Don’t Mix Thoughts and Dialogue

During a bit of dialogue, it can be incredibly tempting to give your reader a glimpse of what the characters are thinking. This is a trap. Don’t do it.

Why?

Well, the best way to explain this is to just give you a quick example.

Question: when you got to Ryan’s response, did you remember what Mary said or did you have to glance back up to jog your memory? If you glanced back up, then don’t feel bad! You are completely normal and that’s why this is a technique that you should use sparingly.

When we’re reading, our brains are constantly processing new information. It’s basically an ongoing memory game! If you’ve ever played one of those, then you know that it can be quite tricky to recall which picture is hiding under which card or what objects were on the now-hidden tray. However, we can always pick up the card or reveal the tray to remind ourselves of the answer. Similarly, we can always glanced back up the page and reread the previous line, but a story isn’t a game. Most writers want their audience to be fully immersed in the scene. Their eyes should travel down the page, following the flow of the words, never needing to look back at what was said three paragraphs ago.

You’re never going to be able to make your audience remember everything that you wrote. There are just too many words in the story. That’s why, when you’re writing dialogue, you want to keep all of the surrounding text related to the dialogue. Don’t let your characters go off on tangents like Ryan did because then your audience’s brain will switch to this new topic and forget the old one the same way that a verbal tangent will lead to someone asking, “Hey, wait, what were we talking about?”

I get the temptation to do the thought thing. It can give some really fun insight into a character. I will do it myself in early drafts. Then, upon rereading, I’ll realize that I switched focus from the dialogue and, as much as I like sharing my character’s thoughts, dialogue just isn’t the place to do it. If you’re including dialogue, the point is usually the interactions between the characters, not their deep, individual thoughts.

In this case of the above, Ryan’s thoughts needed to wait until after the conversation was over OR I should have introduced this topic earlier so that I could briefly hint at Ryan’s feelings with something like:

This is not to say that you can never do the thought thing. You can. Just be aware that it's dragging your audience away from the dialogue and they will likely forget the details of what was being discussed, making it a not-so-great techniquie.

The only time when I’d do that is when I want the character to forget the conversation, too. Then I can bring the character and the audience back to the discussion in a natural way.

I’ll also note that readers do remember things long after they happen. It’s just that what tends to stick are the big, important details (ex: Alim was murdered) or the things that get repeated constantly (ex: the suspect list that the detectives go over after every new clue). Dialogue tends to be largely forgettable as the point is rarely the specific words, which is why breaking a conversation is so jarring.

Subjective VS Objective Criticism - How to Improve Your Writing While Consuming Other Stories

You'll often here writers say that you need to read, watch, or listen to stories in order to be a better writer, but what does that mean in practice? How do you consume media from a critical perspective?

Generally speaking, if you want to be a better writer, then you need to be able to coherently articulate not only if you liked a piece of media, but why you feel that way. A big part of this is understanding the difference between subjective and objective criticism.

Subjective criticism is criticism based solely on personal taste. When we use subjective criticism, we're usually expressing how a work made us feel and there's no real argument for or against that type of criticism. You either like something or you don't. It can be one of the most well loved stories of all time still not appeal to you and that's fine! However, it's important to be able to identify personal taste verses actual writing issues and that's where objective criticism comes in.

Objective criticism is criticism based on technical elements of storytelling. When we use objective criticism, we step back from our feelings and look at things like the story's pacing or character arcs and discuss if there was room for improvement. Part of this is thinking about how those improvements could have been done.

Do know that you can love a work and still be able to point out flaws with it. Similarly, you can hate a work and still be able to point out its strengths. It's also worth noting that there is a subjective element to objective criticism in that different viewers will give different weight to an objective flaw. Some people will see a flaw as ruining a story while others will view it as a minor issue and, in most cases, neither viewpoint is wrong.

These differences are incredibly important to keep in mind when we discuss media. Disliking something doesn't mean that it's bad and liking something doesn't mean that it's good. Acknowledging a flaw in something you love isn't the same as condemning it as trash and finding a flaw doesn't mean that others have to give that flaw the same weight that you do. A story can have objective flaws while still bringing joy even if the flaws are massive. After all, there's nothing wrong with a good, old-fashion guilty pleasure, which I define as something you like, but know is objectively bad.

