What'd You Say Your Name Was?

My current WIP contains a character named Michael Dogan. On a whim, I typed that name into a Google search engine and found seven pages of results to wade through. Then I plugged my character into Facebook and found over 20 people with the same name.

With the population of the world as it now stands, it seems impossible for authors to create a truly unique name for a character. Throckmorton Cumberbun isn't currently in use by another human on the face of the planet. Neither is Fontleroy Woodenbottom. Or Hortence Pickle. But those are terrible names for any character, let alone a protagonist. (Unless the conflict in their life centers completely around their horrific name.)

Challenge: Can you come up with a wholly unique character name that won't result in regular beatings on the school playground for said character? Post your name offerings in the comments section, please! I'd love to see what you come up with.

-Sonja

Of all the stupid things...

I want to take a brief moment away from my study of dialogue to discuss a peeve of mine. I recently read a mystery novel with a female FBI protagonist. Naming the book will only offend the author, and I don't like doing that, so I won't. But I can't read anything else by her for this reason: the FBI agent/protagonist did something profoundly stupid, based on an unbelievable motivation.

You've all seen this before in the movies. The Too-Stupid-To-Live teen-age girl is home alone on a dark and stormy night. The news program just announced that a crazed killer is on the loose--in her neighborhood. Then a creepy noise comes from the attic. For some reason, the movie-maker wants her up in that attic. So she's sent up, for whatever reason. Bravely, she tiptoes up the stairs, listening hard, determined to investigate. Viewers are all screaming at her "GET OUT AND CALL THE POLICE!" But this female continues up the stairs, thinking herself a brave young thing. And viewers wonder how she managed to stay alive until this point in her life, because foolish acts like this can only lead to one thing, and it ain't a Medal of Valor.

The problem is her motivation. If the baby she's in charge of watching is currently sleeping in a crib in the attic, THEN she's got the proper motivation to investigate strange noises coming from the attic (and the fact that she put the child in the attic gives the reader a neat look into the sitter's psyche). If she's got martial arts training, a nine-millimeter handgun in her right hand, and a cell phone preprogrammed with 9-1-1 in her left hand, THEN she's got a decent motivation for heading up the stairs. If she's taking a dare from her boyfriend, who accuses her of being a wimp, that probably won't work.

Character motivations HAVE to be sufficient cause for doing something that would normally be down-right stupid. Even with a gun in one hand, what kind of FBI agent walks into a dangerous situation, KNOWING it's dangerous, without calling for back-up first? What kind of agent sees her partner injured, unconscious, and bleeding to death, but instead of rendering immediate aid, decides to trap the killer first? What kind of agent plans to trap the killer in his own house, but then hides in a closet when she realizes he took the bait and he's inside the house with her? What kind of agent, upon confronting the murderer who's just attacked and possibly killed her partner, instead of shooting first and asking questions later, tries to have a cogent conversation with said killer? It defies logic.

The author offered motivations for all the points I brought up, but I found them weak. Yeah, I can buy bad cell coverage as the reason for not seeking back-up, but the hiding in the closet and the ask-questions-first plot points left me frustrated. Granted, the author is published and she's crafted something that a publisher wanted, but I found the story unbelievable.

If you need your character to do something that's potentially dangerous, back it up with proper motivation! Or at least make the only alternative a more stupid move. Nothing kills the story faster than bad reasoning.

-Sonja

Dialogue #6

Chris Roerden's book, Don't Murder Your Mystery, has a fabulous chapter on dialogue, and I've been picking it apart and sharing it with you, my three loyal blog readers, for the past several posts. This is the last post regarding information from her book.

Roerden says, "Rapid-fire dialogue that goes on for more than two pages might lose it's punch." By altering the pacing of long passages of dialogue, writers can ensure their readers won't get tired too quickly. To reduce the pace of a fast-moving scene, use one of these methods (note: I didn't include all of the methods Roerden did - pick up the book if you want to know them all):

1. Break up dialogue with exposition.
2. Make sentences and paragraphs longer.
3. Add description.
4. Change the setting. (For example: a couple talking on a porch swing in the moonlight vs. a couple shouting the identical words over the roar of city traffic.)

To increase the pace of a slow-moving scene, try these methods:

1. Eliminate words, sentences, and gestures that are non-essential and offer no conflict, characterization, or plot advancement.
2. Revise, striving for rapid-fire confrontation.

By alternating the pace of long passages of dialogue, you have the potential to increase tension and keep the reader turning pages.

-Sonja

Dialogue Episode 5

I'm still on the topic of fantastic dialogue, and still sucking wisdom out of Chris Roerden's book, Don't Murder Your Mystery. Today I'd like to discuss what Roerden calls Informational Dialogue. In genres that rely on intelligence gathering, writers can't toss in scenes where data is the primary reason for dialogue. Data dispersal contains no conflict.

Roerden says, "Confirm that each scene has been built around opposing agendas... Put your characters in situations that produce anxiety. Making two characters focus on different priorities lets you write bypass dialogue: two people talking but not communicating." Roerden goes on to say that transforming allies into adversaries also builds reader empathy for the protagonist. Remember to establish motive for the opposition, though, or you won't pull it off. The reader needs to understand why the miscommunication exists, or they won't believe it.

Another way to add tension to informational dialogue is to use unmet goals. Your protagonist needs to gather information to solve the crime. Any time he goes digging for information and comes up with nothing, that adds tension. You can't play this every time, though, or you'll never get the mystery solved, but used judiciously at a point where the stakes are high, this can create tons of conflict and mess with the reader's nerves.

