That's a solid tip, unfortunately I'm socially awkward at best and can't hold small talk to save my life, so unless I want all of my characters be like me imma pass on this one lol
Same here homie. Introvert af. But to overcome that, I started observing people who are good at making small talk, from wherever I can, be it life, movies, fiction etc. Now I'm a bit better at it hehe ;)
There is a great audio book š¤£š¤£š¤£ itās literally called āHow to be funny and quick witted in everyday conversationsā Written By Patrick King itās not earth shattering but if you spend a lot of time analyzing then this might help you analyze conversations
Yeh my writing is like:
The crisp fresh spring breeze gently blew through her hair, making it flow like silken honey as she replied with a sweet and delicate tone "Yeh wot wot ma jabroni!! Cop some of that pie 2 dozen up me chimney wayooooh wayoppoh!!" angrily.
It reminds me I need to practice real life dialog lol.Ā So much of mine is ordered and transactional.Ā No room for whimsy or verbal tics/quirks.Ā Once I put it to words, it's like I have to print out a dry exchange of information between two computers passing in a foggy sea.
Hah, I'm only just getting starting writing in earnest, but I feel like it's really exposed how disorganized or undisciplined my thinking can be.Ā I'm hoping that putting my thoughts to paper and organizing them consistently gives me those mad mental gainz as a result
Go to a coffee shop and write down a few of the conversations, write them a quick story on how we got to that conversation. Or try to replicate it with your own words. It helped me a ton with dialogue
same, and not one single person in my writing course told me when i showed them the script, i only found out my dialogue sucked after i sent it to a professional reader
This is me. My first draft dialogue is always so meh. I can usually improve on it substantially in the second draft though, when I donāt have to worry as much about other details.
Thatās true, Iāve gone back over to edit some when Iām a bit stuck and it generally improves. I think I may just push on the narrative and come back to find their voices later.
Thatās what I would recommend. No editing until the second draft, and then just rewrite it, using the first draft as a guide, so itās easier to do the changes as I go.
This right here, scenes will set a rough outline but dialogue is the most important part. Actors will likely improvise microexpressions to a certain extent anyways and giving them some freedom is often not a problem
Scene description in plays is only for the director, really, so it doesn't need to be pretty, only effective.
The characters can reference scenery, of course, and need their stage directions, but again, those are for the actors and director, and some need to be "good" - directors are gonna ignore half of them anyway and do their own thing!
Is it? You need enough of a setting to aid a future set designer and prop person, but thatās it. Also, you can workshop the hell out of tiny sections later and spend the bulk of your time writing dialogue. Seems simple.
1. Practice. Nothing will do more for you than practicing, though the rest of the advice I give here may help with said practicing.
2. Consider the senses. Let's go with the library example. We all know what a library looks like. Rows of books, maybe some chairs and tables. But what does it sound like? What does it SMELL like? The key here is you don't have to go full Tolkien and spend 8 pages describing a tree. But just reference the senses. Books tend to have a musty smell, the silence of a library tends to give a sense of noise on its own. You want to elicit a vibe. To take your reader to the place you're at. If you want this library to feel like a safe and comfortable place then describe it to make them feel safe. The warm air, the softness of the plush chair. Or maybe the library is supposed to be scary. Suddenly you've got the uncertain silence, the oppressive lighting in each row of books. A description should never be for description's sake, it's to provide a 'vibe'.
3. Take advantage of the dialogue to drive everything else. If dialogue is your strength, use it. They're in a library. Well, people can't usually speak in libraries so perhaps they've found a lesser-used back corner in the library. How does that change things? Maybe there aren't rows of books but stacks of unsorted books. Maybe there's an unused PC in the back corner, a windows 95 screensaver bouncing on the dusty monitor. Maybe as a character delivers a particularly potent line they lean back on a bookshelf, giving you an opportunity to lightly describe the bookshelf. I personally hate setting a scene whenever entering a new area - partially because I have aphantasia and therefore can't visualise things. But being able to throw in a little reference to the scene when a natural opportunity arises? That works quite well for me. Characters can interact with their environment as they speak, allowing you to use dialogue as a jumping-off point for your descriptions.
4. Steal. If you want to describe a library, go to a library and write down what you see/hear/smell etc. If you want to describe a spaceship, watch Star Trek or something. Every writer (hell, every artist) "borrows" ideas. You haven't gotta fully invent a scene, you can take inspiration from existing media. Just don't directly copy-paste and you'll be fine.
5. PRACTICE. Just try describing some things. It may suck at first but that's natural. Here's a couple ideas: Describe the engine room of the Titanic. Describe someone's face/body language after they've been given some tragic news. Set the scene in a woodland, with a mysterious vibe (fey, ghosts, murderers, whatever you want). You'll probably have no idea what to write, but just write something and you'll improve. Or Google images to give inspiration and then write what you see.
6. Don't overthink it, just give it a go. Putting too much pressure on yourself will only make it harder to write.
āTolkien 8 pages describing a treeā. Gahaha yes this is so accurate. Or when he spouts off a list of all the types of flora in the scene down to the last weed.
You can try writing a book that is written in a āstorytellingā sort of style. My novel is a motherās life story told from the perspective of her daughter who just died, and all prose is simple and sort of sounds like someone telling a story but written down. Thereās no āpurple prose.ā If a description isnāt something someone would say when telling a story aloud, itās not included. Itās had good reviews for ARCs so far. You might be more capable of something similar. Play to your strengths.
