Image courtesy of pucci.it

- Jo-Anne Richards

Immediately, we know a huge amount about this person, without anything having to be explained.

By now, the concept of “showing” rather than “telling” is pretty much accepted. But in numerous writing workshops, it’s become clear that people may accept the concept, but they’re often unsure how to to put it into practice.

Basically, instead of explaining something about someone – he was angry, she was beautiful – you’re going to show us these things. What we’re always trying to avoid, in good writing, is to bring something into sharp focus without having spell it out in long reams of exposition.

There are several ways you can do this. Here’s a small reference guide to what can be used to “show” things to readers, rather than “telling” them what they should know.

1.  Dialogue – the things people say, and the way they say them. What people say – about themselves, other people, and places, says a lot about them. They way they speak does too. What kind of words do they use? What is the tone of their speech – and perhaps more importantly: what do they not say?
2. The reactions of others to our characters. How do people respond … to the powerful man, the beautiful woman. Do they inspire fear, reverence, fawning attention? Are they ignored in company?
3. Introspection – our characters’ thoughts on other characters, or their setting. Do they react jealously to others. Do they hate the outdoors? Are they too hot on the beach or miserable in snow? Are they totally at home in a small flat with 16 cats? Would the mere thought of a small flat or one cat bring on a fit of sneezing claustrophobia?
4. Sensory images. Showing involves the senses, rather than just knowing something in your head. You know that he’s nervous. But you show us the sweat beading at his hairline and dripping to his collar. You hear his fingers drumming. You feel his legs jumping. You smell the acrid stench of him.
5. Specific actions. The way people behave tells us not only what kind of people they are, but also how they’re feeling at a specific time. Show us the robust affection in a family through the teasing insults they exchange and the laughter at the table. Show us she’s feeling sad: She opened his drawer and took out his old blue shirt, the one he used to wear to potter about the house.She brought it to her face and breathed in his smell.
6. Small, telling details. This article began with one of these. Find the right specific and everything else springs into place. If someone is slowly going insane with post-partum depression, show us a plate, covered in tomato sauce, perched on a pile of dirty sheets. And a woman with jeans on, but on her upper body, a pyjama top.
7.  The contrast of other characters. The troubled teen – does he have friends? Does he behave and speak and dress differently from the other kids?
8. It never harms to think more visually. That doesn’t mean never including inner thoughts or short explanations.

But the more you learn to use detail effectively, the more powerful your writing will be.

The book in question is a non-fiction work that borrows from the skills traditionally associated with fiction – as all good narrative journalism does nowadays.

It is written in scenes, with dialogue and developed characters. And the author has cut off his scenes at moments of conflict or tension – which make us long for the story to be picked up again. So perhaps the academic was referring to this type of literary device.

I think it’s one of the things that make the book work. She was criticising on ideological grounds, of course: whether it was valid or “right” to present true stories of crime and violence in a suspenseful way. But surely there’s a certain absurdity to any argument that suggests a book should be made less readable.

And to imply that any book can be written entirely without suspense is nonsense. When we think of suspense, we tend to think of thrillers and murders and detectives.

But anything that draws us forward is actually a form of suspense. It might not be an event or action. It might be a minute change of attitude, a loss of love, the gaining of peace of mind.

I recently read a beautiful novel by Marilynne Robinson, which consisted of an elderly man’s letter to his young son. The canvas was small and there were no grand, sweeping events in his life. But it certainly drew me forward.

Readers are drawn onward by caring for the characters. If they care deeply enough, they’ll be drawn into their world – no matter how small that world is. And on the contrary, I often find high action movies boring. I start nodding off during the car chase – precisely because I don’t care a stuff what happens to any of them.

Ian McEwan protests at what he calls the “dead hand of modernism.” He writes in such a way as to “incite a naked hunger in readers.” He says the key to this is withholding information.

I think that withholding is one of the great secrets – and a skill that’s really hard to learn. When you first write, the temptation is to do the opposite. You want to spew everything out at once.

The reason withholding works is that it creates a tension or an imbalance. We keep reading because we want to see the imbalance righted and the tension broken.

In the end, it’s probably all to do with conflict and tension. If there’s no conflict, there’s no story – and certainly no suspense. This conflict can be with the environment – a plane crash in the Andes …

It can be person against person – or it can be inner conflict. I believe there’s always inner conflict, no matter what other conflicts exist. And these are often the most interesting.

These can be as big or as small as you like, but it has to be there. And suspense is a must, like it or not. If you don’t draw your reader forward, there’s little point in finishing the book – they certainly won’t.

Jo-Anne Richards muses on the challenges and excitement of a writer’s life.

We found this exercise on the site of a US writer, Meredith Sue Willis. Here it is:

“Anthony Burgess once said that he always began a novel by drafting sixty pages of dialogue– no “he-saids-she-saids” or other tags, no narrative, no description, just the words said. After his characters had talked for sixty pages, he would, he said, discard the entire sixty pages and start to write. I’ve never been sure I believe that he actually threw away all those pages, but the technique seemed to work for getting him started.

