Mary O'Gara

Posts Tagged ‘dialogue’

Today’s guest blog is from Don McNair, multi-published author and now a book editor for the rest of us.   Don’s teaching his workshop on 21 steps to fog-free writing for Writers Online Classes in September.

His lesson on eliminating “ly” words was an eye-opener for me, so I got permission from Don to share it with all of you.   Of course I knew (going back to my own copy editing days) that “ly” words make weak writing–but Don showed me what an important small step this change is.

So here’s Don:

Back in my newbie years I heard someplace that I should eliminate “-ly” words.  I had no idea why, but that was the common advice, so I accepted it.  Later, I realized my writing was sharper.  But why would that be?  Years later, while writing dialogue for a scene, the reason hit me.  It can be explained by two words: author intrusion.

To illustrate, consider this sentence, which is indicative of many writing samples from unpublished writers:  “I’ll advise you to stop doing that,” he said, angrily.

How do we know he said this angrily?  Well, the author told us!  After the character said his line, the author poked his reader’s shoulder and said, “That thing the character said?  It was said in an angry manner.  I just wanted you to know that.”

Here’s a more vivid explanation.  You’ve just taken your seat at a theatre on opening night.  The lights dim and the curtain opens on two actors.  The female actor steps forward and says, “John, I wish you hadn’t done that.”

The theatre lights suddenly go bright and the director bounds onto the stage, waving his arms.  He stares at the audience.  “That thing the character said?  I just wanted you to know it was said in an angry manner.  Do we all understand that?”  Satisfied that we do, he disappears behind the curtain and the actors again take their places.  John says, “Well, it wasn’t my fault,” and that director prances back onto the stage to tell us John was miffed, perhaps even a bit petulant.

Do you think you could settle in and enjoy that play?

What’s the solution?  The way our sample dialogue is now, with those “-ly” words, the author is TELLING us how the lines were said.  Let’s let the characters themselves SHOW us their frames of mind, perhaps like this:

“I’ll advise you to stop doing that.”  His hands formed fists at his sides.

Let’s look at another way to show the character’s feelings.  Consider this dialogue:  “Don’t you think we’d better stop?” she asked, anxiously.

There’s that author again, telling us how the characters think.  What’s another way to show she said her line anxiously?  Well, we can alter what she says so that there’s no question, and no need for the author to butt in.  Perhaps like this:  “My God, shouldn’t we stop?”

Author intrusion is only one problem with using “-ly” words.  Redundancy is another.  The above quote uses an adverb (the -ly word), a frequently seen redundancy.  If someone said “Now, now” to you, wouldn’t you immediately classify it as a mild statement?  Do we really need an outsider—the author—to tell us it was, by using “mildly?”  We are being told twice, and that makes it a redundancy.

This is also an instance of author intrusion.  The adverb adds nothing and in fact detracts from our story involvement.  If a quote seems to need an “-ly” word, change the quote so that it doesn’t.  Edit the above example to:  “Now, now,” he said.

Here’s another example:  “It’s none of your business!” she said hotly.

That exclamation mark says she was hot, doesn’t it?  Change this to:  “It’s none of your business!” she said.

Where possible, leave out the dialogue tag completely.  This is true especially when there’s a rapid-fire exchange between characters, like this:

“It’s none of your business!”

“Now, Betty, I was only asking . . .”

“You men.  You come in here and . . .”

Is there any question about who said what?  Or how they said it?

Adverbs are frequently overused in non-quoted material and often are redundant.  Compare this sentence . . . Amy quickly jumped up.  . . . with this one:  Amy jumped up.  The latter is stronger, don’t you think?  Besides, how could one jump slowly?  Aha!  Another form of redundancy.

One more:  “She quickly jerked the hat off her head.”  Compare that with:  “She jerked the hat off her head.”  Or, better yet:  “She jerked off her hat.”

More action, less fog.

