The Writer and the Storyteller

by

Susanna Connelly Holstein

“Once upon a time,” begins the storyteller, “there was a king.” She pauses and sweeps the audience with unblinking eyes. “He was a proud man, a big man.” The storyteller straightens her posture, lifts her chin, and crosses her arms on her chest. She frowns. Her voice drops to a lower key. “Now this king had a young daughter.” Her voice softens; she smiles, and her body relaxes. Her hand reaches out to indicate the princess’s height.

It takes less than a minute for the audience to see the big stern king and his young daughter. Only a few words were needed to describe the two characters.

“Once upon a time,” the author writes, “there was a king. He was a proud man who stood erect and seldom smiled. His hands were always clenched, as if ready for a fight, and he held his head high. He stood over six feet tall, and it took many yards of fabric to make his breeches.” Words paint a picture of the king, and more words will be needed to describe his gentle daughter.

I have been a professional storyteller for over 20 years, sharing stories across the United States at festivals, conferences, workshops, reunions, campfires, and many other events. For the last 15 years, I have been a writer and have often mused about the similarities and differences in these two crafts.

The word storytelling is used today to describe everything from artworks to plays, movies and TV commercials. Filmmaker Ken Burns is often called “America’s Storyteller” and few would argue with that appellation. The word is also used to describe written works, be it novels, creative nonfiction, or historical works. With such broad application, it seems the name of this most ancient art has become as commonplace as generic aspirin. And yet what oral storytellers do is unique, an art with its own tools of the trade.

So what separates storytelling from writing? Are they the same thing, really? Is the only difference the form of presentation, or is there something more? The two artforms certainly have much in common. Both seek a strong storyline, a tale that takes the reader or listener by the heart and leads them to a new place that yet resonates with known experience. Both work to create intriguing characters, dramatic scenes, and a tale that follows the story arc.

Both writers and storytellers usually draft a working outline; the storyteller may never commit a word to paper, but the same work takes place mentally as a story develops. Some storytellers write every story they tell, adding personal notes for gestures, tone, etc., and inserting laugh lines or emotional cues at specific intervals. Some draw their story on storyboards, finding pictorial representation an effective way to commit details to memory. Others learn the key points and scenes only, then tell the story within that loose framework.

Writers and tellers also use another common tool: speaking their work aloud during the creative process. What better way to find redundancy, errors, and ambiguity? Telling the story aloud, even if it is only to the cat or to a wall, helps find areas that need improvement.

Where oral storytelling and writing differ is in the methods each has available to tell a tale. The storyteller has, in many respects, an easier time of it than does the writer because the teller can use physicality and vocal cues: voice inflection, eye contact, gestures and movement, pauses, and other vocal techniques. She can sing, shout, whisper, growl, or coo. She can crouch, spread her arms wide, indicate size with hand gestures. She can hop, walk in place, or move in any other way that helps the listener visualize the story.

The writer must convey everything through one medium: words. Here is where the writer’s skill must blend with creativity to create a powerful story. Dialogue allows the writer to become, in a sense, the storyteller. Descriptions call on artistic ability to create scenes that are clear and compelling. A mantra many writers follow is “show, don’t tell.” An oral artist must show, through movement and voice, because most audiences would be bored to tears with too many descriptive phrases. A writer faces the same threat of being boring if descriptions are too long or complex. While the storyteller must consider and choose both the right action and the best words to describe a scene, situation or character, the writer has only words to work with to do the same task efficiently and effectively.

When telling a story orally, the storyteller can vary the vocabulary and the story’s length; she can build in definitions or use body language to explain something that might be unfamiliar to a particular group, and lengthen or shorten a story to fit time constraints. She can make frightening scenes less scary by smiling or using a softer voice and body language, add humor to lighten the atmosphere, and even engage in conversation with the audience in some settings. The writer is more constrained; when the story is written, it is in a sense carved in stone. It cannot be changed except by future printed revisions. For the storyteller, the tale is constantly evolving, growing, and changing with almost every telling.