Try this: Do a directed free write with a kitchen timer set for fifteen minutes. Start with some words of conversation you have overheard or participated in. They can be totally ordinary, even boring. But keep writing, and adding more dialogue, maybe more speakers, more drama. But keep them just talking for the full fifteen minutes. “

Heather’s Come To Bed Dialogue.

Come to bed!
No
Come on, come to bed!
Just go back to bed
I can’t go if you’re not going to go
Why not?
Because. Will you just come to bed, please!
I don’t feel like it
You’re being ridiculous
Fine! I’m ridiculous then
This is so stupid!
Fine, I’m stupid
I didn’t say you were stupid, this is stupid
Whatever
Look, if I say I’m sorry will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
If I do will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
If I do will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
Fine! I’m sorry. Now will you come to bed?
That’s really not the point, though. I mean, it’s great that you’re sorry but it really doesn’t solve anything
Whatever!
See! You’re not even sorry anyway
This is making me crazy!
You’re making yourself crazy
That doesn’t even make any sense
Whatever – just go to bed. I don’t even want you here anyway
Fine!
Fine!
So… Will you just come to bed already, babe…come on, come to bed
No
Come to bed
No
You know you want to
No I don’t
I’ll give you a neck massage… Well?…
Maybe
Come to bed
Maybe
Please
Maybe
Please
Maybe
Please
Only if you tell me why you’re sorry.
Just fucking forget it! I’m going to bed!
Good!
I’m going to
Good!
I mean it
I want you to
I’m serious
Fine!
Fine!
Fine!
Fine, you fucking freak!
Fine! I didn’t want to go to bed with you anyway!
Good! I sleep better when you’re not there anyway
You sleep better?! You’re the one who’s tossing around and scratching your balls all night!
Fuck you, you fucking bitch!
Fuck you, you fucking dick!
Whatever
Whatever
So, will you knock this the fuck off and come to bed already?

Click here to read a selection of the entries.

You’ve written a really crucial dialogue that will end your characters’ marriage. It should be dramatic and poignant, but instead it seems flat, unreal or, worst of all, dreary.

What’s wrong with it? It will change your characters’ lives. Why doesn’t it affect the lives of your readers?

Here are a couple of quick hints that will lift a plain or dreary dialogue and give it dynamism:

• Give your characters real business, real emotion. Give it dynamism. It’s not just a couple of talking heads. People don’t exist in a vacuum when they’re having a conversation. What are they doing? How does it affect what they’re doing? Do they stop? Do they suddenly sit down? How do they show their emotion? Understated is always better, but imagine she is preparing dinner. What does she do? Does she chop carrots savagely until they appear pureed? Does she emphasise the points she’s making with a particularly vicious-looking knife?
• Don’t go mad on the accent or ethnic line. Just a hint of accent is fine, otherwise it begins to irritate. This works together with tics and action. Some people pace, others twist their hair or bite their nails. These quirks can help you build emotion, and the sense of real characters. But too much will also irritate your readers.
• Don’t put too many “he saids” and “he averreds”. If there are two people speaking, we often know who is who after the first utterances. And if you need to say who is speaking for clarity, “he said” often works best. Our eyes are used to passing over it without being brought up short. And don’t forget, if he hisses, there must be sibilance. Use s’s. If he barks, his words will come out in short, sharp bursts.
• The rhythm of speech changes according to our emotions. An angry person will be short and sharp. A person in love will be long and languid.
• Never forget the subtext. Dialogue is often a mask for unexpressed feelings. Or even for lying. People frequently don’t say what they mean, for whatever reason. It makes for interesting dialogue if the reader knows that someone isn’t saying what they mean, or is lying. It creates tension.

For more about writing dynamic dialogue, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Here’s a quick guide to really good dialogue:

• Does it give the appearance of real speech without the repetitions and inconsistencies of life? If you’ve ever recorded a real conversation, you’ll know that people speak in circles, they repeat themselves, they often talk nonsense … what we want in dialogue is the appearance of speech without the tedium of all that circular repetition.
• Is it energetic? You can energise dialogue by interrupting it, by having people not listen to each other, not ending sentences.
• Is it provocative. Does it surprise other charcters? Does it surprise, intrigue or delight us?
• Does it “show” us something or confirm something about the characters? This, in the things they say, they way they say it, and even the things they don’t say.
• Is it necessary? Does it convey something we need to know? Does it develop our characters or take the story forward?
• Is it economical? We don’t want long swathes that tempt us to skip.
• Does it convey a reality and a past bigger than the narrow plot objectives of the scene? Characters have lives beyond the page. If we hint at a larger existence, it makes them more real and complex.
• Is it witty? Obviously it doesn’t always have to be – but it can give dialogue a real lift.
• Is it appropriate for the character uttering it? Does it show their unique voice, background, personality?

This is just a guide, obviously, but it does contain the most important elements contained by some of the best dialogues ever published.
For more about writing good dialogue, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was published by Headline in London, shortlisted for the M-Net Book Prize and nominated for the Impac International Dublin Award. The book was chosen as a Dillon’s Debut in the UK, to be showcased as “an outstanding first novel”. She has published short stories in five collections.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.