Simply from these details, there’s so much you can infer about this character. You can assume that they’re a neat freak, but also that it covers up a part of them that is private and closed off since they don’t have personal details or effects anywhere visible. This is emphasized further by the drawer detail, showing that they not only keep personal effects in drawers but also in boxes shows how many layers of privacy this person keeps. In addition, the bar detail gives the reader the sense that this character desires to host people, but doesn’t so they may be lonely.

Now, let’s look at another example. You walk into an apartment with carpeted floors and bookshelves lining the walls. Above and around the bookshelves you see dozens of posters for various movies, books, postcards, and paintings taped to the walls. There are notes taped to the fridge with various tasks and grocery lists. The dishes are all clean, but they’ve been left next to the sink despite the fact that they appear to already be dry. There are a few family photos taped up to the wall, but one of the apartment owner and their father appears to have fallen to the ground and hasn’t been taped back up. The carpeted floor appears to be freshly vacuumed, but the apartment owner left their Vans in the middle of the room.

Again, just with these cursory details, you learn a lot about the apartment owner. From the details about the bookshelves and posters, you learn that this person has a more artistic and whimsical personality. From the details about the dishes and the shoes you learn that this person is probably a little disorganized or at the very least not a neat freak like the previous homeowner. However, from the details about the organizational lists and floors, we can see that this person is at least making attempts to be organized, perhaps they’re in the process of trying to better themselves or kick bad habits. Finally, the detail about the fallen photo hints at a possible strained relationship with the character’s father.

Trying your hand at writing observational details like this is the ultimate test in showing rather than telling your readers details about your characters. To help you perfect your scene writing and allow you to give your readers these crucial details, here’s a writing exercise to help:

a) Start by picturing the homes and apartments of your friends and family. Write down each person’s name and specific details you noticed about their homes. Try to specifically think about what each observation could say about their character or personality.

b) Once you’ve completed this, choose a character from your book. Write a scene where your character is attempting to give a room in their house a makeover. Describe the room before the makeover, during as they may uncover things while they clean, and then afterward. Don’t be afraid to use the details you just wrote down about friends/family as inspiration for the details in this scene.

Think about specifically why your character may want to change this room. Maybe it has a lot of memories from a relationship they just ended or perhaps they feel that their life has become too messy and they want to clean in order to allow themselves to feel more organized again. Think about what the room makeover truly means for them and show it through scene details rather than by explicitly telling the reader what the character is doing.

The post Writing Prompt: Home Makeover appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1) Imperfection leads to perfection

Many writers go into writing dialogue with the false perception that, since you’re writing it rather than speaking, it must be perfect. The opposite is in fact true. In real life, speech is littered with imperfection. From um’s to er’s to ah’s to pauses to mispronunciations to when people use the word ‘like’ with frequency, these little bits of imperfection help make dialogue feel more realistic. It may feel counterintuitive at first- why would I leave a mistake in my writing? But it actually helps the reader feel that the character is really speaking and also helps separate dialogue from the narrative voice (which won’t include any er’s or ah’s).

2) Each character is different

When starting to perfect dialogue writing, it can be helpful to look to friends/family/strangers as a source of inspiration. Think about what makes each person’s speaking voice unique. It could be that someone has a stutter or uses a word more frequently than they realize. Some people have a more formal speaking voice while others abbreviate a lot of their speaking words. Some are more talkative and tend to ramble while others speak in short concise sentences.

One of the most helpful tools you can give your reader when it comes to dialogue is giving each character a unique dialogue quirk like this so that it can be easy to distinguish who is speaking at any given moment. As you likely know, when you’re writing a scene primarily in dialogue between two characters, you won’t write who said what quote each time (unless there’s a narrative break). So, when characters don’t have distinguishing speech quirks, it can become very frustrating for a reader as they try to track who said what. Giving a unique aspect to each character’s speaking voice allows the reader to not only feel more connected to the characters but to more easily track speech through dialogue alone.

3) Character Interrupted

Another way to make dialogue feel more realistic is to have characters talk over one another. This doesn’t have to happen every time and would likely feel unrealistic if it did, people can’t possibly anticipate everything another person would say enough to interrupt every time. But this can be a tool to use in the way that people do in real life. In speech, people typically interrupt in situations such as when they feel they’re being accused of something, when they’re particularly excited about a point they’re making, when two characters are trying to tell a third character a story together, when someone feels like they know where the other is going (they could be wrong), when they’re worried someone is going to reveal something they’ve asked them to keep secret, etc.

