Questions

I’m writing a novel consisting almost entirely of dialogue. It only involves 3 main characters:

Rudy: the protagonist, a ludicrously empathetic, depressed teenager, with an eclectic taste in everything pop-culture

Derry: his guy friend, an unintelligent Metal-head, not good with people, fairly caring, but critical

Cath: his girl best friend, and later love interest, basically the same as Rudy, just softer and a touch happier

Each chapter consists of a conversation between Rudy and one of his friends, the Rudy And Cath conversations are serious, and serve a lot of mental insight and purpose. The Rudy And Derry chapters are goofy, non-serious, and fairly playful.

I’m having a lot of trouble writing the latter, but the former are coming along easily, I’m tempted to abandon the whole Derry character, but am afraid to.

I’m taking a creative writing class and need to write a scene emphasizing dialogue. I need some ideas!!! No chick lit, please, I’m 25 and it is too cliche.

10 pts to most creative answer, whether I use it or not!
- BB

The little paragraph below is the one in question:

“I’ll be just fine.” He stood up and brushed himself off in a gesture of nonchalance. “Worry about yourself.”

Is this way correct? Or should I be separating the action and the dialogue?

Thanks!
- Flashlight Taylor

a novel for the first time can be daunting. You’re confident that your story is a cracker, but you’re not entirely sure how the storyline goes, in detail, at this stage. What you need is a simple way of sorting out how the whole thing progresses from start to finish. So read on…

Writing a novel is not a quick afternoon job, it’s a long and often emotionally challenging business. You need to move steadily and methodically along your novel writing journey if you’re going to bring your story to its happy completion.

Some good advice I once received about tackling a large job is to break it down into smaller pieces and then complete each piece in the correct order.

Here is a method for creating a synopsis that does just that.

Stage 1. In two or three brief paragraphs state the broad outline of the whole story.

Example:

The scene is set in Italy where the son and daughter of two warring families meet at a ball and fall in love.

The daughter is being forced to marry another man, but says she will kill herself rather than marry him. She takes a sleeping draught which makes her appear dead.

The son finds her in this state and, distraught, takes his own life with his dagger. The daughter wakes up to find her love dead beside her and kills herself with the same dagger.

Stage 2. Expand this scenario, but this time describe each chapter in two or three brief sentences.

Example:

Chapter 1

The Montagues and the Capulets are two important families in Verona but they hate each other. Juliet is betrothed to a man called Paris, and the wedding arrangements are being made.

Romeo, having declared he is in love with Rosaline, goes to the ball for a chance to meet her. At the ball he meets Juliet and they both fall in love.

Afterwards they discover that their families have a standing feud.

Stage 3. Having got your chapter by chapter synopsis done, expand each one from two or three sentences to a more detailed account of the action in that chapter. Don’t include dialogue or descriptions at this stage unless absolutely necessary. A chapter may well take up a page or more now, but don’t let your enthusiasm run away with you.

Stage 4. Using your expanded chapter summaries begin writing the novel proper. You may find that the story wants to strike out at a tangent. Be careful of this as, if you’ve got a really cracking story already, you risk destroying it.

If you do find yourself going off on an exciting new storyline then stop before you get too far and go back to Stage 1. Write down your changed story in two or three brief paragraphs to see how it looks and to judge whether you’re really happy with it. If you are then go back to Stages 2 and 3 and rework them before continuing with the chapter by chapter work.

Follow this system carefully and you will have created a sure road map to follow that will lead you to your final goal: your completed manuscript.


- Mervyn Love

1. Set aside a time to write and keep it sacred.

Make this a time when you know you are at your best and feel most creative — Saturday mornings, late at night, whatever works for you. Make writing a priority and arrange other parts of your schedule around it.

2. Remove all distractions while you write.

Turn off the television. Don’t answer the phone. You may need to set your writing time at a time when no one else is around to help you avoid being distracted.

3. Outline your plot.

Know generally where you want your story to go. Sometimes stories and characters develop in unexpected ways, and you need to allow for that. But keep your guiding plan in mind.

4. Avoid the intimidation of a blank computer screen.

Just start writing. Try freewriting about the plot of the story or a character to get “the flow” started. Begin a dialogue between two characters and see where your flow takes you. Sometimes that ends up in an embarrassingly bad scene, but that bad scene may just have the seeds of something a lot better in it. Once you’ve got something written, you can always improve it, but you have to get something, anything, written first.

5. Keep a draft mentality.

Nothing you write has to be permanent. Everything can change. If you get into a good flow and there’s a word that you just can’t think of, don’t interrupt the flow by pondering over the word or going to the thesaurus. Leave a blank space and keep writing. There will always be time to go back and look up that word. At this stage, spelling and grammar don’t matter; just write and create.

6. Don’t feel compelled to begin at the beginning.

You don’t have to write your story in chronological order during the drafting phase, especially if you know the main events you want your novel to cover. Work on the chapter you feel like working on. The first sentence and the first chapter will probably require the most work, so don’t get frustrated by trying to get them perfect before you write anything else.

7. Organize your files, especially if you are not going to write in order.

Create a different file for each chapter you write. That way you can dip in and fool around with a few words or draft a scene and then save it, close it up, and move on to a different section of the story. When you can easily work on what you want, you are also preventing writer’s block.

8. Revise, revise, and revise.

Someone once said, “Writing is revising.” Change and polish and delete and rearrange and change some more until you like the sound of the words. Often the best way to revise a sentence is to delete it.

9. Don’t be afraid of putting yourself out there.

Make a list of writers who have written mediocre books (the incentive: “If HE can do it, so can I.”) Be emboldened by writers whose works don’t impress you much. The only thing they have over you is their persistence. There will always be critics, but you have to separate the wheat from the chaff: some people’s criticism means something; most people’s criticism is just so much noise. People keep writing novels despite the criticism. You might as well be one of them.

10. Only you can determine when you are finished.

Show you’re writing to a trusted friend, preferably one who knows about writing. Friends are likely to tell you how wonderful your novel is, as friends will do, and this of course is not helpful at all. Read between the lines of their compliments. Ultimately, you have to be the judge of your own writing.

Make up your mind to finish your novel, and you can do it. The only thing standing in the way is you.


- harjeetkaur

I need to write a short story but don’t know what to write about. Please give me a lot of suggestions! By the way, I like to have a good amount of dialogue.
- Bekah

I wrote some short story, with many dialogue, sure, but I don’t know the reader points of view. Is it interesting or not?
- Doo.ri