Dialog and narrative

I've been participating in a blog tour for Raven's Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet on my other blog and one of the things that I noticed was the dialog. The section I just posted for Cerel Gold has a better balance of dialog and narrative than i ususally manage, I think, neither minimalist nor slowed by narrative expect where slow is appropriate. I think Overstreet goes a bit overboard with the narrative. He crafts beautiful narrative, but I'm more of the minimalist view on dialog: let the speaker's words tell the speaker's story to the degree it can.

I suspect its because of my heavy tv life, which isn't a good thing, but is useful for translation into a script, if any of my stories were movie/tv worthy (Cerelian Gold is probably too much drama, too lttle adventure for an SF movie, but there you are). If I think about it, I like to think narrative should serve a very particulat purpose if it is going to interrupt a discussion: slow the pace for a slow, thoughtufl dialog; convey not just expressions but hidden messages that can't be said aloud for whatever reason, or to hint at lies and such: the reader tends to have to believe what is said unless the author has made clear that a character is a liar. Otherwise, the narrative can go elsewhere.

I've seen it used to explain why characters are saying something, or the reason for reactions to another character's words; but if the writer has done the job, no explanation should be necessary at the time, because the character's and their goals have already been made clear (except in the opening scenes) or it can be explained a little later.

Mussings on stats and stuff

I can track the statistics on my other blog a bit, to see how many visitors I have. It's leveled out a bit, higher on weekdays than weekends, with a lot of people looking at only one of the pages, though I don't know whether they are following the story or the blog. This one I can only tell if people sign up as followers, but I think that requires at least a minimal Google registration and being myself not one to put much info on line, I sympathise if people are disinclined to register. The lack of comments I have come to expect. Even my fellow writers don't typically write much, statistically speaking, especially if they are just following a story. And on this one, for good or ill, they can go back to previous posts to read the whole story later, albeit with the sections stacked in reverse order. Who knows, my fan base might discover me many years from now. I have no idea if it is even posible to make a blog go away once it is on the net. Ah to dream of future success...

wishy washy characters and revision

another of my "global" changes was the word perhaps, which I almost inariably type as perhpas. When i saw how many ‘perhpas’ needed changing, i realized I needed more than a spelling correction. I needed at least to vary it with might, maybe, could, and alternative constructions. As I went through, I realized many should simply be eliminated. A strong character cannot come across as strong if everything is caveated with perhaps and maybe. They must be confident even when they shouldn’t be in order for the reader to see the strength, the confidence. So I simply deleted many and in several cases made the sentences stonger still by rephrasing the statement with even greater certainty. If it wasn’t part of the dialog, I almost always eliminated or at least replaced it with a less wishy-washy phrase. This book isn’t one where I follow one character for long scenes, except Candice. The rest of the time it’s intended to be more omniscient, so conveying a character’s uncertainty into the narrative is rarely appropriate. The author must know the truth even if the characters don’t, unless a thought is clearly and specifically credited to a particular character. Then we're back to conveying the strength, or not, of the character.

Revising notes

I looked ahead and notice that I have much work to do on the ending of Cerel Gold but after doing a rough first draft, I decided to do some mass revisions and fixes, like global replaces on words I always type wrong like "perhpas". Over time I've also noticed a few constructions I overuse and use wrong so i start doing find with variable replacements:

I’ve mostly cured myself of “there are” constructions, but I still over use “that had”, partly as a defense against the tendency to try to eliminate “that” from the English language. It can be over used, and I understand the wish to remove doubles, even though we say such phrases as 'that that' and 'had had' frequently in normal speech. Still, to eliminate 'that' entirely is usually to make sentences grammatically wrong as well as unclear. Ny find function showed that I had used “that had” way too many times even if grammatically correct. So I rephrased maybe half or two thirds to make better, and often shorter sentences, always good when the work is already well over 100000 words.

For the benefit of others who may have similar problems, I provide here some of the kinds of fixes I applied:

Replacing "that had' with "who had" when it refered back to a person rather than a thing. it at least adds variety and maybe clarity.

Condencing with a better word/phrase: replace "displacing all that had come between" with "displacing everything between"

replace "drinks that had been sent" with "drinks sent"

reversing the primary and description and turning the description into something of an adjective: "bedding that had gone unused" becomes "unused bedding"

Any revision and editing tips you would care to share?