For an example of these two types of criticism, I'm going to give a very quick critique of Pixar's new movie Turning Red. I was not a fan of this movie, but a lot my criticisms are subjective ones and I'm well aware of this, which is why I thought it would make for a good case study on this concept. I know that the movie is decent and I'm glad that people like it. It's just not for me. Warning, spoilers below the cut!

Pronoun Troubles

Writing scenes between two characters of the same gender can be difficult because pronouns seem to abandon you and you’re only working with two names which means that you have to get creative or else you’re going to be using each name 100 times over in the space of a few paragraphs. Here’s two thoughts on that:

Once you’ve announced which person you’re describing, you don’t need to use their name again.

Along the same lines, if there are two people in a scene and the action is happening to one of them, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the person performing the act is the second character.

As always, feel free to ask for more examples.

Part Four: Shadows of the Future

(Full document here, part one here, part two here, part three here)

Foreshadowing is one of the most powerful techniques a writer has. It’s how we make readers feel that our stories make sense. In the Harry Potter series, we come across two types of foreshadowing: foreshadowing of book-specific events and foreshadowing of events that will occur other books.

I try to write my stories in such a way that a reader won’t know what’s going to happen the first time they read that story, but the second time they read the story they’ll see the ending coming a mile away. This is apparently a technique Mrs. Rowling likes to use as well because it’s all through the Harry Potter books.

Part Three: Bringing Characters to Life

(Full document here, part one here, part two here)

Last time we talked about the plot of Harry Potter, now it’s time to talk about the characters. Starting with everyone’s favorites: Fred and George Weasley.

Most people fall in love with these two by the end of book one and it’s no wonder. They’re fantastic. But do you know that, of all 312 pages of my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Fred and George are only mentioned on 28. I do mean mentioned, too. If I only counted pages where the boys are physically present, the number would drop below 20.

Part Two: The Big Picture

(Full document here, part one here)

The events that follow are the events that I call the key events. They’re the things that must happen for the story to make logical sense. If even one of these events failed to occur, then the story would make absolutely no sense to a reader. So, go ahead, read through the list, then we’ll talk about why so many things are missing.

The primary purpose of this blog is to help writers. As such, when I agreed to do an event breakdown of Harry Potter, I wasn’t agreeing to just write a list of events and give it to you. I was agreeing to give a lesson on writing with Harry Potter being used as the example. I’ve now finished that lesson and it total about 3000 words and so, instead of making the longest post ever, I’m going to post the lesson four parts over the next four days (part one is already up). If you just want to read the whole thing in one go, though, here’s a link to the official document. Enjoy and PLEASE let me know if you find this useful since it took quite a while to write.

As a side note, I know that this book is also called the Philosopher’s Stone and that is, in many ways, the better title given the fact that a philosopher’s stone is an actual mythological item. Be that as it may, the copy of the book that I read was the American one and so I’m going to refer to both the book and the stone by the American titles for the sake of accuracy.

Part One: A Bit On Beginings

Where to begin? That’s the real question, isn’t it, because the ending? Well, that one’s pretty easy to figure out. It’s the point where there’s nothing left to say. Your characters are done telling you their story and they’d very much like it if you’d run along and torture someone else for once.

Beginnings, on the other hand, well, no story ever really starts at “the beginning” because there rarely is a clear beginning. In the case of Harry Potter, we could say the story begins when Merope Gaunt falls in love with Tom Riddle. We could also say that the story starts when someone invented the idea of a horcrux or maybe we’ll pin the beginning on the day that Lily and James Potter die. All of these events are, in a way, the beginning, for without them the story wouldn’t exist, and it’s up to the writer to pick which one to go with when they tell the story.

SLOW DOWN! Wait, no SPEED UP!

Story flow is a nebulous subject that’s oft times discussed in terms that are far too strict or far too broad for an aspiring writer to get anything out of the conversation. A fact that isn’t too surprising given that are very few inherently wrong ways to tell a story and, therefore, almost no hard rules related to the topics of pacing and flow. In spite of that, let’s see if I can write a semi-cohesive piece on the topic that will serve as something of a reference guide for those of you who struggle to decide how much information is too much or how much is too little.

Telling vs Showing Examples

So, since my last post about telling vs. showing seemed to be quite popular, I’ve decided to expand on it a bit and give you guys a few more examples to look at. I’m doing this because I’ve found that the best way to teach a person how to write well is to simply show them the difference between what they’re doing “wrong” and how I would do it “right.” This doesn’t mean that you have to copy my style, that’s not the point. The point is to get you thinking about all the different ways that you can write something.