5 Tips for Fleshing it Out

by Jemi Fraser

Last month, my post talked about 5 Tips to Trim Your Writing. This month, I'm tackling the opposite. With my current rewrite, I attempted to plot (kaboom!) and ended up with a shorter story than I expected (15k shorter).

So, now I'm focusing on how to flesh out a story without padding it. Some of the things I've discovered:

Fleshing it Out Tip #1 -- Emotions

This one I'm having a blast with. I write contemporary romance, so it's all about the emotion, but I think that's true for most stories. It's the emotions that pull me in and make me gobble up those pages, no matter what the genre is.

Delving into the character's emotions helps the reader connect and makes the writing much more interesting. For me, plot is obviously important, but it's how the characters respond to the plot that intrigues me. So, show that!

Fleshing it Out Tip #2 -- Show, Don't Tell

Another fun one, and very connected to #1. Telling removes the emotion. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said, "Don't tell me the old lady screamed, bring her on stage and let her scream"? Looking for those telling words/sentences in the draft helps me find places I can strengthen my story and make it longer/more compelling at the same time.

Fleshing it Out Tip #3 -- Dialogue

Connected to #2! I love dialogue and tend to include a lot of it in my writing naturally, but there are still places I find where I can have my characters really showing...by telling. Dialogue infuses the story with life and lets the readers hear your characters talking. It also gives the reader a visual--and mental--break from narration, thus increasing the pace of your story.

Fleshing it Out Tip #4 -- Description

Blech. I'm not an especially visual person or writer. My descriptions tend to be focused around the emotions of the characters. And I'm not a fan of reading paragraphs of description either, so I tread very, very carefully when I do this.

For people, I sprinkle in the description. A mention of hair colour by another character here, a comment about height there. Nothing obvious, certainly no looking in the mirror and offering up a self-evaluation. For example, rather than saying my character is short, I'll have her drag a chair over to reach something off a high shelf.

For places, I don't mind stringing a sentence or two together to anchor the reader in the setting, especially when it's a new place. I try to focus on what the character would notice, and only on what is relevant to the story.

I'd rather leave most description up to my readers, but I'm learning I need to include those anchors and let the readers fill in the rest.

Fleshing it Out Tip #5 -- Character Arcs

This one is more complex than the first four. Here, I'm looking for the pace of how my characters are growing. I want them to slowly learn to change, have strategically placed AHA! moments, and obstacles tossed in their paths to have them second guessing their realizations. This is another instance where I find Scrivener invaluable. I can colour code, or use the side bar, or make another file to put side by side in order to track the arcs. Then I can spot where the arc needs some help, tweak a scene here, add a scene there, throw in another obstacle, or three.

There are many more ways to flesh out a story (adding in a subplot and looking for plot holes to fill in come to mind), but these are the 5 I'm working with. Any tips to add? Do you like fleshing it out or do you prefer to trim?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

5 People Watching Tips

by Jemi Fraser

Summertime is here (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) and many people will be heading out on vacation sometime in the next few months. As a writer, one of my favourite things to do on vacation is people watch.

1. Spot the Tourist

Or business person or teacher or musician or pilot or artist or... Switch it up to find different kinds of people during different parts of the day. Look beyond the obvious clothing and check out some of the less obvious clues: head up/down, eye movement, fluid/jerky body movements, facial expressions, accessories, hair, jewelry, hand gestures... Think about the vocations of your characters and find someone who does the same job. How do you know?

2. Eavesdrop

So much fun! Love hearing bits and pieces of conversations and wondering about what happened before to create that particular snippet and what will happen afterward. You can capture great hints for dialogue: length of sentences, tone, pauses, interesting speech patterns and so much more.

When you're eavesdropping, listen to the flow of the various languages and dialects as well. Can you identify the speakers' home regions? What makes their speech patterns special? Listening to people speak different languages to each other is especially fascinating - I love the blend of the languages and the brain's ability to think in both at once.

3. Big Crowds

If you have the chance to be in a big crowd at a sporting event, a concert, charity event or any other big venue, look for what stands out. Who's been dragged to the event and is bored beyond belief? Figure out why that person is there (obligation, business, love...). If it's a sporting event, spot the people who are cheering against the home team and watch how they handle it.

Look at the range of outfits in the crowd. Listen for the uncomfortable voice or the one that drips with sarcasm or the person on the edge of tears or temper. Find the most passionate fan. Watch the body language change as the event moves along. Find the couple most in love, the one about to break up.

4. Public Transit Footwear

When I'm on public transit (everything from subways to buses to boats) I like to check out footwear first. Then I build an image in my head of what else the person might be wearing. After I've got the image set, I check out the reality. It's often WAY different from my expectations. (You can do this anywhere, but for some reason, I like public transit for this  one!)

5. Clothing Fiascoes

(Disclaimer: I am one of the least well-dressed people I know!) As you're moving through your vacation, look for those folks with the wildly inappropriate outfits, then assess their emotional states and figure out how they ended up wearing the exact wrong thing. Are they over-confident? Oblivious? Obnoxious? Rude? Desperately uncomfortable? Superior? Again, body language, tone and eye movements are your friends and will tell you so much more than the person would expect.

So while I think vacations are the perfect time to leave your laptop at home and recharge your energy, there's no need to let your observational skills get rusty!

What's your favourite people watching venue?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Hey, Y'all: Dialects and Slang

by Riley Redgate

Haff you ever read dialogue vere the vords look a beet strange?

'ave you read dialog where words sound right funny in yer 'ead 'cause of 'ow they show up?

Or maybe them quotations get to seemin' real Southern alluva sudden. (Billy, fetch me mah shotgun!)

I haven't seen many stylistic choices that polarize readers as much as written dialects do. Some people despise them with every fiber of their being, and words like "gimmick" inevitably get thrown out with regard to them in conversation.

