Dialogue

So I learned I've been doing dialogue wrong this whole time.  Okay, so maybe I can say I've been doing dialogue in a less professional manner than I should without knowing it.  I watched a video posted by BookBaby/Autocrit about dialogue, and it showed me how I should be doing it according to many editors and publishers.  I knew that adverbs were to be minimized if not avoided entirely in strong writing.  Too many -ly words can lead to weaker instead of stronger writing, and the Harry Potter series was improved as J.K. Rowling worked on trimming them back.  So I knew that I shouldn't tag dialogue with phrases like "said happily" or "asked sadly."  But it seemed to me like the word "said" was such a dry, dull word.  I've heard again and again that redundancy is the kiss of death for good writing.

Well, it turns out I was wrong.  I submitted my first manuscript chock full of characters that screamed, purred, mocked, or murmured their words.  Instead, I should have erred on the side of boring and redundant.  It turns out that one is best served having characters that said this, said that, answered this, and--occasionally--shouted or whispered something when the volume becomes important.  Who knew?  The dialogue tags are simply to show the reader who said what and then fade into the background.  Instead, one should concentrate on beefing up the dialogue, so it's obvious who is screeching, purring, etc.  Not only that, but one should avoid having the characters speak and do something that can't be done while someone is speaking like laughing or coughing words.  Good to know.  Now, I'm wondering what other bits of writing wisdom I'm missing.

My Philosophy

The Standard Romance and Me

Most of us have read or watched the romance: perfect man meets perfect woman.  Granted, they both have one major flaw.  Once they get past that one major flaw, the man makes life perfect for her, and she is rewarded for good behavior.  It's Disney's "Cinderella" all over again.  Many of us have internalized the story to such an extent that we crave it and tell ourselves, "One day, that will be me."  This was my dream for the longest time.  If only I could be Cinderella, the perfect girl, then the perfect man would give me all my dreams.  I internalized the need to be the perfect, beautiful, docile girl if I ever wanted that romance.  

I tried to be docile and shy for a long time.  It came naturally to me.  But I developed a complex about my increasing weight and need to wear glasses.  How could I get married if I couldn't be perfect?  Over time, I rejected Cinderella's mandate.  I learned to overcome my docility and learned helplessness and become confident.  I decided I did not need a man to make me happy.  I had my own Elsa-like declaration to take that perfect girl fiction and "Let it Go."  Furthermore, I noticed more and more there were no perfect girls, no perfect guys, that happily ever after was fiction, and that not just beautiful, docile women were getting married.   I fully noticed that the standard romance was fiction.   

Embracing Imperfection

Once I became confident and embraced my ability to take care of myself, I was able to look for a man on my own terms, one who suited me, not just one who would choose me for my passivity.  I noticed that guys who choose girls for their passive natures can also be those who abuse them.  I wanted a man who embraced me for who I was. And I found him on my terms and in my way.  I didn't wait passively for him to seek me out.  When I found him and knew him to be the person I wanted, I pursued him for a year and a half until he decided I was right and that we belonged together.  

The truth is I am not alone in my imperfection.  I have yet to meet a perfect man or a perfect woman in reality.  And romance doesn't solve all problems for man or woman.  In fact, it can create many more complications than it solves.  From my experience, few people fit the profile described in most books I read: physically, mentally, and emotionally "normal," beautiful, white.  Almost everyone I know personally only appears to live the perfect life from the outside.  From inside their world, most people have a condition of some sort, some kind of disability or difficulty that complicates their life.  I have insomnia.  My husband has depression.  I've recently gone through every member of my family and figured out something that could give them a diagnosis now or in the past.  

People like to think that normal means being free from these struggles, but the truth is life is hard.  It's meant to be.  If we don't have struggles, we don't have any reason to reach out for help from others or from God.  We don't have a way to learn compassion for others who also struggle.  From my experience, there's nothing normal about being normal.  Normal is a setting on a dryer.  So where's their story?  Where's our story? 

Searching for our Story

I've heard it argued that romantic fiction is supposed to depict a fantasy world, a world of perfection.  But from my experience, the expectation of perfection created by these stories, especially in the young, can be damaging.  I see people who seek a hero or heroine with whom to identify, someone who speaks to their life and experience.  Latin Americans search with little success to find very many Latinos in media.  Native Americans do the same.  Black Americans find more success, but so much of it is stereotyped.  Where's the romance for the overweight woman or the emotionally scarred man or the diabetic individual?  

I join my voice to voices of a growing number of writers who are telling stories for the underrepresented reader, the ones who aren't a perfect ten in mind and body or who don't fit the "norm."  I'm an LDS romance author, and for now, that is my genre.  I know we have a loving Heavenly Father who yearns to help us through our struggles.  This is my philosophy, that nobody is perfect but God, so we look to Him to guide us through our personal stories.  Everyone is capable of finding joy.  