This can also be a helpful tool to use on one particular character as a way to show rather than tell your readers that a character is more self-centered or rude. Perhaps your protagonist tries to make conversation with another character and he just interrupts your protagonist every time she tries to speak. This will tell your reader so much about this character even if this happens in an initial interaction.

4) Train of thought

A common faux pas of speech is losing your train of thought. Seriously, start to pay attention to your friends, family, and even yourself when you speak. People lose their train of thought, start to make a point and then go off on a completely separate tangent, start a story in the wrong place, forget to tell crucial details in a joke, remember a chore they need to do in the middle of a conversation, etc. Although it’s tempting in writing to get from point A to point B in a straight line, utilizing the forgetfulness and flaws in storytelling or giving advice or jokes allows for speech to feel more believable instead of feeling dry and too perfect to ever actually be spoken.

5) Consider setting

One must also consider a story’s setting when they’re writing dialogue. For example, people in Texas have different slang words used than people in, say, Pennsylvania (the ‘pop’ vs. ‘soda’ debate will live on forever). Even further, people in other countries like the UK have their own variations of dialogue as well, for example saying ‘cheers’ instead of ‘thank you’. Having a story set in another country or even another time period will require a lot of dialogue research on your part in order to make the voices feel realistic to the time period and location.

In addition, there’s also the possibility of having a specific character who is from a different setting than the story takes place. For example, setting a story in America but having a character who is from Canada. Doing your research to find the right slang and diction that they would use will help make their voice unique as well as highlight their otherness and how it informs their choices throughout the story.

6) Read everything aloud

If we could give you one piece of advice when it comes to writing dialogue, this would be the most important. This is the most foolproof way of being able to tell if your dialogue sounds like something a person would actually say. You may write a piece of dialogue and think it sounds so profound and interesting, but then you’ll read it aloud and it will sound like something someone wrote rather than spoke. There’s such a huge difference between these two things because it’s rare that a proverbial and insightful quote can come from speech alone (unless your character is a Gandalf or Dumbledore). While your narrative voice can continue to sound insightful and methodical, make sure your character’s voices truly sound like people speaking- flaws and all!

The post How to Write Dialogue appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1) Mood

The ‘mood’ of the scene is what you want your reader to feel throughout the exchange. Picture a scene where two characters are having dinner out at a nice restaurant. When you think of this scene initially you think it’s romantic, right? Well, what if they’re on the run and one of the characters has a gun held to the other beneath the table? What if they’re dating, but one character is about to break up with the other one? What if one character is the other’s estranged father and they’re meeting for the first time? Each of these scenarios involves completely different moods and should evoke various feelings from the reader.

2) Atmosphere

The ‘atmosphere’ is the specific detail of a setting that allows the correct mood to be felt by the reader. So, for example, let’s say the dinner we mentioned earlier was romantic. You would then mention how the candlelight casts perfect shadows on the partner’s face, perhaps an old couple next to them gazes at each other lovingly, the intoxicating mix between the smell of fresh bread and the rose on the table. All of these sensory descriptors tell the reader that this scene will be romantic. Whereas if the characters were about to break up, you could describe how the partner is fidgeting in his seat, how an overly sweet smell is making the protagonist slightly nauseous, how there’s an old man sitting alone with a severe expression one table over. This alerts the reader of the more somber mood that this scene will take on.

3) Setting

The setting of the scene involves the combination of the mood, atmosphere, and more specific information. What restaurant is this? In which time period is the story taking place? Where geographically is the story taking place? This sort of additional information should be sprinkled into the scene, especially if it hasn’t already been established in your story at large. However, be cautious not to go too deeply into these details and lose the pacing of your scene. Space out these details between bits of dialogue and more immediate scene work.

4) Point of View

Part of what dictates the setting of the story is the point of view from which the story is told. Your novel may be told just from your protagonist’s perspective or you could have multiple characters in which the story focuses on. You could also vary the psychic distance in your story or have a distant or close third person vs. a first-person perspective. Regardless of the POV you choose in your story, the atmosphere of the story should be influenced by your protagonist, or whoever’s POV is the focus of the scene. This could mean it is influenced by either their mood, their observations, or what will be happening to them during the scene. So, for example, if your character has just experienced something tragic in their life all of the things they observe, taste, smell, or feel will have a melancholic feeling to them.

5) Genre

Another aspect that can influence the setting of a scene is the genre in which the scene takes place. A midnight stroll in the woods is going to feel very different in a romance novel vs. a horror novel. In the romance novel, there would be a full moon illuminating the wooded area, an owl hooting, and a cute frog leaping across the path, and fireflies would be dancing all around. In a horror novel, your protagonist can scarcely see a thing, they’d hear a distant howl, they’d smell something that they can’t place but it gave them a metallic taste in their mouth. And in a fantasy book, there would be an array of fantastical creatures and a mystical fog coating the forest floor. Think about the genre you’re working with when you’re deciding on the mood for your setting. Then use adjectives that evoke those emotive responses from your readers.