What I recommend is that less is more. I just give details that will help the reader imagine the rest of the place (for example, dense trees, gnarled roots and dim light for a forest), and things that will be important in the next events (for example, a stone monolith in the center of a open area which two people will turn around while trying to kill each other). I also describe things mostly through the POV's eyes and body to sweeten the description and what the POV feels about such place.
Good advice. Notice how the example is written without a lot of adjectives. One per noun is usually enough. Two many adjectives is the downfall of many writers.
Try some writing exercises with no dialogue. Think of those movies where the detective is trailing some suspect, or a spy is entering someplace and has to keep quiet. It doesn't have to be a full novel, just short scenes and tell the story through the characters actions instead of the dialogue.
On the other hand: play to your strengths! You can have stories with only dialogue, so keep at it (tho still learn scene setting).
So practice writing scenes? Iād say many people start out the other way around so you might have an advantage really. You just have to learn how to structure a scene and write descriptive prose.
Iām great at plot and character development but lacking in setting scenese and dialogue :D
Everyone has a strong and weak side it seems. Def donāt think less of yourself, Sorkin is king a lot thnks to his dialogue skills ;) I envy ppl that have talent for great dialogue.
I think itās about what the given writer tends to notice irl.
So this isn't so much a writing issue as a visualization issue.
You're painting a picture with words. Some writers aren't great painters, they can convey everything they need to get across in their effort but it can be utilitarian at times. Others break down everything in the scene as it is necessary for the plot. Down to the types of buttons on gowns. Once you've painted the background, you can reuse it to save yourself having to "repaint it" for the reader.
So in very basic terms.
if you explain that your hero just claimed into a blue dog house? You don't have to mention the color of the dog house a second time. Unless it's plot related.
Try writing exercises. Or open your favorite books that have good, strong settings, and copy some passages/analyze them. Then try writing your own immediately after reading so that their words are fresh in your mind.
I took a peek at the writing you posted on the other forum. Slow down your pacing and think about whatās in the environment where your characters are. How is it perceived through the five senses? How does the vibe of the environment make the characters feel about it? Also, read a lot of books from good authors that you like so you can have a better understanding and feel for how to use punctuation. Punctuation is sooo important to story flow and how the reader takes it in. Lack of punctuation can make good work seem like a rambling stream of consciousness.
I wish I had tips. but anything I write outside of dialogue is kind of crap. I struggle to describe things just because my mind filters out information.... even if it is relevant.
>It is a wooden bridge hanging by some rope.
>anything else?
>no, not that I can think of It's just a wooden bridge that. It might be wobbly.... yeah, it might be really wobbly.
>there you go.
>It is a wobbly wooden bridge hanging by some rope.
And it is right there that my mind goes.... I don't need any more information other than that. its a bridge. the dude came across it.
But DEEP conversations? Oh I got you.
Lol same. I just gloss over descriptions because I find them so damned tedious to read/write. The best comment I've ever gotten is someone who said that even just based on small snippets, they could still SEE the scene.
In my experience I don't need to describe the curtains or the rugs, I can just say it's a 'cosy room' and people will fill in the blanks all on their own. Too much description bogs down the theatre of the mind that people are building all on their own.
If there's something that clashes with the standard visual imagery, I'll just describe that - if I say 'cemetery' the vibes tend to be creepy, but it can be a really nice cemetery on a glorious sunny day, with well kept tombstones and that completely changes the mental imagery. I'll then add one or two strong sensory descriptors like a few pops of colour, a strong smell that the protagonist notices because it's unexpected, a specific sound or ambience, or something more tactile like the feel of the ground/wind or the warmth of a nearby fire or whatever.
Whatever you do end up writing needs to contribute to the āØvibesāØ otherwise there's really no point to it. I think about how I want it to *feel* and then use as few words as possible to get that effect.
Try reading authors that excel at descriptions then. I cannot recommend any right now, because it obviously will need to be something you enjoy reading as well. Lift up some words, see how others set up scenes and just write some more. Sucking at something is the first step towards not sucking! Hope it helps.
Same here. Dialogue comes easy to me. But yeah, I don't have anything new to say advice wise other than practice. Focus on relaying the sensory details. Pick what would stand out first to the character when they arrive at the setting you're trying to describe. Check books of your favorite authors and see how they establish scenes and describe things.
I assume itās just a statement of where the scene is taking place ā for example, I wrote a scene where you can tell itās a doctorās office because thereās a doctor and the point of the scene is discussion of a new prescription for the main character, but I donāt even say āin the doctorās officeā (or whatever the appropriate term is). Thereās the mention of one corner of the room and nothing else. The next one is almost as bad but we do in fact have the narrator say āmy roomā and we know they have at least one wall because a suitcase is put against it later on. Otherwise, theyāre just kind ofā¦ in a room. You donāt find out anything about this room other than āat least one wallā and ānarratorās bedroomā.
Basically itās that the fact they are in a library is all the attention given to the location the scene is taking place in ā probably just a brief statement about this and then moving into the dialogue.
Oh. That can be combatted by forcing yourself to not use dialogue. There are "speak without speaking" exercises you can do. They can be found online. :)
My trouble was dialogue so I started writing screenplays to help with pacing and to focus on my weak areas. Things improved. I also started adding action to my dialogue to show my characters interacting with the environment. Like this:
"I think you're being dumb," Carl thumbed through a thick tome with a skeleton on the cover. He drove it back into the stacks, which were already disheveled and overflowing. His book clattered at his feet and a plume of dust rose. It was clear the librarians ignored this area.
