Write A Novel With Me?

Well, now that my short story is written I'd like to move on to something else for a while, something bigger and more unwieldy that my little 5,000-word short story.  Don't get me wrong-- the short story still needs lots of work, but 2011 is fast approaching and I have a burning desire to finish my novel now. I started writing it four years ago but in-between all the roller-coaster ups and downs, the short bouts of writing, and the many, many false starts, I'd like to finally finish the thing.  In fact, I've never felt the urge this strongly before. I think I might actually finish it this time!

Well, we'll see about that, won't we?  Obviously it's going to take a chunk of time to write a novel.  So much time that I might have to blog even less frequently than I do already.  The story has changed dramatically over the last four years and what was initially a simple tale of lost love and second chances has expanded into something much more complicated and (hopefully) compelling.  So my plan is to take the next twelve months to rewrite the novel and then rewrite it again.  Because the story has changed so much, the first rewrite will be almost like a first draft: swift and childlike.  The goal will be simple: to get the new version down on paper.  In the second draft I'll focus more on specific problem areas of the story and different elements of craft.  Again, I'll be turning to some of my favorite authors and writing mentors for examples, advice, and an occasional kick-in-the-pants along the way, and I'll be sharing everything I learn with you here, in a series of posts on this blog.

The one stipulation I've made for myself is this:  I'm only allowed to post something new when I finish writing three chapters.  That could take a week, or it could take a month.  No chapters, no blogging! We'll see how that goes.

Do you have a novel you'd like to finish? Or a novel you'd like to start?  I'd love it if you would join me in this mammoth writing endeavor.  Let's do this thing together, shall we? How about this: we write one chapter a week for as many weeks as it takes us to finish.  Then we'll come back here and sort it all out like we did for the short story.  What say you to that?

For the first exercise, there are so many directions, so many different aspects of craft we could choose to explore.  An exercise on beginnings would seem an obvious starting place.  (Maybe we'll tackle that next, just before we launch into chapter one of our novels (coming soon!)).  In the meantime there's a book I've been wanting to share with you, the book being one of the main reasons I'm so excited about finishing my novel now:  Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose-- "A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them."  USA Today calls it "A love letter to the pleasures of reading," but to my mind it's a a love letter to the pleasures of writing. The back cover copy reads: "Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured."  I wouldn't be surprised if this book gives you the desire to make your own work endure as theirs has-- as well as the tools and insights to make that happen. That's something to shoot for, anyway.

In the first chapter Prose talks about "close reading"-- how she learned to write from reading the works of the masters:

     "I read closely, word by word, sentence by sentence, pondering each deceptively minor decision the writer [has] made.  And though it's impossible to recall every source of inspiration and instruction, I can remember the novels and stories that seemed to me revelations: wells of beauty and pleasure that were also text books, private lessons in the art of fiction."

• • •

        "I've always thought that a close-reading course should at least be a companion, if not an alternative, to the writing workshop.  Though it also doles out praise, the workshop most often focuses on what a writer has done wrong, what needs to be fixed, cut, or augmented.  Whereas reading a masterpiece can inspire us by showing us how a writer does something brilliantly.

        "Occasionally, while I was teaching a reading course and simultaneously working on a novel, and when I had reached an impasse in my own work, I began to notice that whatever story I taught that week somehow helped me get past the obstacle that had been in my way.  Once, for example, I was struggling with a party scene and happened to be teaching James Joyce's "The Dead," which taught me something bout how to orchestrate the voices of the party guests into a chorus from which the principal players step forward, in turn to take their solos."

I encourage you to read this wonderful book.  Then come back in a week or so for our first exercise in writing (and rewriting) our unwieldy novels...

Leslie


~
Francine Prose: Reading Like a Writer

Part VIII: PLOT: John Barth and his Incremental Perturbations

***This post is the last in a series of eight exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***


You’re probably scratching your head right now wondering why on earth I saved “plot” for last, and you’re probably right to wonder about that. Maybe back in August (when we began the work of turning the first drafts of our short stories into unforgettable masterpieces) we should have begun our revisions by studying plot before we talked about all those other things-- like dialogue, structure, setting, and emotion, or how to engage readers using authenticating detail.  

Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing fiction, it’s that no matter how hopeless or unwieldy the task may seem, it’s never too late to fix a troublesome passage—or even an entire manuscript, if that's what's required.  If we’ve taken the time to introduce our characters and delineate their myriad flaws, fears, and emotions, and to fill their little mouths with crackling, subtextual dialogue… And we’ve gone through all the effort to create vivid, dynamic descriptions of the settings they inhabit, why would we not invest the time necessary to tell our story in the most compelling way we can—no matter how many revisions it takes—until we’re satisfied that the story on paper is as good or better than the one that originally took shape in our heads?

“Though character is the emotional core of great fiction, and though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is—or must sooner or later become—the focus of every good writer’s plan.”  Wise words from the late John Gardner, novelist and creative writing teacher, and our mentor for this series of short story exercises.

So what is plot, exactly? And how can we apply it to the draft of a story we’ve already written (and in fact have already been revising for the last three months)?  First, a definition of plot from a few of my favorite mentors:

From The Lie That Tells A Truth by John Dufresne:  “An idea is not a story.  A first draft is not a story.  A moral is not a story.  A character is not a story.  A theme is not a story.  A plot—now, that’s a story! So where do I get me one? you might ask. At your writing desk.  Because plots don’t exist.  They can’t be shopped for or ordered on-line.  They are coaxed into being.  They develop.  They grow in the course of the writing.  A plot begins to form as soon as you begin to ask yourself the appropriate narrative questions: What does my central character want? What is preventing her from getting it? What does she do about the various obstacles in her way? What are the results of what she does? What climax does this all lead to? Does she get what she wants in the end? Plot, then, is the element of fiction that shapes the many other elements—character, theme, point of view, language, and so on—into a story.  It’s the organizing principle of narration, let’s say. […] Plot is the force that holds the universe of your story together.”

From Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich: “If you don’t write from an outline, once you have finished a story, you still should be able to see its outline, the way after a touchdown it’s easy to draw a chart of what happened in the play.  Something must happen, and in the end, we must know why it has happened.  Plot is partly what you discover in the writing of a story, not what you “insert.” You raise questions and seek answers, connect your sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters, chapters into novels.  This thread of investigation may be a thin one, but you must have it to give yourself and your readers something to look for.”

From Brandi Reissenweber in her lecture on “Plot & Structure”: “Structure and plot are the architecture of storytelling. The façade of a building may be beautiful, brilliant, breathtaking even, but it can only be that way if it is standing, right? That’s where these foundational elements come in. All other aspects of fiction—characterization, description, what distinguishes your voice from others,—hang on the basic structure and plot of the story.”

John Barth, noted novelist, short story writer, and witty professor of creative writing, writes that “Dramatic effect, not linear chronology, is the regnant principle in the selection and arrangement of a story’s action,” that “a story’s order of narration need not be the strict chronological order of the events narrated.”

However we decide to arrange the “action” in our stories, that action traditionally includes the six ingredients below. [Bracketed explanations are capsulated passages from “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know Whether You’ve Got a Plot or Not,” an essay by John Barth. To learn more, and to understand his "systems analysis" theory on the workings of plot, read Barth's classic (and humorous!) essay in Creating Fiction]:

1.  Status Quo: [the less-than-stable “Ground Situation.” An overtly or latently voltaged state of affairs preexisting the story’s present time; one that tends to regulate itself toward equilibrium but is essentially less than stable (otherwise there would be no story). The Montagues and Capulets have been hassling each other in Verona for a long time before the story begins: a taunt here, a street scuffle there, but nothing the two families can’t quite absorb.  No ground situation, no story, however arresting the action to come, for it is its effect upon the ground situation that gives the story’s action meaning.]

2.  The Inciting Incident: [A present-time turn of events that precipitates a story out of the ground situation… “And then one day,” as the narrative formula puts it, the dramatic vehicle rolls into town: Young Romeo Montague falls for young Juliet Capulet, and vice versa.] 

