawls even in the boiling heat of the dining room. So old and so cold even in summer, Willie Mae thought, as if a body’s getting ready for the grave.

 From Althea

For the past few weeks, he’d been a regular at a cocktail bar on Durant near the university. He liked the fancy bartender in his black vest and bow tie, enjoyed the way he kept calling him “sir.” The bartender had introduced himself several times—Lester or Sylvester or some shit—but Quint couldn’t remember. He just knew that the guy was easy to talk to and kept his opinions to himself.

 How would you describe these two characters from these passages, or the kind of world they inhabit?

If a scene or text is stilted, I’ll switch to the first person until I have a good rhythm going and the words appear alive. Then I rewrite the entire thing in close or omniscient third depending on the piece. Thank goodness for other choices!

Which POV is best for the story you want to tell?

I’ve learned over the years that the POV decision is partly based on what feels right to you as a writer. It’s instinctual. But it’s also a craft decision, a technical tool that you can use to impact your readers. The best advice I’ve seen on this subject, including how to make the POV decision, comes from Professor Jennifer Cognard-Black in her course Great American Short Stories: A Guide for Writers and Readers. With numerous examples and practical exercises on everything from why the short story matters to imagery, she also defines and discusses POV and how to use it as a tool. For example, she urges writers to consider, “…both who is telling the story and why the story may be best told from that perspective.”  I learned through her course the other issue I had with the first person POV was the challenge to dramatize the story, to show not tell. Cognard-Black says this is a common pitfall of the first-person narrative, while the third-person POV is easier to dramatize because it is “…always an active perspective...” I’m not going to say anything more about the course, because if you are interested in writing, especially short fiction, you should check it out.

I still haven’t gotten around to writing in first-person but I no longer find it daunting. Maybe one day I’ll start the story in first person and forget to rewrite it in third. We shall see. Until then, Bon Appétit.

P.S. Think about the POV of half this blog post, especially the second half, and guess why it alludes to my almost-conquered phobia of writing in first-person. If you come close to the answer, I will send you a free e-book of “A Killing Breath.” Just post your answer in the comments. 

I Me Mine or They Them Theirs? from James W. Ziskin

Which narrator do you prefer to write? To read? First or third? Which is more powerful? More trustworthy? Interesting? Easier to write? More fun to write?

I love writing first person narrations, especially in longer-form fiction. I’ve written third-person in short stories, but all my novels are written in the first person. My latest book, THE PRANK (July 2026), is the first time I’ve used two narrators: thirteen-year-old Jimmy Steuben and his seventh-grade English teacher, Patti Finch. In truth, if you count the newspaper articles I’ve dropped in here and there, you could argue there are three narrators in THE PRANK. And there’s even a brief guest narrator at the end of the book, the Hephaestus, New York chief of police. But he only handles one chapter, so we won’t count him.

What I like most about first person narrators is that they have an agenda. They may be hiding a secret or perhaps they have an axe to grind. Maybe they’re funny or observant in a quirky way. Or unreliable. What they’re not is neutral. They’re in the middle of the action. 

When discussing narrators, I often say that every word they write tells us something about the story AND about themselves. That doesn’t happen with a third-person narrator. Which is not necessarily a negative, but it’s a difference. Personally, I like it when the person telling the story has a dog in the fight. It gives the author a handy tool to ratchet up tension or conflict. And I believe it adds volume and dimension to characters, at least to the narrator. Do readers ever complain that a first-person narrator is paper thin? Maybe, but I would guess it’s less common than complaints about other characters being flat in a story. When you’re the one in the driver’s seat, you make the turns and decide when to brake and when to hit the gas. You—your character/narrator—are the driver, not simply a passenger.

So let’s take a look at how my first-person narrators handle some details differently in THE PRANK. First is a newspaper article—a Greek chorus, if you will—that narrates the inciting incident of my story:

As one would expect from a newspaper piece, this article gives the reader the known facts of the incident and little else. It’s great background for what happened, but there’s no emotion or personal agency here.

