The Writing Bit
How do you make your
dialogue convincing ? It has to be
realistic enough to be believable , but
your characters shouldn't speak exactly like real people, and you only
have to eavesdrop on a few conversations to see why. Real people
say 'um' and 'er'; we waffle; we go off the point; we don't finish our
sentences; we use the wrong word; we can't remember why we started telling you
this in the first place. Characters can't get away with that (well, once,
maybe, to make a point about the character).
But by and large,
what your characters say should be more interesting, meaningful and to the
point than what real people say, and they should say it in more interesting
ways. If you catch your character
wittering on about something that really isn't relevant to his/her character,
the scene, or the overall story, it's time to shut them up!
Dialogue is a
wonderful way of 'showing' rather than 'telling', but we do need to 'tell'
sometimes, such as when showing would clearly bore the pants off our readers. So
for example, it's ok to summarise:
'How was work,' he asked.
She sat heavily on the sofa and sighed. 'You don't want to know,' she said, and then proceeded to give him a blow-by-blow account of her day.
In terms of the
characters and their relationship, maybe we do need to know that they had this
discussion, but we don't need to hear the blow-by-blow account of her day, so
summarising in this way is fine.
Speech attribution
He said/she said.
That's it; it's all you need. Anything
else is an authorial intrusion, because the reader is likely to notice it, and when a reader notices the
writing, it means that he or she has stopped reading, albeit briefly. Ok, we can probably get away with 'he
whispered' (or muttered/yelled/shouted); and I don't think the reader is likely
to trip up over 'she asked' (or replied/added/continued) but please, oh please,
avoid speech tags that are unnecessary or inappropriate at best, and at worst
pompous, overblown or archaic. I have seen all of the following used as speech
tags in contemporary fiction: opined;
interjected; retorted; exclaimed; remonstrated; expostulated; and (I kid you not) ejaculated.
The simplest tag of
all, 'said', is virtually invisible on the page. If you feel you're using it
too much, can you show who's speaking by their actions, or just by what they're
saying? For example:
'Hey, at last!' He
stood up, smiling, his arms outstretched.
She hurried towards him, dropped her bags at
his feet. 'I'm so, so sorry!' She leaned in and kissed him. 'First I couldn't
get a taxi, then the traffic was horrendous and the stupid man kept
going on about what was wrong with the transport system in this country,
and ...oh sorry, I'm rambling. But I mean really, do I look like the sort of
person who would be interested in - '
'No, darling, you
don't. Anyway, you're here now.' He leaned over and pulled out the chair
opposite. 'Sit down. Drink?'
'Oh lovely. G and T
please.'
He looked around for a
waiter. 'Gin and tonic for my companion, please.'
She giggled. 'Ooh, get
you. "my companion" indeed.'
He leaned back in his
chair, a smile spreading slowly over his face. 'So how would you describe
yourself?'
'Let me see...girlfriend is too young; ladyfriend is too old. Mistress? No, then people would
think you were married. Shame; I quite like the idea of being a mistress.' She
leaned towards him and lowered her voice. 'How about lover?'
Ok, it's not the
most riveting piece of dialogue I've ever written, but I think you'll agree
it's fairly easy to tell who's speaking, and not a speech attribution in sight. I'm not a fan of
qualifying 'said' with adverbs, either (she said, angrily) But that's probably
a whole different blog post.
So to sum up: he said, she said - fine. That is all.
The Food Bit
If you don't went to
spend too long faffing around in the kitchen, this garlicky mushroom pasta is dead easy and quite delish.
Bring a large pan of
salted water to the boil and pop in enough pasta (egg-free if you're vegan) for
two. Meanwhile, slice about 300g of mushrooms. I use a mixture of portobello,
chestnut and ordinary closed cap mushrooms.
Put in a pan with some olive oil and cook over a medium heat. Crush two
big fat cloves of garlic and chuck that in with the mushrooms. Add a good grind
of black pepper, a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard and a slosh of white wine.
Cook for a couple of minutes - they should be more or less cooked by now - then add about 100ml of string vegetable stock
and a squeeze of lemon juice. When the
liquid has more or less evaporated, taste, and add salt and more pepper if
necessary, and chuck in a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley. Mix with the cooked pasta, adding more olive oil if
liked, and serve.
This goes well with most types of pasta. For even more flavour, add a few dried
porcini (wild mushrooms). Soak in a
little boiling water first, then add to the fresh mushrooms. You can use the
remaining water as a base for your veggie stock, but make sure you strain it
first because the mushrooms are sometimes a bit gritty. Suitable for vegans
if you use vegan wine (or use more stock instead of wine).
To find out more about me and my work, visit: www.susanelliotwright.co.uk