Note: David Harris Ebenbach of Gotham Writers Workshop says it’s the responsibility of the writer to begin the story at the point of change (the inciting incident), when “something’s happening that stands out.” Take Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” for example.  Carver didn’t begin his masterpiece “a few weeks earlier, when nobody was coming to visit.  [He began with] the day that’s the focus of the whole piece.”  In order to “drop the reader right into the middle of the action” and almost simultaneously provide him with the necessary information to set up the ground situation (exposition), you’ll have to work hard to strike just the right balance.

3.  Complications (escalating conflict): [Incremental perturbations of the ground situation; the successive complications of the conflict. (The star-crossed lovers declare their love, but…) In the story’s middle these “perturbations” follow not only upon one another but from one another, each paving the way for the next (as the story’s middle performs its double and contradictory functions of simultaneously fetching us to the climax and strategically delaying our approach thereto)]

4.  Climax: [A comparatively sudden and consequential effect triggered by comparatively small incrementations, like an avalanche, or the click of the thermostat—whether or not it involves the fall of the mighty from the height of fortune to the depths of misery.  Even in the most delicate of epiphanic stories, the little insight vouchsafed to the protagonist (or perhaps only to the reader), the little epiphany that epiphs, does so in a comparative flash—and, for all its apparent slightness, is of magnitudinous consequence]

5.  Denouement: The consequence of the complications and climax. [measured by the net difference it effects in the ground situation.  If nothing of consequence about the ground situation has been altered, no story has been told…. The equilibrium of a story’s denouement is not that of its opening: The surviving Capulets and Montagues are sadder but perhaps at least temporarily wiser in the “glooming peace this morning with it brings.”  It is an equilibrium complexified, qualitatively changed even where things may appear to all hands (except the reader/spectator) to be back to normal.  Otherwise, what we have attended may have its incidental merits, but, for better or worse (usually worse), it’s not a story].

6.  Wrap-up [the little coda, closing fillip, or dolly-back shot often appended to the denouement like a jazz drummer’s “roll-off” at the end of a number, and usually suggestive of what the story’s completed action portends for the principal characters].

John Barth: “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know Whether You’ve Got a Plot or Not,” from the text Creating Fiction, edited by Julie Checkoway

John Dufresne: The Lie That Tells A Truth

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Josip Novakovich:  Fiction Writer’s Workshop

Brandi Reissenweber: Instructor, Gotham Writers' Workshop, and author of the "Ask the Writer" column for "The Writer" magazine. Be sure to check out "Letterpress," her wonderful blog on the craft of fiction.

David Harris Ebenbach: The chapter "Plot: A Question of Focus" in Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide (also contains the full version of "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver)

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

November: 30 Days of Writing Bliss

Well, I'm supposed to be posting the final exercise in my series of short story writing exercises today, and I was just sitting down to do that when a friend e-mailed with an important reminder:  It's October 27th, which means NaNoWriMo begins in just 5 days!

I posted about this a year ago, so instead of wasting time writing about it all over again I'll just copy, paste, and tweak my post from last year, and that way while you're checking it out to see what all the November fuss is about, I'll slip away to finish up Part VIII of the short story posts.  Meet you back here in just a few days...

From October 2009:

I can't believe it's here again so soon!  If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) -- 30 caffeine-filled days of writing pleasure and frenzy in which participants write 1,667 words per day with the goal of completing a 50,000-word "shitty" first draft by midnight on November 30th.  Are you up for that? Are you ready to go??

There are so many ways to tackle this thing: 

l If you're a planner like me, you might prepare a detailed map either outlining or making lots of notes about every chapter and every scene, with a character chart delineating each character's growth and change throughout the entire novel -- a master plan so to speak, so you'll know where you're going and how you plan to get there.  My advice is to print out your plan and pin it to the wall next to your laptop.  That way you'll have it to refer to whenever you get stuck, which if you're like me will happen quite often. 

l  If you're like some of my successful NaNo friends, you begin on November 1st with nothing but the seed of an idea germinating in the soft tissue of your brain.  The idea here is to sit yourself down in front of your computer and imagine a character or two, listen to what they tell you, and hope that their words trickle down from your brain to your fingertips. If you're lucky, you'll end the month like my friends have, with something unwieldy, surprising, and magnificent -- a rough first draft to take you through the rest of the year and possibly beyond.  That's when you'll apply structure and plot to shape the story into something compelling and meaningful. 