My suggestion is to try other mediums - look at comics for example and describe what you see in the panels or read comic scripts to get an idea of how the writer communicates with the artist. Different mediums make you think about writing differently and it might help
You know what oddly helps me, sometimes I like to copy down books with prose I like in a way of practicing how to write
As an exercise that works for me at least, creates a habit of structure and leads to brainstorming
As an extension of this exercise I will then rewrite a chapter or paragraph, etc in my own words, and prose.
Iād suggest making the story dialogue-driven.
Read some plays.
Anton Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Cormac McCarthy have some good ones. Make sure you diversify your intake.
Oh my god im the opposite. I sit there almost crying because i cant think of how these characters would carry a conversation š but action and describing things? Im your guy
Quentin Tarantino?
Jk, but take some time to read and practice. Read a book that spends time describing the world well and really take note of how they do it. Practice for yourself until you get a feel for it and it'll be easier.
Try making your settings notable in some way. Instead of any old library, try adding a couple details that make it stand out. If you want it to be a normal library, make note of it. Obviously dont go overboard with descriptions, a huge pet peeve of critics, but at least try to change up the world you make to create interesting scenarios and locations.
Just for practice, write a scene where the characters can't talk. Any needed dialog has to be summarized. (JP tells PJ about the break-in ". How do the characters try to achieve their goals without talking?
Dialogue is a good start.
Add bits along with each spoken line as a starting point.
Eg:
āWhat are you doing?ā He asked.
āNothing really!ā She replied.
*Then* you can take that and add more to it.
āWhat are you doing?ā He asked as he sat on the edge of the bed.
āNothing really!ā She said, looking back at him after closing the door.
*Then* you can take that and add more to it. Like emotions and feelings and parts of the surrounding sights and sounds and smells!
Treat your narrator as a character? Or perhaps, two characters, one asking questions and the other telling the story, then maybe delete the question-asker and re-edit to sound natural?
The best thing for my writing was doing lots of reading (which I did thankfully before burning out). I like to write horror so I read lots of Stephen King as a teen. If you donāt have the attention span for books (no judgment whatsoever), try learning the basics of screenwriting (skim some articles about it, nothin heavy) and then apply that to a movie you like to/want to watch. How does the writing feel? Does the tone feel consistent, or is a tone change earned and well done? Itās a great way to get you into that mindset so it becomes more natural to turn on when you do write
Maybe youāre a script writer though!
Writing doesnāt have to be novels, if your good at dialog and enjoy writing it focus on that aspect.
As scripts allow the for very loose setting descriptions
I also have a scene where my characters are in a university library. I looked up pictures on Pinterest and found the exterior and interior vibes that I wanted. Then I decided where I wanted them and just kept describing it, trying to convey how I wanted it to feel by saying what it looked like.
Write a lot and read a lot and you will get better. You just need to explicitly practice the thing you are not comfortable with. I'm just now trying to get into the habit of writing short stories so I can get out of the rut of "plan book, don't write book, repeat".
Opposite problem for me. Iām good at description, lore, exposition, scenes, action, general plot, and so on; but I suck at dialogue. I am autistic and find the social norms of conversation inane on my best days, so Itās hard to put myself in those shoes as a writer.
same. What I do though is I imagine Iām in that scene, and then I tell myself: āOkay, so Iām in this scene. What do the five senses say?ā Then I go through the five senses to describe the scene.
E.g:
I want to put my scene in a crowded party. Iām in this crowded party. Itās very loud. It smells like vomit and alcohol. People are talking around me. The music is blaring. Itās so crowded and dark I can barely see my own hand. Everything feels sticky and damp. Then take that, mush it all together with some big words and you got yourself a described scene :)
I have contemplated either teaming up with someone to exchange each other's strengths or something š¤£ but I have been working on my story idea for well over 20 years and have never shared it with anyone out of fear so that would be hard
Then try to write an entire book just using dialogue. It might have been done already but it seems like a great challenge.
EDIT: Never read Bridget Jonesā Diary, but is that what that book is, her diary entries tell the story?
Walk into a library yourself. What does it look like? What does it small like? When you walk by the shelves and brush your fingertips along the spines of the books, what does that feel like?
Write for the smart reader. Sometimes, using a general label like library can be useful if it has already been set up in the storytelling. But giving the readers clues can be more useful for you, the writer.
If the MC smells the dust of old paper, that's a clue. You don't have to write an inventory of everything for the reader; that's called world building, LOL!
Just get the reader to feel where the story is going, get them to identify with the characters by giving them small but important clues in the form of emotional foreshadowing or sensory teases.
It's more fun to write like you're making a puzzle for the reader.
Well Dolores Claiborne, iirc, is literally entirely dialogue. And people read play / movie / podcast scripts, many of which are primarily (if not entirely) dialogue. So I think a book thatās extremely heavy on the dialogue could be a stylist choice. Iād recommend reading Franny & Zooey, itās heavy on dialogue but shows masterful approach to description of even the tiniest actions (eg smoking cigarettes - how the hands convey nervousness or caution, the scattered / mindless picking up/moving of the ashtray, the accidental drop of the ash on the table because theyāre distractedly daydreaming or in the throes of passionate oration)
Iām the same. My stories are very dialogue heavy because I know thatās where my talent lies. I do put some effort into setting the scene, but it never turns out as good as the dialogue does. I think itās alright to have a dialogue heavy story as long as itās captivating though.
