Category: tips

Dialogue is the lifeblood of fiction. It’s how your characters move beyond the page and become living, breathing people. In any sort of literature, it’s going to be the key to making them memorable. In screenplays, it’s going to be what makes them quotable.

Conversely, bad dialogue is the fastest way to make sure characters are dead to your readers. When someone speaks in flat, clumsy, expositional dialogue, it makes them unbelievable. And when a reader can’t believe in your characters, it means they can’t believe in your story.

There are a lot of mistakes I see coming up again and again in stories. Here are seven of the most common ones…

Contractions– One thing that always makes dialogue drag and sound forced is when every word is spelled out in full. A lot of people start out writing this way because they’re trying to follow all the rules of spelling and punctuation so they don’t get branded a rookie, and ironically… While this is a good practice for your prose, most people use contractions in every day speech, even judges, professors, and rich businessmen. Without them, dialogue sounds stilted, wooden, and off-kilter. If there’s a reason for someone to speak that way (ESL, robots, aliens, or what have you), then by all means do it. If your characters are regular, English-speaking mortals, though…

“I am willing to bet you will not act while a child is in danger.”

“I’m willing to bet you won’t act while a child’s in danger.”

“What is the number for the place that does not charge late fees?”

“What’s the number for the place that doesn’t charge late fees?

Notice that using contractions also drops your word count and page count.

On The Nose— Professional readers and writers talk about dialogue that’s “on the nose.” It’s when someone says precisely what they mean or what they’re doing without any subtlety or characterization whatsoever. It’s the difference between “Why are you constantly mean and disrespectful to me, Rob?” and “What the hell’s your problem, anyway?” Nine times out of ten, if someone’s talking to themselves out loud, it’s on the nose. Almost half the time it’s just exposition (see below). A good way to think of it is old radio-show dialogue, when people had to depend on only dialogue with no visuals at all.

“Come on, Jenkins! There’s only six more steps to the top of this staircase. You can make it.”

“You know I can never forgive you for the way you treated me back when we were in high school and I was in love with you.”

“I can’t eat the rest of this food. I’ll ask the waiter to pack it up so I can take it home with me for later.”

Follow the example of the late, lamented Keen Eddie, where at least once an episode Mark Valley and Sienna Miller would bellow or snap “I hate you!” “I hate you, too!” back and forth at each other in their shared London flat. While those words were pretty on the nose the first time they were yelled, across the show’s short life they came to mean the exact opposite– with no explanation needed.

Exposition—It was just last week I said exposition gets a bad rap. Expositional dialogue is what gives it that bad rap. Remember being a kid in school and being bored by textbooks or filmstrips below your level? That’s the boredom exposition gives your readers.

“You know, Doug, you’ve been my step-brother for seventeen years now, and I’m still stunned how bad you are at geography. You need to bone up on it, especially now that you’ve finally gotten your dream job of being a professional airline pilot.”

Use the Ignorant Stranger method as a guideline and figure out how much of your dialogue is crossing that line. If any character ever gives an explanation of something that the other characters in the room already should know (or your reader should know), cut that line. If it’s filled with necessary facts, find a better way to get them across.

Transcription– One thing years of interviews have taught me is that, with very few exceptions, people trip over themselves a lot verbally. We have false starts, we repeat phrases, we trail off, we make odd noises while we try to think of words. Anyone who’s ever read a strict word-for-word transcription of a conversation will find it’s awkward, hard to follow, and a lot gets lost without the exact inflection of certain words.

One of the worst things you can do is try to write dialogue in such an ultra-realistic manner. It will drive editors nuts and waste your word count on dozens of unnecessary lines.

“What I… I think you’ll find that what I wanted…what I meant to say, is that there are some wanna-be… some aspiring writers who follow directions- some aspiring writers who follow guidelines better than others, and they’re the ones who eventually, that is—I mean, if you can’t follow the rules you can’t expect to succeed, right?”

This sort of rambling can work great in spoken dialogue, but when it’s written on the page it’s lethal. Even if you’re trying to re-create Hugh Grant’s confusing confession in Four Weddings and a Funeral, keep it simple for now so you don’t scare off producers and investors..

Similarity– People are individuals, and we all have our own unique way of speaking. People from California don’t talk like people from Maine (I’ve lived almost two decades in each state, I know), people from Oxford don’t talk like people from ITT Tech, and armor-plated, heavily-armed mutants from Skaro don’t talk like Earthlings. In your writing, your characters need to be individuals as well, with their own tics and habits that make them distinct from the people around them. If you can’t tell who’s speaking without knowing the complete context or seeing the dialogue headers, you need to get back to work.