Flannery O'Connor liked to work that way.  She once said: "If you start with a real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen; and you don't have to know before you begin.  In fact, it may be better if you don't know what before you begin.  You ought to be able to discover something from your stories."

l  Of course you can always use a combination of these two methods.  Ansen Dibell, author of Plot, calls this writing method "Outlining from Inside":

"Stories -- especially live, convincing stories -- will change under your hands.  That's the reason I've never been persuaded of the usefulness of outlines.  By other writers' experience and my own, I judge that you generally won't know how a story's going to go until you get close to the place where something is just about to happen.  It will take its own shape and tell you how it wants to go, if you listen and watch attentively for the ways it's telling you. 

            "My advice is that you should always know what your next set-piece is going to be." [Dibell defines a set-piece as "a big scene the reader can see coming and can look forward to awhile, either in fear or in hope, before it's reached."] "You should be laying the groundwork for it right up to the time it happens.  You should start that groundwork either from the story's beginning, or lay down the first seeds back before the previous set-piece, to mature and bloom later."

            "When you've written your set-piece, you should be looking ahead to the end, to see if you can see its shape any more clearly from this vantage point than you could before.  And if you can, make adjustments to make this scene lead more clearly, more precisely, toward the last cliff, with fewer possible turnings-away, so that the story, crisis by crisis, narrows down to a point that seems inevitable when it comes. 

            "I call it outlining from inside.  Blocking out the story, one set-piece at a time, from inside it, taking due account of what it seems so far to be trying to become.  That much outlining, I believe, every writer needs if his story is not to appear a funhouse, a random series of events sprung on the reader for no particular reason, gone too fast to have impact, leading from nothing to nothing.  You need some kind of an outline, some idea of where you're going and how, if you're going to keep your story out of the funhouse which, in fiction, is no fun at all.  Look ahead at least to your next major scene and get ready for it.  Then deliver."

           

l   Another method I've heard about (but never tried myself) is the "Snowflake Method" developed by Randy Ingermanson, physicist and author, in which you begin by writing a one-sentence summary of your novel in 15 words or less. You turn this little snow-crystal into a snowflake (and finally, a snowball) by rolling it through the snow-fields of your mind where hopefully it picks up more and more ice-crystals during each pass.  By November 30th at midnight you should have a massive and intricate snowball full of well-developed characters, detailed settings, and compelling dialogue.  It goes something like this:

            1.  Write the summary sentence of your story in 15 words or less.

            2.  Expand this sentence into a 5-sentence paragraph: one sentence for the story setup, one sentence for each of three "disasters" that take place during your novel, ideally each disaster worse for the protagonist than the last.  The last sentence  tells the ending.

            3.  Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a paragraph of it's own, fleshing out some of the disasters in your summary paragraph above.

            4.   Expand the one-page plot synopsis into a 4-page synopsis… etc., etc., etc.

You get the picture. Actually, it's much more detailed than that, and may be just what you need to organize your thoughts and turn them into a well-oiled page-turner.  You can get all the background information, and Randy Ingermanson's "Ten Steps of Design" at AdvancedFictionWriting.

Anyone who's ever NaNo'd successfully will tell you that every writer has a slightly different method of reaching that 50,000-word goal by the end of November.  All I can tell you is what worked for me.  

Here's just the thing to help get you started.  It's a great little exercise from John Dufresne's wonderfully encouraging book on writing fiction, The Lie That Tells A Truth.  (Might be a good one to read in preparation for November 1st…)  The exercise below will not only get you thinking about the beginning of your novel, but will come in handy whenever you're ready to begin that next big scene.