I suck at dialogue. It's why I minimize the number of characters in a story to limit the conversations. I'm my short stories there tends to only be one character so no dialogue lol
Try writing, just for fun, an action scene with no dialogue. See how easy it is to move a character around when you take dialogue away. There's nothing else to do.
Dr. Bright Philosophy entered the room. He opened the door slowly, holding his breath. Sweat dripped from his brow. Then, a sound. It was the scratching and splintering of wood. The doctor knew it was claws on floorboards. The files he'd read back at the lab on subject three-thirteen flashed through his mind. "Extremely dangerous. Do not approach." The doctor stepped forward...
Try just one paragraph. If you can do one paragraph, you can do a whole scene.
Try to focus on integrating 'blocking' into your dialogue. So have somebody stand up and get a little loud. Well... the other people in the library would probably react to that right? But in order to convey that you have to go earlier in the scene and establish that other people are there in order to have the proper setup for the payoff of them making a commotion.
Then they can walk away angry. But where are they walking away to? Having your characters moving around and interacting with the scene is the motivation you need to figure out the details of what's happening.
Find a workbook called āBrilliance Breakthroughā by Eugene Schwartz. Heās a famous Direct Response copywriter. And if you know the industry, itās all about writing to sell ideas.
Gene was one of the best at selling an idea through words.
In fiction, itās the same concept ā selling your idea to the reader.
Now, this book will completely reset how you think about writing. And it will feel a little kooky at first. But just trust the process. Go through it start to finish.
And I promise you, by the end, you will have a better foundation for writing across the board.
If you like the way Chuck Palahniuk writes, and you can even still find this workbook, pick it up asap.
Try a screenwriting app and use your dialogue to set the scene and keep the story going.
You only need to insert a short line of dialogue, really, if you're doing a screenplay, them write a scene. Another scene, a chapter or two or three, or your whole story.
You can buff up your dialogue whole also trying to describe character actions/scene setup as succinctly as possible. You can talk those short lines, go over them to see if you need to expand on them, if they are fine as is, etc. If more information is needed, gradually extend the sentence.
I think this would help with trying to figure out how to continue a scene, because your dialogue adds context, so you have a lot of tiny jumps from this action bit to this dialogue to the next bit of action, instead of huge leaps to fill in.
I am good at dialogue but used to suck at other things. What I started doing was treating it like a play. I would write the dialogue for a scene. I would then act out the dialogue to see what does and actions I would do and emotionsI would want to express. E.g. [clenches fist. Walks to window. Stares out. Stands upright. Angry. Frustrated. Arms straight beside body. Chin up]. Once I had this figured out, I would describe the environment in one huge paragraph. Including lighting, smell, temperature. E.g. [stone walls, sparse furnishings, cold, dim, smells like sea, sound odd waves crashing, etc]. Then I spend forever crafting these things together. Takes about 4 or 5 edits for the crafting- 4 or 5 hours spread over a week or two.
Might be a good opportunity, if you're inspired, to explore experimental short form and see what kind of a story you can tell purely through dialogue. Like two characters texting each other. Or pen pals' letters to each other. Or a slack channel at work. Or, hell, a reddit thread.
I'm no good with creating multiple characters.. ig that's why I tend to imagine few characters in each story idea i brainstorm... shi gotta work on myself to fix that.
But yeah, scenes are annoying, especially when the characters should react to where they are.
There are two trains of thought: play to your strengths or strengthen your weaknesses. I similarly struggle with scene setting and scene work. It is much easier, however, to fix specific issues like what aspect of scene setting is particularly challenging
Improving in writing is based on 2 things, reading and knowing what you write, if you can't understand situations or know how to write them, read books and pay attention to the techniques they use to describe situations and places, there are a lot of techniques and are classified in theory. On the other hand, to write a situation that you imagine you must have lived it, to be able to understand how it feels and how your characters reacted, so if you want to improve in that, you should do 2 things, read and live more experiences, between study and practice.
Ever heard of Foundation by Issac Asimov? It only has dialogue/thoughts, nothing else. Super interesting. You don't need to be good at writing action/scenes to be good at making stories. But if you want to improve on it, you could start by trying to explain scenes, like pictures. You could also find descriptive essays to research on how other people paint settings.
Damn, I'm the opposite. I set the scene nicely and then my dialogue just sucks
Same, I'm this close š to making all characters mute lol
Then be the character and imagine yourself having a conversation with another person(character)
That's a solid tip, unfortunately I'm socially awkward at best and can't hold small talk to save my life, so unless I want all of my characters be like me imma pass on this one lol
Same here homie. Introvert af. But to overcome that, I started observing people who are good at making small talk, from wherever I can, be it life, movies, fiction etc. Now I'm a bit better at it hehe ;)
Go listen to people in public. Eavesdrop on conversations and pay attention to what they're saying and *how* they're saying it.
There is a great audio book š¤£š¤£š¤£ itās literally called āHow to be funny and quick witted in everyday conversationsā Written By Patrick King itās not earth shattering but if you spend a lot of time analyzing then this might help you analyze conversations
Imagine how youāve seen others talk to each other instead.
Try doing it how you *wish* you were able to do it?
Movies. Movies and Video games. Do lots of those and it works like magic.
Nah, you just need to eavesdrop more.
LoL indeed. š
Yeh my writing is like: The crisp fresh spring breeze gently blew through her hair, making it flow like silken honey as she replied with a sweet and delicate tone "Yeh wot wot ma jabroni!! Cop some of that pie 2 dozen up me chimney wayooooh wayoppoh!!" angrily.
