Dialog Checklist

Dialog is one of the best ways to bring your characters to life. A sharp line of dialog can tell you more about a character than an entire paragraph of description. I've compiled a list of some of the good and bad ways to approach dialog. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but I find that these are pretty good rules of thumb.

GOOD:

• Dialog Steeped in the Character's Voice - An expert is going to use the vernacular of their field. A street urchin is not going to use erudite vocabulary.

• Altering Characters' Speech Depending on Who's in the Room – Most characters will speak differently to their boss than they would with their buddies at the bar. If they're irreverent with both you need to consider what the consequences of that are.

• Brevity.

• Wit - But make sure it's truly witty and suited to the character. If your beta readers don't chuckle, or worse, if they groan when they get to that bit– it's not witty.

• Differing Character Voices – The words should let you know who's speaking before you get to the dialog tag.

• Dialog Tags – As many as necessary, as few as you can get away with.

• Interspersing Actions Within a Conversation – Use to show character mood or attitude and for pacing. You can also use this to reduce the need for dialog tags.

BAD:

• "As you know, Bob…" – This is a bad way to get an explanation into your story. Never have one character explain something to someone that should already know the information. Use a foil or put it in your exposition.

• "Said Bookisms" – I'm not as against these as some people, but use sparingly. 'He whispered', or 'she yelled' can be effective and unobtrusive alternates to 'said' and 'asked'. But don't have your characters spouting, snarling, screaming, moaning, and ejaculating all over the place.

• Boring Introductions – When someone is introduced to a group don't bother with, "Hi, nice to meet you." Put it in the exposition. Susie was introduced to everyone in the board room. However, if there's something important about the way two characters meet, by all means show the introduction. A good case for this would be instant attraction or animosity. Leading off with a charming smile or a killer grip to show dominance can be very telling about the characters.

• Using a Class Lecture to Present World Building – A sentence, or two, maybe, if it makes sense for the character to be in that class and if something else is going on in the scene. But don't use a history class as an excuse to info dump your extensive world building onto the reader.

• Inappropriate Colloquialisms – Make sure your turns of phrase are appropriate to the time and place of your story. A medieval peasant would not use the phrase, 'totally awesome' or 'crackalackin', and really, neither would a human five hundred years from now on another planet.

Did I miss something? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

What Exactly is Good Writing?

From Stock.xchng

Whenever agents talk about books they're looking for, most of the time, they specify one that is well-written, and I’ve always wondered what that actually was.  According to readers on goodreads, Twilight was poorly written and The Da Vinci Code and even, dare I say it, Harry Potter.  I’ve always wondered if this was just something associated with writing styles because I have my own personal preferences when it comes to writing styles, but I don’t think that makes other styles wrong.

 So is being well-written subjective, or is it being confused with style and/or voice?  Maybe style, voice, and how the book is written are just so intricately connect that they can’t be separated.  Maybe, but maybe not.

 I recently came across this post by ex-agent now author Nathan Bransford.   He wrote this post in response to his blog readers questioning his claim that Fifty Shades of Grey is “not that badly written.”  He talks in the blog post about how he defines good and bad writing. 

“When I talk about "good" writing and "bad" writing, I mean the prose. Is it readable on a sentence-to-sentence level? Is there a flow? Is there a voice? Do I get tripped up by a lack of specificity in description or are the details evocative? Is the hand of the author too apparent or am I able to lose myself in the world of the book?”

I think this is the perfect definition of good writing.  It really gets to the heart of what is important in writing, and it separates, as much as it can be separated, the very subjective style and voice from the writing itself.  And I’m not entirely sure if my interpretation is correct, but this is my take on the points he makes and how they relate to good writing.  

“Is it readable on a sentence-to-sentence level?” 

 I think clarity is the key here.  The sentences need to be free of grammar mistakes, and they can’t be too convoluted or poorly constructed.  The reader shouldn’t have to struggle to understand the sentences.

“Is there flow?”

It isn’t enough to have clearly written sentences, those sentences need to connect to each other.  The ideas need to logically flow from one sentence to another, and then from paragraph to paragraph.  In good writing everything is connected to what came before with smooth seamless transitions from idea to idea as the story progresses.

“Is there voice?”

Voice is kind of this nebulous thing that agents and editors seem to want but no one really understands.  I know that voice is far more complex then I'm going to get into here (and Melanie gives a great definition of voice here), but I think an important aspect of voice is consistency.  There needs to be a consistent style throughout the entire story that holds the writing together.  It doesn't have to be a specific style.  It just has to be consistent.  

“Do I get tripped up in lack of specificity in description or are the detail provocative?”

I think this has to do with confident writing.  Vivid details help the story and the world feel real, but I think there is more to it than that.  I think there is a confidence that comes from writing that is very specific, and that confidence in the prose makes us readers more willing to trust that the writer knows what he/she is doing.