If you haven't already signed up for National Novel Writing Month, I urge you to do it now, before it's too late. You'll have the time of your life and you'll end up with a writing project to take you through 2011 and beyond :-)

Good luck!

An exercise from John Dufresne to get you started:

John Dufresne is professor of creative writing in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami, and author of The Lie That Tells A Truth, a Guide to Writing Fiction.  He has also authored four novels, and at least two short story collections that I know of. 

Part VII: The Art of Delay--Creating Tension and Reader Anticipation

***This post is the seventh in a series of eight exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***


Back in January I posted a piece on the importance of tension in writing fiction, but the topic is worth revisiting I think, especially now that we're in the process of reworking our short story "masterpieces." So, what are people referring to when they talk about tension in storytelling? I like this definition offered by the late Rust Hills, long-time fiction editor for Esquire magazine, and author of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular:

That “something” which is “going to happen” usually involves conflict of some kind, and the foreshadowing of that conflict is a key element in creating tension that works.  “Conflict is the heartbeat of all writing,” says Lajos Egri, author of The Art of Dramatic Writing.  “No conflict ever existed without first foreshadowing itself.  Conflict is that titanic atomic energy whereby one explosion creates a chain of explosions”:

Says Hills, “As with every other discussion of method, of course, there has to be an amount of competence and care on the writer’s part, or the effect won’t be caused by the method.”

Our mentor, the late John Gardner, agrees:

So for every piece of delayed information we'll need to do three things:  a) foreshadow the event so that the reader will anticipate its eventual coming; b), resolve or reveal the event or information at some point later in the story; and c) keep the tension taut throughout the story leading up to it, writing with such care, such rich language and startling accuracy of perception, that the reader can’t wait to skip ahead to the end, but is kept from doing so only by his own unwillingness to leave the gorgeous passages leading up to it.

Simple, right?

Rust Hills: Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Lajos Egri:  The Art of Dramatic Writing

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Part VI: Authenticating Detail and Description

***This post is the sixth in a series of eight weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

“Vivid detail is the life blood of fiction…” – John Gardner

I am so behind on my revisions for this story! This most recent pass-through (the one with a focus on dialogue and subtext)  took much longer to complete than I expected. Even though my story has just five or six partially dramatized scenes --and even fewer passages of dialogue--it took quite some time to hone that dialogue down to only the most meaningful and significant lines. Now it’s time to move on to the next revision pass: authenticating detail and description.

So what does our mentor, the late John Gardner, have to say about detail?

The details in this brief passage from Colm Tóibín’s short story “The Use of Reason” capture only a tiny aspect of who this mother is, but the few, carefully chosen words and details suggest so much more beneath the surface:

“Good authenticating details set a trap that captures a small piece, a tiny aspect, of what’s being described in a way that allows the reader to come to understand what’s being described for himself,” says Dave Koch, author of one of the clearest explanations I’ve read on the subject of authenticating detail. “[Readers] of literary fiction want to be able to figure things out for themselves; they want to do work. When a story allows you to do this sort of work—to come to your own decision, to come to your own conclusions—you participate in that story. And that sense of feeling like you participated, like your opinions and interpretations matter, is a big part of the pleasure you take from reading literary fiction.” Koch gives us five steps to follow to help make our readers feel like they know just enough about a character or place (or whatever it is you’re trying to describe).  To get the whole scoop including some good examples, read the rest of Dave’s article here, on the Gotham Writers’ Workshop site.  The five steps:

1. Make the decision to capture whatever it is you’re trying to describe. Set a trap.

2. Identify details you don’t need for this capturing. Ordinary details are your enemy.

3. Look to unusual details to capture the big picture. Unusual details let readers do work.

4. Lie, cheat, and steal. Do whatever you have to. You don’t necessarily capture the truth by being truthful.

5. Trust the reader. Don’t explain something after you’ve captured it. “Over-explaining takes all the power away from [the] authenticating detail. Avoid that by letting the reader figure things out for himself.”