I was a storyteller before I thought about trying my hand at writing, and I have seen over the years how each craft informs the other. Storytelling has taught me how to use words and pacing for dramatic effect, and how to discover the heart of the story, the universal truth that will make that tale resonate with people of all ages and backgrounds. Writing taught me to develop strong openings and endings and the importance of dialogue in moving a story forward.

Both writer and teller strive for the same goal: to draw the audience into the story so deeply that the actions, characters and scenes play like a mental video as they listen or read. In the end, the medium disappears; only the story remains.





Writer, poet, professional storyteller, and ballad-singer Susanna Connelly Holstein is from Jackson County, WV. In addition to frequent storytelling performances, she writes the online journal Granny Sue’s News and Reviews, the blog Mountain Poet, and has been a columnist for Two Lane Livin’ magazine for almost ten years. Her storytelling performances include Appalachian stories and ballads, family heritage and history, and tales from West Virginia’s weird and wonderful history. Holstein’s work has appeared in Fed From the Blade, Diner Stories, and Unity: Coming Together, Falling Apart from Mountain State Press, These Haunted Hills and Easter Lilies among other titles from Jan-Carol Publishing, and in many other online and print journals and anthologies. She has produced three storytelling CDs and was a founding member of the West Virginia Storytelling Guild. She holds a BS from West Virginia State College and a MLIS from the University of South Carolina. In 2015, Holstein was named a West Virginia History Hero. When not writing or storytelling, she spends her time gardening, putting up food, and selling antiques.

Blog Two: Dialogue Tags

by

Sandy Tritt



Last week, we discussed how to write effective dialogue. This week, we’ll discuss how to tag dialogue. A dialogue tag identifies who the speaker is and, sometimes, the manner in which he has spoken. “John said” is a dialogue tag. Let’s look at an example of how not to tag dialogue:

     “Just be like that,” she pouted.

     “Oh, come on,” he groaned. “Not this again.”

     “You don’t love me,” she replied.

     “Right,” he snarled. “That’s why I bought you an eight hundred dollar diamond."

     “Here,” she sobbed. “Just take it back. Take it.”

Okay, what’s wrong with our sample above—other than being melodramatic? It’s an ailment I like to call “Creative Dialogue Tag Syndrome”—the writer relies on creative tags such as pouted, groaned, replied, snarled, sobbed, and so forth so the reader will know how to interpret the dialogue. What’s wrong with this? Let me count the things:

• The reader must interpret the tag and evaluate if the dialogue agrees with the tag. At best, it disrupts the flow. At worst, the reader decides the two are contradictory and the writer loses credibility.
• It’s telling the reader how the words are said instead of showing by action.
• If the dialogue is well written and the accompanying action is well chosen, it’s redundant.
• It’s annoying.
• It is, in many cases, just downright wrong. If the verb used as part of the dialogue tag is not synonymous with “said,” “asked,” “whispered” or “exclaimed,” it should not be used as a tag. It’s physically impossible to “smile” a word. Therefore, “smile”—and other such verbs—should never be used as part of a dialogue tag. Instead, use it in a separate sentence: “I love Sundays.” She smiled.

 

Consider, instead:

 

      Shelly’s lower lip quivered. “Just be like that.”

 

     “Oh, come on.” Mike scowled. “Not this again.”

     “You don’t love me.”

 

     “Right,” he said. “That’s why I bought you an eight-hundred-dollar diamond.”

 

     “Here.” She jerked off the ring and shoved it under his nose. “Just take it back.” Her voice wavered. “Take it.”

