Draft with your gut, revise with your head: tips for approaching dialogue

Photo by Harishan Kobalasingam.

In my experience, writers usually feel strongly about creating dialogue, either loving or hating the challenge of building plot and character through seemingly genuine conversation. And more often than not, those feelings are evident in their subsequent manuscripts. Fortunately, although great dialogue may not be easy to craft, the process doesn’t have to be painful.

Of course, there is no single “correct” approach to writing dialogue. The below advice is meant to help authors decrease some of the anxiety around the process and avoid what I have found to be the most common pitfalls in composing naturalistic conversations, including

• exposition dumps;

• overly formal, complex, or otherwise awkward language;

• unnecessary repetition;

• boring, flat, and extraneous passages; and

• out-of-character statements.

Your usage may vary.

Drafting with your gut

A good first draft of dialogue will be focused and feel natural. To accomplish the former, you need to approach your scene with purpose. To accomplish the latter, you want to write from your gut, allowing your characters’ words to pour out of them rather than being forced upon them by the needs of the story.

Before writing a scene, you should have some idea of what its purpose will be and how it will move your plot along. Doing so will give your characters and their conversation a clear destination and path to follow, but also room to experiment and grow.

Once you have a sense for where you want the scene to go, allow yourself to sink into your characters, feeling the drives that propel them forward as well as the histories that weigh them down.

Now, write.

Revising with your head

When you’re ready to revise, it’s time to hop out of your characters’ skins and review the scene from the outside. Here are some key aspects to consider.

Turn up the tension

There’s what we think, what we want to communicate, and what we actually communicate. These three things rarely line up perfectly, and that fact is a primary source of tension in dialogue.

When you revise, make sure you are playing up to this tension. Not only will it keep your readers interested, but it will clue them in to important facets of your characters’ desires and personalities.

Remember, too, that people communicate at least as much through body language and facial expressions as they do through words. Be sure to use your characters’ physicality to either support or conflict with what they say.

Disparities between the perspectives of your characters is another natural source of tension in dialogue. This doesn’t mean every interaction you write needs to be hostile, but you should keep an eye open for places where misunderstandings or contrasting perspectives might occur—especially in ways that are relevant to the plot—and then lean in to those moments.

Refine the rhythm

Refining the rhythm of your dialogue requires both cutting and expanding in the revision stage, and usually involves bouncing back-and-forth between the two.

Tighten your writing by cutting or summarizing any lines that don’t move the plot forward, build character, or establish setting. Strive for phrases that do at least two of these at once.

Cut unnecessary repetition, flabby phrasing, or other extraneous words.

Look for opportunities to add white space. Unless there are strong character or stylistic reasons to have long, speech-like paragraphs, these should be broken up.

Likewise, most of the time you want to break-up complex sentences and simplify vocabulary. Reading your dialogue aloud will help you hear what works and what doesn’t.

Check your dialogue tags. Words like “said” or “asked” should be sparing; the voices and perspectives of well-written characters can do most of the work of identifying each speaker.

If you find you need tags on every line, this may be a sign that your characterization isn’t strong and you need to tweak the dialogue itself to more clearly evoke the speaker’s personality/point-of-view. (That being said, contemporary readers and editors usually prefer accents and vocal tics to be handled like a strong spice: added sparingly for flavor but not laid on so heavily that they overwhelm the actual meat of the scene.)

Dialogue tags should sometimes be supplemented with, or replaced entirely by, descriptions of body language, facial expressions, or interior thoughts. Adding these moments of description can keep passages of dialogue from feeling too thin and provide your readers with important context regarding your characters’ personalities and states of mind.

Similarly, inserting brief descriptions of the setting or surrounding action—especially when it reflects, conflicts with, interrupts, or otherwise affects your characters’ discussion—is another effective way of adding layers and dynamism to a scene.

Check for character and plot consistency

Drafting from the gut can mean that what comes out sounds more like the author than the character. Or worse, we might have our characters say something that seems to work in the moment, but takes them to a place we really don’t want them to go. For instance, if you have a series-recurrent character who up to this point has always been meek or kind or wise, you don’t want her to suddenly become aggressive or mean or reckless unless you have established a very believable reason for her to do so and are prepared to deal with the repercussions of that conflicting behavior going forward.

When you revise your dialogue, ask yourself whether each statement really makes sense for the speaker. If just a line or two sounds off, you will probably want to change those lines. If, on the other hand, the entire conversation sounds off, you might want to either rethink the character or recast the speaker altogether.

Once the first draft of your entire book is complete, you might also discover a conversation that works on its own doesn’t add much to, or even conflicts with other aspects of, the overall story. Painful as this can be, the scene will have to be trimmed or cut accordingly.

Looking for more?