Author, Monica Wood,  interviewed for The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Building Blocks (a wonderful resource for both inspiration and technique) talks about the importance of picking just the right detail when describing something-- a place or character, for instance:

I’m excited to discover that in addition to her novels and short stories Monica has written a number of books on the craft of writing, one of which is Description, a book in the popular “Elements of Fiction Writing” series.  I’m looking forward to checking that one out.

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Dave Koch: "Authenticating Detail" Gotham Writers' Workshop (article first appeared in "The Writer" magazine)

Monica Wood: interviewed for The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Building Blocks

Colm Tóibín: "The Use of Reason" in the collection Mothers and Sons

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Part V: Dialogue That Crackles

***This post is the fifth in a series of eight.  Through September I'll be posting weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

Yikes. By now I should be posting Part VI (or even VII!) of my series of short story exercises, but I’m just getting to Part V.  I may need to extend my self-imposed deadline another week or so.  That’s okay.  The important thing is not that the story gets finished by a certain date, but that however long it takes-- through diligence, determination, and pure pleasure--the story grows and matures into the best story it can be.

One way to accomplish this is to make sure our characters’ interactions radiate heat through conflict, tension, and misunderstanding. Allison Amend, author of the chapter on dialogue in Gotham Writers’ Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide tells us, “more often than not dialogue is a key part of [that] interaction.” You’ve no doubt heard me sing the praises of this book a time or two in this blog... Well, Amend’s chapter, “Dialogue: Talking It Up” is one of the best I’ve read on the subject and is but one more reason to get your hands on a copy now. 

Dialogue is a function of character, as screenwriting guru Syd Field reminds us. Not only does dialogue need to move the story forward but it should also establish relationships, reveal the conflicts of the story and its characters, reveal the characters’ emotional states, and comment on the action: “Your first attempts will probably be stilted, clichéd, fragmented, and strained,” writes Field. “Writing dialogue is like learning to swim; you’re going to flounder around, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.”

Unlike a novel, a short story doesn’t allow time enough to dramatize every single event or to write out every line of dialogue in every conversation that our characters engage in over the course of the story’s telling, so we’ll need to choose thoughtfully.  Last week we made a list of significant, turning-point incidents that will take place in our stories.  This week let’s work on dramatizing them through dialogue.

As Allison Amend tells us, not every conversation needs to be dramatized in direct, line-by-line dialogue.  Sometimes all we need to reveal is a gist of the conversation and we can accomplish that through summary alone (via indirect dialogue) or with a combination of both summary and scene. By way of example she offers us this passage from Tobias Wolff’s short story “Smokers” in which the author uses a mix of both direct and indirect dialogue, sparing the reader “a monotonous conversation, but [giving us] the most important information… in a most economical fashion”:

Writes Amend: “Here we get the gist of the conversation, but then, on an especially significant line, we get the actual quote.” She continues, “So, in addition to asking yourself if a moment should be dialogued or not, you can also ask yourself if direct or indirect dialogue is the best choice for that particular moment.”

Study Amend’s chapter on dialogue to learn lots more:  dialogue conventions, the illusion of reality, subtext, dialect, stage direction in dialogue, character and dialogue, bad dialogue...  You won’t be disappointed.

One more word on dialogue that I’m sure you’ve already heard over and over but is worth keeping in mind as we begin to craft those passages of dialogue in our stories:  Subtext. John Gardner, our mentor for this series of exercises, reminds us to “make our dialogue crackle with feelings not directly expressed.  Remember that in dialogue, as a general rule, every pause must somehow be shown, either by narration (for example, “she paused”) or by some gesture or other break that shows the pause.  And remember that gesture is a part of all real dialogue.  Sometimes, for instance, we look away instead of answering.”

Interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson for The Glimmer Train Guide To Writing Fiction: Building Blocks, author Amy Bloom talks about “writing below the surface”:

Finally, an important note on subtext from Allison Amend:

Allison Amend: “Dialogue: Talking it Up” Gotham Writers’ Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide

Syd Field: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Amy Bloom: interviewed in The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction: Building Blocks

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot