Teach-in

[Dianthus]

Hi, babe. How is your fine self?

Older and wiser, sweetie. How about you? What did you do to the shoulder?

 

[Mark_Ilaan]

Older and wiser, sweetie. How about you? What did you do to the shoulder?

Fell off a roof. Has life been treating you well?

 

[Dianthus]

Fell off a roof. Has life been treating you well?

Not really. I've written a sternly-worded letter but don't know where to send it.

I'm in rehab for my ankle. I feel your pain. (Not literally. I feel mine. It's in my ankle. )

Been anywhere exciting lately?

 

[SweetWitch]

With the other hand and a wooden spoon or chopstick.


Writing question: Everyone says 'let the dialogue tell the story, don't narrate'...How?

Stop encouraging the klutz, Di.

I've found it impossible to tell an entire story solely with dialogue. I think you have to be writing a play for such action. When telling a story, a certain amount of narration is required.

That being said, a great deal of a story can be told in dialogue. Two characters can lay down an emotional field in the landscape narrated by the writer. Narration can take many forms, as well. Two of the most widely used are active and passive. It's best to use an active tense, I think, to keep a reader engaged.

 

[Mark_Ilaan]

Not really. I've written a sternly-worded letter but don't know where to send it.

I'm in rehab for my ankle. I feel your pain. (Not literally. I feel mine. It's in my ankle. )

Been anywhere exciting lately?

What did you do to your ankle?

I'm supposed to be in Sicily this week, but . . .

Over the winter it was the Bahamas, but not much of anywhere else, and that was just vacation time.

 

[Dianthus]

Stop encouraging the klutz, Di.

I've found it impossible to tell an entire story solely with dialogue. I think you have to be writing a play for such action. When telling a story, a certain amount of narration is required.

That being said, a great deal of a story can be told in dialogue. Two characters can lay down an emotional field in the landscape narrated by the writer. Narration can take many forms, as well. Two of the most widely used are active and passive. It's best to use an active tense, I think, to keep a reader engaged.

I'm still a shut in, Molly. I like conversation.

I think Robert B. Parker was a master at the dialogue in his later Spenser books but it worked so well because the characters were already well known to the readers. There wasn't a lot of narration needed to describe the relationship between Spenser and Hawk, for example. The sentences said it all.

Too much passive tense and my brain disengages.

What did you do to your ankle?

I'm supposed to be in Sicily this week, but . . .

Over the winter it was the Bahamas, but not much of anywhere else, and that was just vacation time.

Slipped on an icy sidewalk. No more ligaments on the outside of that ankle, so I'm working to strengthen muscles. I am determined to roller skate again. (looks fierce)

Vacation time sounds good. Especially warm weather in winter.

 

[Mark_Ilaan]

Slipped on an icy sidewalk. No more ligaments on the outside of that ankle, so I'm working to strengthen muscles. I am determined to roller skate again. (looks fierce)

Vacation time sounds good. Especially warm weather in winter.

Yeah, Molly's still mad at me for running away from the bad weather and heading to the islands. I brought her back a beach towel. She threw it in my face.

You need to be more careful. You need a long, healthy body massage.

 

[Dianthus]

Yeah, Molly's still mad at me for running away from the bad weather and heading to the islands. I brought her back a beach towel. She threw it in my face.

You need to be more careful. You need a long, healthy body massage.

I can't imagine Molly with such ill manners.

Yeah, I could use a massage.

 

[Hypoxia]

Writing question: Everyone says 'let the dialogue tell the story, don't narrate'...How?

Get out of the way and let the characters talk.

That sounds mush-headed. It ain't.

1) Build an environment.
2) Define characters.
3) Set the characters loose.
4) Transcribe and edit the action.

See, it's easy!

 

[Dianthus]

Get out of the way and let the characters talk.

That sounds mush-headed. It ain't.

1) Build an environment.
2) Define characters.
3) Set the characters loose.
4) Transcribe and edit the action.

See, it's easy!

Easy Peasy... Thank you.

Are we going to have the 'coaches' give some examples?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Get out of the way and let the characters talk.

That sounds mush-headed. It ain't.

1) Build an environment.
2) Define characters.
3) Set the characters loose.
4) Transcribe and edit the action.

See, it's easy!

Sure! If youre writing existential 'shit happens' prose. But if you use a plot your story is romantic, and romantic characters don't have license to run about like fags at Disney Gay Day.

 

[Handley_Page]

Easy Peasy... Thank you.

Are we going to have the 'coaches' give some examples?

I was rather hoping that this would be the case, but. . .

 

[Hypoxia]

Easy Peasy... Thank you.

Are we going to have the 'coaches' give some examples?

