Karen Collum">Australian Children's Author

Two blog posts in one week? I’m outdoing myself at the moment, purely because I’m knee-deep in editing my Year of the Edit novel and I’m dealing with my manuscript on a daily basis (and loving it, I might add). Last post I addressed the issue I have with setting and how I’m not very good at it. The second part of my homework has been to look at dialogue. This has been just as interesting for me and I’ve come up with a few problems that need to be fixed.

I approached the dialogue part of my homework like I have every other part of the editing process: detached and methodical. I decided the only true way to test my dialogue was to read it aloud. So, for the last few days I’ve been talking to myself for hours at a time. :) Overall, I’m actually quite happy with the quality of my dialogue. I’m particularly happy with the way I’ve captured my three-year-old main character, Shine. At the time I was writing the novel during NaNoWriMo 2008 I had a three-year-old in the house and I listened really carefully to the way he spoke. I think this in-depth understanding of word choice and sentence structure has come through beautifully into the manuscript and I’m delighted with the childish dialogue that has resulted. My two other main characters, however, are a different story.

My novel is a little unusual as it has two male main characters. I seem to be drawn to writing male characters, maybe because I’ve been surrounded by boys all my life! The problem lies in the fact that my two men are sounding far too similar. They are both professionals which equates to a certain level of ‘rightness’ in their speech, but I’ve been struggling to find a good way to differentiate between the two on the page. If I didn’t know the story so well I’m not sure I’m be able to identify who was talking if someone read me a section. That’s not good enough for me. I want my dialogue to be so realistic that there will be no question in my readers’ minds as to who is speaking. The two men are quite different people. Tanner is a scientist and comes from a rough background. He’s had to work his little tail off to get where he is. He prides himself on his intelligence and his work ethic. Clint, on the other hand, is Mr Smooth. He’s got oodles of charisma, works in HR and scares people just by his confidence and presence. Sadly, these characteristics haven’t come through in the dialogue as yet. The good news is that’s about to change!

I am fortunate to be part of a great online community of writers and so I turned to them for help. This morning I asked the question, “How can I make my two main characters sound more different?” The answers that came back were fantastic and I thought I’d share some of them with you.

1. Interview my characters and ask them questions. Really listen to how they answer. This will give me great insight into the way they speak. (Thanks, Dee White for this suggestion.)

2. Eavesdrop on men whenever I can. I’m going to do this tomorrow at church. Do you think anyone will notice? LOL (Thanks, Ali Ashley for this one.)

3. Different people speak in different sentence lengths so utilise this throughout the manuscript. This one really jumped out at me as I can imagine Tanner spending a lot of time explaining himself while Clint speaks in short and sharp sentences, assuming that everyone understands exactly what he means. (Thanks to Peter Taylor for this one.)

4. Peter also suggested I look at movie scripts and read the mens’ dialogue there.

5. Tanner would be more likely to be softly spoken and use more scientific words than Clint, who is likely to be gregarious and loud. (Thanks, Trudie Trewin! You’re spot on.)

How’s that for a great starting point? I’m feeling much more confident that I can create unique voices for my characters now; it’s just a matter of making those subtle changes in their dialogue that can make all the difference in the world.

My final Year of the Edit workshop is on Sunday and I’m hoping to have the dialogue and setting edits done by Sunday morning so I can print out a new copy of the manuscript to take with me. This may necessitate a rather late night on Saturday! With one more workshop to go, I’m really close to actually being finished with this part of the editing process. I have a huge respect for the importance of editing but it no longer scares me (which is a miracle in itself!). Instead, I have a step-by-step guide on how to tackle my first draft and whip it into shape. It’s such a satisfying feeling to see my novel coming together so well. I have high hopes for this one and still love my story. I just hope that my writing has done it justice. I guess my next step of sending it out to beta-readers will be the true test of that.

How about you? Do you find dialogue easy? Or is it something you have to be conscious of when editing?

(PS It’s just over 3 months until this year’s NaNoWriMo and I’m getting excited already. I’m planning on having the edits done on this novel by then which means I’ll be able to write something new. Yippee! The big question is, of course, what will I write this time???)