Living the Fictional Dream

I think writers walk a fine line when they create dialog. You want dialog that sounds like something people would actually say, but you don’t want to get too bogged down in the realism, either.

Shows like My So Called Life that really get into the “realistic” dialog (complete with a full complements of ums and stutters and run-on sentences) get on my nerves before too long. And reading such things instead of just listening to it would be even more irritating. Dialog is such an important part of a story, that if it irritates me, I’m very likely to get thrown out of the fictional dream and not care about fighting my way back in.

I like dialog that is crisp and clear and that portrays important information. I want it to be realistic, but in the best way possible — realistic for someone who’s into public speaking or has had training. Forget “uh” and “um,” and also forget boring dialog that, while we might say it in real life, has no bearing on the actual scene at hand. We don’t have time for that in our fiction today!

Writers have to be careful about information portrayal in dialog, though. Too much is just as much of a faux pas and dialog that is not relevant enough.

I get turned off when I read a conversation between two characters where they tell each other stuff that they would already know. For example:

Joe: When are you coming home tonight, honey?

Jane: Well, I work in a law office, so I have to stay until all the other partners are gone for the night. I probably won’t be home until 9.

If Joe and Jane are close enough that he would call her honey, they are close enough that he would already know she worked in a law office, so Jane would not feel the need to say that. The information was just thrown in so that the reader would get it. If that’s the only reason the information is in the dialog, cut it right out of there. If it’s that necessary to the story, find a way to get it in through narration or naturally in a scene. Don’t shoe-horn it into dialog.

And, now I’m off. A long weekend at the cabin. No internet — I hope I manage to get some writing done. Perhaps I’ll work on dialog! Either way, I expect to enjoy a relaxing weekend, which is probably the most important thing!

Naming is such a tricky thing. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, a character will spring to mind with his or her name already in place. Sarah Kirby from “The Widow and the Stranger” was like that. Some of the characters from my novel-in-progress — Caryn, Sean, Brilynn — as well.

And then there are the ones I have to struggle for. I flip through name books or name websites, looking for the perfect name. Sometimes I’ll pick a letter of the alphabet and go through all the names for the appropriate gender that start with that letter. I’ve always believed that characters should have names starting with different letters so it’s easier for the reader not to get them confused. In a novel, you can have a couple with the same initial, but the shorter the story, the more strictly I try to adhere to this rule.

I always thought that my experience naming characters would be helpful when it finally came time in my life to name a child, but now that my first little one is on the way, it’s not proving such an easy task. Of course, for the baby, my husband and I actually have to agree on a name. (Well, I guess that’s not always true, but it’s important to me — I want him to love what we name our child just as much as I do.)

The problem is, we have very different ideas about what makes a good name, especially for girls. We had our boy’s name totally picked out, but since the ultrasound said girl, we’ve been wrangling back and forth for months.

I love plant names… Sage, Holly, Rose, Laurel. He thinks that those names are too sissy, and has outlawed all plant names. Left to his own devices, he chooses many names that I think are too common or boring.

And, as if we didn’t have enough trouble between the two of us, there are always plenty of other people to offer suggestions and opinions. My sister loves the trendy names, like Piper and Taylor. My in-laws prefer more traditional names, like Ann — and they especially dislike names coming from the natural world (like Sierra) or names that would have nicknames. One friend told us that we should be sure to name our baby something that you can find on those racks of keychains in souvenir shops, because the child would be disappointed all of her life if she couldn’t be a part of that. Another friend tends to point out negativity in the meaning of a name (Leah was the unwanted sister in the Bible, Sage is a big ugly bush).

Now I understand why some people don’t tell anyone the name until the baby is actually born and the name is on the birth certificate, LOL! But a lot of times, the comments are helpful and encouraging, and sometimes other people see something that we didn’t see before. My husband especially gets a kick out of announcing the “name of the day.” I think it amuses him when people don’t like it!

We still have several months to go, and I have faith that eventually my husband and I will settle upon the perfect name for our little one. We have three top girl names that haven’t really changed in a while. And, of course, if the ultrasound proves wrong about the gender, we still have that boy’s name all ready. I suspect that, at this point, we need to meet our little one before we can decide on the perfect name.

But all this drama and back and forth over names has made me appreciate how much easier it was when I was just naming characters. Sure, those characters are very real to me, but if you’re writing along and suddenly the name isn’t working for the character, it can always be changed. And, when it comes to a character’s name, there is only myself to please.