The post Why is Setting Important? appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Unrealistic Dialogue

One of the most common mistakes writers make is having dialogue that sounds too literary and fluffy. Your narrative should sound drastically different than the way your characters speak because people don’t talk in abstract similes and poetic imagery. People use slang, have a finite vocabulary, and stutter or stumble over their words. Speech is an imperfect thing and if your novel doesn’t reflect that, the characters will feel dry and unrealistic. One of the easiest tricks to making sure your dialogue sounds realistic is to speak any dialogue you’re writing aloud. It may make you feel a little silly, but hearing the words coming out of someone’s mouth is the clearest way to figure out if it’s something that someone would actually say.

Similar Voices

Another common dialogue mistake is failing to differentiate your character’s voices from one another. So many books exist where each of the characters just speaks how the author speaks. Not only does this problem make it difficult to tell the characters apart, but it also affects the believability of the book because a world where every character sounds exactly the same just doesn’t feel real. Consider where each of your characters grew up- is there slang from those areas they would use that other characters wouldn’t? What is each of your character’s level of education? This will affect their level of vocabulary as well. In addition, think of their tone, if they stutter or ‘er’ and ‘um’,  or do they have specific words they simply like to overuse? Use these questions as tools to help make your characters sound more unique.

Writing ‘In-Scene’

One thing writers often overlook is how to write ‘in-scene’ to create drama. Think about a movie- when there’s less action, there are slower shots and when there’s more action, you get quicker cuts. Writing is the same way: when you want to create drama or suspense in a scene you start to write with shorter, sharper sentences. Writers often make the mistake of keeping the long-winded prose for suspenseful scenes and this ends up making them feel less dramatic.

Where are we?

Out of everything on our list, this is likely the most common writing mistake. Leaving the reader asking ‘where are we?’ because you’ve done no work to describe the scene. We know it’s easy to get caught up in the plot and forget to include these details, but in order for readers to feel fully immersed in your novel, all of their senses need to be activated- including sight. Every time you switch the setting of your story, make sure to take a paragraph or two to go into detail about what this new setting looks like, feels like, smells like, etc.

Missing Conflict

In order for your story to feel realistic, you must create conflict that is both interesting and believable. So often in books, writers create scenarios where the entire root of the conflict is simply based on the characters misunderstanding what the other is saying. This is not conflict. Conflict involves both internal and external forces keeping the protagonist from getting what they want. If the conflict just involves characters misunderstanding each other, you’re simply going to leave your readers frustrated.

POV & Tenses

Inconsistency with POV and tenses is another incredibly common writing mistake. Make sure when you begin writing your novel you choose your POV and whether the story will be in past or present tense…and then stick with that throughout the story. Nothing is more jarring than a story that keeps switching between third-person on one specific character to third-person omniscient to third-person in the mind of another character with little to no transition.

The post Common Writing Mistakes appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Remember our dialogue exercise? If you haven’t completed that one yet, follow the link here because we’re going to use it again. If you need a refresher, here are the specs:

Setting: A small dive bar, midday on a Sunday afternoon. The bar is scarce, just a few patrons. There are two younger men who seem to know each other, but it appears everyone else came alone. Most of them are older men, in their early 50’s. The bartender is a relatively handsome young man in his early twenties.

Character One: A young man in his mid-twenties. He loves classic rock and country music, just graduated from a nearby college with a degree in Creative Writing, and he grew up in Texas.

Character Two: A young woman in her early twenties, currently attending a nearby college and aiming to graduate a semester early. She’s double-majoring in business and communications and her favorite shows are House of Cards and Grey’s Anatomy.

Character Three: A middle-aged man with a military history. He has a wife and two kids, grew up in the south, loves watching Sons of Anarchy and The Sopranos. He’s currently trying to quit smoking.

1) Select one of the scenes of dialogue that you’ve already written. Select one of the two characters in that scene and write the scene from that person’s point of view. Remember, think about how they’re perceiving what is said, what they see, etc. And don’t forget to also consider how the other person in this scene is reacting and feeling about what is said, what they see, etc.

2) Take that same scene and these same lines and rewrite the piece again from the other character’s point of view. Differentiate between the first perspective as much as possible. Create misunderstandings, missed opportunities, etc., so the reader can see a clear difference between how the first and second person felt about this conversation and why.

The post Writing Exercise: Point of View appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.