Who Writes Great Dialog?

“Freaky Deaky” (1988)

Robin said, “I could tell you were a little ripped when you walked in.”

“Not bad. All I had after work was some hash and beer. I’m still geeked on acid, but couldn’t find none. I can get blotter in L.A. once in a while, it’s okay. But old Owsley’s preemo purple or even windowpane, that stuff could get you in touch with your ancestors. ... Acid’s good for you — I mean you don’t overdo it, become a burnout. It’s like laxative for the brain, it mellows you while it cleans out your head.”

Robin sipped her wine. She said, “I have some,” and saw Skip’s sly grin peeking through his beard, a sparkle coming into his pale eyes.

“You know I suffer from anti-acrophobia, fear of not being high.”

Who else? 

The Most Versatile Writer?

What writer writes across the largest canvass? In other words, who constantly surprises you with what he/she turns out next?

I am going with Stewart O'Nan who never seems to repeat himself. If you look at just three of his books you can see what I mean.

SPEED QUEEN is about a woman in jail, and how she got there. A PRAYER FOR THE DYING is about a nineteenth century doctor returning from the Civil War. LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER is the story of a man closing down his branch of the Red Lobster for the last time. Here we have a crime novel, historical fiction, and a very contemporary story. His dozen novels are all very good and all very different in tone, subject, sex of the protanogist and age. Who else pulls this off?

Change in Writing Styles

If you pick up a crime fiction novel from the first half or so of the last century. chances are the story will be told in a pretty straight forward way. I am thinking of almost any writer from that period. But today's crime fiction novel is likely to be closer to so-called literary fiction with lots of prose that would have been edited out in earlier days. I am reading THE SHINING GIRLS and am amazed by how much "style" there is compared to say something by Holding, Millar, Armstrong or even male writers of a half-century ago. I am not sure how I feel about this. Certainly the aerials impress, but perhaps it leads to a murkier plot sometimes.

When did this change happen and do you prefer your crime fiction straight up or with some fancy embellishments?

Sexing Up a Scene

Occasionally I cheat by putting a scene with sex in a story, which I know should be played out and I don't play it out. I find writing about sex of any sort very difficult. I guess I am from the old school that liked seeing the bedroom doors close in a movie. Or even dozens of doors if there was real ardor. Remember that.

But right now I am reworking a story where the editor said, "You got to show not tell this." He's right because a lot hinges on what happens.

Writers: do you find this difficult? What kind of scenes are hardest for you to write.

Readers: do you feel cheated if a sex scene never really is described?

Thinking About Short Stories

I just read a short story that I think was sabotaged by too many characters, too many separate scenes, too much complexity. The writing was good though so I waded through. But the ending didn't turn it around. The story was more like a blueprint for an eventual novel than a short story to me.

When I studied writing, the professor said that he felt three or four characters was the most there should be in a short story. He also felt it should play out in as few scenes as possible. I seem to have taken that to heart because most of my stories are sparsely populated. "Scrapping", for instance, in an issue of PANK, has three characters and basically three scenes. "Mermaids" in OFF THE RECORD: AT THE MOVIES has five characters but only two scenes. "How to Launder a Shirt" is basically a monologue about three people.. "Undetectable" in PULP INK 2 has four characters but only three really figure in. In other words, in a short story, I don't think you have time to develop many characters and it confuses the reader to try and keep track of too many.

What do you think? I know in the right hands a short story could work with a dozen characters but in average hands, how many is too many characters, settings, scenes?

Perhaps I am under-populating my stories and I shouldn't have listened to that guy.

And here is another question. In a short story, how specific do you like a locale to be? Would you rather have a writer say. 'he's moving up north." Or pinpoint it in a state, "he's moving up to Ipswich."

Hilary Mantel THE DEAD ARE REAL

Last week's NEW YORKER has a fabulous piece about the writer, Hilary Mantel, who just won the Booker for second time for her novel BRINGING UP THE BODIES, a sequel to the 2009 Bookered. WOLF HALL. Among the many interesting details of her life are several good ones about her writing process.

One of my favorites was this "Sit quietly and withdraw your attention from the room you are in until you're focused inside your mind. Imagine a chair and invite your character to come sit in it. Once he is comfortable, you may ask him questions."

The first time she tried this when she was writing a novel about a giant, the giant came in but before sitting down, he tested the chair to see if it would take his weight.From then on, she knew this technique would work for her and it has.

Have you ever tried such a technique, writers? What do you do to get inside the head of a stubborn character?.

Is Daphne DuMaurier A Lesser Writer Than ???

