Old Dog, New Tricks from James W. Ziskin

What writing lessons did you have to keep learning over and over?

Writers are often advised to kill their darlings. This is usually good advice. But, if you stop to think about it, you might be killing off some of your best writing. A line that could be quoted a hundred years from now…

Maybe that’s why I stubbornly refuse to learn that lesson, no matter how many times I try. Yes, I suppose I could be more succinct in my prose. And I know I tend to indulge in descriptions and diversions beyond what would seem ample to most writers. I follow my whimsy, the result of which is scenes that go on only slightly longer than the Ring Cycle. Those are my darlings. I enjoy writing such stuff. And why not? That’s what I hope readers will quote a hundred years from now.

I’ll give you an example from THE PRANK, which comes out in July 2026.

SETUP: Following the tragic electrocution deaths of a beloved teacher, Mr. Voohrees, and a seventh-grade student, Artie Lionel, the junior high school principal, Mr. Hinkle, hosts an assembly to commemorate the two victims. When Hinkle “outs” Miss Finch—another teacher—as Voohrees’s girlfriend, my thirteen-year-old narrator, Jimmy Steuben, reacts and describes the scene in his inimitable fashion. I’ve highlighted some of the extra, non-essential “darlings” he serves up.

Jesus H. Christ, what the hell was Hinkle blathering about? I was only a seventh grader, but even I figured it wasn’t right to talk about a dead guy’s girlfriend in front of six hundred students, teachers, and guests. For one thing, who the hell knew they (Miss Finch and Voohrees) were an item? Not me. Miss Finch never mentioned it during our tutoring sessions, but why would she? It was private, right? And I never saw them together except the way you might see any two teachers in the same place at school.

 

Take the music teacher, Old Lady Underwear, for instance. Actually her real name was Underwood, but you know how kids are. Anyways, I saw her talking to Mr. Truax, the handsome young math teacher, lots of times in the hallway, but I wouldn’t say they were dating because of that. I mean Old Lady Underwear was seventy-five if she was a day, and Mr. Truax was maybe twenty-eight. He could’ve probably picked the prettiest girl in town any night of the week. Or maybe the second prettiest girl, since Mr. V would’ve got the prettiest, what with his good looks, cool car, and on account of he was rich.

 

But back to Mr. Hinkle. There he was making it sound like Miss Finch and Mr. V were going steady or were engaged or something. No one sitting near me got it either. Kids were looking confused and acting like that was news to them. And what the hell was he driving at? Now everyone in the hall was thinking what Mr. V and Miss Finch were getting up to, instead of feeling bad that Artie and him were dead.

 

I glanced around the auditorium, looking for Miss Finch, but I didn’t see her. There was a lot of muttering going on, and I figured she must’ve been embarrassed and ran out of the place. Who wouldn’t? What was Mr. Hinkle going to say next? That Artie felt up Janey Silverman at the Harvest Dance in October? Yeah, we all knew about that. Not that she had a lot to feel up, but it was still pretty cool. Of course touching a twelve-year-old girl’s chest wasn’t something the school principal should be talking about in an assembly when he’s supposed to be saying words of comfort to a bunch of kids and their nosy parents. And he shouldn’t have been telling everyone Miss Finch was going out with Mr. V either.

 

And, to prove he never should’ve mentioned it, now I couldn’t help wondering if Mr. V had felt up Miss Finch. It was a natural thing to think about after remembering Artie and Janey Silverman, after all. And like my habit of laughing at serious occasions, I couldn’t stop myself. So there I was at a sad ceremony to honor Mr. V and Artie, thinking about Artie feeling up Janey Silverman and Mr. V feeling up Miss Finch, who looked like the girl in Playboy, only her hair was different. It wasn’t right. And it was Mr. Hinkle’s fault, not mine. He shouldn’t have brought up her name.

 

Strictly speaking, the highlighted yellow passages above have nothing to do with the actual assembly scene and could have been omitted. But they tell us so much about Jimmy, his worldview, his irreverence and morality, and his iffy grammar. Editors everywhere must be clamoring for this text to be expunged posthaste. Perhaps I should give it one more try to learn this lesson and kill my darlings. 