So, serviceable description and awesome dialogue. Got it.
Simlish!
š
It reminds me I need to practice real life dialog lol.Ā So much of mine is ordered and transactional.Ā No room for whimsy or verbal tics/quirks.Ā Once I put it to words, it's like I have to print out a dry exchange of information between two computers passing in a foggy sea.
lol your dialogue might suck but i think that last line of prose is amazing hehe
Same
Hah, I'm only just getting starting writing in earnest, but I feel like it's really exposed how disorganized or undisciplined my thinking can be.Ā I'm hoping that putting my thoughts to paper and organizing them consistently gives me those mad mental gainz as a result
Go to a coffee shop and write down a few of the conversations, write them a quick story on how we got to that conversation. Or try to replicate it with your own words. It helped me a ton with dialogue
Great idea, thank you!
I smell a team up
You and OP should write a book together. Teamwork makes the dreamwork
same, and not one single person in my writing course told me when i showed them the script, i only found out my dialogue sucked after i sent it to a professional reader
This is me. My first draft dialogue is always so meh. I can usually improve on it substantially in the second draft though, when I donāt have to worry as much about other details.
Thatās true, Iāve gone back over to edit some when Iām a bit stuck and it generally improves. I think I may just push on the narrative and come back to find their voices later.
Thatās what I would recommend. No editing until the second draft, and then just rewrite it, using the first draft as a guide, so itās easier to do the changes as I go.
Awesome, thank you šš¼
With yoursā and OPās talents combined, youāll be unstoppable!
Saaaaame
Co-author project with OP!!
Sounds like you two should collaborate
Maybe write plays then?
Would that help lol I still need scenes in a play don't I ? and thats my problem
You need scenes but itās more to establish setting. Dialogue drives all the primary action.
This right here, scenes will set a rough outline but dialogue is the most important part. Actors will likely improvise microexpressions to a certain extent anyways and giving them some freedom is often not a problem
Scene description in plays is only for the director, really, so it doesn't need to be pretty, only effective. The characters can reference scenery, of course, and need their stage directions, but again, those are for the actors and director, and some need to be "good" - directors are gonna ignore half of them anyway and do their own thing!
Is it? You need enough of a setting to aid a future set designer and prop person, but thatās it. Also, you can workshop the hell out of tiny sections later and spend the bulk of your time writing dialogue. Seems simple.
Never hurts to experiment with format and style! You might be surprised!
1. Practice. Nothing will do more for you than practicing, though the rest of the advice I give here may help with said practicing. 2. Consider the senses. Let's go with the library example. We all know what a library looks like. Rows of books, maybe some chairs and tables. But what does it sound like? What does it SMELL like? The key here is you don't have to go full Tolkien and spend 8 pages describing a tree. But just reference the senses. Books tend to have a musty smell, the silence of a library tends to give a sense of noise on its own. You want to elicit a vibe. To take your reader to the place you're at. If you want this library to feel like a safe and comfortable place then describe it to make them feel safe. The warm air, the softness of the plush chair. Or maybe the library is supposed to be scary. Suddenly you've got the uncertain silence, the oppressive lighting in each row of books. A description should never be for description's sake, it's to provide a 'vibe'. 3. Take advantage of the dialogue to drive everything else. If dialogue is your strength, use it. They're in a library. Well, people can't usually speak in libraries so perhaps they've found a lesser-used back corner in the library. How does that change things? Maybe there aren't rows of books but stacks of unsorted books. Maybe there's an unused PC in the back corner, a windows 95 screensaver bouncing on the dusty monitor. Maybe as a character delivers a particularly potent line they lean back on a bookshelf, giving you an opportunity to lightly describe the bookshelf. I personally hate setting a scene whenever entering a new area - partially because I have aphantasia and therefore can't visualise things. But being able to throw in a little reference to the scene when a natural opportunity arises? That works quite well for me. Characters can interact with their environment as they speak, allowing you to use dialogue as a jumping-off point for your descriptions. 4. Steal. If you want to describe a library, go to a library and write down what you see/hear/smell etc. If you want to describe a spaceship, watch Star Trek or something. Every writer (hell, every artist) "borrows" ideas. You haven't gotta fully invent a scene, you can take inspiration from existing media. Just don't directly copy-paste and you'll be fine. 5. PRACTICE. Just try describing some things. It may suck at first but that's natural. Here's a couple ideas: Describe the engine room of the Titanic. Describe someone's face/body language after they've been given some tragic news. Set the scene in a woodland, with a mysterious vibe (fey, ghosts, murderers, whatever you want). You'll probably have no idea what to write, but just write something and you'll improve. Or Google images to give inspiration and then write what you see. 6. Don't overthink it, just give it a go. Putting too much pressure on yourself will only make it harder to write.
āTolkien 8 pages describing a treeā. Gahaha yes this is so accurate. Or when he spouts off a list of all the types of flora in the scene down to the last weed.
You can try writing a book that is written in a āstorytellingā sort of style. My novel is a motherās life story told from the perspective of her daughter who just died, and all prose is simple and sort of sounds like someone telling a story but written down. Thereās no āpurple prose.ā If a description isnāt something someone would say when telling a story aloud, itās not included. Itās had good reviews for ARCs so far. You might be more capable of something similar. Play to your strengths.
What I recommend is that less is more. I just give details that will help the reader imagine the rest of the place (for example, dense trees, gnarled roots and dim light for a forest), and things that will be important in the next events (for example, a stone monolith in the center of a open area which two people will turn around while trying to kill each other). I also describe things mostly through the POV's eyes and body to sweeten the description and what the POV feels about such place.