 

Okay, so nothing’s going to help our melodrama, but let’s examine the techniques used. We scrapped every creative dialogue tag. Every one. We replaced each with one of four techniques:

• No tag at all. This allows the power of the words to stand alone. As long as we know who’s speaking, no law says we must use a tag. 
• Action. “Shelly’s lower lip quivered” replaces “she pouted.” It’s more specific, it allows us to visualize Shelly, and it’s showing, not telling. This is preferable to using a tag.
• Invisible tags. Use the prosaic “said.” Yes, “said” is boring. It’s overused. In fact, it’s so boring and overused that it’s invisible. Just like “the” and “a” and “his” and other parts of speech that are used several times on each page, “said” slides right past the reader and allows him to concentrate on what’s important—the action and the dialogue.
• A combination of “said” and action. This is particularly effective when interrupting dialogue, as in the last sentence of the “after” example above.

Dialogue Punctuation

 

Let’s also talk about correct punctuation. If a tag (“he said”) is used, a comma separates the dialogue from the tag. If action only (no tag at all, as in the first sentence in the example) is used, it’s considered a separate and complete sentence and should be punctuated as such.

 

Note: “I love you,” she smiled, is never correct. “Smiled” cannot be a tag; it’s an action. Therefore, it can be written one of two ways: “I love you,” she said and smiled. - or - “I love you.” She smiled.

 

Dialogue is one of the most important tools a writer has to convey character and to build plot. Learn to use it effectively, and it will become the best friend you ever had.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2016 by Sandy Tritt. All rights reserved. This blog article is an excerpt from The PLAIN ENGLISH Writer’s Workbook (LINK)

Blog One: Dialogue

by

Sandy Tritt

Have you ever read a court transcript? It accurately gives a word-by-word report of exactly what is said. But is it interesting? No way. If we wrote dialogue the way people actually talk, our readers would execute us at dawn (or maybe earlier). So what do we do to create “natural” dialogue?

First, we must listen to the way people talk—both the choice of words and the rhythm of those words. People rarely speak in long sentences or without pausing (except for my mother), so we must write dialogue in fragmented sentences and in short bursts.

Second, we must decide which of these spoken words are worthy of writing. For example, in real life, when we greet someone we generally say, “Hello,” then ask how he is, maybe how his family is, and so forth. But this is boring stuff to a reader, who is smart enough to realize small talk occurs and impatient enough to want to get immediately to the meat of the conversation. Therefore, we need to eliminate the “niceties” and get on to what the reader wants to read.

And third, we need to add body language and action to dialogue to convey its true meaning. For example, a character says, “You jerk.” Without body language, we don’t know what the emotional value of this statement is. Consider the following statements:

• “You jerk.” His eyebrow cocked just enough so I’d know he was challenging me, that he was checking to see if I would back down.
• “You jerk.” The twinkle in his eye told me I’d finally earned his respect.
• “You jerk!” Carl slapped his knee and laughed from his belly until I feared he’d fall down.

As you can see, the action and body language allow us to interpret the meaning of the words. Since the reader cannot see the character talking, it’s our job to describe all the information the reader needs. Adding action and body language to our prose also accomplishes another task—it controls the pacing. Now, there are times when rapid-fire dialogue is necessary, such as at high drama points when things are moving quickly, or after a long descriptive section to pick up the pace. Monologues usually do not need interrupted by tags or action, as the story being told is the story holding (we hope!) the reader’s attention and to suspend it would be distracting.

There are no precise rules for writing dialogue, but an ear for it is developed by reading aloud. Do you start drifting? You need action. Do you forget who’s talking? You need a tag. Is the conversation moving too quickly? You need a break—narrative or action—to even out the pacing.