Character Change

So I started writing my current book, Pigs Fly, with a fairly clear idea of the main characters but only a vague idea of the side characters.  Now that I have most of the plotline written in disorganized bits and pieces, I've started to look for holes and places that could be fleshed out.  I realized I needed to truly develop some of the side characters, especially those that will star in the books to come.  The next book will be all about Connor's mentor in a community theater, Gayle.  When I started the book, I had a vague idea of a white older lady in a wheelchair, some matronly sort who was all put together and professional.

But Gayle runs a community theater, and I haven't been able to convince the character to get a real job.  She's only 61, and I keep trying to talk her into a profession.  Today, I sat down and spent some bonding time with her.  I realized everything about my prior vision was wrong.  Her voice sounded way too much like my other side characters.

First off, she's not white.  She's ethnically Japanese with no emotional connection to her culture, which frustrates her.  So many main characters, particularly in romance novels, are just white.  White is treated as normal even though more and more people have some minority blood in them or identify as other.

Second off, the wheelchair never really fit with my vision of her character.  No, Clark, the male main character, will be wheelchair-bound.  Gayle's going to be diabetic.  You see, a lot of people like to think that disabilities are rare.  To read fiction, you'd think they NEVER or almost never happened.  But in my experience, if you don't see a person's disabilities, it's probably because you don't know them as well as you think.  I rarely meet a person without at least a minor disability.  One of mine is insomnia.  That isn't an obvious disability like blindness or being wheelchair-bound, but it can make for some really bad days.  So many people I meet seem "normal" at first, but then they turn out to have dyslexia or OCD or auto-immune disorder or ADD or depression or anxiety or deafness in one ear or something.  Some of these issues are disabling while some are merely inconvenient.   It is, from my experience, a rare person that is TRULY free of ALL disabilities.  We are just culturally trained to avoid showing it, sometimes even to ourselves.  So many of us want to be seen as normal without realizing normal isn't the norm if it exists at all.

So as Gayle introduced herself, I realized her mom and grandparents had to become super Americans during WWII, thereby turning their backs on all things Japanese.  Here she is, several decades later with a rebellious hippie streak, a crazy fashion sense, and no idea what it even means to be Japanese.  She is culturally lost and in search of her roots as she tries to be a Japanese hippie artist, working through the symptoms of the same type of diabetes that took her father and expressing herself through art and community theater.  She zips around everywhere on her 70's bike, trying to brighten the world one play, one canvas at a time. I've read romances--not many but a few--centering on a middle-aged white matron.  But I haven't read this story.  And like all stories that intrigue me of late, it starts to get at the human condition.

Children's Book

I've been pondering how to reach out to a family in my area whose four-year-old son, Jaxton, received the diagnosis of stage four cancer.  I don't feel rich but felt there was something I could do.  After hearing his mommy talk about all the community support she's received, it came to me:  I can write and draw.  I gave her a hug and expressed empathy since my little niece went through cancer treatments that ended a year ago with the declaration that she was cancer free.  I'm sure my niece's story brought that mother some hope, but I wanted to do more.  I wanted to reach out to the boy directly.  So I told his mom I would write him a story.  I asked what animals he liked, then I turned his story into a children's book just for him, peopled with his favorite animals and illustrated by me but colored mostly by my kids.  It feels good when one's writing and other talents can be turned to help others, both my talents and my kids' talents.  I hope to be able to find other ways to help as well.  I know I'm not alone in wanting to reach out to those who are having a hard time.  I'm just thankful for the chance to do it and hope it brings some amount of comfort.

Missing Pieces

Once upon a time, the writing process was about telling a story for me, something crazy and wild plucked from my imagination or from roleplaying games I played with my brothers.  I mentioned this before.  But then my baby died, and I discovered those hundreds of pages I had written before meant nothing.  Those pages provided practice for my real writing to come.

Then I turned to LDS/Christian writing, writing wherein I could explore explicitly meaningful and often spiritual ideas.  I wrote my first novel for publication, one in which I could explore aspects of my spiritual and emotional journey after my loss in the code of someone else's story.  I had the safe distance of fiction but yet could deal with very real emotions.

Now, I'm almost 50,000 words into my next manuscript and I'm finding one big hole that needs to be filled: spiritual meaning.  I've been writing from my head, not from my Spirit.  I write daily, and there are days in which I don't feel very in tune with the Spirit and days in which I write to fulfill my goal of daily writing and don't have time to deal with deeper meaning.

I think it's time I took a step back from just writing and pray for guidance about what meanings need to be here.  It's a little more challenging because this time, the story is even farther removed from my experience.  It's about difficulties, but they're in no way my struggles.  I have never had fibromyalgia or Hashimoto's as Robin has or ADD like Connor has.  But I want to give voice to all kinds of struggles, not just those I know best.  I know people with these issues and can talk to them.  But it's a little harder to make connections and meaning when I'm not as connected to the subject matter.

Still, I know this is the story I need to tell now.  So I know I can receive guidance, both from my associates and from the Lord, to make sure the themes and layers of meaning resonate.  I'm wrapping up the fun part of writing.  Now, it's time to get to the real business of telling the story as the Lord wants me to tell it.