The Novelwriter's Toolkit Read online

  Real Versus Realistic

  Apply some of the things you overhear to your characters. And remember that there is a vast difference between real dialogue and realistic dialogue. Most of us talk a lot about mundane subjects such as the weather and supermarket prices. But unless the weather or the cost of living directly relates to your characters and plot, stay away from them. Also, most of us punctuate our speech with ums, ers and you knows – all of which become very boring if you copy them out word for word. When writing dialogue, omit these verbal fillers unless you want to show your character’s nervousness.

  A Night at the Cinema

  Films are a good place to study effective dialogue, because they rely so heavily on it. Listen to the words being bandied back and forth between the characters. Ask yourself what works and what doesn’t. Sloppy dialogue doesn’t sound real. It doesn’t have contractions. It doesn’t pause for breath. It doesn’t reflect the personality of the character. Sharp, crisp dialogue jumps off the page or out of the screen. It sparkles and makes the character shine. It’s so good it can be the hook that drags the reader into the story all by itself. It moves the story forwards and keeps up the pace.

  Reading Aloud

  This is the crucial test of whether dialogue ‘works’ – does it sound right when you read it aloud? Say you have written a scene in which one character asks another a question:

  Susan, what is that that you are looking at?’

  Grammatically, it’s fine. But say it out loud and you’ll find it’s stilted; the double that makes it sound as if a Martian has taken over your mouth. Ask yourself what a real person – you, for instance – would actually say in those circumstances. How about:

  What are you looking at, Susan?’

  The moment you speak these words aloud, you realize that they are punchier, more streamlined, more realistic. They have the same meaning, but they are much more effective as dialogue.

  Dialogue That Fits

  A tough cowboy walks into a saloon, wanting a drink. He doesn’t say:

  ‘If I don’t get some whisky soon, I’m just going to die of thirst.

  No, that sounds like an elderly lady who persuades people to wait on her hand and foot by making herself sound feeble. Or possibly an over-the-top Southern belle.

  What about:

  ‘Could you please give me a small glass of whisky?’

  No, that’s a meek bank clerk who has never been in a bar before and doesn’t know how to order.

  Tough cowboys talk tough. They say, ‘Whisky. Now. And leave the bottle!

  It’s important that dialogue reflects the characters’ roles and personalities. Your reader will be reading the dialogue you write and hearing the voices in his or her head. The voices have to ring true or you will have lost one of the most powerful tools you have for showing who your characters are.

  Dialogue That Rings True

  In real life, people don’t tell each other things that they know already, nor do they address each other by name all the time. That’s what happens in bad radio plays, where dialogue has to convey all the information the listener needs and the writer isn’t skilled enough to get it across any other way. In a novel, you have other options. Don’t have one sister tell another that it is their mother’s birthday next week – she knows that. Put it in dialogue that helps develop the characters:

  ‘You aren’t forgetting that it’s Mum’s birthday next week, are you? You know how upset she gets if we don’t go for lunch.’

  Or mix dialogue with narrative:

  ‘You are coming next Wednesday, aren’t you?’

  Wednesday is Mum’s birthday and Sarah always goes into big-sister mode, assuming that I am going to forget.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming. I’ll be there at 12 to give you a hand with lunch.

  From these two pieces of dialogue we learn, first, that the mother is sensitive (perhaps hypersensitive?) about the attention her daughters pay her; and second, that there is tension between the two sisters. But we also know the narrator – the younger sister – doesn’t want to rock the boat: she could have given Sarah a less conciliatory response. How people say things and what they choose to leave out can be just as important as what they say.

  In real life, a lot of conversation is repetitive and unnecessary. In a novel, there is no room for meaningless conversation. Dialogue should always help advance the plot or tell the reader something about the character.

  Male or Female?

  Is there a certain way of speaking that can be defined as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’? Over the telephone the pitch of the voice would normally give away the speaker’s gender. But what about on the page?

  ‘I saw her run down the street after the dog. She was wearing tight shorts and a low-neck sweater.’

  ‘I saw her run down the street after the dog. She was wearing bright red shorts and a pink cashmere sweater.’

  Without any context for this line of dialogue, you would be pretty confident that the first speaker was a man and the second a woman. But you could use the same line in different ways to convey something about the speaker:

  ‘I saw her run down the street after the dog,’ he said, an appreciative grin on his face. ‘She was wearing tight shorts and a low-neck sweater.’

  Or:

  ‘I saw her run down the street after the dog. She was wearing bright red shorts and a pink cashmere sweater. I don’t know how she can afford cashmere on her husband’s salary.’