Here are some quick tips for writing dialogue:

• Read your scenes aloud, listening for the rhythm of your dialogue.
• Don’t use sound effects (called “onomatopoeia”). This is annoying. Simply state, “The gun shot echoed through the chapel,” instead of “Bang! Bang! Bang!” An exception to this, of course, is children’s literature, in which the sounding out of noises is part of the fun.
• Take it easy on dialect. Sounding out words becomes distracting and time-consuming, and most readers tire of it quickly. Instead, use the grammar, word choice, and rhythm of the character’s voice to insinuate the dialect or tag it with an explanation. Instead of writing: “I vill dough zit meself,” write: “I will do it myself,” she said, her Polish accent thick, the way it was when she was tired or sick. Likewise, instead of writing, “It doune make no differen’ ta me. I’m goin’ eenyway,” write: “It don’t make no difference to me. I’m going anyway.” 
• Don’t include “well,” “uh,” and other such nonsense unless it serves a purpose, such as a character whose only word is “uh,” or a character whose main distinction is prefacing every statement with “well.”
• Keep your tags either interspersed with action and description or at the end of the quote. A tag at the beginning (although occasionally okay) tends to make the writing more passive. Consider which of the following carries the most power: 
• He said, “Help me. I need help.”
• “Help me. I need help,” he said.
• “Help me,” he said. “I need help.”
• “Help me!” His arms flailed as his head disappeared under the water. He resurfaced again, fighting surf. “I need help.”

Next week, we’ll discuss how to use dialogue tags and how to avoid “Creative Dialogue Tag Syndrome.”









© 2016 by Sandy Tritt. All rights reserved. This blog article is an excerpt from The PLAIN ENGLISH Writer’s Workbook (LINK)

GUEST POST: From Diction to Rhetoric to Writing

by

Kirk Hazen

In early January 1999, an aide to the mayor of Washington D.C. used the word “niggardly” in reference to city funds while speaking with two employees. Ten days after this usage, the aide, David Howard, resigned. The term “niggardly” means “in a stingy manner,” appropriate for a budget, so how did the use of this word lead to his resignation? Context and audience conspired to create misinterpretations of Howard’s utterance: his immediate audience was offended because they thought he had said the N-word. Once those rumors began about racial animosity, especially in a city office already divided by racial tension, they were unstoppable.

Diction is an important skill and one that gets better with practice, but choosing the right word is only one step in the process of crafting the best writing. Unless you are only writing for yourself, you must get into other people’s minds and assess how they view the world. On the large scale, this would require writers to be both sociologists and psychologists; in practice, walking a few feet in other people’s shoes is easier today than it has ever been.

Several modern word tools can benefit writers, and I use all of these tools in my own writing. These tools include electronic dictionaries, Ngrams, and corpora. Although there are several high-quality paper-based dictionaries (I recommend the American Heritage Dictionary), the benefits of an electronic dictionary are sizeable. Most importantly, these dictionaries save time with easy searching. Even the dictionary on my computer allows me to easily switch between dictionary and thesaurus so that I can fully flesh out a word’s etymology (its word history) and its regular ambience (the kind of context it normally occurs in). With these qualities you can better discern how others will understand the word. Keep in mind that all modern dictionaries (and there are hundreds of them for different specialties) are surveys of usage. That distilled usage is what the writers need to understand to be fully conscious of their writing.

Ngrams are another tool for understanding how words are used and what they might mean for different audiences. The Ngram viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams) is a tool developed on Google Books that calculates and plots the frequency of words and phrases. There is a simple set of instructions (https://books.google.com/ngrams/info) that will allow you to search billions of words between 1800 and 2000. For any phrase or word comparison an author is deciding upon, the frequency and contexts for usage are quickly findable over the last 200 years.  

If authors need a more in-depth and nuanced assessment of the words in question, then searchable corpora are the answer. A corpus (plural, corpora) is a body of writings. Searchable corpora have been parsed so that most words are tagged with part of speech markers to allow for highly specialized searches (e.g. what adjectives come before woman/man?). At BYU, the http://corpus.byu.edu/ website can connect authors to searches through hundreds of billions of words in American and British English as well as 45 billion words in Spanish. Perhaps the two most useful corpora for writers are the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). For example, COCA can be searched by genre: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts, so, for example, researching authors can see that over the last century, the word “mauve” is most frequently used in fiction and magazines, but rarely comes up in speech or academic contexts. What writers do with such information is a rhetorical choice.