Accents– This is a common mistake by beginning writers. Accents, dialects, and odd speech tics that are written out drive readers and editors nuts. Now, there are a handful of professional writers who can do truly amazing accents in their dialogue, yes, but keep those facts in mind— Only a handful. Professionals. If you’re reading this, odds are you’re still on a lower rung of that ladder trying to impress an editor or producer.

“’ullo, dere, Guv’nah. Spara few shillin’s fur a fella Vetrin uf th’ Waa’?”

“Eh, mah frien’, why you go causin’ mah peeple such beeg problems?”

“If thiz iz yourrr wish, then my warrrriorz will drrraw back.”

Yeah, that last one’s an alien accent I came up with years back for a race that had tongues and beaks like birds. I lost five pages when I got rid of all those triple-Rs.

Show an accent by picking out one or two key words at most and making those the only words you show it with. If he or she’s Jamaican, stick with “mah” instead of “my.” For the Cockney fellow, keep the dropped H when he speaks. Past that, just write straight dialogue. Just the bare minimum reminders that the characters have an accent. Like most character traits, your reader will fill in the rest.

Monologues—This one’s tough, because a good monologue can be a major point in any story or film. By the same token, though, a bad one can bring your story to a screeching halt.

The first clue at if it’s a bad monologue is to look at some of the dialogue rules above. Is it necessary? Does it read naturally? Is it flowing? Does it fit the moment? Someone who launches into a formal monologue while being pounded by artillery shells and enemy sniper fire is probably going to sound a bit forced. If you’re breaking one of these guidelines and doing it with a 750 word monologue, your manuscript is going to end up in the ever-growing left hand pile.

Second clue if it’s bad is to count how many monologues there’ve already been. Yes, that may sound laughable, but you’d be amazed at some of the things I’ve seen. One recent script I read for a screenwriting contest had half-page dialogue blocks on almost every page. If you’re on page forty-five and this is your fifth full-page monologue… odds are something needs to be reworked.

One last tip. A lot of people suggest reading your dialogue out loud to find where it trips. That’s not bad, but if you really want to find out how it reads, ask someone else to read it out loud—preferably someone who hasn’t seen it before or heard you talk about it. If you’re reading it yourself, you know how it’s supposed to sound, where the breaks should be, and what gets the emphasis. Let a friend or family member who doesn’t know it read it out loud and see what they do with it.

And then get back to your writing.

What are you still online for? Get back to writing!

You can’t have a story without characters. They don’t need to be human. They don’t even need to be alive. But if the reader doesn’t have someone to focus on you’re going nowhere fast.

For all of us, the goal is to create characters that live, ones a reader can bring to mind and identify with. Most of us could picture what Harry Potter looked like long before we’d heard of Daniel Radcliffe. In Casablanca, without even seeing what happened in Paris, we know enough about Rick to guess why Elsa’s arrival is having such an effect on him. Even though we’ve never seen it, we can all extrapolate how Darth Vader would deal with someone having a loud cell phone conversation in a restaurant

However, for every character that leaps off the page or the screen to be remembered forever there are a dozen who languish in obscurity. And for every one of that dozen, there’s a couple dozen more who never even made the cut. They were so flat on the page they couldn’t catch anyone’s attention.

Characters will make or break your writing, which means they deserve attention. The mistake I see again and again, though, is writers who give their characters too much attention. Their characters never get off the page because they’ve been buried alive and crushed there.

Some rules-of-thumb and reasons I’ve pasted together over the years…

Don’t describe characters in exacting physical detail. Your audience doesn’t need to know someone’s precise height, weight, cup size, skin tone, inseam, hair color, nail polish, and eye pigment. They don’t need to be told the exact tie pattern he’s wearing, where her skirt hits her thigh, if he likes boxers or briefs, if she likes thongs over bikinis, how many fillings either of them have, or precisely what they’re having at the restaurant for lunch down to drinks, side dishes, and condiments.

You don’t need any of that in your writing. Honest.

