Tell me true.

I love dialogue. I love writing it. I love reading it. I love listening to it whether it’s in my classroom, the hallway, on TV, or walking down the streets of NYC. I love the words, the slang, the phrases, the rhythm, the cadence, the whole hidden conversations in our conversations.

I love the variety of purposes dialogue can serve from exploring characterization to describing scenes and characters to giving us information to further the story. And when I write, I always write the dialogue first. If I can’t hear the dialogue in a scene, I can’t write anything else until I can.

Roz over at Nail Your Novel has a great post here on dialogue. Check it out and tell me: How do you feel about dialogue as an element of your story? How do you use it? Do you eavesdrop on people around you? Is it easy for you to hear when you write?

A very fine line

I’ve been thinking about how much of myself as a writer finds its way into my words. We’re told write with courage, write with respect for our readers, ourselves, our words, and our story. We’re told to write what we know and to write with and from our passions. We’re told to write (and do) from our lived biographical experiences.

Larry Brooks at storyfix has a great cautionary post here about the awareness that writer’s must have regarding the unavoidable bleed-through between who and what they are and what their MC/hero/protagonist is on the page. Check it out.

How much of you is in your stories? How/where do you draw the line? Are you worried about possible consequences and/or repercussions?

Speak up, I can't hear you.

I hear voices in my head. All the time. I say this unabashedly as a writer, a teacher, a mother, a wife. There is a constant stream of conversation running in my head while I am going about my day.

Sometimes it’s the background buzz that says what I’m really wishing I could say when I’m smiling and nodding at people I’d really like to stab with a spork. Sometimes it’s my characters yelling and screaming me stupid because they don’t think I’m listening to them. Sometimes it’s the beautiful cascade of words flowing from my brain and out through my fingertips to create something I think is good writing.

We’ve been talking about voice and character here lately; character voice and our own narrative voice. Our final visit to link land this week is something I found about a month ago that I still think is really interesting; Alexandra Sokoloff talking about the Rules of Character. Check it out. It makes me feel better about the voices in my head.

Hey! I know you.

Since we were talking about character last time…we were talking about character last time, right? Anyway. I love female characters. Intelligent, strong, multi-faceted, flawed female characters. I love reading and writing them. I love male characters. Intelligent, strong, multi-faceted, flawed male characters.

I tend to write from both male and female POVs. I think a lot of writers do. Roni over at Fiction Groupie had a great post on writing from the male POV.

But I’ve been thinking lately more about female characters especially and their evolution in fiction. And lo and behold, Sarah Rees Brennan has a really interesting post looking at and looking for girls in fiction.

So what I want to know is this. Do you prefer reading/ writing male or female characters? What makes a good female character? Who or what has influenced how you see or write female characters?

Deal breaking

So we’ve been talking about good writing and bad writing and what we liked to read, and it occurred to me that maybe again it comes down to a question of plot and character.

A story is plot and character. Intertwined as they are, I find that I will generally read a story with a less than stellar plot if I think the characters are real and engage me. I don’t really think it works the other way for me.

Of course other elements like theme and tone and dialogue all play their part, but for me they all play into character. I find that’s how I write as well.

So what trips your trigger as a writer or a reader? What’s necessary and what’s a deal breaker when it comes to reading and writing for you?