Talking about Talking
15/12/09 08:05 Filed in: Writing
On holidays now, so that means I have a little time
every day for writing. I have a number of other tasks
I want to get to but my year-end deadline is looming;
I'm trying to make The Silent Goodbye a
focus so that the first draft is completed by
December 31.
I spent about 90 minutes at the computer just after lunch yesterday. That seems to be a pretty good time to write: after Patti's gone back to work, Marlee has just been walked and food is not on my mind. It felt good and went well: I went over the passage I wrote the other day, where Gold recounts his childhood trauma to Constable McLean, then did a first draft of what I've called the "Discovery Scene". This is the scene where Gold discovers the key piece of evidence that will set his client free.
It was a fun scene to write. Breathless action (well, dialogue, really, but I love writing back-and-forth dialogue that includes mostly three-word comments back and forth) and interesting developments. You want to write what's happening, of course, but you also want to make sure you allow your characters' reactions to what's happening peek through as well.
Dialogue is an interesting thing. I'm reading Dickens right now, as I think I mentioned, and he wrote some amazing dialogue of the "monologue-to-monologue" type. You know, one characters speaks for several paragraphs, with long flowing sentences and lots of metaphors, then the other character launches into her own extended monologue on the subject? It's witty and fun but also not even close to realistic (well, maybe they did in fact talk like that in the 19th Century!).
Me, I like the more natural dialogue. Like a game of ping pong. Short comments, often part sentences. Interruptions. Laughs. Physical responses rather than verbal ones. A single page ends up having maybe seventy words on it. Something like this:
"Phil?"
"Yeah."
"You awake?"
"No... yeah."
"I got something."
He sat up, rubbed his eyes. "What?"
"It's important, Phil. Game changing."
"What?"
"Go to your computer."
"Yvonne, it's three o'clock in the..."
"Just go, Phil. I mean it."
"Okay, okay." He rubbed his eyes again, dragged himself out of bed.
"You there?"
"Hold on a minute." He reached the computer, touched a button. "Okay..."
"Go to Youtube."
"Youtube? You got me looking at..."
"It'll be worth it, I promise."
"Okay. I'm there."
I love that kind of stuff. Things just motor along and it's fun to write. I hope it's fun to read too. Needless to say, that little snippet (which I just made up now so it's not polished and it's not taken from the draft novel) is just an example. I like the pace, the punch. Passages like that make the pages turn and the action roll.
I enjoy writing dialogue so much that I've often considered writing plays. Maybe someday. Hard to do, though, writing plays. I'll have to keep considering it.
I spent about 90 minutes at the computer just after lunch yesterday. That seems to be a pretty good time to write: after Patti's gone back to work, Marlee has just been walked and food is not on my mind. It felt good and went well: I went over the passage I wrote the other day, where Gold recounts his childhood trauma to Constable McLean, then did a first draft of what I've called the "Discovery Scene". This is the scene where Gold discovers the key piece of evidence that will set his client free.
It was a fun scene to write. Breathless action (well, dialogue, really, but I love writing back-and-forth dialogue that includes mostly three-word comments back and forth) and interesting developments. You want to write what's happening, of course, but you also want to make sure you allow your characters' reactions to what's happening peek through as well.
Dialogue is an interesting thing. I'm reading Dickens right now, as I think I mentioned, and he wrote some amazing dialogue of the "monologue-to-monologue" type. You know, one characters speaks for several paragraphs, with long flowing sentences and lots of metaphors, then the other character launches into her own extended monologue on the subject? It's witty and fun but also not even close to realistic (well, maybe they did in fact talk like that in the 19th Century!).
Me, I like the more natural dialogue. Like a game of ping pong. Short comments, often part sentences. Interruptions. Laughs. Physical responses rather than verbal ones. A single page ends up having maybe seventy words on it. Something like this:
"Phil?"
"Yeah."
"You awake?"
"No... yeah."
"I got something."
He sat up, rubbed his eyes. "What?"
"It's important, Phil. Game changing."
"What?"
"Go to your computer."
"Yvonne, it's three o'clock in the..."
"Just go, Phil. I mean it."
"Okay, okay." He rubbed his eyes again, dragged himself out of bed.
"You there?"
"Hold on a minute." He reached the computer, touched a button. "Okay..."
"Go to Youtube."
"Youtube? You got me looking at..."
"It'll be worth it, I promise."
"Okay. I'm there."
I love that kind of stuff. Things just motor along and it's fun to write. I hope it's fun to read too. Needless to say, that little snippet (which I just made up now so it's not polished and it's not taken from the draft novel) is just an example. I like the pace, the punch. Passages like that make the pages turn and the action roll.
I enjoy writing dialogue so much that I've often considered writing plays. Maybe someday. Hard to do, though, writing plays. I'll have to keep considering it.