August 3 in the Story Kitchen

Hello writers, gentlefolk, and scoundrels, Jane here from Story Kitchen. Whew, July just flew by. It's hard to believe we're heading into fall already!

Our first season of the Story Kitchen Podcast has wrapped up (you can listen to episodes in lots of places, including Spotify and Spreaker!) and while we wish we could continue it, Maureen has to go back to teaching classes and just doesn't have the time. We're excited to come back to it in a few months, though!

Speaking of classes... Maureen and I are contributing a workshop to the Uncanny Magazine Year 8 Kickstarter, called How to Get Ideas for Your SFF Story. As of this writing (Aug 2) there are TWO spots left from the Uncanny campaign! We love Uncanny and what they've built and we were so pleased to be able to offer a fun reward for backers of this Kickstarter project.

Even if that reward tier is sold out, for those of you who might be interested, I think we're going to offer a similar workshop sometime in the fall. We will announce it in the newsletter!

This week's craft essay is about writing dialogue, which is something I know I've struggled with, and which I hear is a common problem among my fellow writers. Sometimes I write a scene that becomes ALL dialogue and it feels like nothing's happening--if I left it up to my characters, they would happily sit and just chat all day. Other times I'm trying to get to the action and the dialogue feels rushed, forced, and awkward. Luckily for us, Maureen has some thoughts to share to help us rethink how we approach dialogue in fiction!

How to Write Dialogue that Sounds Realistic

by Maureen

Dialogue. It’s hard. Well, in some ways it’s easy. Give me two characters and a room and I can write a lot of dialogue. Reading pages of dialogue, not so fun. Dialogue that sounds forced, awkward, or so similar that I can’t tell the characters apart? Also not fun.

I'd say use a little repetition, or the occasional 'um', sentence fragments, or other characteristics of real speech pretty sparingly. My mother’s side of the family comes from a small town in Kentucky, nineteen miles of the Tennessee border, and when I put a story there, I write it using the characteristics of my family’s speech. (I can do that because when I’m with them, I talk that way, too. When I’m not, I talk like a university educated middle class white person. It’s a mild example of code-switching.) So I can use that experience to make a conversation feel ‘realistic’.

You can become an observer of speech and learn the things to sprinkle into your dialogue to give your characters speech individuality. But I’m going to suggest that the problem isn’t that the dialogue doesn’t sound realistic. The problem is that it’s being used in place of action or exposition.

The thing that I didn't understand about dialogue for years was that dialogue is an action. It's like a fight scene. Dialogue works best when there is at least a little something at stake.

Dialogue works least well if it's exposition. I'm not saying you can't tell the reader things through dialogue. The best exposition is in everything--your dialogue, your description. But vivid characters are characters in situations that reveal who they are through what they want. If two people are talking, they usually want different things. Sometimes only slightly different, and sometimes conflicting things.

Often, what people want when they are talking is very social--we're small group primates as a species (small group meaning that we're good in social groups of thirty to 90 or something--not remembering the numbers, versus large group prey animals like wildebeests that have groups that number in the four figures). I want people to like me, so part of every conversation, for me, is trying to be likable. Other people are guarded, because they're trying to avoid pain.

Add that to whatever plot you have, and whatever secrets and backstory, and motivation your characters have, then when they talk to each other, their conversation will be dynamic.

That, more than realistic, will engage your readers. Star Wars (the first movie) has some of the stiffest dialogue ever written. Princes Leia says, "Governor Tarkin, I should’ve expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board." Try saying that out loud. It's genuinely terrible. But in the moment, defiant princess, evil empire, scary looking dude in black helmet, it works well enough because we're getting the conflict. Princess Leia is defiant in the face of possible death.