In an article in the Guardian, Daphne Du Maurier is compared unfavorably to Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh and other writers. Her writing is called flabby, overwrought. She is judged to be  a near equivalent to Barbara Cartland (no insult intended--I have never read Ms. Cartland).

Now when was the last time you heard anyone say they were reading Powell, I ask you. If a book continues to draw in readers 75 years later, can the writing really be sub-par?Mustn't it have some qualities that are to be admired? Some enduring positive traits?

 REBECCA and MY COUSIN RACHEL astounded me once again when I read them a few years back. They have a power, a pull,  that many other novels of that era did not. Some of DuMaurier short stories are brilliant too. (Don't Look Now, The Birds).

This becomes a tiresome argument, but what other writers have been consigned to second ratedom and continue to be read rather than just talked about in articles like this one? 

Who deserves more respect than they get?

Lost in the Dunes

What do you do to get yourself out of a writing funk? A month or two ago, I had ideas for two or three stories that excited me. But I got caught up with revisions for stories accepted for anthologies and the stories I was excited about now don't occupy the same place in my brain. Am I making sense? After more than a hundred stories, maybe I am just running out of ideas. What do you do when nothing grabs you and the unfinished stories on your hard drive seem old and stale? What happens when no one steps inside your head and takes it over?

Ideas???

After finishing three stories recently, I have zero ideas for the next one. Does this ever happen to you, writers? Do you ever sit down without the foggiest idea of what you are going to write? Does it ever turn out well?

(P.S. I think this is an angry birds mask. You don't like to ask)

Developing Minor Characters in a Book

Since we fled DC after the storm on Friday night, here I am asking questions again. I am beginning to think taking vacations is a dangerous thing for us to do. Dangerous for the places we visit as much as for us.

Anyway, I just finished GONE GIRL, which was in most ways a terrific novel. Exciting, well-written, original, great finish. Who could ask for anything more. Me

One thing bothered me and it has come up before in many novels. How well-developed should the second male or female lead be in a novel. Does it work for you if they are only there to fill out the cast or to listen to the troubles of the star? Shouldn't they have some sort of life of their own?

In GONE GIRL, the male protagonist has a sister named Go. Great name, but she was given very few other characteristics although we were supposed to believe these two were very close. They run a business together, for instance. But she never came to life because she had no story of her own.

In a short story, you don't have the space to do this. But in a novel, there is lots of time to bring characters to life. What do you think? Maybe it is asking too much in a novel that is mostly about plot? But I wanted to know Go! Especially after she gave her that name.

Show Don't Tell

This advice has basically been in vogue since the Ernest Hemingway days. Although we have nay-sayers like Francine Prose who teaches writing and writes brilliant novels.

I believe this is from her book READING LIKE A WRITER.

"....there is a form of bad advice often given young writers—namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out ... when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language."

ME:

I sometimes think that the most beautiful writing comes with the narrative passages, not ones of dialog. I get weary of too much dialog, too much of an attempt to completely root a story in hip, pitched dialects. Conversations can easily be as dull as narration. What do you think? Stasis isn't the outcome of narration (or telling) necessarily, but of too little story, too little description, too little character.

Dated Writing Styles

Edna Ferber dated?


On a blog last week, someone said they were not able to read older books (a century or so older) because of the dated writing style in many of them. Some writers seem able to write books that don't suffer from that as much as others. I guess the best way to avoid becoming dated is not to rely too much on current slang, current politics, current technology, etc. This is hard to do because we are often not aware of what is strictly current and embedded in a specific time and consequently will date the book eventually.

What writers from the early 20th century and earlier hold up especially well? Now here is a case where descriptions are probably more timeless than dialog. Nothing nails down a time more than dialog.

What Speaks to You?

Interesting article in the Huffington Post about what qualities in a novel pull you in. How different people are attracted to different voices/themes/characters.

I need an emotional content, something at risk, a person I find interesting even if unlikable. What about you?

The Uses and Misuses of Dialect

Use of a dialect is something I am always struggling with when trying to write stories set in Detroit. Here is an article that has some good ideas about it.

http://www.justaboutwrite.com/A_Archive_Uses-Abuses-Dialect.html

How do you incorporate the kind of speech your characters use without becoming incomprehensible to your readers?

As readers, how much dialect do you want to read? Is it fair to use a little to indicate the speech patterns and then drop it?

I know it bothered me in Huck Finn, for instance.

Opening Lines

"I don't know what to do about my husband's new wife."

