I said I had another post on writing coming up, and here it is!<\/p>\n
So, last time, Julia asked:<\/p>\n
Do you think you could do a post on sentence-by-sentence spice-adding, in terms of dialogue and such? The problem I often have with writing is that my plot either moves too quickly and I can’t think of what to put for actual descriptive meat, or I get bogged down in descriptions and dialogue and lose the plot there. Any tips?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think the answer to both not having enough dialogue and description and of getting bogged down in it is remembering that every line of your story is an opportunity to strengthen characterization. \u00c2\u00a0Plot itself can be extremely short and simple. \u00c2\u00a0“A stranger comes to town” is an easy example. \u00c2\u00a0This sentence implies potential conflict–who knows what kind of trouble a stranger coming to town might mean. \u00c2\u00a0Depends on the town and the stranger. \u00c2\u00a0 You’re probably already picturing some kind of conflict, though, like a retired sheriff riding into a lawless Old West town in desperate need of someone to stand up against the bad guys.<\/p>\n
I picked a sentence-long plot to show that a plot can be told in one sentence. \u00c2\u00a0(All plots can be.) \u00c2\u00a0Obviously when you’re working on your book, you’ll expand that plot and branch it out in more detail. \u00c2\u00a0But the point here is that “plot” can be used up really fast, and if you’re relying on plot to make up the meat of your story, you might not get very far. \u00c2\u00a0One way to think of it instead is to build the meat of your story on conflicts.<\/p>\n
Let’s take our Old West sheriff for example. \u00c2\u00a0What if the woman running the saloon is his childhood sweetheart, but they never got married and life took them in different directions, and now he’s a man of the law (or was, since he’s retired), and some of the goings-on in her saloon aren’t exactly on the right side of the law, but she’s happy to look the other way because she makes a good living off her less-than-savory customers. \u00c2\u00a0She and the sheriff are still attracted to each other and longing for the past, but their current beliefs and situations are going to put a rift between them. \u00c2\u00a0This is going to have an affect on every conversation and every description of the two of them. \u00c2\u00a0A plot point could be that the retired sheriff witnesses a crime while in the saloon. \u00c2\u00a0He could walk in, see the crime, and walk out, just like that. \u00c2\u00a0But there’s a difference between describing an event and exploring conflict and characterization. \u00c2\u00a0The ex-sheriff and the woman who owns the saloon are probably going to have some pretty interesting conversations, especially if they haven’t seen each other in years. \u00c2\u00a0It might get even more interesting when he witnesses a crime take place, and he knows she knows about it, but that she also doesn’t care. \u00c2\u00a0But he cares, even though he’s retired and has decided to stay that way and not get involved in keeping the peace here, even if it goes against his better nature. \u00c2\u00a0So he’s not only struggling with the decisions she’s making, but with his own inner conflicts. \u00c2\u00a0He can’t be with her and uphold the law. \u00c2\u00a0And he can either be retired, which means letting things go, or he can step up and become the sheriff of this town, but he can’t have both.<\/p>\n
That’s where your meat comes from. \u00c2\u00a0Not from the event itself, but from the characters’ conflicting wants and their goals they can’t quite reach. \u00c2\u00a0I think this approach would help with getting bogged down, too, because each line of dialogue and description are opportunities to add to our understanding of this situation. \u00c2\u00a0It’s a chance to show us the characters’ opinions about each other and the world around them. \u00c2\u00a0So every line that goes in will have a purpose, and that purpose is more than the sum of its parts. \u00c2\u00a0A sentence describing the counter at the saloon needs to do more than just tell us what it looks like. \u00c2\u00a0What it looks like needs to tie in to the characters, either by showing us their opinions of it, or showing how it fits into their lives.<\/p>\n
The saloon was dark and dimly lit, a sharp contrast to the blazing sun outside. \u00c2\u00a0He’d seen these types of places before, and this one was no different–shady and rotten to the core. \u00c2\u00a0He’d heard it was hers<\/em>, \u00c2\u00a0that this was the kind of life she’d set up for herself after all this time. \u00c2\u00a0Knowing she’d get involved with a no-good place like this, with gamblers and outlaws at every table, giving him hard looks, came as a shock. \u00c2\u00a0She’d changed. \u00c2\u00a0The girl he’d known wouldn’t have put up with these types, and not with the mud on the floor and the smoke clogging up the air either. \u00c2\u00a0But as he sidled up to the bar, he noticed the counter. \u00c2\u00a0Unlike everything else in this place, it was clean. \u00c2\u00a0Spotless. \u00c2\u00a0He smiled to himself, thinking maybe she hadn’t changed so much after all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I could have just said he walked in and sat at the bar and noticed it was clean. \u00c2\u00a0Or I could have gone on describing how everything looked until I lost track of why he’d come into the bar in the first place. \u00c2\u00a0But what I wrote here tethers all the description to the characterization, whether it’s giving us a glimpse into the characters’ personalities, the conflicts between them, or both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I said I had another post on writing coming up, and here it is! So, last time, Julia asked: Do you think you could do a post on sentence-by-sentence spice-adding, in terms of dialogue and such? The problem I often have with writing is that my plot either moves too quickly and I can’t think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"views":605,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chelseamcampbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}