A later newspaper article illustrates how the reporter and my two narrators use very different voices to give information about one of the electrocution victims:

The newspaper:

Seventh grader Arthur “Artie” Lionel was a popular, fun-loving boy who followed the Hephaestus High School Red Raiders teams with fanatical devotion. He also rooted for the New York Giants, Yankees, and Knickerbockers. Doubleday gym teacher Stanley Litwaw recalled him as a fast runner, good rope-climber, and scrappy second baseman on the baseball field. “ He had a good glove,” he said. “And he was a fair underhanded foul-shooter on the basketball court.”

Teachers remembered Artie as punctual and polite. His parish priest, Fr. Anselmo, said he was a faithful, pious communicant at St. John’s on Washington Avenue and had served two years as an altar boy.

Color code: yellow=vanilla reportage. Human interest.

            green=faint praise used as filler

Jimmy Steuben, thirteen-year-old main character/narrator reacting to the article:

Well, that stuff about Artie was a load of bull. He rode the bench on the baseball team and was about as fast as a turtle when it came to running. And if managing to hit the rim on one out of ten foul shots was “fair,” then—okay—he was a fair shooter. Sure, he was an altar boy, but only because his ma made him do it. He always told Booker and me that the priest was a pain in the ass. Took too much time telling Artie to comb his hair and smooth his vestibules. I think that’s what he said his altar boy clothes were called. More mumbo jumbo. I saw Father Anselmo a couple of times. Weirdo with a sweaty forehead and Coke-bottle glasses. And Artie a pious communicant? Are you kidding me? He told me him and the other kids once put green JELL-O in the holy water. It was pretty funny, he said. Didn’t sound too “pious” to me. I would’ve loved to see that, though. Green JELL-O in the holy water.

Color code: orange=humorous, deprecating remark

            pink=slang, bad words typical of a 13-year-old                       boy in 1968 

            blue=malapropism or bad grammar

Patti Finch, seventh-grade teacher and other main character/narrator:

Artie…lacked maturity, yet he was one of the taller boys. Good looking with plenty of charm, he nevertheless would tease the girls and posture like a peacock at times, acting as if it were his birthright as a boy to expect attentions and indulgence from the females he wanted to impress. I heard he’d told his friends he’d felt up one of the girls in the class. That disappointed me. Oh, not that he had curiosity and desires. Those were the most natural things in the world for a pubescent boy. No. But bragging and besmirching the poor girl’s name, that was too much. I wanted to slap him for it when I heard it. Now that was all forgotten.

 

    Color code: gray=higher-register, descriptive language,                          appropriate for a teacher to use

Here, the newspaper sticks to the facts, but Jimmy’s personality shines through in his version. For one thing, he doesn’t seem as upset as you might expect about his pal Artie’s death. And for another, he betrays his feelings about religion and his own education with the words he uses. Patti uses better vocabulary and longer, more-complicated sentences, but she’s not afraid to employ some popular language of the time, e.g. “to feel up a girl.” And she shares a personal opinion teachers might not say aloud today, to wit wanting to slap her student.

All of this discussion of different voices should seem obvious and unnecessary, yet sometimes narrators can sound alike. Or maybe they have the exact same sense of humor. It’s important to try to avoid such pitfalls, of course.

One more example from my two narrators, Jimmy and Patti. As background information, I point out that, following the tragic electrocution deaths of the aforementioned Artie Lionel and a teacher named Rick Voohrees, Jimmy and Patti wind up spending lots of time together over Christmas break 1968. The secret that fuels the suspense in my story and in my narrators’ minds is that Patti was secretly dating Rick Voohrees and, unbeknownst to her, Jimmy Steuben is responsible for the accident that killed him and Artie. Patti’s intentions, while selfish perhaps, are not salacious in any way. Jimmy, on the other hand, has other ideas, just as you’d expect from a thirteen-year-old boy.