Long descriptions bring the reader to a grinding halt. The longer the description, the louder the squeal of brakes. You’re performing, as some folks like to say, the infodump. The writer is throwing out a pile of information at a time the reader wants action and forward motion (which is—for the record—always). It’s wonderful to know that, as Jane steps into the street, everyone notices her Prada bag, Yves St.Laurent jacket, eel-skin boots, wedding band with matching engagement ring, the St.Christopher’s medallion she wears outside her midnight-blue silk blouse, her sapphire eyeliner, and her $300 hairstyle that’s starting to sag, giving her one loose blonde strand that hangs loose over her face in a kind of sexy way as she puffs and swipes at it with her free hand.

You know what’s far, far more interesting than all of that, though? Why is Jane stepping into the street? Is it a crosswalk? Is she avoiding someone? Getting into a limo? Throwing herself in front of a bus? She’s been frozen there in mid-movement while the writer (in this case, me) prattles on about her clothes and hair. Heck, by the time I got back to her you’d probably forgotten she was even outside.

There’s another reason to not spend time on physical descriptions, whether you’re writing a novel or a screenplay. Silly as it sounds, you don’t have much say in what this character looks like. When people read, they form their own mental images, and they’re usually pretty different from the ones that were written out. In Dan Abnett’s Ravenor books, I always see the character of Kara Swole looking like my friend Penny from college. Their descriptions don’t match up at all (well, they’re both female gymnasts, but that’s about it) yet this is how I picture Kara. For that matter, in the same books, I always see Harlon Nayl as Jett from Cowboy Bebop. As you refer back to your extensive description, you’ll jar the readers out of the flow of the story as they think What? Blonde? I thought Jane had black hair? Jar them one too many times and they’ll start to get resentful, and then they’ll start to read something else.

If you’re writing a screenplay, this is even more telling. It’s really cool that you’ve described Lynne as 6’3″ with raven hair, blue eyes, alabaster skin, the physique of a pro bodybuilder, and half a page of further description. Then Jessica Alba expressed interest in the part and suddenly Lynne was a 5’6″ tanned brunette with a body built along very different lines. So you just wasted half a page and messed up the timing of your script for nothing.

So… extensive, elaborate physical descriptions are a no-no. Use broad strokes and fill in details only where you need to. Pick three or four good descriptive words for the character (not their clothes), and stick with them. Their dialogue and actions will bring them to life and your readers will fill in the rest.

In the novel I’m working on right now, for example, the antagonist I’ve just introduced is a pale man who’s bald with tattoos on his head. There’s hundreds of ways to interpret that description, but you’ve got a solid image in your head just off that, yes? Which means I’m now free to go talk about what he’s doing with that AK-47, the ultimatum he’s issuing for his boss… and he’s already a bit more interesting and solid than Jane up above, yes? In about half the space.

Now, as far as the mental/ historical side, if this stuff is important, of course it should be included. If our main man has lost everyone he’s ever cared about, if our heroine suffered from asthma as a child, or if an encyclopedic knowledge of rural New England history will be critical to resolving this mystery, then these things need to be in your writing. Again,though—no infodumps. If you introduce me to Robin and then explain how her hometown got its name, the name of her first pet, who she took to the prom, the state her parents grew up in, how she did on that second grade spelling test, and why she loves pink… there’d best be a damn good reason for all of that being in the first two pages, and it better all be important in the next 298.

That’s the best rule of thumb for all of this descriptive stuff. Is it critical to what’s going on within these pages? Your audience is going to assume if you’re giving all this information, it’s because they need this information. After the fourth or fifth exhaustive description of a character’s jewelry, lunch time eating habits, or genealogy, your reader is going to make the assumption none of this is going anywhere and start skimming. First paragraphs, then pages, and then over the television listings to see what else could be filling this time…

Now, you can make an argument that any event in someone’s past affects their present and every single decision shapes a person’s life to some degree. Thus, anything you choose to include is relevant to the story on some level, yes? Again, though—this is not real life (please look back a few posts to resolve any confusion). No one wants to read about a character’s personal history that does not have a direct bearing on what they’re experiencing right now.

Again, for example…

I hate ketchup (and catsup). Honest and for true. Cannot stand it. Loathe it. Not for any flavor or texture issues, but for color. When I was five I was eating French fries and saw my dog, Flip, hit by a car outside the dining room window. Happened more or less right in front of me on Rt 1A in Cape Neddick, Maine. I could show you the spot today. I still remember his scream. And my screams. My mom and my little brother freaking out. And I remember the blood. And I’ve never been able to deal with ketchup since.

A formative event that still affects me to this day? Absolutely. I’d never deny it. Does it have anything whatsoever to do with the hints and suggestions I post here?