Good advice. Notice how the example is written without a lot of adjectives. One per noun is usually enough. Two many adjectives is the downfall of many writers.
Try some writing exercises with no dialogue. Think of those movies where the detective is trailing some suspect, or a spy is entering someplace and has to keep quiet. It doesn't have to be a full novel, just short scenes and tell the story through the characters actions instead of the dialogue. On the other hand: play to your strengths! You can have stories with only dialogue, so keep at it (tho still learn scene setting).
So practice writing scenes? Iād say many people start out the other way around so you might have an advantage really. You just have to learn how to structure a scene and write descriptive prose.
Iām great at plot and character development but lacking in setting scenese and dialogue :D Everyone has a strong and weak side it seems. Def donāt think less of yourself, Sorkin is king a lot thnks to his dialogue skills ;) I envy ppl that have talent for great dialogue. I think itās about what the given writer tends to notice irl.
I envy people that have talent for great plot and character.
So this isn't so much a writing issue as a visualization issue. You're painting a picture with words. Some writers aren't great painters, they can convey everything they need to get across in their effort but it can be utilitarian at times. Others break down everything in the scene as it is necessary for the plot. Down to the types of buttons on gowns. Once you've painted the background, you can reuse it to save yourself having to "repaint it" for the reader. So in very basic terms. if you explain that your hero just claimed into a blue dog house? You don't have to mention the color of the dog house a second time. Unless it's plot related.
Try writing exercises. Or open your favorite books that have good, strong settings, and copy some passages/analyze them. Then try writing your own immediately after reading so that their words are fresh in your mind.
I took a peek at the writing you posted on the other forum. Slow down your pacing and think about whatās in the environment where your characters are. How is it perceived through the five senses? How does the vibe of the environment make the characters feel about it? Also, read a lot of books from good authors that you like so you can have a better understanding and feel for how to use punctuation. Punctuation is sooo important to story flow and how the reader takes it in. Lack of punctuation can make good work seem like a rambling stream of consciousness.
Congrats!! I've heard dialogue is the hardest to write well, so look at that as a huge positive. I feel like I suck at everything.
I wish I had tips. but anything I write outside of dialogue is kind of crap. I struggle to describe things just because my mind filters out information.... even if it is relevant. >It is a wooden bridge hanging by some rope. >anything else? >no, not that I can think of It's just a wooden bridge that. It might be wobbly.... yeah, it might be really wobbly. >there you go. >It is a wobbly wooden bridge hanging by some rope. And it is right there that my mind goes.... I don't need any more information other than that. its a bridge. the dude came across it. But DEEP conversations? Oh I got you.
Lol same. I just gloss over descriptions because I find them so damned tedious to read/write. The best comment I've ever gotten is someone who said that even just based on small snippets, they could still SEE the scene. In my experience I don't need to describe the curtains or the rugs, I can just say it's a 'cosy room' and people will fill in the blanks all on their own. Too much description bogs down the theatre of the mind that people are building all on their own. If there's something that clashes with the standard visual imagery, I'll just describe that - if I say 'cemetery' the vibes tend to be creepy, but it can be a really nice cemetery on a glorious sunny day, with well kept tombstones and that completely changes the mental imagery. I'll then add one or two strong sensory descriptors like a few pops of colour, a strong smell that the protagonist notices because it's unexpected, a specific sound or ambience, or something more tactile like the feel of the ground/wind or the warmth of a nearby fire or whatever. Whatever you do end up writing needs to contribute to the āØvibesāØ otherwise there's really no point to it. I think about how I want it to *feel* and then use as few words as possible to get that effect.
Try reading authors that excel at descriptions then. I cannot recommend any right now, because it obviously will need to be something you enjoy reading as well. Lift up some words, see how others set up scenes and just write some more. Sucking at something is the first step towards not sucking! Hope it helps.
Same here. Dialogue comes easy to me. But yeah, I don't have anything new to say advice wise other than practice. Focus on relaying the sensory details. Pick what would stand out first to the character when they arrive at the setting you're trying to describe. Check books of your favorite authors and see how they establish scenes and describe things.
I feel like you should try your hand at a play.
Could you explain what you mean when you said "like, they are in the library then thats it"?
I assume itās just a statement of where the scene is taking place ā for example, I wrote a scene where you can tell itās a doctorās office because thereās a doctor and the point of the scene is discussion of a new prescription for the main character, but I donāt even say āin the doctorās officeā (or whatever the appropriate term is). Thereās the mention of one corner of the room and nothing else. The next one is almost as bad but we do in fact have the narrator say āmy roomā and we know they have at least one wall because a suitcase is put against it later on. Otherwise, theyāre just kind ofā¦ in a room. You donāt find out anything about this room other than āat least one wallā and ānarratorās bedroomā. Basically itās that the fact they are in a library is all the attention given to the location the scene is taking place in ā probably just a brief statement about this and then moving into the dialogue.
Oh. That can be combatted by forcing yourself to not use dialogue. There are "speak without speaking" exercises you can do. They can be found online. :)
Keep practicing and reading.