Whole books can be—and have been—written on the subject of writing dialogue. If you’re searching for more in-depth advice than what I’ve put forward here, you might want to check out Crafting Dynamic Dialogue by the editors of Writer’s Digest.

How to avoid annoying your editor (and get better feedback as a result)

Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw

do your due diligence before submitting

An editor is essentially a well-trained second set of eyes whose purpose is to catch the things you can’t. The manuscript you send to your editor should therefore be the version that represents how far you are capable of taking your work on your own. Ideally, this means you have

1) finished a full draft of your ms

2) revised that draft

3) sent the revised draft to beta readers

4) revised again based on the readers’ feedback

5) run spellcheck and checked formatting one last time

before sending your book to a professional.

Even after the ms has gone through all that, there will still be plenty for your editor to suggest and correct. However, doing your due diligence upfront should not only decrease the number of paid edits your book needs, but will also save your editor the concussion that comes from banging her head against a wall when faced with the easily avoidable, careless errors of a poorly self-edited ms.

Be upfront about anything that might impede your ability to write or Self-edit, as well as anything that might affect your content

Years before becoming an independent editor, I was an annoyingly thorough college-level grader. Since then, I’ve found that much of the advice I once gave to my students also applies to the writers I work with. The most widely applicable of these wisdom-nuggets is to be upfront about anything that might affect your writing and its content. If I know a writer is vision impaired, for example, I will have significantly more patience when his/her manuscript is littered with commas where there should be periods—or vice versa—than I would be otherwise. The same goes for those writing in a second language.

Similarly, it is also helpful to know whether clients are writing from their own experience. If you are writing a main character with a particular mental disorder, knowing how much first-hand knowledge you have of that disorder will help your editor know how much to question your presentation of that character. Likewise, if you are writing from the perspective of a particular culture, it helps to know if you are either from that culture or if you have spent significant time in/studying that culture. Your editor should want to respect your point of view, and if she feels you’re an expert on a subject, she probably won’t question that expertise unless it seems absolutely necessary.

Make the changes your editor asked for before sending a draft back to her

Obviously, no one wants to redo work they’ve already done, just as no one wants to do work for people who don’t take their own writing seriously enough to do what’s necessary to improve it. More than that, though, it’s important to keep in mind that editing is really a refining process, and the edits for each draft clear the way for a new set of issues to show up and be corrected. When changes that need to be made aren’t, this process is both stalled and imperiled.

Of course, your editor may suggest changes you decide are not best and/or appropriate for your work. In these cases, you should discuss your reasoning with her. Not only will this help her understand your choices in these specific instances, but it will help her better understand your perspective as a writer in a way that should improve the kind of feedback she gives you in subsequent drafts and manuscripts.

Learn from your previous edits

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then the surest way to make otherwise sane editors feel crazy is to make them correct the same mistakes over and over. If, for instance, the first ms you give to your editor is full of sentence fragments that she carefully corrects for you, make sure your subsequent manuscripts are drastically fragment-reduced, if not completely fragment free. If you instead decide not to learn from your previous mistakes and treat your editor like a garbage dump for lazy writing, be prepared for increasingly harsh feedback or for her to stop working with you altogether.

Besides, why wouldn’t you want to write the best book possible and save yourself significant time and money by avoiding what should be unnecessary revisions?

In summary

Basically, what all of this boils down to is just another version of the Golden Rule: treat your editors with the respect you want them to show you and your work. Remember that, even in the best of circumstances, editing is an extremely time-consuming, painstaking process done by fallible humans. The more problems your ms possesses, or the more additional frustrations you add to the process, the less complete—and kind—their feedback will be. On the other hand, the more effort you put into your own work and the more openly you communicate with your editor, the better her feedback can be and the more willing she will be to go the extra mile for you.

The who, when, what, and why of beta readers

Photo by Wynand van Poortvliet

The beta-reading stage is a critical part of the writing and publishing process, making beta readers some of the most important people in a writer's life. Although there are no set rules on who your readers should be or what you should (and can) ask from them, there are some general guidelines writers about to embark on the beta-reading process should be aware of.

The who and when

Beta readers are unpaid volunteers who read and give feedback on your story prior to publication. Ideally, your manuscript should go through the beta-reading process after your original round of self-edits but before you turn it over to a paid editor or submit to prospective agents. Some writers may choose to go through multiple rounds of beta-reading, one of which might come after the original paid edit. However, please keep in mind that beta readers should not take the place of a professional editor and that it is always safest to have content-, line-, and copy-editors review your work after making any major changes to your ms.

Unless you already have a significant loyal social media following to draw from, most of your readers are going to be friends, family, and people from your writing community. Within that group, you want to get as much diversity (gender, age, race, etc.) as possible, unless you are only writing for a specific gender or age group, such as women's fiction or YA. At least some should be regular readers in your genre, but they don't all have to be.