Ah, who am I kidding? That’s a new trick that I—an old dog—refuse to learn. I LIKE writing and reading this kind of padding. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: in THE PRANK, there’s more where that came from. And in the very same scene, including descriptions of a fistfight and split trousers right there on the floor of the auditorium. No, I reckon I’m too old and stubborn to learn a lot of new tricks. But what the heck, I’m going to be true to mine own self and write what I like to read. I fervently wish readers will enjoy reading about Old Lady Underwear and split trousers in my books as well.

 *****************

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

794

Welherrijwe

A Frequent Flyer

What writing lessons did you have to keep learning over and over?

By Dietrich

I’ve bumped into a few truths that didn’t stick the first time—or even the second. Some were as elusive as that one sock that always disappears in the dryer. But after enough laps around the track, a handful of lessons have sunk in.

Just start. I’ve learned not to wait for the perfect moment. Diving in beats staring at a blank page every time.

There’s no point fretting over deleted scenes or chapters that refuse to work. And whining about it won’t help.

When a sentence of “literary genius” starts holding an entire chapter hostage, it’s time to cut it. Sometimes I just have to kill that darling and bury it in the backyard next to the thesaurus and the adverb jar.

Recognize when something isn’t working. This is vital. Some days I’ll spend an hour perfecting a single scene. Other mornings, yesterday’s “brilliant” page looks like hot garbage. Effort doesn’t always equal progress, and I’ve learned to be okay with that.

“This time it’ll come out perfect on the first try” is a lie I’ve stopped telling myself. Expecting a flawless first draft is like hoping that first pancake will look like the ones pictured in the cookbook. I’ve learned to accept the tragic, lumpy mess for what it is, so I can enjoy sculpting it into something worth reading.

Momentum beats perfection. Every. Single. Time.

There is no magic formula. Creative writing isn’t paint-by-numbers. No one-size-fits-all system can reliably produce a masterpiece. Trust the process, not a checklist.

Mind the gap between my head and the page. Just because a scene is crystal clear in my mind doesn’t mean it will land that way for the reader. If the text needs an explanation in the margins, it just isn’t working yet.

“Show, don’t tell” is a great rule—until it isn’t. Following this advice too rigidly means my novel might turn into a 500-page travelogue where every leaf rustles with deep, heavy meaning. Swinging too far toward telling, I start sounding like I’m bored and reciting the phone book. I’ve realized the magic lives in that sweet spot in between. So, I show for impact and save the sensory details for the moments that actually matter to the heart of the story. And I tell for speed, using it as a shortcut to move through transitions and details that don't need a spotlight. There's no need to describe every shadow. I just need to give the reader enough of the right details to let their own imagination fill in the gaps.

Back at the start, I tried to sound literary, which made the prose read like the thesaurus had a stroke. Since then, I’ve learned raw is good, and voice isn’t something that I can invent through effort. It’s what was left over after I stopped trying too hard. When I finally got it right, I could read my pages aloud, feel the rhythm and clarity, without wanting to set the manuscript on fire.

Date the routine. Don’t marry it. I love writing at the same time each day, in the same place, with the same coffee mug. But life intervenes. Routines evaporate. Flexibility keeps the words flowing when the perfect conditions disappear.

Comparing my work to others is a total trap. Wondering why someone else’s story sparkles while mine reads like it was edited by raccoons is a losing game. 

Surrounding myself with like-minded people who support and inspire me makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Above all, the most important lesson I’ve learned is to just show up. Every morning. Consistently. And the rest will follow.

Confessions of a Wannabe Pantser - by Matthew Greene

What writing lessons do you have to keep learning over and over?

I'm not sure what it is about "pantsing" that is so appealing to me. 

Maybe it's the romantic image of writers touched by the muse, letting the words flow through them, creating works of genius unencumbered by any prior planning. Maybe it's a frustration with the drudgery of outlining, the mess of notecards spread across my office, the thoroughly un-sexy work of breaking story. Maybe I believe I'd be a better writer if I were more spontaneous, less methodical. Maybe that's why pantsing holds such allure.

Or maybe it's because I can't do it.

More accurately, I can't sustain it. When I have the magical spark of an idea, the first thing I want to do is dive into the writing process. Let's get these characters talking! Let's see what the opening scene looks like on the page! Let's let this momentum carry us through the entire manuscript!