  You are in danger of falling into sexual stereotyping here, but in the first example you have given a none-too-subtle indication of the man’s lechery and in the second you have suggested a nosy and envious neighbour who probably nags her own husband about how little he earns.

  If you want your reader to know what a character’s voice is like, you have to describe it. A woman’s voice might be sweet or shrill; if you want to give her a deep voice it could be husky or even manly. A man’s voice could be deep and reassuring, a booming bass or a cultured baritone. While society looks for ways to make men and women equal, writers look for ways to tell them apart.

  Because dialogue is unique to each character and each story, it’s difficult to say what’s right and wrong. What is right for a 1980s Scottish heroin user in Irvine Welch’s Trainspotting would be ridiculous for a Victorian thief in Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, but that doesn’t mean that either is better or worse than the other. Whatever your characters’ ethnic or social origins, and whatever century and country they live in, they have to have something to say. Their words have to touch the reader. They have to make her laugh or cry at the right moment. They have to move the story forwards and/or reveal something important about whoever is speaking or being spoken about. And they have to do it in a way that is authentic to the character and his setting.

  Dialogue Tags

  At its simplest, a dialogue tag is ‘he said’ or ‘she said’. It separates dialogue from narrative, indicating who said what, how they said it and what else was going on at the time. Today’s fiction tends to use dialogue tags sparsely, relying on them only when they are necessary to enable the reader to keep track of what is going on – usually in a conversation between two or more people.

  Finding the right number of dialogue tags to use in your work requires a common-sense approach. If you use too many, you’ll interrupt the flow of dialogue and the storyline; too few and the reader won’t be able to figure out who’s talking.

  Look at this example from Dickens’ Great Expectations. The narrator, Pip, is a young boy; he and his guardian/brother-in-law Joe have fallen into conversation with a stranger in the local inn:

  The stranger looked at me again … and said, He’s a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?’

  ‘Pip,’ said Joe.

  ‘Christened Pip?’

  ‘No, not christened Pip.’

  ‘Surname Pip?’

  ‘No,’ said Joe; ‘it’s a kind of family name what he gave himself when an infant, and is ca
lled by.’

  ‘Son of yours?’

  ‘Well, said Joe, meditatively – not, of course, that it could be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was discussed over pipes; ‘well – no. No, he ain’t.’

  This deceptively simple piece of dialogue moves the plot along by sparking our interest in the stranger: why is he asking so many questions? It adds to the impression we already have of Joe as a decent if not very quick-witted man. Even its use of dialogue tags adds to the character development: the repetition of the simple ‘said Joe’ reflects Joe’s slow, measured speech. The only way to learn this technique is trial and error. When you’ve written enough dialogue of your own, you’ll get the idea.

  ‘Go Away, ‘He Sneered

  A common pitfall is to use too many alternatives for ‘said’. Try not to get too colourful:

  ‘I’ll see you in hell first,’ he snarled.

  ‘Oh, why does it always have to be me?’ she moaned.

  ‘Everyone must leave,’ he ordered.

  are fine every now and then, but soon become tiresome.

  Questions of Pace and Space

  Dialogue can be used to create a feeling of movement in the story. It helps the reader by – among other things – making the page look more open and easier to read. If you find that some spots in your book are not as lively or well paced as they could be, try adding some dialogue.

  TELLING THE STORY

  Getting It All Down On Paper

  As a writer you are also an artist. You create emotions and characters. You paint a background and introduce the reader to your world. Everything on the page begins in your imagination. But it needs to have a structure.

  You’re almost ready to start writing, but now is the time to go back over that original idea, the one you have fleshed out with such great characters and lively dialogue, and make sure that everything is clear in your mind.

  Formal Versus Informal Outlines

  We talked earlier about whether or not you need to write an outline. You may feel that by now you know everything you need to know about where your story is going. There is no obligation to write a formal outline at this stage – that will come when you are ready to submit your work to an agent or publisher. Anything you do now is for the sake of clarifying your own thinking.

  If you do feel you want something structured, one way is to begin with:

  Title: My Book

  1. Characters

  a. Main characters

  1. Hero

  2. Villain

  b. Subsidiary characters

  You could write a brief description of each character: the part they play in the story, what they look like, something about their goals and motivations. Create something you can glance at as you’re writing in order to keep track of characters and avoid having Chapter 1’s scuba diver turn into a mountaineer in Chapter 5.

  Alternatively, or perhaps in addition to this, you could write out a summary of the plot, either chapter by chapter or incident by incident. A short paragraph or two for each one is usually enough – the point is to jog your memory about things you have already thought of, important details that will add to the authenticity and richness of your story.