That being said, you don't want to set yourself, or your reader, up for failure. Not only will a poor experience be counter-productive for your work, it can damage your relationships. If you already know prospective volunteers wouldn't like your story—if, for instance, they hate being scared and your book is horror—they shouldn't be readers. If you know a person is unreliable or has a penchant for tearing other people down to make him- or herself feel better, s/he shouldn't be a reader. And, because readers should not share your work, those who couldn't keep your ms to themselves shouldn't be readers.

When sending out a call for volunteers, therefore, be clear about what your work is like—its genre, its target audience, its level of sex and violence, or anything else that might affect someone's ability to enjoy or appreciate the story—as well as a basic description of the process and your expectations. Don't be discouraged if you then don't get a lot of volunteers; all of those people who are passing are doing you (and your friendship) a huge favor.  

As you may have already gleaned, the most important qualities to look for in readers, beyond basic genre and content compatibility, are honesty, respectfulness, thoughtfulness, and trustworthiness. Your readers are the first people to see the result of what might have been years of blood-sweat-and-tears, when your manuscript is in a decent, but ultimately imperfect, form. It is therefore imperative to deal with people who understand this is your work (not a hobby) with real stakes and real deadlines; who want that work to succeed; and who are capable of balancing sincere, considered criticism with supportive feedback. 

Many, possibly most, of your readers won't be able to do all of that. Some won't follow-through at all. To be prepared for these eventualities, you should strive to get as many prospective readers as possible, albeit within the guidelines listed above. 

The what and Why

The purpose of beta-reading is to give authors a better idea of what works and what doesn't in their manuscripts. Readers should therefore only look at big-picture issues like pacing, clarity, believability, and character development.

Some particularly detail-oriented or didactic readers may want to give the kind of in-line feedback that's normally reserved for editors. However, because the manuscript will likely need significant revisions after the first, or even second, wave of beta readers, this kind of editing will usually be a waste of their time and yours.

Writers should therefore be clear at the outset about both what they do and don't want. If readers then ignore your instructions, well, that's on them. However, when you have people in your stable of potential readers who you already know fit this criteria, it may be best to see if they would be willing to wait for a later round, when the bulk of your novel will be solidified and their eye for detail will be more useful.

In one of her many vlogs on beta-reading, Jenna Moreci recommends writers keep frequent contact with their readers, reviewing every few chapters in weekly-ish interviews. While this is probably the ideal approach, the reality for most people is that such constant, rigorous feedback just isn't feasible.

Another option is to provide a list of questions with your manuscript (or sections of manuscript), along with instructions. Include a request for confirmation of receipt near the bottom of the questionnaire to be sure your readers actually reviewed the instructions before starting on the ms. Even if you choose the questionnaire (or questionnaires) over frequent interviews, ask your readers in the beginning for a follow-up phone call or e-chat to occur at the end of the process, after you have received and had time to think about their initial responses. 

Include at least two deadlines with your instructions: the first will be the day they should expect a reminder e-mail from you, the second should be the final deadline for them to send their responses. I recommend building-in a few days of padding between when you ask for their replies and your true date-of-no-return.

Because you want to compare their impressions and make your decisions about changes accordingly, there will come a time when late feedback will no longer be helpful or relevant. If you have readers who are still promising feedback after that date, you will need to politely tell them you had to move ahead without their responses. If they still send that too-late feedback, it is up to you whether to use or ignore it.   

The trickiest aspect of preparing your questionnaire will be balancing your need to get as much information as possible with your readers' need to not be overwhelmed. It will probably take a few rounds to get this formula right, but, generally speaking, you will be better off with open yet directed questions that give your readers plenty of space to provide comprehensive feedback. For instance, "Where did the plot become sluggish?" will probably be more useful than "What did you think of what happens on page 273?" Of course, the more often you are able to communicate with your readers, the more specific your questions can be.

No matter what, be nice

At the end of the day, writers must always keep in mind that readers are volunteers who are taking time out of their busy lives to read your ms. They need to feel safe giving you honest feedback, and it needs to be okay for them to only do what they are able, even if that means backing out completely. When someone turns out to be a terrible or simply ineffective reader, just use whatever aspects of their feedback you find helpful, kindly thank them for their effort, and don't work with them again.

However, when it comes to those wonderful few who show they care by getting their feedback to you on time with the kind of thoughtful, balanced responses no decent book (or writer) can do without, make sure they know how awesome they are. Then, see if there is anything you can do to make the process better for them in the future. Great readers are rare and precious, and once you find them you should do whatever you can to ensure they are willing to work with you again.