The problem is, the momentum doesn't last. And before I know it, I've wasted thousands of words trying to find the story. I've let characters indulge in long stretches of dialogue as they explain themselves to me. I've let the narrative stall because there is no muse guiding the process. At least not for me.

Perhaps the truth is, outlines are my muse. Amorphous ideas turn to scribbles on a legal pad. Those scribbles turn to index cards shuffled into the order that feels right. And those index cards turn (if I'm doing things the proper way) in a detailed outline that can guide my process. Sure, I'd much prefer a toga-clad goddess whispering in my ear. But a Word document full of bullet points gets the job done all the same.

Still, every time I start a new project I question whether I need to go through all that. Sometimes a character is so clearly defined in my imagination, a story idea is so salient, it fools me into thinking I can skip the hard stuff. But over and over again, I learn that I'm not that kind of writer.

Over the past few weeks, I "pantsed" my way through 20,000 words of a new manuscript...only to learn once again that I was building without a foundation. Of course, I maintain that no time spent with your characters is ever wasted, but having to throw out all that work still hurts. Maybe someday I'll learn.

One tip I heard recently (in a TikTok from screenwriter Colby Day) may be the key to breaking this bad habit of mine. He acknowledged that sometimes when he's fired up about a new idea and wants to jump straight into writing, he'll give himself "a little treat" and write the scene(s) or sequence(s) that he can already see clearly. After that, he'll do the work of writing a full outline for everything else, guided by everything he learned from writing those initial pieces. No wasted time. No squandered momentum. I may just try it.

In the meantime, if you hear me say "I'm gonna try writing this one without an outline," please slap me in the face. Friends don't let friends write 20,000 words in vain.

Dialogue do's and don't's by Poppy Gee

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

I'm not sure dialogue-writing can be taught. I think writers have an ear for it, or they don't. But here are some tips I have learned from my own writing, from editing manuscripts for others, and from teaching creative writing. 

1. Eavesdrop. Listen. Write down interesting things people say. Especially people who have interesting, specific backgrounds. Sailors, farmers, doctors, artists, soldiers, for example, sometimes use language that is specific to their profession. Unique turns of phrase can make the dialogue colourful and memorable.

2. Start the scene late, end the scene early. This is advice for any scene, but especially important for dialogue. The reader doesn't need to hear people say 'hi, how are you, goodbye, catch you next time.'

3. Avoid phone conversations. I see this when I'm editing my students' work. Emerging writers will put potentially interesting conversations into a phone conversation. It's really boring, and a missed opportunity. Have your characters meet up in real life, it's a much more visual scene.

4. Don't info dump. No speeches. No characters relaying info that is being conveyed for the reader's sake. 

5. Use contractions to make it sound natural: I wasn't instead of I was not etc. 

6. Use said, or asked, rather than more creative words (bellowed, snivelled, squawked) which can suck oxygen from the writing. This is a fashion, in bygone eras writing was more flowery. Maybe it will change back one day. I've also heard writers say that you should be able to tell who is speaking by the sound of the dialogue; their point is that you don't need speech tags. I disagree a little bit. It's a courtesy to the reader, to make sure that it's easy for them to know who is speaking. So throw in a 'he said, she said' when it's helpful. 

7. Show don't tell. Instead of your character saying, 'I feel sick', have them coughing until their eyes water, throwing up under a tree, wearing a Covid mask, or losing a lot of blood.

8. Anytime the character is breathing, thinking about breathing, holding their breath, exhaling - hit delete. There are plenty of reader forums online where readers discuss how annoying it is to hear characters being hyper aware of their breath rhythms. When was the last time any of us was 'waiting to exhale?'!

9. Read your dialogue out loud.

10. Read. Some of my favourite crime writers for dialogue include Tana French, Allie Reynolds, Chester Himes, Angie Faye Martin, and (it's a cliche, sorry) Cormac McCarthy. 

"'Say, remember when that thing happened with which we're both au fait?' she queried unconvincingly" by Catriona

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

I just developed a workshop on this very topic and presented it for the first time - to SinC Grand Canyon Writers - so it's been on my mind, as I reflect on what I missed and what I could have put over better. Between that and my back ground in linguistics . . . settle in; I have many thoughts. 

And a fair few opinions. Because bad dialogue bothers me more than any other kind of sub-par fiction writing.

(That said, my first tip is to read what Angela, Gabriel and Eric have already said this week. Great stuff.)