Whether for a real person or a character, names are important. Names are identity. Names say a lot about who a person is. Nothing tells everything about a person, of course — I’m sure there could be an assassin or a ninja out there named Ethel or Maude — but names send a certain impression out into the world, and, for both my baby and my characters, I want to make sure that impression is a good one!

I’m working on another flash piece right now… it started with one of the prompts from my writing group’s April prompts writing contest. The prompt challenged me to write a story about ice. I wanted to do something different than just have the story take place in an icy setting or have an ice cube as an object. So, instead, ice is the main character… in a way.

Now I just need to buckle down and do revisions after my writing group was so helpful as to send critiques to me. I don’t know why I’m having such troubles making myself sit down and write or revise these days. Maybe my group should have more write-ins… I find myself being more productive at planned writing activities than in finding time on my own. When I’m at home right now, there is always something else to do — usually baby prep.

Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and we’re going to stay at my parents’ cabin for the holiday. It is usually so quiet and peaceful out there — also, there is no internet or cable to distract me. Perhaps I will find some good writing time while we’re there — when we’re not at my friends’ pool party!

I’ve been reading a series recently that, despite having intriguing characteres and a well-drawn fantasy world, repeatedly commits what I consider a big sin for an author — leaving emotional moments out of the story.

The author has such an engaging voice and conceives such good characters, I don’t know why she keeps making this misstep. I’ll be reading along in the story, and she’ll start building up a dramatic moment or event. In the most recent book, basically one of the main female characters had to participate in a magic spell. The spell would kill her — something that had to be done to achieve the end result they needed — but someone would be standing by with another spell to (hopefully) revive her afterwards.

You can probably tell just by my description that such a moment should have been pivotal. It’s the potential death of a major character — talk about a moment rife with drama. The idea of this spell was mentioned in the second-to-last book of the series, and when the character’s husband heard about it, he lashed out at the messenger and then nearly died himself because the messenger had a magic mirror that reflected the blow back on the caster. For the rest of that book and the beginning of the last book, the other characters utilize all this effort convincing the husband that there is no other choice and this risk is their only option. Either his wife is killed to save the rest of them and possibly revived, or all eight brothers and their wives die.

Finally, the husband is convinced. Then we spend pages getting more detail than I personally needed about the mechanics of the magic involved and what would happen. Then there is a scene break, and the beginning of the next scene starts after the spell has been cast and the wife has been revived without a single hitch.

… WTF? …

Talk about feeling cheated! I endured all that set up — some interesting, but some, frankly, a little boring — and then I don’t even get to see the moment of truth? What happened? How did the husband react when his wife was dead? Was there any moment when it seemed as if she would not be revived in time?

And this is not the only time that this author has committed this sin of omission. She doesn’t do it with every emotion-packed moment, but several times throughout the series she had the chance to write a very impactful scene, a scene that she’d been building up to for a while, and then just doesn’t write it. Instead, she skips over it to the happy conclusion and moves on to the next plot point.

As a reader, I feel cheated. As a writer, it amazes me that the author of this series is willing to skip these moments. The climax may be a challenge to write, but it’s the big pay out. It’s why we’re all there? Why would you ever want to skip it, when that’s the moment that affects your characters the most?

Perhaps its an offshoot of a problem that I sometimes have in my writing — being too easy on my characters. My characters are my babies — I created them out of nothing and I want the best for them. Sometimes it’s hard to hurt them and so I wuss out (when I do, though, my sister and my writing group mates always call me on it!). Maybe this author has the same problem and just can’t always manage to write about the dramatic/bad/hard stuff that happens to her characters?

In this instance, I enjoyed the world enough that I was a forgiving reader and kept going, despite my dissatisfaction with this tendency. However, if I’d been busier at the time or had other books that I wanted to read, I would have been more likely to drop this series and move on to the next one.

As a writer, you can’t guarantee that readers are going to forgive such a faux pas. Instead, the writer needs to do their utmost to keep the reader immersed in the fictional dream — don’t let them escape until you’re done with your story, and you have a much better chance that the readers will keep coming back for more.

Sorry for disappearing on you guys for a week. I caught this horrible crud last week and it laid me low for a long time. I’m only just now finally feeling sort of normal and getting back into the swing of work, and I’m still suffering from the lingering cough and runny nose. It really sucks being sick when you’re pregnant — you’re not allowed any of the good meds!

But, enough about that boring stuff. Let’s talk about writing.