Patti

Jimmy was polite and friendly, and I think maybe he liked me more than simply as his teacher. A girl learns to recognize the looks from men and boys, after all. The leers, the stares, the open-mouth and vacant eyes… Some men are wolves when pursuing a girl, but Jimmy was sweet and innocent about it. I knew he wasn’t thinking of seduction or sex; he was too young and naïve for that. His was a puppy love, I figured, and I felt flattered that he was attracted to an “old lady” like me. Still, I had to remind myself to be careful, or next I’d be the teacher suspected of inappropriate “fraternization” with a young student.

Jimmy

“You’re a very sensitive young man,” she said to me. “I believe you feel things other boys your age wouldn’t understand.”

Yeah, I was sensitive. And all I could think was that I was feeling good and hot for her, right there in the kitchen on Christmas Eve. Oh, I’d never have the guts to make a pass at her, but that’s what I was thinking. She would never be interested in a thirteen-year-old kid anyways, even if I was going to be fourteen next month.

           Color code: red=descriptions of Jimmy’s feelings                                towards Patti

So which is better, first- or third-person narration? I’ll go out on a limb here and say neither one. They’re both strong in different ways. I’m happy to read both. Why, then, have I written only first person in my novels? Dunno. Maybe I enjoy exploring the personalities of my main characters from the inside.

I look forward to a spirited debate in the comments section.

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THE PRANK…enigmatic and unnerving. The pace never flags for a second. This is some masterly plotting. I loved it.”

—Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

 

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

 

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,” THE PRANK features a charming but volatile thirteen-year-old named Jimmy Steuben. He befriends his seventh-grade English teacher, Patti Finch, just days after her boyfriend is killed in an electrocution accident while hanging Christmas lights on his roof. Patti desperately needs respite from her grief, and a chance encounter with Jimmy provides just that. Ignoring the dangers of a potential scandal, the mismatched pair begins spending time together over Christmas break. Patti finds solace in Jimmy’s company; Jimmy discovers desire and infatuation. But what Patti doesn’t know is that it was Jimmy who caused the tragic accident that killed her lover.

From two-time Edgar Award finalist, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winner James W. Ziskin, THE PRANK releases July 2026.

PLACEHOLDER—NOT THE OFFICIAL COVER

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The Voices in My Head — Come On In!

Do you write with multiple narrators? If so, do they have distinctly different voices? And if you don’t use multiple narrators, here’s a question for you: Which do you prefer to write—and to read—first person or third? Which feels more powerful? More trustworthy? More interesting? Easier to write? More fun?

By Dietrich

I like to use multiple narrators to explore the colliding perspectives within a story. Shifting viewpoints allows readers to see the same event through contradictory lenses, keeping tension high and the pace moving.

Jumping between characters reveals their motivations, blind spots, and raw desperation. It makes time jumps and location changes feel organic while staying rooted in character. I often experiment with blending first- and third-person in early drafts, but I eventually commit to whichever serves the story best.

Making characters distinct is key. In the early stages, I work at it; once they come alive, they take over and do much of the work themselves.

I aim for a neutral narrative voice—tight, punchy, and free of authorial intrusion—unless I’m deep inside a character’s head. An older, world-weary ex-cop might think in the gravelly, resigned rhythms of Nobody From Somewhere. A reckless young crook might sound jittery and profane, like in The Get. The shady figures in Crooked offer a chilling casualness that "good guys" lack. Whether male or female, young or old, the goal is authenticity—not slight variations of the same voice.

I gravitate toward the third person. It provides the freedom to move the camera, weave subplots, and build suspense through what characters don’t know. First person is intimate and immediate—putting the reader in the shotgun seat—but it can feel restrictive with a large ensemble cast.

Sometimes I experiment with both to heighten contrast: raw confession in first person against cooler observation in third. A great example of this is Slaughterhouse-Five.

Which is more powerful? For me, third person usually wins. It delivers gut-punch revelations while letting the subtext breathe. As for trustworthiness, neither is inherently reliable—unreliable narrators exist in both. However, first person feels more seductive because the reader is trapped inside a potentially warped worldview—think A Clockwork Orange or The Catcher in the Rye.

