Who Do I Believe -- My Gut Or My Critique Partners?

Last week I submitted the latest chapter of my story to my crit group, and while the response was positive (several members said it was my best chapter yet), one of the members expressed concern that even though there were some bits of action near the end, not enough had occurred that pushed the story forward.

In one sense, I have to agree with her. This chapter was meant to be more of a sequel, a time for the character to regroup after the excitement of the previous chapters. A chance for her to learn both about the trouble she’s in and about the new character she’d just found herself partnered with. There’s some action at the end, while she’s trying to escape the bad guys and make it to the bus station, but my CP didn’t think that this wasn’t enough to justify the chapter.

Which leaves me with a dilemma. Do I listen to her and get rid of some of the non-actiony stuff, or do I go with what my gut tells me: that the reader needs (and wants) me to spend some time establishing the relationship between the MC and her paranormal partner before the next wave of action engulfs them. I mean, isn't that pushing the story forward too?

Some of you may suggest the old adage that I should always go with my gut. Unfortunately, my gut has led to plenty of “too much dialogue, not enough action” comments peppering my critiques over the past year, so I know I still don’t have a good feel for the proper proportions. So what's a writer to do?

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what my other crit group thinks when they get the chance to read the chapter.

Isn’t procrastination wonderful?


ChemistKen

P.S.  How do you decide who to believe?

Having Your Character Sound Like An Idiot For The Sake Of Your Story

I’m due to turn in another chapter for one of my crit groups tomorrow, and once again I find myself scrambling to finish it on time. Sigh… To be honest, I’ve avoided this chapter for the last several months, keeping my crit partners at bay by handing them revised versions of earlier chapters, but they’ve made it clear I can no longer get away with that. They want new stuff.

The chapter in question is a sequel chapter. Things have calmed down after the frenetic events the protagonist has just been put through, and now it’s time for her (and the reader) to catch their breath and be given some explanation (from the protagonist’s new partner) about what the heck just happened.

So here’s the problem. There’s going to be a fair amount of explanation at this point, and based on what my crit partners have dinged me for in the past, I know they’re going to complain that:

1). I have too much dialogue, and 

2). I’m dumping too much information on them at once. 

So I’m struggling with deciding how much to say now and how much to save for later.

My natural inclination is to answer all the protagonist’s (and reader’s) questions as soon as possible (at least the obvious ones) because that’s how things tend to work in real life. But there are so many obvious questions I know my crit partners will complain if I answer them all.

The general rule is that you don’t hand information to the reader until they need it, but that’s not always the best strategy. If you wait until you absolutely HAVE to give the reader some information, it often turns into an infodump that kills the pacing, and the reader barely has a chance to digest this information before it becomes relevant and the action begins. I’ve gone back over some of my favorite fantasy books to see how those authors did it, and to my surprise, they rarely waited until the reader absolutely needed the information. Instead, they sprinkled it out over the course of the story, kind of like a trail of breadcrumbs to keep the reader reading along.

But back to my dilemma. How can I go about having my MC not ask all the obvious questions? How can I save some of them for later? As usual, I ran to the TV/movie theater to see how those writers do it, and the answer turns out to be quite simple. Pretend the character is an idiot (or at least is so flustered their mind isn’t working as it should). I’m serious. I can’t count the number of times I’ve railed at a TV/movie character for not asking a few direct questions that would immediately occur to anyone with an IQ over 1.

For example, if the character has just been rescued by a stranger with superhuman powers, instead of asking who the stranger is or how does he have superpowers or why he was attacked in the fist place, the character will ask something like: Are you an alien? Kind of an off-the-wall question if you ask me. A question that even once it's answered, still doesn’t tell the character or the reader much. And, even worse, when the stranger answers no, the character usually kind of stops asking questions. Arg!!!!!

But as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, dialogue isn’t real. It’s written in a way that maximizes the entertainment value of the words. So who cares if a real person would have asked all these questions? If the author thinks it’s better to withhold the information, then they just don’t have the character ask those questions.