Nope. Not in the slightest.

It has nothing to do with my writing here, for CS Publications, or my own fiction, which is why most people reading this have never heard of it before. It has no business being in any of this. In fact, unless someone’s writing a story where I’ve been replaced by an undercover agent/ alien shape-shifter/ android double and my girlfriend catches said doppelganger when he puts ketchup on his scrambled eggs– this is a completely pointless bit of information about me.

Oh, but it builds character, you say? Expands the vast tapestry of my life? Tells everyone a little bit about me in so many ways? Makes me more human?

(Feel free to read that out loud in a Stewie Griffin voice)

So what?

You’ve got an actual story, don’t you? If you want to focus on one thread in the tapestry of my life, choose one that shows the reader how my life relates to that story. Don’t waste their time with something that has no bearing on the book/ screenplay/ short story they’re reading.

Let the audience know how annoyed I was at thirteen when a doctor told me during a physical that writing wasn’t “a real job.” Explain how thrilled freshman-college-me was when he got a personal letter from Tom DeFalco rejecting my Marvel pitch but with hints and tips about how to improve and try again, plus a full copy of one of his Thor scripts for reference. Give them the visual of me in a panicky, cold sweat sitting outside Ron Moore’s office, waiting to pitch a few Deep Space Nine stories I’d come up with that had impressed a long string of script readers and story editors.

See? That’s all relevant. You’re reading and saying “Wow, this guy’s been serious about writing for a while now, hasn’t he?” That’s the kind of stuff that should come out in your writing.

And you’ve already forgotten my dog’s name, haven’t you? And the name of the road he was hit on? No worries. He’ll always be important to me, but I understand why he’s not important—or relevant—to you. Honest, I do.

Now, go write.

A common mistake I see from a lot of people is length. It does matter, but not in the way you’re probably thinking right now (pervert). People produce things that are just too big, be it novels, screenplays, even short stories and short films. This can be especially deadly in genre fiction, where publishers and producers have a lot of expectations—and limitations—about what they want.

For publishers, word count translates to page count which translates to the size and cost of your novel. Size tells them how many copies of it will fit in their limited shelf-space at Borders (and how many other things they can’t put there). Cost tells them how many they can hope to sell, as folks tend not to choose a $9.99 paperback when they’re just looking for something new to read. Series books (like mysteries or epic fantasy) tend to be smaller, too, to encourage readers to buy more of the series.

For film producers, a long script means a long production time, which means keeping cast and crew on payroll longer. It also means more raw expenses. One second of 35mm film costs about two dollars. A longer film means the thousands of prints that go out to theaters will each cost more to make, and it also means theaters don’t have time for more screenings. One huge weakness of Peter Jackson’s King Kong in theaters was while Kong ran once most other films had two shows—they were pulling in ticket money twice as fast.

As always, I’m sure there’s a bunch of folks reading this and saying “Oh, but what about…” Yes, there are always exceptions to these rules. Stephen King’s The Stand or Desperation easily go far beyond what would be expected for genre horror novels. J.K. Rowling wasn’t mincing words on those Harry Potter books either. I think we can all agree, however, that the Man from Maine and the boy sorcerer have shown a certain degree of strength in the marketplace. Publishers are probably not gambling too much by taking on their latest double-sized novel.

When any of us are selling like King, break out that 150,000 word mystery.

Speaking of the King, in his excellent book On Writing he states a simple rule for revisions. If you’ve read this page more than thrice and you don’t own that book, stop now and go to your friendly neighborhood Borders or Barnes & Noble. No, seriously, go right now. The internet will be here when you get back. Heck, take your laptop and mooch free wireless up in the cafe. It’ll make up for the price of the coffee.

Anyway… that rule…

Second Draft = First Draft – 10%

Couldn’t be simpler, right? If you scribble out a 5000 word short story, trim 500 words before you show it to anyone. Your 120 page screenplay could probably get cut down to 108 pages without too much trouble. And that 100,000 word novel? Odds are there are 10,000 words you could lose.

While this sounds ruthless, brutal, and perhaps even a bit arbitrary, there’s solid experience behind it which is worth at least considering for a moment. Since seventh grade you’ve had composition teachers telling you to remove unnecessary words. There’s a reason tight writing lasts and purple prose—no matter how popular it is at the time– gets forgotten.