My ongoing THE BOOK OF RUTH stories grew like that. I knew pretty much who was involved, and where and when. (I drew maps, calendars, and family trees.) I knew what some of the plot points were. (And a few plot gerbils chewed their way into the narrative.) I had an idea for the overall feel, and its limited scope.

Then I set the characters loose, and they lived the tale in ways I never expected. Everything about Katia was a surprise to me. Ruth is becoming someone I never envisaged, as is Jill. I still don't know how the action will play out -- the players haven't told me yet. I can hardly wait for the next episode! (They're mostly standalone episodes, although the current is a two-parter.) And they may insist on a prequel...

 

[MSTarot]

Writing question: Everyone says 'let the dialogue tell the story, don't narrate'...How?

Riding down the street in a blue car Tim and Sandy are going to a party. They were suppose to be there by nine thirty. They're running late. (narrated)



"We're going to be late!"

"No we're not." Tim spun the wheel hard nearly clipping the curb. "Billy, hosted our last party. It wont even be getting started till ten."

"Easy! You about left blue paint all over that mailbox. I'm not in that much of a hurry." Sandy clutched at the dash board! (dialogue)



I gave you the same information, but didn't give it by making you read a big block of text. The words between them also gives the scene action.

MST

 

[MSTarot]

alright I'll ask one that has bugged me.

Active and Passive voice. I've been constantly told to use the active voice.

People will quote examples of each.

To me they sound the same. It's often the very same words, said in just slightly different order, to convey the same information.

This is seriously something I do not understand.

Why... is active better in a story?

How does it get the information across better to the reader when it's the same words?

MST

 

[Bramblethorn]

"We're going to be late!"

"No we're not." Tim spun the wheel hard nearly clipping the curb. "Billy, hosted our last party. It wont even be getting started till ten."

"Easy! You about left blue paint all over that mailbox. I'm not in that much of a hurry." Sandy clutched at the dash board! (dialogue)

I gave you the same information, but didn't give it by making you read a big block of text. The words between them also gives the scene action.

The dialogue also conveys something about their personalities: Tim comes across as more of a risk-taker, Sandy is the cautious one.

I like this technique, but it can easily be overused. If you go into a dialogue passage intending to provide exposition it's easy to forget how people actually talk and end up writing something that sounds really stilted. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsYouKnow

One option is to let the characters talk naturally, see how much is conveyed in dialogue, and use narration to cover the remainder. It can also be useful to abridge dialogue when it's going to be tedious or difficult for the reader.

For instance, I've got one passage where I gave a lot of dialogue but then summarised one thread as "they were talking about her brother, who was a Marines sergeant serving in Afghanistan" because representing that in dialogue would involve a lot of military slang that readers might not follow.

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

Get out of the way and let the characters talk.

That sounds mush-headed. It ain't.

1) Build an environment.
2) Define characters.
3) Set the characters loose.
4) Transcribe and edit the action.

See, it's easy!

I've used this technique a few times. Ok, more than a few times. The problem with this scenario is coming up with a good ending.

In my longest running series Convenience Vs. Need, (29 multipage chapter) I went with what I knew. Much of the beginning of the story is autobiographical.

1) Build an environment: I selected the Washington D.C. area. I lived there for 10 years, second only to Dallas for duration. I chose most of the action to occur around a house (one that I had actually bid on, in foreclosure). It made it very easy to add useful details as I went.

Late in the story, around chapter 23, I moved the location to Spain for five or so chapters. Again, Spain, particularly Zaragoza and Madrid, are places I know well. Easy peesy.

2) Define characters: Again, I chose to create characters that were based on actual people. The deal in the beginning, with a guy and two women living together, in a FWB relationship, was an actual offer made. The main characters were all personalities I knew well, so again, it was easy to imagine how they'd behave.

3) Set the characters Loose: The first two chapters were somewhat autobiographical, it made it very easy to get started. Then I just played out in my head things that could happen. Things got a little crazy a few times.

The big problem was that without a strong plot in mind, I kept getting stuck. This story has been around forever. It scores very well, 29 Red H's, only four below a 4.70, and has chapters in half-a-dozen or more categories, many of them on top lists. I've been writing it in spurts since 2001.

I had an ending in 2010, and again in 2012. When I presented it to a couple of friends from my writing group, they bombed it. Hated where it went.

I have a new ending, but now it's much longer (about 5 more chapters) and I got the seal of approval from the writing group. I'm hoping to finish it - finally - during Camp Nanowrimo.

It's worth noting the readers tend to LOVE these stories. I don't know why. I get more emails on these character driven series than almost anything else.