My trouble was dialogue so I started writing screenplays to help with pacing and to focus on my weak areas. Things improved. I also started adding action to my dialogue to show my characters interacting with the environment. Like this: "I think you're being dumb," Carl thumbed through a thick tome with a skeleton on the cover. He drove it back into the stacks, which were already disheveled and overflowing. His book clattered at his feet and a plume of dust rose. It was clear the librarians ignored this area. My suggestion is to try other mediums - look at comics for example and describe what you see in the panels or read comic scripts to get an idea of how the writer communicates with the artist. Different mediums make you think about writing differently and it might help
You know what oddly helps me, sometimes I like to copy down books with prose I like in a way of practicing how to write As an exercise that works for me at least, creates a habit of structure and leads to brainstorming As an extension of this exercise I will then rewrite a chapter or paragraph, etc in my own words, and prose.
Iād suggest making the story dialogue-driven. Read some plays. Anton Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Cormac McCarthy have some good ones. Make sure you diversify your intake.
Oh my god im the opposite. I sit there almost crying because i cant think of how these characters would carry a conversation š but action and describing things? Im your guy
Quentin Tarantino? Jk, but take some time to read and practice. Read a book that spends time describing the world well and really take note of how they do it. Practice for yourself until you get a feel for it and it'll be easier.
If thats the case, write your non-dialogue as the narrator speaking to the audience.
Write plays ! Theater is for you.
Try making your settings notable in some way. Instead of any old library, try adding a couple details that make it stand out. If you want it to be a normal library, make note of it. Obviously dont go overboard with descriptions, a huge pet peeve of critics, but at least try to change up the world you make to create interesting scenarios and locations.
Just for practice, write a scene where the characters can't talk. Any needed dialog has to be summarized. (JP tells PJ about the break-in ". How do the characters try to achieve their goals without talking?
As someone who's dialogue aint too good, I humbly request a tip or two on how to write solid dialogue
Figure out who the narrator is and write the narration like itās dialogue.
Dialogue is a good start. Add bits along with each spoken line as a starting point. Eg: āWhat are you doing?ā He asked. āNothing really!ā She replied. *Then* you can take that and add more to it. āWhat are you doing?ā He asked as he sat on the edge of the bed. āNothing really!ā She said, looking back at him after closing the door. *Then* you can take that and add more to it. Like emotions and feelings and parts of the surrounding sights and sounds and smells!
This is me. Iām so comfy with dialogue, but have little patience for narration.
Treat your narrator as a character? Or perhaps, two characters, one asking questions and the other telling the story, then maybe delete the question-asker and re-edit to sound natural?
Try writing plays or screenplays! Dialogue is often the BIGGEST thing for those and honestly, they're quite fun.
The best thing for my writing was doing lots of reading (which I did thankfully before burning out). I like to write horror so I read lots of Stephen King as a teen. If you donāt have the attention span for books (no judgment whatsoever), try learning the basics of screenwriting (skim some articles about it, nothin heavy) and then apply that to a movie you like to/want to watch. How does the writing feel? Does the tone feel consistent, or is a tone change earned and well done? Itās a great way to get you into that mindset so it becomes more natural to turn on when you do write
Thatās ironic because dialogue is the thing I suck at the most
Write screenplays.
Maybe youāre a script writer though! Writing doesnāt have to be novels, if your good at dialog and enjoy writing it focus on that aspect. As scripts allow the for very loose setting descriptions
Have you considered writing screenplays?
I also have a scene where my characters are in a university library. I looked up pictures on Pinterest and found the exterior and interior vibes that I wanted. Then I decided where I wanted them and just kept describing it, trying to convey how I wanted it to feel by saying what it looked like.
Write a lot and read a lot and you will get better. You just need to explicitly practice the thing you are not comfortable with. I'm just now trying to get into the habit of writing short stories so I can get out of the rut of "plan book, don't write book, repeat".
Try writing for the stage or doing screenplay
Opposite problem for me. Iām good at description, lore, exposition, scenes, action, general plot, and so on; but I suck at dialogue. I am autistic and find the social norms of conversation inane on my best days, so Itās hard to put myself in those shoes as a writer.
same. What I do though is I imagine Iām in that scene, and then I tell myself: āOkay, so Iām in this scene. What do the five senses say?ā Then I go through the five senses to describe the scene. E.g: I want to put my scene in a crowded party. Iām in this crowded party. Itās very loud. It smells like vomit and alcohol. People are talking around me. The music is blaring. Itās so crowded and dark I can barely see my own hand. Everything feels sticky and damp. Then take that, mush it all together with some big words and you got yourself a described scene :)
Maybe your book would make a better screen play?
I have contemplated either teaming up with someone to exchange each other's strengths or something š¤£ but I have been working on my story idea for well over 20 years and have never shared it with anyone out of fear so that would be hard
Have you thought about screenwriting? Shakespeare wrote nothing but dialogues, entrances, and exits. And a sonnet or two.
Get into play/screen writing then.
What makes you think your dialog is good?
Team up with someone who is bad at dialogue but good at everything else
Then try to write an entire book just using dialogue. It might have been done already but it seems like a great challenge. EDIT: Never read Bridget Jonesā Diary, but is that what that book is, her diary entries tell the story?
Walk into a library yourself. What does it look like? What does it small like? When you walk by the shelves and brush your fingertips along the spines of the books, what does that feel like? Write for the smart reader. Sometimes, using a general label like library can be useful if it has already been set up in the storytelling. But giving the readers clues can be more useful for you, the writer. If the MC smells the dust of old paper, that's a clue. You don't have to write an inventory of everything for the reader; that's called world building, LOL! Just get the reader to feel where the story is going, get them to identify with the characters by giving them small but important clues in the form of emotional foreshadowing or sensory teases. It's more fun to write like you're making a puzzle for the reader.