“Is the hand of the author too apparent, or am I able to lose myself in the world of the book.”

I think this is the most important aspects of good writing.  Good writing shouldn’t get in the way of the story.  It shouldn’t be awkward or repetitive in structure, ideas, or words, but it also shouldn’t stand out and steal the spotlight from the story.  It should paint a scene, evoke emotion, and put images and ideas into the readers mind, but the words themselves should be invisible.

I think these things, clarity, flow, consistency, confidence, and invisibility is what makes up good writing.  Honestly, I’ve never read a traditionally published book that I didn’t think was well-written on some level, even Twilight, The Da Vinci Code, and Harry Potter.   

So what are your thoughts?  What is good writing to you?

~MaryAnn

The Trouble with the Witness Character

This summer, while looking through my library for books on Melanie’s summer reading list, I came across this intriguing cover.

 Yes, it’s true. All you have to do is put a picture of a bird on something, and I’m so there.

Anyway, the plot is this: ordinary village girl Aggie is hired to be a companion to the ward of the owner of Murkmere. But mysterious Leah cares more for the company of swans than humans. As Aggie spends more time at the manor, she is drawn deeper into the secrets of her new mistress and Murkmere’s tragic history.

The book is very Gothic in tone: empty, forbidding manor; mysterious, injured guardian; flighty, wild daughter. But I didn’t really enjoy the novel, because the narrator of the book utterly frustrated me. Aggie was fearful, hesitant, superstitious, and almost completely lacking in personality. There was a token attempt at the end to give her a backstory, but to be honest, I don’t remember anything about it – though I remember Leah’s story quite clearly. In the end, it seemed like Aggie was a placeholder, a witness there so that the readers could go through these strange events.

After reading Murkmere, I came to realize that this is a fairly frequent situation in literature – and one that has always bothered me. I call them witness characters, but they’re often referred to as the “Everyman” character. The idea is that the reader thinks, if this ordinary character can do things, so can I. But they also risk being boring, empty slates. Some famous examples of Everyman characters are Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Watson from Sherlock Holmes (the original books), and Frodo (Everyhobbit?) from Lord of the Rings (and Bilbo, for that matter).

But it seems sometime that the attempt to make the character relatable can go too far. A frequent criticism of Bella in Twilight is that she is completely a blank slate, apparently in order to make it easier for readers to imagine themselves as her. I don’t think it has to be so extreme. Aggie from Murkmere is even more extreme in her own way. She is described, but she herself has so little stake in the story that she might as well not be there. Here are some questions I think it’s important to ask when building relatable characters.

  

What role does your character have? And what’s at stake?

One of the problems with Aggie in Murkmere is that she had very little at stake. Through most of the book, it seems like the worst she could do is lose her job. And… go back to live with her aunt. Who is apparently well off.  There are vague threats to her life and accusations of blasphemy, but though those troubled her greatly at first, the tension of that diminished rather quickly.

Take Frodo as a contrast. He’s not only putting his life at risk, he has the most important job in the Fellowship. And not only is his life at risk, but also his sanity (both his personal world and his physical world!)

  

What does ordinary mean?

Ordinary does not mean boring. Ordinary does not mean ineffective. In my view, all ordinary means is starting out powerless, and succeeding despite that. If you make your character too powerless, too frightened, you risk the reader getting frustrated. In my opinion, the idea is to produce an ordinary character that makes the reader want to be better. Do that right, and it can be very powerful.

Are you writing the right character?

Okay, so you’ve got this awesome idea for an eccentric character. This character is the one who takes up all your mind and pages and pages of notes. So… why is this person not your main character?

What would Murkmere have been like if it had been told from Leah’s perspective? Sure, there would be a couple of mysteries the author couldn’t have held over us, but imagine being in the head of a girl who can understand swans, whose loneliness and isolation might have resonated just fine with readers, even if they didn't want to live with swans. The witness character can be a powerful voice if handled right, but I think it's important for authors to go with the character who speaks most clearly to them.

That being said, Kait (the main character in my next novel, Swallowed the Moon), is pretty much an everyman (everywoman?). What do you do to keep your characters ordinary - and more?

Details, Details

I hope I’m not stepping on MaryAnn’s toes, here. I was so inspired by her post about world building, I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned about filling in the nitty gritty details of the worlds we create. Who knows, maybe I’ll do a few running posts about this.

So, today:

World View and Word Choice

I've found that for characters to be real to me, they need to have a past, even if it's only intimated and not spelled out. Characters need to have been shaped by the world they lived in – the geography, the politics, the people, the struggles they faced (or didn’t). This, to me, is one of the components of the all important ‘Voice’ we hear so much about these days. It’s not just the attitude (snarky or otherwise) the author writes in, it’s how the characters see the world, and therefore react to it.