  Another option is to create a timeline. Start with the event that begins your story and move forwards. If it matters you can put in dates and times:

  Tuesday morning: Dan fails to show up for work. His dead body is discovered in his garage, face down in a pool of oil. His friends Steve and Tom are suspicious because they know he was a hopeless mechanic and never did any work on his car.

  Tuesday lunchtime: waiting to be interviewed by the police, Steve and Tom overhear Dan’s wife Sylvia lying about where she was the night before.

  Wednesday afternoon: etc. etc.

  You can do this as a graph or just as a list of events, fleshing out the characters of Steve, Tom and Sylvia and adding details of the setting wherever it seems appropriate. If you prefer, you can put all these details on separate pieces of paper and spread them out over a table (preferably one that isn’t going to be needed for breakfast any time soon) so that you can shuffle them around if need be. Some people even create a spreadsheet, because they have orderly minds and this is their way of keeping track of everything. There are no rules here: you are doing this for your own benefit and no one else ever needs to see it.

  However you choose to outline, or even if you choose not to do it at all, you need to remember that there are three parts of your novel that are vitally important: the beginning, the middle and the end.

  And if you think that adds up to ‘all of it,’ you’re absolutely right. So let’s look at the impact that those three elements need to have.

  The Beginning

  The first words of any manuscript are the most important. They set the mood and lure the reader into the story, making him want to know what happens next. If the beginning fails, the reader will put the book down and never pick it up again. The beginning can be powerful, violent or passionate. It can be subtle like a gathering storm. It can be dialogue or narrative. But whatever its subject matter or mood, it must be exceptional. Consider:

  ‘Have you split up now?’

  ‘Are you being funny?’

  People quite often thought Marcus was being funny when he wasn’t.

  Or:

  When my mother died she left the farm to my brother, Cassis, the fortune in the wine cellar to my sister, Reine-Claude, and to me, the youngest, her album and a two-litre jar containing a single black Périgord truffle, large as a tennis ball and suspended in sunflower oil, which, when uncorked, still releases the rich dank perfume of the forest floor.

  These are the opening lines of two very different books – Nick Hornby’s About a Boy and Joanne Harris’ Five Quarters of the Orange – but they share this indispensable characteristic: the reader is hooked. Who is Marcus? Why is he so often misunderstood? Why does Joanne Harris’ narrator have siblings who are named after fruits and why is she bothering to tell us about the aroma of an enormous black truffle? If you can write a beginning that makes readers asks questions like this, they will read on.

  Even though it is the beginning, your plot should begin in the middle. This may seem like a contrary idea, but you’re trying to put your readers in the thick of things. You don’t want to start with long explanations that take them into the plot. You want them to feel the icy finger of death on their necks, or to be standing at the edge of the volcano with your hero just before he slaloms down the lava flow.

  Don’t give readers a safe place to be. If your book starts out with afternoon tea in a Cotswold village, have someone spill the tea or make your characters gossip maliciously. Show that all is not as it seems. Engage readers in your plot from the word go.

  Hooks

  A ‘hook’ is an interesting part of the story meant to grab the reader’s attention. Using a hook means that you start your piece in a way that will engage the reader and make her want to read more. A hook can be either a piece of dialogue or a description, as in the two examples quoted above. It is often emotional in nature, expressing fear, anger, passion or hatred. The key is to make sure the reader starts in the middle of the action. When you’re starting a story, don’t spend a lot of time establishing setting or character. If you start with action, you pique the reader’s curiosity; you can work in setting and character later, once you’ve whetted the reader’s appetite for more.

  The Middle

  Yes, it’s essential to grab your readers in the beginning, but what you say next is important too. You’ve connected with your readers; now bring them into the story more deeply. Follow the plot points you established in your outline or summary. Don’t be afraid to add anything that seems important that you didn’t think of in the planning stage. Let the tension build as you add blocks to the story’s foundation. Carefully take your readers from place to place.

  Your plot should fol
low a logical line that your readers can follow easily. Or fairly easily. Of course you need tension. You need readers to be wondering what will happen next. But that isn’t the same as wondering what is going on. Don’t leave essential information out, assuming that readers will ‘get it’. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t, and there is nothing more frustrating than reading a book and suddenly feeling that you don’t know what has just happened. Even in a mystery, don’t leave readers stranded for long or let them fall too far behind.

  Make sure that your characters’ actions add to the feeling of movement in the plot. This doesn’t always need to be literal movement. Sometimes a character might need to sit down and take a rest. Even Sherlock Holmes sat quietly and pondered when he had to. But that very fact could add to the tension as Dr Watson, who was narrating the stories, waited in growing frustration to hear what the Great Detective came up with. Whatever is going on, whether it is a lot or a little, the plot must continue to build, drawing readers closer as the story races like a runaway freight train towards its inevitable conclusion.