Consider the HBO miniseries Lewis and Clark, where modern writers needed to develop a script about the early 1800s but one which speaks to modern audiences. Pitfalls abound in such writing. If a word like “golden boy” sounds old fashioned to us, that might work for modern audiences, but it was not available until 1937, much too late for Lewis and Clark. If these former military men are going to curse on their dangerous cross-country expedition, should they sound more like Yosemite Sam or Deadpool? Cursing around 1800 sounded more like Yosemite Sam (“Tarnation!”) than any modern cursing, and the sexualized swearing of modern writing did not arise until the early 1900s. Such choices are artistically rhetorical choices where writers balance between historical accuracy and audience impact.

The interpretation of words changes over time, and those changes are outside of authors’ control. Consider the case of one of my English department colleague’s tale of a suspect phrase: In reading Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875) the European heroine (who speaks English, French, and German) tells her American suitor that she will not marry him until she sees his big house in San Francisco, saying “I like you very well, but I’m not going to take a leap in the dark, and I’m not going to marry a pig in a poke.” My colleague and I were both surprised that Trollope would have a character use the phrase “pig in a poke.” For both of us, the phrase is rural and colloquial and certainly American. But a bit of research shows that its usage in the mid-1800s was higher in England than in the US:

 

(To enlarge the photo, click on it. To see the original image click here.)

 

For modern writers to reach beyond themselves to other contexts and other voices, choices about what words mean for particular audiences loom large. Thankfully, modern tools allow authors to make informed rhetorical choices more quickly than ever before.



Biography:

Kirk Hazen is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at WVU and winner of the 2014-2015 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award in the Humanities. Hazen has been the founding director of the West Virginia Dialect Project since 1998, and he has been writing professionally since 1993. His most recent book is An Introduction to Language (Wiley 2015), and he can be found on Twitter @DrDialect. 

The Body Language of Deception

by

Charlotte Firbank-King

Body language is must-have knowledge in a writer’s arsenal of writing tools. It’s important to understand that people communicate through body language, whether intentionally or not. Studies have shown how important body language and tone are when people speak face-to-face. Therefore, if you expect dialogue—your character’s words—alone to communicate his emotional state to your reader, you’re expecting way too much. It’s critically important to replace those ho-hum dialogue tags (he said/she said) with body language or action. Let your reader see the way the speaker’s fist is clenched when he talks or the way a character’s head tilts toward her lover. Those are the clues your reader needs to figure out what is really going on.

I strongly recommend picking up one of the many books on body language and keeping it with your other reference books. Body language can a great array of emotions, and we couldn’t possibly cover all of them in one blog article. Therefore, we’ll talk today about the body language of deception.

The Body Language of Liars

A liar will often cover his mouth, as though to keep the deceitful words inside. He may lick his lips or giggle, and, when he speaks, he may hesitate, stutter, or slur, or, he may have an overly controlled tone. Most liars will speak with less inflection, tending toward a monotone. When asked a direct question, he may repeat the question, or say, “Do you think that I would do this?” or state his opinion on the subject—which is likely to be violently opposed to any such activity that he’s being asked about—instead of directly answering the question. For example, if asked if he mowed over the daisies, he’d say, “There’s no excuse for sloppy mowing. Mowers should be aware of what they are doing at all times.” He’s also likely to hesitate before answering, especially if asked a question for which he’s unprepared. 

Liars will normally avoid eye contact. Some liars are aware that this will give them away, so they will instead force eye contact, which feels unnatural. Pupils constrict when their owner lies, which may be why liars blink rapidly. They may glance away or glance sideways. 

A liar wants to be invisible—or, at the least, take up as little space as possible and not draw attention to himself. Therefore, he may have an overly stiff posture with controlled movement, and his hands and leg movements are toward his body core, not outward. 