Personally, I think it adds a nice bit of variety to the mix. Some writers use it to great effect—one of my favorite series has dialect not only in dialogue, but in the actual first-person narration. But sometimes it feels awkward, or worse, unnecessary.

It's certainly an interesting choice, because it takes "Show, don't tell" to an extreme. I mean, if you simply wanted to get a description of a voice in there, you could write, "She spoke with a thick Slavic accent." Or, of course, you could describe a voice more figuratively—"Each of his words was crisp and well-measured, a bite of something acidic." But when you encounter an author who writes the words as they actually sound under the influence of that accent, it's a constant reminder. If it's well-done, it turns into a pleasant auditory effect rather than a weird garbled distraction. A bit of atmosphere.

It is a fine line to walk, though. If "dialected" words aren't there enough, they'll jar when they crop up again. On the other hand, if they're too present, you risk complete incomprehensibility. Yeow.

It's an important issue, because it brings to the forefront the issue of sound in writing. I was a musician long before I was a writer, so rhythm and sound are paramount to me, especially when I'm doing line edits. Most people even read their manuscripts aloud at some point to get that auditory perspective. Either way, whether you internalize the flow of a line or hear it with your earholes, you can tell when it clicks into place—and you can sure as hell tell when it's clunky. Sound helps bring shape to the form of sentences, paragraphs, pages. It speeds the pace or drags it behind; it casts a line for the reader or yanks them in. And hoo boy, does it make or break humorous writing.

Most people know sound is an important step, but rarely do writers have to confront sound so directly in the drafting stage as in the case of dialects. I mean, you've got onomatopoeia, etc., but for so many people, the real 'music' of the writing often comes through in later drafts.

Slang, too—another sound-related tool—seems to polarize readers. Maybe not to the extent of dialects, but I've noticed that weird curses or terminology can quickly end up seeming like a crutch. Unfamiliar terms pop out of the text, naturally, and since the readers are extra-conscious of them, they sometimes seem like they're there twice as much as they actually are. There's a recent trend toward futuristic slang in speculative manuscripts—and it's a fine line to walk. If it doesn't sound cool, it'll feel awkward. And just like dialect, it can't fade into the background altogether, or suddenly it'll pop up again like a friend you forgot you had. And the interaction will be uncomfortable. And y'all don't want that happenin', now, do ya?

Are you a fan or a foe of dialects? How about slang?

Riley Redgate, enthusiast of all things YA, is a bookstore-and-Starbucks-dweller from North Carolina attending college in Ohio. She blogs here and speaks with considerably more brevity here.

No Talking Heads

by Lucy Marsden

Talking Head Syndrome.

It's a thing that I notice when I and other writers are bolting through a story, particularly if it's our style to do early drafts mostly in dialogue. It's line after line of conversation, with enough "said" in the mix so that we can tell which character is speaking, but too few of the action tags, facial expressions, tone of voice indicators, and internal dialogue tags necessary to convey the full impact of the words being spoken. In her fantastic Romance Writers of America presentation, Dialogue: It's More Than What You Say, author Julia Quinn puts it like this: "The first thing to remember, is that dialogue has two parts. There is the part between the quotation marks, or WHAT IS SAID, and there is the part outside the quotation marks, or HOW IT IS SAID."

We need both parts in order to really bring our dialogue home, so today's post is going to (briefly) touch on the tools we writers have at our disposal when crafting the "how" of dialogue.

Said
I know the word is out on this one, but let me repeat it here for emphasis: Using the tagline "said"—rather than forcing our characters to squeak, mumble, hiss, or shout—is perfectly OK. In fact, it's generally preferable, since we know that readers don't "see" the tagline, and it makes for a smooth experience of reading dialogue.

Other Utterances
This isn't to say that characters should never squeak, mumble, hiss, or shout; these tags can add a lot of fun and flavor to our dialogue when used judiciously.

Adverbs
Ditto. If someone delivers a verbal stiletto sweetly, or answers cautiously, these are valid, useful ways to deliver the impact of the dialogue, as long as they aren't overdone. Overuse of adverbs can contribute to "telling" rather than "showing," but they're still nice to have in our toolbox. To reference Julia Quinn one more time: "Adverbs are not your friends, but there is no reason they can't be your casual acquaintances."

Action Tags and Body Language
Action tags are fantastic: they really help us to show, not tell. And if it's true that communication is mostly non-verbal, then it's doubly important for us to provide details about facial expressions, whether a character's posture is tense or relaxed, and the rate of someone's breathing.

Tone of Voice
Once it a while, is it as dry as the Sahara? Oily enough to lubricate a hinge? Excellent! Then this is one more way of delivering impact that also utilizes sensory input and our enjoyment of simile and metaphor—a bargain if there ever was one.

And Lastly, Internal Dialogue
When what we say out loud is juxtaposed with what we're thinking in the privacy of our heads, it's wonderful, so we shouldn't miss out on this opportunity to add a touch of irony and a splash of humor by utilizing internal dialogue as a counterpoint for what is spoken.

So there we have it. I want to wrap up this post by acknowledging that each writer will use these tools differently. The choices we make will be a reflection of our voices as writers, a reflection of the voices of our characters, and a reflection of the feel of a particular story. More important than any one approach to using these tools, is a growing sense of awareness of how these techniques work, and an increasing sense of confidence that we can employ them to create the results that we want. Please stop in and talk about the choices you make when writing dialogue—the tools you're comfortable using, and the tools you'd forgotten existed.

Lucy Marsden is a romance writer living in New England. When she’s not backstage at a magic show or crashing a physics picnic, she can be found knee-deep in the occult collection of some old library, or arguing hotly about Story.