Julie Duffy's Blog, page 189
September 18, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Dialogue Attributions
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We’ve been focusing on dialogue – from realistic to stylized.
Today we’re going to work on the thorny issue of dialogue attribution. Should you say “he said” or “he whispered seductively”?
How about neither?
The Prompt
Write a story that is dialogue-heavy but features no dialogue attributions at all.
You know what this looks like, right? Picture a fast-paced thriller where the protagonist and his boss are talking about the probability that the volcano will explode, or the Russians will invade. The conversation pings back and forth, snaking its way down the page without a ‘he said’ in sight. Or maybe it’s a romance where, one hopes, it’ll be pretty clear who’s saying what and to whom. But you never know…
Tips
This is easiest to do if only two people are involved in an exchange at a time and if it doesn’t go on too long.
It is possible to make it clear who is speaking by having very strong characters (one curt, one longwinded; one snarky, one sweet)
How long can you make the exchange run before it becomes hopelessly confusing and you have to insert a stage direction?
(Remember, this is just a fun exercise.)
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 17, 2012
[Writing Prompts] Stylized Dialogue
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Sometimes it can be inappropriate (or boring) to write realistic dialogue. If you are Aaron Sorkin or Shakespeare or R.A. Salvatore you probably don’t want your characters having humdrum conversations littered with everyday grammar. You’re creating a world, a fantasy kingdom, an idealized version of reality. Your characters’ speech, word choice, syntax and rhythms should reflect that.
The Prompt
Write A Story Containing Stylized Dialogue
The key to making this work is that you must remain consistent in tone through out the piece. If your main character sounds Shakespearean at the beginning, make sure he sounds that way in all his big set pieces.
Of course, you can puncture the style for comic effect but this works best if you break out of the style sparingly.
And just because everyone speaks in a formal or jargon-laden, or poetic manner, doesn’t mean that all your characters should sound the same: far from it. Even in Shakespeare, you still have people who are florid and poetic, and people who are earthy, coarse and abrupt.
Give it a try, have some fun. You may find you’re adding a style of dialogue to your repertoire that you can pull out in moments of high drama in your future writing. If it goes badly, at least you’ll have discovered some of the pitfalls of writing this way and can avoid them in future.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 16, 2012
[Writing Prompts] Realistic Dialogue
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I don’t know if you’ve been using little or lots of dialogue in your stories up until now. We’re going to spend the next few days looking at dialogue issues, and play with a few different aspects of it.
The Prompt
Write a story that features realistic dialogue
Tips
When writing dialogue, remember that people don’t talk in speeches, not really. And they certainly don’t listen to each other. We interrupt, talk at cross-purposes and misunderstand each other all the time. Capture some of that.
When writing colloquially don’t go overboard with misspellings and missing letters to convey how people ‘really’ talk. Using ‘gonna’ and dropping the ‘g’ from ‘ing’ is fine if you’re trying to show that someone has a really strong accent, but invented spellings risk just making the reader impatient and irritated. Much better to try to capture the rhythm of a locale’s speech or use one or two tell-tale local words, than to try to transliterate a dialect accurately.
Remember to use sentence length to reflect how someone is feeling: short, choppy sentences for someone who is agitated; long, lugubrious sentences for contented fat cats.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 15, 2012
[Writing Prompts] All
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Another one-word prompt for the weekend as we head into the second half of the month.
The Prompt
All
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 14, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Half
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We’re half way there! Enough with the writing class style prompts. Today I’m throwing you a simple word prompt. Do what you like with it:
The Prompt
Half
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 13, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Bring On the Antagonists
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I know, I know, I included villains and antagonists in yesterday’s prompt, but today we’re focusing on them.
The Prompt
Pick An Antagonist Type
If you’ve been following along with the prompts this week, you’ll already have worked on a flawed main character and a targeted secondary character. That secondary character may even have been an antagonist (a villain). So why am I talking about them again?
It’s one of those venn diagram things. All villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains.
Antagonists’ CheatSheet
The antagonistic force in any story is the thing that is stopping the main character for getting what s/he wants or needs. While it might be Count Olaf terrorizing the Beaudelaire children, the antagonistic force might just as easily be Holden Caulfield’s crippling cynicism. Or maybe it’s Norman Bates’ mother.
Start with your main character. What do they want? What can stand in their way?
Internal personality flaws?
Something from their past?
A person?
A physical object? (though usually this generates an internal or external struggle)
Make sure that everything you write about your antagonist illustrates something about its relationship to your main character. We don’t have room, in a short story, for sub-plots.
Kristen Lamb has some excellent posts on this topic, if you need a little more reading.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 12, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Secondary Characters
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It is day 13 of StoryADay September and you have almost made it to the halfway point. How’s it going? What challenges are you encountering? What are you learning about your writing habits? Leave a comment, or get in on the discussion in the forums.