CvsN is only one example of this. The truth is, most of my long running, unfinished series had this same start. Two Moms, Two Laps was written as a standalone story. I had so many requests for a continuation, that I decided to do the same thing. I had established the environment and characters in the first Story. The following chapters were just letting the characters play themselves out, adding a couple of new ones along the way.

Again - I got stuck. I received a TON of feedback, hundreds of comments on where I should take it. All with very different ideas. Some from very respectable fellow authors. I have outlined the finish, finally, and written one more chapter I haven't posted. I have three to go. Another Camp Nanowrimo challenge.


The Perfect Game, one of my earlier works and most popular was written this way.

1) Environment: My actual living arangements with my first live-in girlfriend. Wash. D.C., my actual apartment. The Game described was an actual game I designed in the 80's during my wilder days. I was single until I was in my 30's and built up a lot of experience I could later use in my writing. I spent a huge number of hours designing the game, and only modified it about 20% for the story

2) Characters: I could get in trouble for this one. It was my girlfriend, and our closest friends, who were the first people I played Strip Poker with as couples to completion. The sister was my girlfriends sister, with some modification. These characters were at least 80% based on actual people.

3) Let them go: In my case, I played out an actual game, cards and all, tweaking it as it went. Until I got to the last round, and then I just let my imagination take over.

With the setup complete, it was easy to write a second and third story with the same environment and characters, adding a few more as it went. Chapters one and three both spent many months at #1 on the Group Sex Top List.

There is no ending to the story, because, as in real-life, there was no ending. At least not a happy one.



Finally, what I learned from this process.

For That Old House, I had a shell of an outline. A beginning, where I wanted it to go, and the idea for the sex scenes.

1) Environment: An actual abandoned house on a hill I drove past for many years. I was fascinated by it, and made the effort to hike up to it. The descriptions of the house as the beginning are very authentic. Again, write what you know.

2) Characters: Protagonist, old lady, and ghost were well defined from the beginning. The love interest fought her way in after a few pages. The protagonist and the old lady were mixes of people I know. Honestly, I put a lot of myself into most of the main characters.

3) Let them loose: That's what I did, but not completely. Your characters will fight for their own ideas, and go on some wild tangents. Indulge them, and then edit them out later. If they stray from the plot, gently urge them back. Bribe them if you have to. I left one crazy tangent in (The Jewelry, for anyone who read the story) because I had an idea for using that as a follow on story, if I ever got around to it.

It's a long story, and the last 3 pages were rushed to meet a contest deadline. In the ebook version of the book, I took the time to fix those pages, cleaning up a LOT. I'm amazed the story did as well as it did, considering how sloppy the ending was.

I can't emphasize this enough. These stories, where the characters drive the action, will ALWAYS take strange detours. Edit, edit, edit. If I spent 1/3 the time editing for grammar and spelling as I do for cleaning up storylines and plots, my stories would be immaculate.

One more thing about character driven stories, based (loosely) on people you know. The dialogue is more authentic, at least I find it to be. All the characters don't sound the same. You don't end up with exaggerations or stereotypes as much.

My $.02 on how to make this work.

 

[Hypoxia]

These stories, where the characters drive the action, will ALWAYS take strange detours. Edit, edit, edit. If I spent 1/3 the time editing for grammar and spelling as I do for cleaning up storylines and plots, my stories would be immaculate.

One more thing about character driven stories, based (loosely) on people you know. The dialogue is more authentic, at least I find it to be. All the characters don't sound the same. You don't end up with exaggerations or stereotypes as much.

Quite. Most of my pieces are based on real live places and people, suitably disguised. (Note: I'm not one of them. Well, mostly not...) I use their voices, their expressions, their personalities. All twisted a bit, of course.

And my "Build an environment" stage is about more than just locales on an X-Y map grid. I also need to set the T-axis stage, the timeline. I know when (and where) my characters were born; where they'll be at certain times; which plot points and gerbils they'll hit, when. And now, I try to make the ending a plot point. The trouble comes when multiple endings are possible.

Take my THE BOOK OF RUTH tales. Please. I mapped out the overall calendar, with intersections noted. My basic notes, with years and ages:

1960 Randy born (LA)
1966 Ruth born (NYC)
1984 R&R: Venice / LA
1986 R&R: Wash DC
1989 R&R: marriage LA
1995 R&R: divorce DF
199?-20??: unknown

(The DF in there is District Federale, ie Mexico City.)

Lots of improvisation in there. I tweak dates as the story evolves. I don't have a final date there yet because I'm not sure how it will play out. HEA? Everyone dead or jailed? Guess I'll be a literary water-witcher and douse for an ending.