The trick for writers is to figure out how to do this without making the character sound like a moron or without pissing off your readers that have an IQ over 1.

ChemistKen

What TV Dramas Can Teach Us About Dialogue

On the advice of one of my crit partners, I’ve gotten into the habit of watching a few television dramas with my back to the screen. By not having my eyes telling me what’s happening, I can focus entirely on the dialogue, figuring out how the writers manage to pack so much information and emotion into so few words. Back in July, I posted that dialogue in novels isn’t real dialogue, it’s code for real dialogue. And now I’m slowly beginning to crack some of that code.

One of the best dramas for this technique is Suits, one of my favorite shows on cable. I won’t describe what the series is about, other than to say it involves lawyers suing each other a lot, but I’ve already noticed one trick the writers use to keep the pace moving. The nonverbal information dump.

Let’s say one of the characters has just had a confrontation with the antagonist, and when he returns to the office he yells at/complains to/argues with his partner about it. The thing I’ve noticed is that the character never repeats what happened during the confrontation, other than a quick one sentence description that hardly does the confrontation justice. The writers do this because the audience has already seen the conflict and would be bored by a rehash of events, but the trick is that, despite the lack of communication, the second character now behaves as if he has a perfect understanding of that confrontation.

I remember first seeing this technique in episodes of X-Files back in the day. Mulder and Scully would often be chasing mysteries in separate locations, and as soon as one of them discovered some vital clue, they would call the other and let them know. But the calls would always be short and sweet, with very little in the way of real details. Scully may have just discovered that the creature they’re tracking is sensitive to a certain wavelength of light when applied in a certain pulsating pattern during a full moon, but all she would usually say is that the creature doesn’t like light and be done with it. And, voila, Mulder would automatically know everything Scully did and act accordingly. Totally unrealistic, but it kept the story moving.

So always remember, good dialogue is not just about cutting out the boring parts, or keeping the words tight, or having characters talking at cross purposes. It’s about delivering information to the reader in a way that maximizes its entertainment value.

Even if that dialogue wouldn't come close to working in real life.

ChemistKen

Dialogue Isn't Real, It's Code For Real-Life Conversations

If you believe my critique partners, my dialogue writing skills have improved by leaps and bounds over the years. Sometimes I wonder if they’re simply being kind, but considering how poor my dialogue skills were back when I began writing over six years ago, I guess it wouldn’t have taken all that much for me to become noticeably better.

Perhaps it has something to do with being an introvert, more accustomed to listening than talking, but dialogue has never come naturally to me. Heck, six years ago, I didn’t write dialogue, I wrote telling summaries of dialogue. As if I was afraid of using quotation marks. It wasn’t until I compared my chapters with those in published books that I realized the problem. No wonder my chapters had seemed so short.  :(

Fast forward to the present and I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with the whole dialogue thing, although I still have plenty left to learn. If anything, my dialogue now goes on for too long. Experts tell us it’s what’s left unsaid that delivers the most punch, but leaving stuff unsaid leaves me with a queasy feeling in my stomach. (Maybe because I used to be a teacher) Having characters talking at cross purposes or evading each others questions or misunderstanding what the other is saying are techniques I still struggle with.

Lately, I’ve been paying attention to television dramas to see how their writers write dialogue. One of my favorite shows for this is “Suits.” Even though there’s plenty of conflict and tension during an episode—almost all of it revealed through dialogue—the dialogue exchanges are surprisingly short. In fact, they’re much too short to adequately cover everything the characters would really need to know. And that’s the point I’m beginning to understand. Dialogue isn’t there to communicate information between the characters, it’s there to relay information to the reader in a manner that maximizes its entertainment value.

Dialogue isn’t real-life conversation, it’s code for real-life conversation.

So what shows do you watch for the dialogue?

ChemistKen