Say what?

Everyone has a particular challenge to overcome in their craft.

I like to think that description is my strong point. I love setting the scene and making it come alive for my readers. My bête noir is dialogue. It is something I work very, very hard at.

I envy writers who create natural dialogue, witty repartee, snappy exchanges. Oh, to be like that!

I remember being at a workshop with an author who said she mentally recorded everything she heard around her – the example was a beautiful young woman dining with a much older man who was obviously not her father, and throughout the meal called him, “Daddy,” in a little-girl voice – and stored it away in a mental file to use someday in her own books. Maybe I just don’t get out enough. :lol

My best trick to writing good dialogue is to simply imagine myself as a fly on the wall, looking on as my characters interact. Then, I just type whatever I imagine them saying, free-flow, no punctuation or dialogue tags. It goes pretty quickly that way, and comes out more naturally than anything I’ve tried yet. Afterwards, I go back and add dialogue tags where needed, and include what Diana Gabaldon refers to as “underpainting” – the actions and scene markers that give the dialogue life, weaving it seamlessly into the story.

Occasionally, I do think of fun, dramatic or illustrative phrases I’d like my characters to use. If possible, I write them down to refer to later. I may not use them at all if they don’t come naturally when my dialogue’s flowing, but it helps in my own mind with the pictures I draw of individual characters as the story builds. The dialogue may wind up getting pared down or cut in the final draft, but that’s all right. The more real my characters, and what they say, is to me, the more real they’ll be on the page.

And, hopefully, the more real they’ll be for my readers.

All the best,

Raina