NaNoWriMo 2015 Prep: Thoughts about Dialogue by Ilana C. Myer

Thoughts About DialogueIf characters are the heart of a story, dialogue is the lifeblood that serves the heart: we learn most of what we know about a character from their utterances, as well as from how they speak. While novelists can’t always afford to choose their words as carefully as, say, short story writers or poets, the wording of dialogue might be the exception. These are the words that define the people. More than that: they define the world. A line of dialogue can plunge us into a different world more effectively than any description.

There are a few principles I work from:
Cliches come first. When we write dialogue, every movie and TV show we’ve ever watched is lurking on the sidelines. This is especially true during scenes that are more genre-specific, like love scenes or confrontations with villains; we’ve seen so many of these, heard so many key phrases again and again (“You’ll never get away with this!” “I already have.”), that it’s inevitable these phrases will spring to mind first. So while it’s okay to get the cliches out there for the sake of hitting word count and getting the ideas out, it’s just as important to go back and re-examine every line.* If it sounds eerily familiar, you’ve most likely heard it before.
*In December! December is for editing. ;)
About the Author

Ilana C. Myer has written about books for the Globe and Mail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Huffington Post, and Salon. Her first novel, the epic fantasy Last Song Before Night, is available now from Tor/Macmillan. She lives in New York City.

Book Info Her name was Kimbralin Amaristoth: sister to a cruel brother, daughter of a hateful family. But that name she has forsworn, and now she is simply Lin, a musician and lyricist of uncommon ability in a land where women are forbidden to answer such callings-a fugitive who must conceal her identity or risk imprisonment and even death.

On the eve of a great festival, Lin learns that an ancient scourge has returned to the land of Eivar, a pandemic both deadly and unnatural. Its resurgence brings with it the memory of an apocalypse that transformed half a continent. Long ago, magic was everywhere, rising from artistic expression-from song, from verse, from stories. But in Eivar, where poets once wove enchantments from their words and harps, the power was lost. Forbidden experiments in blood divination unleashed the plague that is remembered as the Red Death, killing thousands before it was stopped, and Eivar's connection to the Otherworld from which all enchantment flowed, broken.

The Red Death's return can mean only one thing: someone is spilling innocent blood in order to master dark magic. Now poets who thought only to gain fame for their songs face a challenge much greater: galvanized by Valanir Ocune, greatest Seer of the age, Lin and several others set out to reclaim their legacy and reopen the way to the Otherworld-a quest that will test their deepest desires, imperil their lives, and decide the future.

Last Song Before Night is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.