Third person feels smoother to write, like directing an ensemble cast rather than performing a monologue. It allows for more complexity and surprise. Still, I can’t imagine the masterpieces of Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain working in anything but first-person. 

The narrator’s voice must serve the story, not overshadow it. I’ve scrapped early drafts to switch perspectives when the original approach didn’t click. I try to keep my own views in check, though a sliver often sneaks in.

It’s about staying fresh and avoiding the same old road. If the voice doesn't pull me in while I’m writing, it won’t pull the reader in either. Fiction thrives on a voice that is distinct, honest, and sometimes dangerous. When it clicks, the whole thing sings.

First Person Problems - by Matthew Greene

Which narrator do you prefer to write? To read? First or third? Which is more powerful? More trustworthy? Interesting? Easier to write? More fun to write?

As a playwright, I used to think first person narration would come most naturally to me. After all, I traffic in dialogue, putting words into the mouths of others. One of the more satisfying parts of the writing process, I think, is discovering a character's vocal tics and habits, expressing thoughts in a way I never would. I love writing dialogue in my books and stories—it's the part that feels most natural, that flows most easily.

My first book was written in first person, with that deep POV that's key to cozy mysteries. But early feedback from editors and beta readers gave me some alarming news: my protagonist's voice wasn't coming through! And here I thought "voice" was the one part of the prose puzzle that I wouldn't have to worry about. 

As I set out to remedy this problem, I did all the things you might expect. I read each chapter aloud, casting myself as Tasha Weaver. I broke up long, clinical paragraphs of narration, opting to let Tasha editorialize as she told the story. I studied reality TV and the "talking heads" that provide commentary and character simultaneously. And through it all, Tasha got her voice.

(Of course, when I look back at that novel and work on its follow-up, I can't help but cringe a bit at some of the blander passages and wonder if there was more I could have done to distinguish my amateur sleuth. But we live and learn.)

When the time came to start a new project, I defaulted to first person narration. I had some hard-won experience, and I wanted the narrative to feel human and dynamic. But much to my dismay, I started feeling the same issues sprouting up. This protagonist's voice was flat and uninspired, recounting events rather than experiencing them. That's when I realized something...

I was getting stuck on a very simple—and entirely too literal—question: If my protagonist is narrating the book, how is he doing so? Does he know she's narrating? Is he literally sitting down at a keyboard to type this out? What if my character doesn't like to write? Should I imagine him dictating these words, like he's being interviewed for a documentary? Was I overthinking all of this?

Like I said, I was approaching this too literally. Maybe it's the fault of literary adaptations on film, where the screenwriter justifies expository narration by cutting away to a shadowy figure typing out the story years later. But when I thought about the protagonists I know and love, it was hard to imagine most of them sitting down to write a 70,000 word account of their adventures. So, how could I justify doing so in their voice?

I started to wonder if this was solely a "me problem." But, as it turns out, there's a term to describe the technique that had proven so elusive: unmediated first person. While a lot of first person narratives do imagine a scenario in which the narrator is literally writing the account and is aware of their readers (epistolary novels, for example, or Watson's narration of Sherlock Holmes), many present a voice that is more oral or internal in nature (Huck Finn or Patrick Bateman come to mind). It takes a reader directly into the narrator's mind without fretting about the mechanics of how these words ended up on the page.

The magic of fiction—go figure!

This realization has been so freeing, as I embark on this new first person project. (For the record, I got about 30,000 words into a draft in third person before I realized I needed to make the switch. Again, we live and learn.) I'm enjoying getting into this character's head and letting his voice come through, unencumbered by my overthinking. As is usually the case, the best work tends to happen when I get out of my own way.

PS: In the meantime, I wrote a short story in epistolary form that was included in Malice Domestic's Mystery Most Senior anthology this year. It's a fun one, so check it out!