Ideally, this core understanding of the character's world view should be woven into the storyline. And one way I’ve found to do it is simply by the word choices you make when writing.

Examples

Okay, I may be a) narcissistic (I hope not), b) foolhardy (probably), or c) too exhausted to dig up stuff from published books (bingo), but I decided to try to use a few examples from my current WIP (may it be finished soon) to illustrate my point. Now, I’m not saying I’ve written this masterfully, or even correctly, but I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying to say about word choice helping to build a picture of a character's world view.

Here goes…

For some background on my WIP, MOTHER OF PEARL, see the query here (it’s also a wip, and I’m gratefully accepting any and all advice on it).

I’m in a little bit of a challenging situation – maybe even in over my head -  with this story. You see, each chapter is split into two parts, the first from Pearl’s point of view (third person, tight), and the second from Dyln’s (first person). To create two distinct voices telling one story, I've had to keep in mind each of their perspectives and the personal experiences that would have shaped their lives.

So…

Dyln is from a coastal country. When I write him, I try to have him view things through the lens of his upbringing, and keep the way he speaks and thinks grounded in the idioms he would likely be familiar with. So, when he’s trying to tell Pearl about the irrelevance of his position in the world, instead of saying ‘I’m common as dirt,’ it seems more appropriate for him to say,

 ‘I’m common as sand.’

Likewise, when he’s just beginning to realize that he likes Pearl (and he’s still in pretty deep denial about it), an inner monologue starts with a reference to what he was familiar with:
 

Thoughts of Pearl washed up at the edges of sleep and in the midst of boredom.  

I'd hoped the imagery of waves pushing onto the shore would remind the reader of his background, and maybe even why he was in the process of deceiving Pearl so thoroughly.

Pearl, on the other hand, has spent her life hidden away in a deep desert. When she, along with her mother and Dyln, are kidnapped from her home, she’s sure they’ve got the wrong girl – there’s no way she could ever be the heiress to an underwater kingdom. The men place her in a wooden crate  for transport, where she has time to think about the possibililty of escape and saving those she loves. Ultimately, she realizes that for now, the only thing she can do is try to pretend, no matter how absurd, to be this princess.

The bar grated back, the door swung open. Torchlight streamed in, blinding Pearl to anything outside. “Come out.” It was the rough voice of the scarred man. What courage she had gathered melted away. Pearl shrank back. She’d wanted her freedom from walls so long, and now all she could do was huddle in the tiny space and wish the door would close again.

“Come out,” the man said again. He would fish her out like a mouse from an empty barrel. Princesses, or pretended princesses, should not be fished out quaking in fear. If she was going to do something to save her mother and Dyln, she needed to do it now.

Unlike waves on the shore, a mouse in an empty barrel would be something Pearl would have likely encountered, even with her sheltered life. It's entirely in keeping with her world view. And, in fact, barrels of stored food were mentioned in the second chapter, so there’s already an image of this possibility embedded in the reader's mind.

My thinking (and hope) is that by adding these small details and turns of phrase, the voices of the characters and their world will come across as richer and more authentic than they otherwise would have.

Hope this tip helps.

~Susan

Finding Your Voice

At the beginning of the summer, I made a summer reading list, and I've been steadily making my way through. I just finished reading The Book Thief. If you'd like to see my review, you can go to our brand new book review blog (!!!) called The Prosers Read.  The Book Thief was a nice story, but what sets it apart from other books and puts it in line to becoming a classic is its incredible voice.

 I've struggled with the concept of voice in my writing. It is a simpler concept than I'd originally thought, but polishing it will take just as much effort as I'd feared.

 Here's one example:

"Hans Huberman sat sleepy-eyed on the bed and Liesel would cry into his sleeves and breathe him in. Every morning, just after two o'clock, she fell asleep again to the smell of him. It was a mixture of dead cigarettes, decades of paint, and human skin. At first, she sucked it all in, then breathed it, until she drifted back down. Each morning, he was a few feet away from her, crumpled, almost halved, in the chair. He never used the other bed. Liesel would climb out and cautiously kiss his cheek and he would wake up and smile." (from The Book Thief, page 37)

 In essence, this paragraph is saying, "After her brother's death, Liesel often woke up with nightmares, and her foster father would come in and comfort her." But when Liesel wrote about her nightmares years later, she remembered the smell of her foster father more than any other thing, so that's what she wrote about. Her brother's empty bed also becomes a symbol that is referred to frequently throughout the whole story.

Contrast that to the book I am reading right now. I'm not far into it, but here is an excerpt. Can you guess who wrote it?

 "Miss Maria's name was never spoken of at M_____. Her father had utterly forbidden it. A man of high principle and strong moral judgment, he had suffered anguish unspeakable at the time of his daughter's degradation...and could not bear the least allusion to any topic bordering on reference to his abandoned daughter. 

