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Authors: K. L. Going
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potatoes. And the peas. And the bread. Finally, Dad can't stand it any longer. He sets down his knife and turns to Curt.
"So," he says. "Do you have a job?"
See how the characters' mannerisms help us understand who they are and what they're feeling? Without having read any other part of this book, do you already have a sense of the personalities involved?
Body language is a wonderful tool for rounding out a scene, making it both real and complex. Use it wisely and use it well. You'll soon find that your scenes take on a multidimensional quality they might have been lacking before.
WORDS OF CAUTION _
Body language and dialogue are two of the best ways to bring characters to life, but I would offer a few words of caution, especially regarding dialogue. Characters in books do not speak the same way people in real life speak. Most of us ramble, cutting off sentences in the middle and never getting back to them. We allow our train of thought to take us off the topic of conversation. Some of us might repeat the same actions, like twitching or blinking or scratching, far more than we're aware. We say "um," "like," and "you know" so often that we cease to hear them.
If you've ever had to take dictation you understand what I mean. When you read through an actual transcript of a conversation it's nearly impossible to follow. While writers strive for realism, this is not something we want to emulate. Remember that dialogue is meant to reveal character, not writing prowess. The goal for any given scene is not to convince a reader you are the most talented mimic of all time. In fact, it's quite the opposite. In the best scenes the writer fades into the background so much so that the reader forgets the writer exists. The reader has suspended his disbelief to the point where he feels as if he is listening to a conversation between two real people. For this to happen, he can't be stumbling over words and sentences laden with "likes" and "urns" and he can't be fighting a nagging sense that no one really talks in such a polished, grammatically correct manner. You, as the author, must strike a balance.
Dialogue, as well as first-person narrative (the "I" voice), is all about weighing what sounds real against what makes for clean reading. A good rule of thumb is that a little goes a long way. Do you feel your teen character would say "like" a lot? Well, one strategically placed "like" can have more impact than the more realistic dozens of uses because the flow of the text is not interrupted. The same can be applied to accents and regional words. Certainly people from different parts of the world speak differently, using unique slang and speech patterns, but trying to force too many examples of this into your writing can backfire, taking away from the intended effect. Dialogue is a powerful tool, but choose your characters' words wisely. Remember, writing is not about capturing speech verbatim—it's about using rhythm and word choice to capture the truth of what your characters say. How the words translate to the reader is more important than how they would sound in real life. To facilitate this, many authors read their dialogue
out loud. You might need to write several versions of a conversation before you reach that critical balance that makes your characters seem real while not interrupting the reading experience.
TYPES OF CHARACTERS _
Once you understand action and dialogue as tools for developing characters, the question arises: Who do you give the actions and dialogue to? When you have many different characters, how canyou decide which character gets to speak that great line or make that important decision?
When you begin a story, it's important to be very clear about whose story you're telling. When I critique manuscripts, one of the most common problems I find is confusion over who the main character is. Sometimes a character that seems to be set up in the beginning of the novel as the primary character ends up with the least
"So," he says. "Do you have a job?"
See how the characters' mannerisms help us understand who they are and what they're feeling? Without having read any other part of this book, do you already have a sense of the personalities involved?
Body language is a wonderful tool for rounding out a scene, making it both real and complex. Use it wisely and use it well. You'll soon find that your scenes take on a multidimensional quality they might have been lacking before.
WORDS OF CAUTION _
Body language and dialogue are two of the best ways to bring characters to life, but I would offer a few words of caution, especially regarding dialogue. Characters in books do not speak the same way people in real life speak. Most of us ramble, cutting off sentences in the middle and never getting back to them. We allow our train of thought to take us off the topic of conversation. Some of us might repeat the same actions, like twitching or blinking or scratching, far more than we're aware. We say "um," "like," and "you know" so often that we cease to hear them.
If you've ever had to take dictation you understand what I mean. When you read through an actual transcript of a conversation it's nearly impossible to follow. While writers strive for realism, this is not something we want to emulate. Remember that dialogue is meant to reveal character, not writing prowess. The goal for any given scene is not to convince a reader you are the most talented mimic of all time. In fact, it's quite the opposite. In the best scenes the writer fades into the background so much so that the reader forgets the writer exists. The reader has suspended his disbelief to the point where he feels as if he is listening to a conversation between two real people. For this to happen, he can't be stumbling over words and sentences laden with "likes" and "urns" and he can't be fighting a nagging sense that no one really talks in such a polished, grammatically correct manner. You, as the author, must strike a balance.
Dialogue, as well as first-person narrative (the "I" voice), is all about weighing what sounds real against what makes for clean reading. A good rule of thumb is that a little goes a long way. Do you feel your teen character would say "like" a lot? Well, one strategically placed "like" can have more impact than the more realistic dozens of uses because the flow of the text is not interrupted. The same can be applied to accents and regional words. Certainly people from different parts of the world speak differently, using unique slang and speech patterns, but trying to force too many examples of this into your writing can backfire, taking away from the intended effect. Dialogue is a powerful tool, but choose your characters' words wisely. Remember, writing is not about capturing speech verbatim—it's about using rhythm and word choice to capture the truth of what your characters say. How the words translate to the reader is more important than how they would sound in real life. To facilitate this, many authors read their dialogue
out loud. You might need to write several versions of a conversation before you reach that critical balance that makes your characters seem real while not interrupting the reading experience.
TYPES OF CHARACTERS _
Once you understand action and dialogue as tools for developing characters, the question arises: Who do you give the actions and dialogue to? When you have many different characters, how canyou decide which character gets to speak that great line or make that important decision?
When you begin a story, it's important to be very clear about whose story you're telling. When I critique manuscripts, one of the most common problems I find is confusion over who the main character is. Sometimes a character that seems to be set up in the beginning of the novel as the primary character ends up with the least
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