So, a few easy ways to cut some of the fat from your writing…

Adverbs— These are the most common sin (not original at all). As most of us get caught up in the flow of words, the impetus of a scene, and the thing that slides by most often is the all-but-useless adverb. For example…

–She ran quickly.

–He excitedly tore open the package, and happily said “This is the best Christmas ever!”

–They shouted loudly.

—“Maybe I saw something, maybe I didn’t,” Slim said coyly.

Of course she ran quickly! Have you ever heard someone shout quietly? Three out of five times if you’re using an adverb, you don’t need it. The fourth time odds are you’re using the wrong verb, and once you find the right one, again, you won’t need the adverb. And that fifth time… well, maybe it’s only one in six. If you’re using your vocabulary well, there aren’t many times you need an adverb. For screenwriters, adverbs are the parentheticals of prose (which means you should be stomping out parentheticals, too).

Adjectives—These are the deadly ones, as people create compound adjectives from hell to describe things that tend to be pretty mundane when you think about it. We all do it now and then, however, because we’re convinced this person, this place, this thing needs more description.

–He had sky-like cloudy dark blue eyes.

–She wore polished glossy black designer boots.

—The tall, majestic, awe-inspiring cliffs of weatherworn, charcoal-gray stone loomed over them.

There’s an odd habit I’ve seen among fledgling fantasy writers to use dozens of adjectives per page, if not per sentence. It’s part of that purple prose I mentioned above. Writer/ Editor/ Publisher Pat LoBrutto tossed out a great rule of thumb last time I heard him speak—”One adverb per page, four adjectives per page.” It’s only a rough guideline, of course, but if you’re averaging six or seven adjectives in each paragraph maybe you should give them all a second look…

That—This is a new rule someone introduced me to just a few weeks back, but I’ve already fallen hard for it. That is a word people tend to drop into their writing a lot, and a good four out of five times their writing would be tighter without it.

—He believed that once the button was pressed, the world would be saved.

–She ran off in the same direction that John had.

–George knew that once Jane saw the puppy that she would want to take it home.

Just use the Find feature in Word (it’s up there under Edit). Search for uses of that and see how many of them are necessary. Odds are you’ll find at least half of them aren’t.

Appeared to… – This is one of those phrases people see used, latch onto, and use all the time—without understanding it. It tends to be used as an introduction of sorts, leading the reader into some purple-prose description. This phrase sometimes disguises itself as looked like or seemed to be or some variation thereof.

The thing is appeared to… doesn’t get used alone. It’s part of a literary construction where the second half of that structure is either an implied or actual contradiction. So when you’re saying…

–She appeared to stand just shy of six feet tall.

–His eyes seemed to be burning embers in his skull.

What you’re actually saying is…

–She appeared to stand just shy of six feet tall, but she was actually closer to five foot five without her monstrous boots.

–His eyes seemed to be burning embers in his skull, but really they were just catching the light.

And what you mean to be saying is just…

—She stood just shy of six feet tall.

–His eyes were burning embers in his skull.

Note that clever metaphor you just used in the second example. Nobody is going to think this poor guy has actual glowing coals in his eye sockets. They’ll understand the visual image, honest.

Long Names – The King himself offhandedly suggests this rule in the above-mentioned On Writing. If you’ve got a lot of characters named Vandervecken, MacMortimerstein, or Bannakaffalatta, they’re going to take up a lot of space as their names get used again and again. Not only that, several of them will die as other characters rush to blurt out “Dear God, Doctor MacMortimerstein, look out for that… ahhhhh, too late!”

Try using simple names like Vander, Mort, or Ban, which are easier for readers to keep track of as well. True, this will not lessen your word count, but it can shorten your page count, which is the next best thing. Of course, if there’s a solid reason for alien cyborg billionaire midget Bannakaffalatta to be called Bannakaffalatta and not Ban, stick with it. But if it’s just a background character you’re using for two chapters or three scenes…

Somewhat Syndrome — This one’s the albatross I bear, and one of my friends points it out to me all the time. Symptoms include littering your writing with somewhat.., a bit…, slightly…, and other such modifiers. Nine times out of ten they’re not doing anything except adding to your word count and slowing your story. Use the Find feature again, see how many of them are necessary, and look how much tighter and stronger your writing is without them.

So, grab your manuscript and snip, slice, and cut a few dozen words. See if you can make those sentences leaner and meaner. Suggest some of your own easy ways to trim if you’ve got them.

Then come back next week and I’ll rip apart your characters.