Today is a fine day for a writing dialogue with someone you loved–or might have loved if he or she had returned from a war, any war–or perhaps for writing a heartfelt prayer for the ones who did come back.

In Red Oak, Iowa, my home town, they still fly the funeral flags of our hometown veterans on Memorial Day.   Among them are two men I loved who came back:  My father and my grandmother’s brother, who was my surrogate grandfather:  Charles Arthur Reese and Philo Douglas Clark.

The stories they told me as a child were wildly exaggerated and made war sound like a great adventure.   Today I might dialogue with Uncle Philo about his real memories of World War One.   Dialogues aren’t limited to living people.

You could also dialogue with the condition of living in a world at war, and you might be surprised at what you discover for your own life and your writing.

Or this may be a chance to say good-bye in dialogue–or hello to someone you never got to meet.

Dialoguing is simple:   Sit quietly and breathe slowly and deeply.   Write a name on the journal page and make a short list of up to a dozen milestones in that person’s life, remembering that you are only one of those milestones.   Then close your eyes and imagine that person or something representing the situationn in front of you.

Close your eyes.

Write:  Hello or some other greeting.

Listen and record what you hear or understand.

Write your next sentence.   Continue until the conversation drops.

Ask if there’s anything else.

Sit in silence a little longer, waiting.

And when it’s really done, jot down a summary sentence for yourself or maybe a reminder about what you want to take into the rest of your life from this moment.

How well are your important relationships working?   Is reciptocity still there?  Are you letting time slip away and erode important connections?  Or are you being stifled by a relationship that has grown too close?

Here’s a simple way to journal about vital relationships and keep them alive and thriving over time with just minutes a day:

On the first page of a notebook or journal (inexpensive spiral notebooks are perfect for this, but so are old journals with blank pages at the end you haven’t used) make a list of the days of the week and write the name of an important person in your life next to each of those days.   My current list, for example, might look like this:

Sunday:  My husband

Monday:  Our daughter

Tuesday:  Our older son

Wednesday:  Our younger son

Thursday, Friday and Saturday:  Our grandchildren

But what about all those other important people?   I could expand the list to 14 (two complete weeks) or 15 (halving the month) or even 31 (if I had a really complex life).   Or I could group the grandchildren and our oldest son on one day as older son’s family, neatly tucking our daughter-in-law into the family group.

You might want to do one list for family and one for co-workers or friends.   Or you might want to monitor one group for awhile, then switch.

However you make your list, on the appointed day of the week (or date in the month), take five minutes to assess how you’re faring with that relationship since the last time you wrote about it.   Look at the quality and not just the quantity of your contacts.  How current are you with each other’s lives?

Are you happy with the relatinship as it is now?   Would you like to be closer?  Or a bit less cozy?

Is it working?  (And notice that we’re sometimes happy with unhealthy relatinships even if they’re not functioning–and we need to recognize that situation when it arises.)

Barring traumas, which get special consideration for a time, is it a two-way relationship or one in which one of you does all the nurturing and the other barely participates.  (In some working relationships, that’s not unhealthy, by the way; it might be your boss’s management style to stand apart when things are flowing well, but it’s a warning sign for personal and emotional relationships.)

One week, even one month, doesn’t make or define a relationship.   But over time, a picture emerges.  If a relatioship is out of balance week after week, the situation needs to be addressed.

There are other journal tools that will help you once you’ve made an assessment.   You might write an unsent letter to get rid of anger or excessive emotions in order to think more clearly about what you do want from the relationship and what you’re willing to do to improve it.

You may want to dialogue with the other person.  Maybe what doesn’t function for you does function for the other person–and you have to make your own choices based on that knowledge.

Or you could work with lists or poems, even drawings.  My journal workshop, Nurturing the Writer Within, is filled with ideas for working on your life, and it’s available as a package from maryo@iowapoet.com for $20 ($25 if you’d like to have a CD mailed to you instead of receiving lessons by email attachment).