In some people, the hands may be animated, as though the extra movement can help move the words through the air with added integrity. However, a liar will not cover his heart with his hand—that is, unless he’s aware this is a sign of being open and honest, and he does it to deceive. An honest person will often have a hand that is turned up, with the palm exposed, while a liar will keep his hand clenched or his palm down. A liar’s hands may touch his face, throat and mouth, or touch or scratch his nose, upper lip, or behind his ear.

Emotional Gestures and Contradictions of Liars

When someone tries to deceive, the timing may be off between the emotional gestures/expressions and spoken words. For example, a character may say, "I love it!" when receiving a gift, but then smiles after making that statement, rather than at the same time. The gestures/expressions may also fail to match the words spoken, such as smiling when saying “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” or shaking the head while saying, “Yes, I’ll take care of that for you.”

Expressions are limited to mouth movements instead of involving the entire face when faking emotions. For example, when someone smiles naturally, his whole face is involved. He has jaw/cheek movement, his eyes light up, and his skin crinkles at the corners. A liar’s eyes remain expressionless when he smiles.

Interactions and Reactions

A liar is uncomfortable facing his questioner/accuser and may turn his head or body away. He may unconsciously place an object, such as a book or a newspaper, between himself and the other person, or he may move objects around, indicating discomfort.

If an accuser believes someone is lying, he should change the subject quickly. A liar follows along willingly and becomes more relaxed; the deceiver is relieved the subject changed. An innocent person may be confused by the sudden change in topic and try to return to the previous subject.

Final Notes on Lying

These are just a few of the body language clues that a deceiver may use. In fact, entire books have been written on just this one area—on the body language of a liar or how to identify a liar, so it’s a subject that can be studied in-depth. 

It’s also important to note that when trying to clue your reader that a character is lying, the character should respond in a way that is not normal for him. And, of course, just because a character exhibits one or more of these signs does not make him a liar. 

If a character is a psychopath, these indicators may possibly not apply—psychopaths have no real conscience, and therefore do not have the guilt that causes many of the reactions listed here. Some psychopaths may even be cunning enough to behave in an acceptable manner—and are good enough actors to get by with it.

Writing is a craft with much to learn. We encourage you to sign up for our newsletters, this blog, and glean our website for the many tips offered there. We’re also here to help you along the way. Just shoot us off an email at IFWeditors@gmail.com. We’re here.

Be a Cinematic Novelist

by

Charlotte Firbank-King

As a break from my study of the novel, I’m studying scriptwriting. In the process, I realized that perhaps we novelists should follow the scriptwriter’s methods—meaning we should write more concisely and keep the action moving at a fast pace. Most movies are just under two hours long, some less. Can you read your novel in that amount of time and pack in as much action and drama as a scriptwriter does? Scriptwriting is all about economy of words.

When explaining what makes a good story, Alfred Hitchcock said, “Life, with the dull parts taken out.” We need to visualize the movie and write with that vision in our brains. The story needs to be all about action—showing, not telling. For example, we can eliminate internal monologues and allow our reader to reach his own conclusion about what our character was thinking by the way we’ve described a look or an action.  

Scriptwriters can argue that writing is easier for a novelist. They can switch heads at will and go into any character’s head, whereas a scriptwriter has to show all this. So, take a break from all the tools you have available and try writing like a scriptwriter by showing your reader. When you’re about to switch heads to tell the reader how the other character feels, pretend you’re making a movie. How would you make the audience see what you want them to see?

When we first learn to write fiction, we may think that writing dialogue is all about making it sound like real life. More experienced writers know it’s basically smoke and mirrors. You make the reader feel as though they’re reading real dialogue, but it can’t be, because real-life conversations are mundane. Listen to people talk. Most talk is repetitive and downright boring, even if the dialogue is a heated argument. I would go so far as to say record an argument on your mobile phone and then edit it—you’ll take out most of what is said.