Script writing is different, of course, but it is obviously all about the dialogue. And yet, when people teach script writing, the last thing we worry about is dialogue. The first thing is story. I heard an interview with TV writer Aaron Sorkin, who is pretty well known for his dialogue in shows like West Wing. The interviewer asked him about writing smart dialogue and he said, in effect, he wasn’t particularly smart (not true by the way) but he knew what smart people sounded like. When I had to write scripts, my boss suggested among many other things, to read some West Wing scripts. The West Wing has a bunch of vivid characters. They’re smart, they’re competitive, they’re often witty. I hadn’t seen the show when I read the scripts, and to me, the characters felt as if they all talked the same way. What brought them alive was the actors.

In a story, what brings them alive is the situation. If I am invested in your character, I’ll find some of that character in your dialogue, because in my mind, the story is playing out. How many times has someone said that when a work was adapted for film or television, the main character didn’t look anything like what they had in their head? That’s because they had a character in their head, with a sense of what they looked like and who they are. They will read your serviceable dialogue in that context. From that character, and it will take on some of the richness of the rest of your story.

All this to say, perhaps your problem isn’t that your dialogue doesn’t sound realistic, perhaps it’s that:

• You’re using it instead of story—having your characters act instead of do.
• You’re using it as exposition—dialogue is not always a great way to explain setting, backstory, or stakes.
• You’re not seeing it as an action sequence in and of itself, dialogue should be something the characters do to each other.

Happy writing!

Any questions? Reach out to us on Twitter (@storykitchen2)!

This week’s recipe: Jane's Refreshing Summer Salad

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I define "salad" VERY loosely. It's basically a collection of ingredients tossed with dressing in a bowl. That's it! :D

That said, I do have a "formula" or sorts. I like to include some example of the following categories:

• Something leafy: right now I'm really into little gems lettuces mixed with a few leaves of bitter purple radicchio. I also LOVE escarole for this. In the past I've also loved cabbage, baby spinach, baby kale.
• Other veggies: This is entirely optional, but there's a lot of room to play here. You can throw in diced bell peppers and corn for a Tex Mex vibe, or sliced cucumbers and carrots, or even raw cauliflower florets. You can also mix some cold or warm grilled veggies into the salad! There's no rule that says cooked can't coexist with raw. And even if there were, you can be a total salad rebel.
• Something herby. Parsley, chives, and dill are all classics but I personally love cilantro leaves.
• Something chewy. I'm a big fan of throwing in something like chickpeas, marinated tofu, hard-boiled egg, or my current favorite, a handful of shelled edamame.
• Something crunchy. I like to top the salad with a sprinkle of toasted almonds, walnuts, or pumpkin seeds.
• Optional to go for sweet: something fruity. I had some melon on hand and I threw into the little gems along with some mint for my herbs, and it was DELICIOUS.
• Optional to go for salty and/or sour: quick-pickled red onions, pepperoncini, olives.
• Optional for creamy: CHEESE. Grated Parm or pecorino or diced Gruyere or feta.
• Optional for starchy: add rice, quinoa, steamed potatoes, croutons, pasta!

For me, the success of a salad is in the interplay of the ingredients and the proportions. I prefer to have the largest volume be taken up by the leafy greens, and followed by other veggies and starches, if using; then I consider the other components -- herbs, crunchy things, cheese, etc -- as toppings.

Next up, the dressing~! Here's another place you can get super creative, or keep it simple. My very very basic go-to dressing is 3 parts olive oil to one part apple cider vinegar (a little sweeter and milder than white wine vinegar!) and a dash of Dijon mustard. I like to make a jar of dressing and keep it in the fridge for future salads over the next couple of days.

For a Japanese-inflected salad, maybe one with tofu and cucumber, I like ground sesame seeds (I mash it in a mortar with a pestle), a dash of rice vinegar, a squeeze of lime juice, and a tiny spoonful of sugar or honey.

Toss it all together with the dressing and serve it up with some tasty toast or foccacia bread and it's a fantastic lunch or light supper!

Enjoy!

We'd love to hear what you think! What writing issues would you like help with? What topics would you like us to cover? Let us know! Write us at storykitchenstudio@gmail.com.

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