Category: How to Write

Motivational Moments…for Writers #30

Pride Yourself on Your Great Dialogue!

Definition: the conversational element of literary or dramatic composition

I’ve often wondered if authors whom I’ve read, like Edna Ferber, wrote pages and pages of narrative/description because they never mastered the art of dialogue. Hmmm.

I got lucky because I began my writing career writing stage plays. And they are nothing but dialogue. So early on I learned from, not only writing plays but, reading plays…thousands of them over the years.

To be good at it, I think one of the tricks is to write more and more dialogue and then write some more. You have to be able to get in that character’s head. What do they ‘sound‘ like? Is their grammar messy? The character who hails from the Bronx, for example, is going to cut off words such as: walkin’, talkin’, eatin’, and so forth. There will be more idioms (such as ‘grill’, ‘to front’, ‘rachet’, ‘na’mean, and ‘spaz’)  than a person who was raised in a household where grammar and diction were more valued. You have to be able to switch characters and write ‘flavor’ into their speech. How would an eastern Indian, whose first language is not English, ‘sound‘?  Now write it that way.  How would a southern ‘sound’? Be careful, people from Charleston, S.C. sound totally different from people in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Now, go back over your story and focus on how each character sounds. Is one character’s grammatical habits spilling over into another? Once in awhile I will read over my dialogue and suddenly one of my characters ‘sounds’ like me but they’re not anything like me. I let my own idioms slide right into my character’s mouth.  It’s disconcerting because it’s so easy to do. When you’re out and about listen to other people’s speech patterns, idioms and speech habits.

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L.Doctorow

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Logan Pearsall Smith

                    ~~‘As a writer, I marinate, speculate and hibernate.’  Trisha Sugarek ~~

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MY BLOGS feature INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!   Did you miss the past few months?    February’s author was Sheryl Steines. Johan Thompson (South African author)  joined us in April.   June: Mehreen Ahmed.  July: Janet Macleod Trotter, author of Tea Planter’s Daughter and in August we say ‘hello’ to Cheryl Hollon.
                                                                                   
                                         Check out more Motivational Moments…for Writers!

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How To Write Creatively~~ Writing Tips

For several years I’ve been writing posts for my Blog entitled, ‘Motivational Moments...for Writers!’  I got to thinking that I should compile all 41 posts into one place.  This new, exciting, instructional book is my sharing of over twenty+ years of my experience honing my craft of creative writing. 

That first, all important, sentence.
How to develop rich characters.
Writer’s Block.
Procrastination and how to get out of it.
What does it Mean to be an ‘Indie‘ author?
How to handle constructive criticism
…and many more words of encouragement and tips
…including quotes from successful writers such as yourself
AVAILABLE :  amazon.com

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MY BLOGS feature INTERVIEWS with  best-selling AUTHORS!   
                                                                                   
                                       To receive my posts sign up for my blog, blogs, blogger, writer, author, playwright, books, plays,fiction  On the home page, enter your email address.  Thanks!

                 “Writing  isn’t  a calling;  it’s  a doing.”  T.Sugarek

Interview with Author, Susan Elia MacNeal

        interviews, author quotes   Do other writers find themselves  at 4 in the afternoon, still in their pajamas, lost in their writing ?   Hopefully it only happens at home and not at the corner coffee shop…

My readers are enjoying hearing about other authors‘ writing processes.  I created a Question & Answer-type Interview and then began contacting some of my favorite authors to ask them to participate.  It turns out that not only do these other writers want to share their writing life with us, but they are equally interested in the stories from other authors.

                              In this three-part post, my interview is with Susan Elia MacNeal.   I am especially honored as Susan and her publicist have asked me to review her next book, “His Majesty’s Hope”, to be released in May of His_Majesty's[1]this year.  Please sit back and enjoy a chat with Susan……..

 

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I work in my beautiful library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, overstuffed velvet sofas, a fireplace, two cats, and a handsome young manservant to fetch me tea and coffee.  Okay, that’s not true. But I do have two cats.  I live in New York, and space is definitely at a premium. Before our son was born, my husband and I used our guest bedroom as an office. After it became a kid’s room, I started working at the kitchen table, or sometimes cross-legged on the living room sofa.

I joined the New York Writers Room in the West Village for a while and had many happy days there with a view of the Empire State building, but I’m not currently working there. (My son has asthma, and I like being closer to his school in case of emergencies.)  I also love a little café near us—best coffee in the world, plus big tables full of other writers. I also like to work at our local public library, which is one of the old Carnegie libraries.

I’ve also written at a lot of friends’ homes, while they’ve been on vacation – some of them famous. So, parts of my books have been written at actor/writer John Hodgman’s apartment (I also looked after their cat), composer Kristin Andersen Lopez and Robert Lopez’s apartment (yes, of course I picked up his Tony award for Avenue Q and pretended to make an acceptance speech), and Ron Lieber and Jodi Kantor’s apartment. (They’re both journalists for the New York Times, and Jodi’s the author of The Obamas.)

I’ve also written with Josh Axelrad, the author of Repeat Until Rich, which was fun, because we’d break for bourbon at six p.m. But he was always saying, “I’m afraid you’re listening to me not typing and thinking I’m lazy!” I tried to tell him I have too many of my own issues to even thinking about listening to his typing or not typing!

Susan_Elia_(c)_Lesley_Semmelhack              The most amazing place I’ve ever written was just recently at Arisaig House, which is a former manor house, now a bed and breakfast, on the west coast of Scotland. It was also used as an SOE spy training camp during World War II. I was talking to a lot of people alive and living in the area during that period of time, and doing research, but I also wrote in a beautiful room with oriental rugs, a crackling fire, a view of the grounds and shoreline, and three big napping golden labs. Heaven!

But I’ve also written on trains planes and waiting rooms. Basically, I’ve learned to write anywhere and everywhere.

http://www.susaneliamacneal.com/

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Join us to read part two of this wonderful interview (March 7th.) with best-seller author Susan Elia MacNeal .
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner” INTERVIEWS with other  best-selling AUTHORS!

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month .  I have invited such luminaries as: Anne Purser, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Robert McCammon, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Sue Grafton, Jeffrey Deaver, Rhys Bowen, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create!
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