Short stories can feature just one main character. You can totally get away with it. But not all the time.
The Prompt
Play With Your Secondary Characters
What is a secondary character? It’s any character who doesn’t matter to the story if you take out the protagonist.
Everything the secondary characters do in this short story should relate to the protagonist in some way:
The villain forces the main character to pursue a course of action
The best friend helps the main character figure out what she should do
The sweet character storms off, showing up how much of a jerk the main character is being.
As you write your story today make sure to include secondary characters and pay attention to everything they do. if they start to wander off-script, into areas that do not directly relate to your protagonist, stop them! (Promise them their own story tomorrow, if you have to!)
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 11, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Hidden Depths
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Now that we’ve played around with perspective for a few days, let’s turn our attention to character.
Of course you want your hero to be heroic and your bad guys to be evil, but don’t forget that one dimensional characters are unrealistic and unsympathetic.
So what’s the solution?
The Prompt
Give Your Character a Flaw
The key to giving your character an interesting flaw is to let the readers see the potential for failure early on.
If your heroine is a devoted mother and that is going to be the thrust of the story, let the readers see her having a moment of resentment, of longing for her former freedom. Raise the stakes by giving her chances to regret that feeling later, when her children are in peril. It’s not who she really is, but it was a very human impulse. Your readers will empathize both with the impulse and the regret.
If your hero is a wise-cracker, hint that there is a serious reason underneath.
The same goes for the evil witch in the office, who makes your main character’s life a misery. If she is all bad, the reader will get bored with her. If she has a hint of a redeeming feature (even if it is that she is hilarious), the readers will have more patience for her necessary appearances in the story.
Just don’t go overboard with this. It’s a short story. A quick hint early on is all you should need to put on the page.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
September 10, 2012
[Writing Prompt] Second Person
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Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:
Write a Story In Second Person
This is probably the least-used of all the points of view and with good reason. It’s not one we’re used to reading because it’s tricky and informal and potentially distracting.
So what is ‘second person’? It’s when the story is told with “you”, where the narrator puts you in the position of the main character.
If you’ve ever played a role-playing game (or a first-person video game) this perspective is going to come a lot easier to you than if you have never read it before. In role-playing games, the games master reads a scenario to the other players, putting them in the scene:
“You walk into the room and know, immediately that something is wrong. There’s a huddled shape in the shadows at the far side of the dim, low-ceilinged space and strange markings on the floor. You turn to leave but the door has slammed shut behind you. There is no handle.”
That’s all very well, but how do you stop a story from reading like a ‘choose your own adventure’ book: a series of descriptions? Well, here’s a passage from Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City” that shows you how you can incorporate action, reflection and dialogue into a second person story. In this scene, the main character is in a nightclub.
In the bathroom there are no doors on the stalls, which makes it tough to be discreet. But clearly you are not the only person in here to take on fuel. Lots of sniffling going on in the stalls. the windows are blacked over, and for this you are profoundly grateful.
Hup, two, three, four. The soldiers are back on their feet. They are off and running in formation. Some of them are dancing and you must follow their example.
Just outside the door you spot her: tall, dark and alone, half hidden behind a pillar at the edge of the dance floor. You approach laterally, moving your stuff like a Bad Spade through the slalom of a synthesized conga rhythm. She jumps when you touch her shoulder.
“Dance?”
So yes, it is an unusual written form. It is, however, the way we often talk (“So, say your mother-in-law was coming over and she’s always having a go at you about the state of your bathroom, but her baby boy has never been seen to life a Clorox wipe in his life…”)
No need to be intimidated. Try out the second person and see what it does for your writing, your tone, the storytelling possibilities. Pay attention to how much description and dialogue you use in this form and how much of it seems interior. Is it significantly different from how you usually write?
Have fun with this and…
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
[Writing Prompt] Third Person, Omniscient
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Continuing this week’s theme of POV prompts, here is today’s prompt:
Write a story from the Third Person, Omniscient perspective
This is the perspective you know from all the classics (Dickens springs to mind): the author can say anything, pop inside any (or all) character’s heads, travel backwards and forwards in time, insert herself and her own commentary onto the page…
Have some fun with this. Take an episode and tell it from one character’s perspective, then leap into another character’s head and give their read on the situation. Try out your authorial prerogatives and make a comment about what’s going on (think of that moment when a TV character turns to the camera and talks directly to us, the audience).
This can get quite complicated (which is why it works so well for novels) but give it a bash and see what you come up with.
Go!
And when you have written your story, log in and post your success in The Victory Dance group or simply comment on this post and let the congrats come flying in.