Is that a great opening line or what? When I read it, a story flew into my head entirely different than the one that Molly Giles wrote in her story "Pie Dance." She is a terrific writer and did a great job with this surprising story though. Mine may not be nearly as good as hers, but it will be quite different.

So I'm going to write that story. I don't think stealing a first line is verboten.

So here's an idea if not a real challenge because it's been too soon. (Although I am afraid I will forget this idea if I wait). Pick a great opening line to someone's novel or story and write a completely different story. You don't even have to read the original work. Just steal the first line.

In the meantime, what are some of the great opening lines? Maybe I can get more ideas for stories from you.

Little Magazines

I received a copy of NEEDLE in the mail today. I'd already bought one, but I think perhaps Steve Weddle, the terrific editor who manages to get these out regularly,
sent me one not knowing that. I have every issue of this zine as well as the first issue of GRIFT and two issues of PULP MODERN.


Along side of them are two copies of MURDALAND-which folded due to lack of support. I can't tell you how great those two issues were. That was in the day before they could be printed for a reasonable amount. And a sad day, it was. And although it may be a bit easier to keep a magazine afloat, it does require some devotion from the crime- loving community.

BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND ONE and CRIME FACTORY: FIRST SHIFT also sit on my shelf although they are not technically zines. Just darn great anthologies. There are some great online ones too, but I can't cover all the bases at once.

The stories in these little magazine and anthologies are often on a par with EQMM and AHMM (IMHO) although they are darker, grittier, sweatier, and clearly the work of mostly younger writers.

I have read a dozen or more stories in these zines that are equal to what I see in the older magazines. The voices may be different, the story less focused on traditional crime solving, but the elements are still there.

If you haven't tried any of these newer print zines, I urge you to try a copy. If we want to hand over the car, we have to have the drivers ready to drive.

On Writing

How much are you in control of what you write? Are you able to discard an idea you know is probably going to be difficult to pull off?

Or are you swept away by words you didn't know you had in your head when you sat down?

I read a piece by Laura Lippman that said she outlines when she gets into a jam with a novel. It's only then that she begins to evaluate where she is and what must come next. What is working, what characters are not well developed enough or are in the story too much.

I think I do outline--but only in my head. The main thing for me when I am writing that first draft is that I like the voice, the character. I am seduced by it, in fact.

Control comes in later edits for me. Plot if often the last consideration. The character finally shows me what he is up to.

What about you?

Best Rejection Letter Yet

Here is the link to a video of Megan's panel in Australia with Jo Nesbo.


Next Monday, FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE. A story set at a zoo. Mine needs to go past my reading group.
Let me know.

Best Rejection Letter This Time Around.

From a well-known agent:

Dear Ms. Abbott
I have read the chapters you sent me from SHOT IN DETROIT and although I enjoyed what I read, my enjoyment was not enough to read more.....

Really wouldn't you think an agent might have a better way of rejecting a ms. after years of doing it. Wouldn't he/she have a standard rejection letter that was kind but firm. I really resent the flippant attitude of this one, in particular.


How about:

Dear Ms. Abbott:

I enjoyed what I read of SHOT IN DETROIT. Unfortunately I find myself unable to represent it.

Or something like that. You have to wonder if some agents have a streak of masochism in them.

What's the worst one you've received? Or better yet, do you know an agent looking for clients?

The Short Story

I know many people who never read short stories. They claim shorts are not absorbing enough to spend time with. They don't transport them to the place that good novels do. Of course, I disagree with this. And because a short story can usually be read in one sitting, the experience can be very transporting. You usually know very clearly what the story is about.

In the 2011 O'Henry Awards, A.M. Homes compares novels to short stories by using the metaphor of a train. "The novel is a cross-country trip; one boards leisurely in D.C. and watches the landscape unfold as the train passes through Maryland, Ohio, Illinois as one prepares to disembark in L.A.'s Union Station. The short story is like hopping on that same train already in motion in Chicago and riding it into Albuquerque with no time to waste."

Is this a good metaphor for you? Yes and no. I don't see why the short story has to told as she indicated by the phrase "no time to waste." Also some novels seem to rush by us and some short stories seem to linger on a moment forever.

How would you define the difference?

Illness and the Modern Novel

Nashville

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but in almost every book I pick up lately a major character has an ailment of some kind: Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimers, Blindness, Deafness, brain disorders, cancer and their kids have autism, Downs Syndrome, aphasia, mental illness.

Is this because the reading audience is getting older and both the writers and readers are affected by such ailments? Or was it always like this and I missed it?

I am not really talking about characters that are victims of crime, but ones that are victims of physical ailments and disabilities. What ails us?