So why does dialogue matter so much? For the reader, I think it's because you can skip dull description and the flattest narrative still tells you what’s happening but bad dialogue - clunky, tin-eared, ill-considered, unrealistic dialogue – screams that these people aren’t real and it would be a waste of time you caring about them.

For the book, for the contract between reader and writer - dialogue breathes life into a story. It breaks up slabs of prose. It’s refreshing to the readers’ eyes and brains. I reckon, if you’re tired and you turn a page, a block of narrative might see you reaching for the bookmark and lightswitch, but a string of short speeches . . . you read on.

For the story, for the writer’s craft, it’s a nifty way to smuggle in plot and it's better than anything else at revealing character. It’s the ultimate show don’t tell. Even better, we can have speech that shows what the character wants us to see and betrays what they're trying to hide. Oh, I love it. In crime fiction, that's a great way to plant clues.

My prime example of this - not from crime fiction - is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, from Pride and Prejudice. She thinks she's displaying her grandeur, wit and all-round spiffiness when she says things like "You have a very small park here" (mine is bigger, Miss Bennet). In fact, she's making herself look petty and ridiculous.

So I suppose my first acual tip is make sure there's more than one thing going on, every time a character opens their mouth. There usually is, in life.

Something I think should never be done via dialogue - no matter how tempting - is where a character backs their brain up to someone’s ears and tips out industrial loads of facts.  This is bad even when the facts are crucial to the plot; it’s unforgivable when the facts are just interesting and took hard library time for the author to learn. 

The title of this post highlights one method of info-dump so bad I kind of love it “Say, remember when . . .?”  is the worst! You can't have a character remind her listener of something that listener knows, so that we find out too. No exceptions. 

I tried to watch a Hallmark movie last Christmas. It was called the HOLIDAY SITTER and, a few scenes in, was one of the most egregious SRW info-dumps I've ever seen. Paraphrasing:

 

Husband: Our surrogate is in labour!

Wife: But the baby isn’t due for another three weeks!

Husband: Who will we get to babysit the older kids?

Wife: My parents aren’t back from their cruise till New Years’.

Husband: And my sister is in Europe.

Catriona: Kill me now.

I mean, no. Just no. And it's not only terrible. It's also lazy. Because getting background information over in dialogue isn't even hard. With a married couple, it's an especial breeze. All you need to do is add conflict. Have them bicker about whatever it is and no reader will ever find their chat unconvincing.

Watch this instead, when the time comes

Wait - as long as you make a bit of effort with the form as well as the content. If your characters talk in paragraphs of syntactically complex, orderly prose then no one's buying it. Real speech is discontinuous, repetitive and fragmented, with staggered turns - everyone answering the question before last - and a ton of padding. 

But the answer isn't to write real speech down and call it dialogue. Because, stripped of tone and body language, real speech is nigh-on impenetrable. (You know? Like how transcripts of certain verbose public figures' outpourings read like total bilge, when live recordings are only 80% bilge?) Good dialogue needs to find a balance between authenticity and comprehensibility. My tip is to write it like you think it would be in real life and then leave it for a while. When you read it over, change anything you find hard to follow. This is Reason 783 for letting your work sit a good while before you edit.

Finally, while we're on writing so bad it's adorable, I can't ignore tags and adverbs. I'm not a hardliner who thinks any speech tag except "said" is a crime and I don't even mind the odd modifying adverb - I've got a real soft spot for "crisply"; I think because it sums up a very particuar kind of (British) character. But there are limits. If I find myself reading a writer who can't see those limits in the rear-view mirror, it's always a lot of fun.

The undisputed King of Tags and Adverbs is a writer called Victor Appleton, whose character Tom Swift gave his name to the Swifty - "I've dropped my toothpaste," she said crestfallen - on account of how Appleton dedicated his life and soul to letting no bit of dialogue go untagged and unmodified. 

It's glorious stuff. At the beginning of Tom Swift and his Airship, after an explosion, Appleton has:

“Of course they are!” declared Tom, positively. 

"There was an explosion!" exclaimed Pete. 

And my favourite:

“Shut it off!” cried Tom, quickly. 

As opposed to all the times when you mildly suggest shutting it off. After an explosion.

Cx

 

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.

"  "

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.

" "

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.

"   "

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. 

"   "

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.