A third method is what Roerden calls "other business." The protagonist is digging for information from a witness who is focused on something else: "other business." Maybe they're watching a football game on tv. Or trying to keep an eye on a rambunctious child. Or worried about how their spouse will react when he comes home and finds that dinner isn't ready. Then, when the protagonist asks a question, the witness says something that could refer to either context: the protagonist's question, or the "other business." If you can fool the reader into believing the answer was directed at the protagonist, even for a few seconds, when it was actually directed at the "other business," so much the better.

Finally, Roerden admits that not every development merits a scene of it's own. She says, "Instead of inventing a situation solely to bring tension to an information exchange, try paring the information to its essentials and merging those essentials into another scene." In other words, blurt it out quickly and move on to something more important or tension-filled. For example, if the protagonist needs a bit of information from a secretary, instead of outlining the entire phone call, go for something like this:

He called her.

"Sure, I've got that. Hang on." A few seconds later, she came back. "The address is 1660 New Vines Road."

Short, simple, tension-free, and on to better, more interesting things.

Challenge: use one or more of these methods to inject some tension into your informational dialogue.

-Sonja

Dialogue Part 4

In the last post, I wrote about question-and-answer sessions within mysteries. I'd like to continue that discussion. All the wisdom contained in this post is from Chris Roerden's book, Don't Murder Your Mystery.

Roerden identifies symmetrical dialogue like this: "Every question receives an answer." Symmetry suggests cooperation, and cooperation doesn't contain conflict or tension, one of the most important parts of dialogue. Roerden challenges writers to use asymmetrical dialogue, instead, or to begin with symmetrical dialogue and then jump to asymmetrical.

When the interviewer asks a question, in symmetrical dialogue, the interviewee would answer the question as fully as possible. In asymmetrical dialogue, the interviewee changes the subject, asks a different questions, maybe even a rhetorical one, or remains silent, refusing to answer at all. Here's an example from my thriller, Cassandra's Curse. The protagonist, Cassie, is speaking with a police officer after a traumatic event:

"Do you need a medic?" the female officer asked.

Cassie looked at the officer. Her name tag read Phelps. Or Phipps. Hard to tell. Tears clouded Cassie's vision, making reading difficult. Her hands shook from the adrenaline overload, but other than the pain of her scalp, she was unharmed. "No, I'm fine."

"Tell me what happened," Phelps/Phipps asked.

"I want to go home," Cassie said, clutching her coat more tightly around her body.

Granted, it's not the most tension-filled dialogue in the book, but it illustrates the point. Instead of telling the officer what happened, Cassie ignored the question completely and said what was on her mind. It also reveals a bit about Cassie's character, and mirrors another conversation that comes up later in the story between Cassie and a police detective.

Challenge: find a question-and-answer session in your WIP and identify the symmetrical bits, where every question is answered truthfully and fully. Then add some tension by inserting asymmetry.

-Sonja

Dialogue III

Mysteries always involve question-and-answer sessions, usually between the person trying to solve the mystery and any suspects or witnesses that come along. In my on-going study of writing excellent dialogue, I discovered that even these question-and-answer sessions should include tension.

Chris Roerden, in her book Don't Murder Your Mystery, says, "Any ordinary, amiable question-and-answer sequence can be given an adversarial flavor by having characters interrupt each other, answer a question with a question, give an unexpected response, and change the subject. Kill the words "yes," "okay," and "I agree," even when no disagreement exists. Merely the sound of an affirmative can breed a congenial, agreeable tone that takes the steam out of any encounter."

When the sap being questioned is a shady character, then the reader expects some tension in any conversation with the police (or PI, or amateur sleuth). But when the interviewee is a friendly witness, an upstanding member of the community, an innocent bystander, how do you incorporate tension?

Roerden says, "create disagreement and suspicion among your characters. Invent misunderstanding. Encourage misinterpretation. Add distraction."

Maybe something in the witness' past causes her to mistrust police officers. Her answers might be ambiguous or down-right misleading because of this mistrust.

Maybe she's romantically interested in the questioner, and will incorporate flirtation into her answers, making them not quite so truthful.

Maybe she'll completely misunderstand the question and give an incorrect answer based on that misunderstanding.

Maybe she needs to be somewhere in ten minutes. She'll try to hurry things along, offering curt answers, thinking of this appointment instead of concentrating on the questions.

I could play this game for hours, but you get the drift. Give the witness a motivation, and her personality will shine through her answers and lend conflict to an otherwise simple scene which needs to disseminate information or a lack of information.

More on this in the next post. For what it's worth.

-Sonja

Purposeful Dialogue

Continuing my study of the art of dialogue, I turn again to Chris Roerden and her book, Don't Murder Your Mystery. She's got a single chapter on dialogue, and it's loaded with good stuff. Here's a tasty morsel from the first page:

"Effective dialogue is purposeful--the means by which characters strive to realize their objectives, act on their strategies, and incite reactions from others."

The first thing I noticed is that "Hi, how are you," "fine, thanks," and "how's your day" do not fulfill the purpose of dialogue. Removing these unimportant bits of dialogue immediately sharpen the text.

That leaves me with the rest of the dialogue text. This gets especially tricky when the character speaking is a minor character, or worse yet, a throw-away character, like the waitress taking an order, or the guy in the ticket booth selling movie passes. How can minor characters strive to realize their objectives, or act on strategies, or incite reactions? Maybe by having them want something other than what the protagonist wants. Or they want to push the protagonist in an opposite direction. Or they want to hide something from the protagonist.

The key is conflict. Throwing conflict into any piece of dialogue automatically adds interest and tension. More about that in later posts.

Challenge: go through a section of dialogue in your WIP that you feel is weak, and analyze every speaker. Do her words reveal her objectives, her motives, her strategies? Is she trying to incite a reaction from the other speaker? Is there any tension between the two speakers, or are they getting along beautifully? Shake them up, and see if it doesn't improve the passage.

-Sonja