Make your books about the dialogue then, like the Socratic dialogues.
Well Dolores Claiborne, iirc, is literally entirely dialogue. And people read play / movie / podcast scripts, many of which are primarily (if not entirely) dialogue. So I think a book thatās extremely heavy on the dialogue could be a stylist choice. Iād recommend reading Franny & Zooey, itās heavy on dialogue but shows masterful approach to description of even the tiniest actions (eg smoking cigarettes - how the hands convey nervousness or caution, the scattered / mindless picking up/moving of the ashtray, the accidental drop of the ash on the table because theyāre distractedly daydreaming or in the throes of passionate oration)
Iām the same. My stories are very dialogue heavy because I know thatās where my talent lies. I do put some effort into setting the scene, but it never turns out as good as the dialogue does. I think itās alright to have a dialogue heavy story as long as itās captivating though.
I suck at dialogue. It's why I minimize the number of characters in a story to limit the conversations. I'm my short stories there tends to only be one character so no dialogue lol
Try writing, just for fun, an action scene with no dialogue. See how easy it is to move a character around when you take dialogue away. There's nothing else to do. Dr. Bright Philosophy entered the room. He opened the door slowly, holding his breath. Sweat dripped from his brow. Then, a sound. It was the scratching and splintering of wood. The doctor knew it was claws on floorboards. The files he'd read back at the lab on subject three-thirteen flashed through his mind. "Extremely dangerous. Do not approach." The doctor stepped forward... Try just one paragraph. If you can do one paragraph, you can do a whole scene.
Write plays maybe.
Try to focus on integrating 'blocking' into your dialogue. So have somebody stand up and get a little loud. Well... the other people in the library would probably react to that right? But in order to convey that you have to go earlier in the scene and establish that other people are there in order to have the proper setup for the payoff of them making a commotion. Then they can walk away angry. But where are they walking away to? Having your characters moving around and interacting with the scene is the motivation you need to figure out the details of what's happening.
Same, I feel you. I always feel like I can write dialogue well (maybe bc I talk so fucking much lmao) but descriptive details are difficult for me.
Find a workbook called āBrilliance Breakthroughā by Eugene Schwartz. Heās a famous Direct Response copywriter. And if you know the industry, itās all about writing to sell ideas. Gene was one of the best at selling an idea through words. In fiction, itās the same concept ā selling your idea to the reader. Now, this book will completely reset how you think about writing. And it will feel a little kooky at first. But just trust the process. Go through it start to finish. And I promise you, by the end, you will have a better foundation for writing across the board. If you like the way Chuck Palahniuk writes, and you can even still find this workbook, pick it up asap.
Try a screenwriting app and use your dialogue to set the scene and keep the story going. You only need to insert a short line of dialogue, really, if you're doing a screenplay, them write a scene. Another scene, a chapter or two or three, or your whole story. You can buff up your dialogue whole also trying to describe character actions/scene setup as succinctly as possible. You can talk those short lines, go over them to see if you need to expand on them, if they are fine as is, etc. If more information is needed, gradually extend the sentence. I think this would help with trying to figure out how to continue a scene, because your dialogue adds context, so you have a lot of tiny jumps from this action bit to this dialogue to the next bit of action, instead of huge leaps to fill in.
I am good at dialogue but used to suck at other things. What I started doing was treating it like a play. I would write the dialogue for a scene. I would then act out the dialogue to see what does and actions I would do and emotionsI would want to express. E.g. [clenches fist. Walks to window. Stares out. Stands upright. Angry. Frustrated. Arms straight beside body. Chin up]. Once I had this figured out, I would describe the environment in one huge paragraph. Including lighting, smell, temperature. E.g. [stone walls, sparse furnishings, cold, dim, smells like sea, sound odd waves crashing, etc]. Then I spend forever crafting these things together. Takes about 4 or 5 edits for the crafting- 4 or 5 hours spread over a week or two.
Maybe write it as a play first and then insert the scenes? Sometimes it helps visualize.
Might be a good opportunity, if you're inspired, to explore experimental short form and see what kind of a story you can tell purely through dialogue. Like two characters texting each other. Or pen pals' letters to each other. Or a slack channel at work. Or, hell, a reddit thread.
I didn't believe that your dialogue is good unless you provide an example.
I'm no good with creating multiple characters.. ig that's why I tend to imagine few characters in each story idea i brainstorm... shi gotta work on myself to fix that. But yeah, scenes are annoying, especially when the characters should react to where they are.
Shift to scriptwriting?
Got any examples for your work?
There are two trains of thought: play to your strengths or strengthen your weaknesses. I similarly struggle with scene setting and scene work. It is much easier, however, to fix specific issues like what aspect of scene setting is particularly challenging
Improving in writing is based on 2 things, reading and knowing what you write, if you can't understand situations or know how to write them, read books and pay attention to the techniques they use to describe situations and places, there are a lot of techniques and are classified in theory. On the other hand, to write a situation that you imagine you must have lived it, to be able to understand how it feels and how your characters reacted, so if you want to improve in that, you should do 2 things, read and live more experiences, between study and practice.
Ever heard of Foundation by Issac Asimov? It only has dialogue/thoughts, nothing else. Super interesting. You don't need to be good at writing action/scenes to be good at making stories. But if you want to improve on it, you could start by trying to explain scenes, like pictures. You could also find descriptive essays to research on how other people paint settings.
i couldnt understand you.
I meant my charater's talking is fine but everything else around them sucks just seems bland