Dialogue is a tool used to illustrate a character’s personality or even the character of the person being addressed or discussed. It’s a way to reflect a character’s mood and emotions, or it can convey the relationship the characters have with each other. Dialogue can expose a motive or hide it. Dialogue must always have a root in what was said or what happened before and must lead smoothly into what happens next. It must convey meaning pertinent to the story, and it can be a portent of what might happen next. Above all, dialogue must be concise and easy to understand, not convoluted like real life. Again, see dialogue as if it is in a movie. Make your characters act it out rather than telling the reader what happened.

Scriptwriters have what they call subtext. It’s the understated scene. For example: 

A single mother comes back from a double shift at work. She worked the extra shift to help a friend who needed to attend her little girl’s school play. Dark rings underscore the mother’s eyes and she drags her feet as she walks into the sitting room. Her teenage son sits hunched over, glaring at the TV.

The mother drops her bag on the floor. “How was your day?”

He transfers his glare to her. “Just great!” He jerks up and stomps from the room, punching the wall on his way out. 

The mother sighs heavily. But as she’s about to walk to the kitchen, she stops and stares at her shattered glass-top coffee table. An MVP Trophy lies in the center of the ruin. Tears fill her eyes and she bites her lip.

 

He said his day was “just great.” Obviously, it wasn’t. He feels rejected and angry that his big day was forgotten by the only parent he has. We can see she feels guilt and regret. She sacrificed her son’s big day of getting this prestigious award so a small child’s mother could see one of perhaps many plays.

This is the under text. It isn’t served to the audience on a plate. They must figure it out on their own. On a subliminal level, this makes the reader/viewer feel clever for having figured it out. Although the writer could have done the work for them and written the scene out with a lot of dialogue and argument, it would still be showing. Many times, the understated is best.

Leonardo da Vinci said: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

As a novelist, we need to kick it up a notch and describe the scene because it isn’t a movie and the reader cannot literally see the characters in action. But if we can start off by doing what a scriptwriter does by just describing the action, then later we can add the bits between. With clever writing, our characters’ actions, emotions and dialogue should have filled in most of the blanks—the things a reader can’t see like a movie-goer can—and we should have a tighter story that is much more powerful.

Animal Contest Winner, and New Contest Announcement

Congratulations to Lori from Mason, Ohio, the winner of the Amazing Animal Contest for her piece, "Teaching Without Words." Lori won a free edit from IFW, as well as some other great prizes and bragging rights. Be sure to submit your entry to this month's contest. Details are below.

The Dialogue Recovery Contest

Why don't you show us what you can do with some interesting dialogue? For your hard work you could win a copy of Joy Held's Writer Wellness as well as some other great gifts from Inspiration for Writers, Inc., (not to mention the critical acclaim of being able to say you WON one of our prestigious contests)! Enter our FREE writing contest. This month's theme is Dialogue Recovery. Here's how it works: write a short story of up to 1,000 words, the only catch is that your story must start with one of the following bits of dialogue:

"Look out! It's coming right for us!"

"And that, my dear, is why your husband willed me all of his money." OR

"Check out those buns."

Be creative! The more fun you have, the better! Submit your story to IFWeditors@gmail.com with an e-mail title of "Dialogue Writing Contest" by 11:59PM on May 6th to be considered for the contest. Also in the text of the email, please give us your name, email address, and snail mail address (yes, we keep these confidential), AND, please let us know if we have permission to print your entry, your first name, and your city/state or nation in a future blog or newsletter column. I will send a "we received your entry" email to all entrants, so if you don't get one, email again or call Sandy at 304-428-1218 during regular business hours (M-F 9-5 Eastern time).

Our editors will judge the entries on content, creativity, writing style, and writing craft. The winner will receive a prize package that includes a copy of Joy Held's Writer Wellness, an Inspiration for Writers duffle bag, a GHOSTWRITERS tote bag, Inspiration for Writers notepads, and other miscellaneous goodies. Now, get writing!