I sculpt characters. Randy and his sister are two aspects of one acquaintance. Ruth and her sister are two aspects of another real person. Their mothers are merged from various real moms, with major excisions (to make them sluttier, sure). I hear each of their voices in my head. They say and do what they want.

And then I edit. Lots and lots of editing. But the story comes by itself.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

S've found it impossible to tell an entire story solely with dialogue. I think you have to be writing a play for such action. When telling a story, a certain amount of narration is required.

That being said, a great deal of a story can be told in dialogue. Two characters can lay down an emotional field in the landscape narrated by the writer. Narration can take many forms, as well. Two of the most widely used are active and passive. It's best to use an active tense, I think, to keep a reader engaged.

Read "Vox" by Nicholson Baker - nearly entirely a conversation.

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

Stop encouraging the klutz, Di.

I've found it impossible to tell an entire story solely with dialogue. I think you have to be writing a play for such action. When telling a story, a certain amount of narration is required.

That being said, a great deal of a story can be told in dialogue. Two characters can lay down an emotional field in the landscape narrated by the writer. Narration can take many forms, as well. Two of the most widely used are active and passive. It's best to use an active tense, I think, to keep a reader engaged.

I actually posted a short dialog only story, as a personal challenge. It didn't do all that well, but it didn't bomb either. The sad thing was nobody seemed to notice what I'd done:

A Quiet Discussion

Quite often, I open stories with dialogue. I think it goes a long way, in first person POV, to get the reader to identify with the protagonist quickly, and capture the readers attention.

Poolboy Benefits did this:

"Mom, gimme a break! I only got back from college two days ago. How about a little time to relax?"

"If you're not going to work for you father, you're going to stick with our deal. I won't have you laying around the house all summer."

"All summer? I'm talking about a week's break, Mom. One week. Not a weekend. I'll start with the handyman services next Monday. I still haven't seen any of my old crowd or anything," I argued.

"Two days should be rest enough. Amy Daniels needs pool help in a bad way. I told her you'd stop by and see what you can do. Think you can find time for her in your busy day?"

Amy Daniels? "Uh, when does she need me?"

* * *

There is a major issue with stories that show, don't tell, and have lots of dialogue.

They are longer. Much longer.

What you can summarize in a paragraph, might take hundreds of words to reveal in dialogue. Visually, narrative tends to be dense: larger paragraphs, six, eight, ten lines long or longer. Good dialogue is often numerous shorts lines, bantered about, making your story longer in lit pages, word count, and physically longer.

Dialogue always has the danger of losing the reader, if there are not enough attributions, or looking amateurish if there are too many, or the wrong kind.

Writing dialogue takes practice, and it's extremely hard to self-edit for comprehension. You as the author KNOW who's talking. Often the reader doesn't. Especially when there are three or four people speaking. I can't even imagine how many hundreds of times I've had to re-read passages to figure out who said what.

Personally, I like writing dialogue. It's easier for me to immerse myself in the story when writing dialogue heavy passages. With narrative, I find myself being more concerned with word order, echoing, phrase length, vocabulary and such. Dialogue, on the other hand, usually gets written the same way it comes to mind, with much less tweaking.

 

[Serafina1210]

Okay, SweetWitch and other Lit Mistresses and Masters, here's another topic for you.

Signalling passage of time.

Say (for example) you're describing a sex act. It's pretty easy to write a nice varied description of foreplay, and the variety of activities your lovers engage in has the happy effect of giving the impression of time passing.

But sooner or later your couple settles down for a long spell of the good old in and out. Fun to do, but not so great to read about (or watch, for that matter)! You don't want to waste a lot of space describing it, but you also don't want to give the impression that the act lasted only thirty seconds. You don't want to write something boring like "they did the in-and-out for thirteen minutes." You do want to convey that time has passed before you let them have their orgasms.

How do you do it?

 

[Hypoxia]

You don't want to write something boring like "they did the in-and-out for thirteen minutes." You do want to convey that time has passed before you let them have their orgasms.

How do you do it?

I use "for a timeless moment" or "a measureless eternity" -- or "till they dropped from exhaustion".

 

[SweetWitch]

I use "for a timeless moment" or "a measureless eternity" -- or "till they dropped from exhaustion".

Sometimes, a good tool is a momentary distraction, the wandering of a character's mind. Of course, if the character is having sex, distraction is not a good tool.

 

[FAWCker]

Molly!

Sometimes, a good tool is a momentary distraction, the wandering of a character's mind. Of course, if the character is having sex, distraction is not a good tool.

Breaking up the paragraphs works, too.

 

[SweetWitch]

Molly!



Breaking up the paragraphs works, too.

Hi, Sugar tush!

Breaking the paragraphs, works. Sometimes, my hero goes off on a tangent. It works.