When I logged into my email account after having been down for so long, I was rewarded with one acceptance and one rejection. It was nice that they balanced each other out!

A very strange story (about superheroes and vomit, of all things) was rejected. I wasn’t surprised. There were some really stomach churning descriptions in there (yes… I wrote it under the influence of first trimester morning sickness!). Now I have to look at it again (if I can find the stomach for it) and see if there is something revisable in that mess. I liked it at the time, but now… I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s because I’m now past all that nausea?

On the happier side of things, I wrote a little ghost story flash called “The Last Ball at Concord House,” and it will be published in the inaugural issue of 10Flash. I’m excited about that — it’s really neat to be part of a brand new ‘zine. And congrats to K.C. for all the work she’s been putting into it! I think it’s going to be a really fun publication!

And, speaking of K.C., if you’re interested in writing flash, you should read this post over on her blog. I enjoyed it a lot.

Finally, this is a little late, but my writing group mate Alex had a story published on Every Day Fiction earlier this week. It’s called, “The Squeeze.” It’s very short, and the ending will make you laugh.

Thanks to last night’s write-in with my writing group (and fellow attendees Stephanie and Sandra), I managed to finally finish the flash piece that I’ve been working on for a couple of months. And, after that, I popped it in an email and sent it off to the market it was written for. We will see if they like it!

Either way, it was a nice sense of accomplishment to actually finish a story this year. There hasn’t been enough of that lately. I know I have my excuses (all called pregnancy, LOL!), but it felt nice to actually finish a story and get it out the door.

Maybe I need to make myself a small but managable goal for the next few months. If I could make myself sit down for, say, two hours a week and either write or dust off stories for submissions, that would at least be a little progress. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, but I also don’t like slipping into the void of absolutely no progress.

Hmmm… something to think about anyway.

Happy writing everyone (especially Virginia and Dauna who have challenged themselves to write a story a day for the next two weeks)!

The power of the sense of smell is fairly amazing when you think about it. Especially considering that humans are so much less dependent on that sense than the other four, especially sight. But it is so crazy how a certain aroma will take you back to a specific memory almost instantly.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the library. For much of my childhood, the small town where I grew up didn’t have its own library, so on Saturdays and during the summer my mom would take me to the main library branch in the larger town about 30 minutes away.

I remember the smell of the building that would waft over me when I stepped through the doors. It was kind of musty and old, but not in a bad way. I loved that smell, and I loved how it clung to the books when I would take them home. When I was young, I always assumed the scent had something to do with the books themselves, but now I think that it probably had more to do with the age of the building.

The library I went to as a girl was built in… I guess the 50s or 60s. It had a bomb shelter in the basement, if that helps date it for you. There is a building across the street from where I work, a bank, and every time I walk in there (there’s a Subway on the first floor where I like to pick up lunch sometimes) I catch a whiff of that library/old building smell.

One whiff, and I’m suddenly 11 years old clutching an arm load of books and waiting for them to run my library card through their little machine. Though they later got scanable cards, the ones in my memory are the ones they had when I first got a card — they were pink and made of paper and they went through some kind of machine that pressed them and made them warm to the touch after when you checked out books.

Another scent memory that sometimes strikes me unawares is the smell of sun on grass. It’s been a while since I got a really good whiff of this one, but I used to smell it a lot when I was in college — I guess because they were always working on the grounds. The smell of sun-baked grass used to cling to my first dog’s coat when he would come back in the house from his back yard time. Sandy (a cockerspaniel) was an inside dog, which made smelling the outdoors on him all the more unusual. Sandy passed away while I was in college, but whenever I inhale that sunshiney, grassy smell, I’m transported back to when that little stinker used to sit on my feet or want to play tug-of-war; I can totally see him standing in front of me wagging his little stump of a tail.

The power of various smells and aromas can be utilized to great effect in one’s writing, in my opinion. The more senses you invoke in the story, the richer and more detailed your fictional world will be come, which makes you better able to draw in your reader and hold him there, right where you want him.

Hearing and sight are the dominant senses we describe in stories, but if you add the scent of woodsmoke; the taste of the cool, crisp water; or the way the fur carresses your main character’s fingertips, it gives the story an extra layer of depth. And, every detail you add has the possibility of resonating with your audience in ways you can’t anticipate — we all have our own associations with sights, sounds, smells, etc., and the more we can tap into those within our readers, the more bound they will be to our stories.