USING DIALECT IN STORIES

By

Rhonda Browning White

Nothing sinks the reader deep into a story like using all available senses in your writing. We want to smell the wood smoke from the fireplace, taste the buttery crust on the apple pie, feel the well-worn softness when we snuggle under Grandma’s lap quilt, see the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, and hear the Southern twang of her voice. But how is the best way to convey Grandma’s Southern dialect, without having it backfire on you? Here are few rules you can follow that should keep you out of trouble.

Be personally familiar with the dialect you’re trying to convey, unless you want to be considered a thoughtless classist or racist. At one time or another, we all share the same emotions and many of the same experiences, so use caution when conveying those emotions and experiences through regional dialect. This isn’t to say one should be ashamed or afraid of dialect. In fact, nothing makes me happier—more proud, even—than to hear people speak using their own local speech patterns. If we all spoke a homogenized language, what a boring world this would be!

Don’t overdo it when writing dialect. A few well-chosen words and phrases sprinkled throughout your story will do an amazing job of allowing your reader to hear the character’s speech inflections. Paragraph after paragraph of phonetically written dialogue will fry your reader’s brain. Who has time to interpret an entire novel of “foreign language,” when we simply want to read a good story? Overuse of dialect will take away from the plot and action, because it pulls the reader away from the story and makes them think about the words, instead of the meaning they should convey.

Take it easy on misspelled words. I strongly recommend avoiding what Jerome Stern, author of Making Shapely Fiction, refers to as “eye dialect.” Substituting misspelled words such as enuff for enough does nothing to change the pronunciation of the word (dialect), but instead suggests inferiority on behalf of the character and arrogance on behalf of the author. Misspellings and overuse of apostrophes also wear out the eyes of your reader. For example, read the following sentence:

          All dis tawk ‘bout die-leckt is ware-in’ on my onlyest nerve.

Can you imagine having to read an entire book with a character’s dialogue written in this manner? Instead, you can express the same character’s speech patterns in this way:

          All this talk about dialect is wearing out my last nerve.

By the phrases “all this talk,” and “wearing out my last nerve,” we know that the character has a strong regional dialect.

Don’t be afraid to use slang. Each region has its own set of words as phrases, as does each generation. Think about the phrases your parents used and use, compared with those used by your teenager. “Man, he’s one cool cat,” transports our character into the seventies. “That’s what I’m gonna did,” tells us the speaker is an older Cajun. “Y’all come back now, you hear?” Well, we all know Grandma Clampett’s voice. Again, the key is not to overdo it. In addition, words like gotcha, gonna and probly are such common pronunciations of their correctly spelled counterparts in American English that it’s not necessary to misspell them in your writing, at all.

Study some of the masters of regional dialect before you begin to write. Two who quickly come to mind are Toni Morrison and Ron Rash, and here is an excerpt from each one’s work:

          “You think I’m going to let him put me in the poorhouse so a slick lawyer can stay rich?”

          “No, ma’am.”

          “You been watching those Watergate lawyers?

          “No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”

          “Well, then. Don’t say another word about it. You want some supper or not?”

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

          “You ain’t got need for a granny-woman, have you?”

          “No,” I said. “I’m the high sheriff, and I’m looking for Holland Winchester. I was wondering if you’d seen him?”

          “Oh, I’ve seen him,” Widow Glendower said. “I seen him twenty-odd years ago when I brung him into this world.”

One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash

From each of these powerful examples, we have an idea not only of what these characters sound like, but what they look like, as well. Though we don’t know the exact setting of the story (location, year, and so on), from each brief paragraph, we can guess that the first is set in the Deep South and the second in the Appalachian Mountains. The characters aren’t portrayed as ignorant, because two have knowledge of politics, another is a law enforcement officer, and yet another is a successful midwife.

Dialect is influential and commanding, when used correctly. Take care to use it as you would a potent seasoning. Sprinkle it lightly and occasionally throughout your story for the best flavor.