 "Lady Bertram was not so nice. Never, even when they were small, having been deeply attached to her children, she felt much less interest in them as they grew older, and had long ago divested herself of any anxieties or gratification regarding them, unless in a matter directly concerning herself...That Lady Bertram never alluded to the erring Maria was due primarily to a complete lack of interest in her disgraced daughter's fortunes; in fact, she was hardly remembered from one year's end to another."

 Would you have guessed Jane Austen? I would have. But this is from Mansfield Revisited by Joan Aiken, who wrote it as the sequel to Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. (The excerpt quoted above is from Mansfield Revisited, pages 17-18).

 I looked everywhere for a definition of voice that I really liked, and I never found one, so I'm taking everything I have learned and making up my own.

Voice:
1. Voice is all the choices you make as a writer that convey your attitude, your personality, and your values to the reader.


2. The speech and thought patterns of your main character or narrator, and, to a lesser degree, other characters in your story.

 When I first started writing young adult fiction, and I read that publishers were looking for a strong voice, I thought they were referring exclusively to the second definition. More specifically, I thought they wanted a really snarky narrator, like Alcatraz Smedry:

"I've been many things in my life. Student. Spy. Sacrifice. Potted plant. However, at this point, I'm something completely different from all of those--something more frightening than any of them. 

 "I'm a writer. 

 "You may have noticed that I began my story with a quick, snappy scene of danger and tension--but then quickly moved on to a more boring discussion of my childhood. Well, that's because I wanted to prove something to you: that I am not a nice person." (Alcatraz and the Evil Librarians, by Brandon Sanderson, page 14. You can find my review of this series here. )

In case anyone else was suffering from the same delusion I was: voice does not equal snarkiness.

 Voice is the tone of your story, your choice of theme, your choice of audience, the topic you pick, the details you include, the personality of your characters, even the types of words you pick and the length of your sentences.

 Voice might be conveyed with ellipses or italics, but probably not. When you choose to break any particular writing rule, that becomes a part of your voice. So does following the rules closely. In The Knife of Never Letting Go, voice is almost like a picture on the page, with handwritten sentences, in a variety of styles, written on top of each other until meaning is almost indecipherable.  The author does this to convey a sense of CHAOS.

In the Book Thief, the author's voice includes poetic phrases like "she sucked it all in, then breathed it until she drifted back down." He uses senses to evoke a feeling of MEMORY.

 With Jane Austen, part of her voice includes explaining the motivations behind people's actions with a dry wit. When she's finished, we understand her sharp conclusions about people without her having ever actually cast judgment. It is obvious that Aiken has put considerable effort into figuring out Austen's voice so she can imitate it, and she does an admirable job. However, I think Jane Austen used character sketches to help us draw conclusions about SOCIETY and MORALITY, and that is one way that Aiken falls short.

 All of Brandon Sanderson's considerable talent is used in Alcatraz to draw our attention to ABSURDITY and PARADOX. The story line behind the Alcatraz books is full of holes, purposely dug by the author himself. But Alcatraz becomes a hero teenagers can relate to because he is likeable in spite of feeling unlikeable. He learns that his weaknesses can transform into his strengths.

If you are interested in honing your own voice, this is the best advice about finding your voice that I've seen on the internet.

Happy writing!

What to do when your imaginary friends talk back to you.

Um... Panic?

So last week, I wrote about how everyone's tastes are different, and told about one of my favorite books, The Obnoxious Jerks, by Stephen Manes. One Proser's Treasure

Yesterday, I saw Mr. Stephen Manes wrote a comment back...

Funny. I'm the guy who wrote that book, along with more than 30 others, including a new one about ballet that at 900+ pages is the opposite of flash fiction (you can check it out at http://wheresnowflakesdanceandswear.com.) And as coincidence would have it, The Obnoxious Jerks is set to return to "print" as an e-book in a week or two.
You're right. It never did win any awards. But it did rack up some good reviews, and for a time it was under option for a Hollywood movie that never got made. (The one person I knew who claimed to have seen the script--of course, they would never think of letting me take a whack at it--said it was truly ghastly.)
Like several of my other books, this one seems to have attracted something of an underground following, which was almost impossible for an author to find out about before the advent of the Web and the Google Vanity Search. It's gratifying to know that you've written something that's touched someone else, particularly when you're not the bestseller type. 
This book is one of the few I've written that has elements of autobiography. In my formative years, a bunch of us high-school misfits put together a club called The Lancers. Its logo was a steel pen, its motto "The pen is mightier." But though we did manage to pull a few authority-tweaking pranks, we were neither smart nor secure enough to invite girls into our ranks.
Thank you for putting fingers to keys so that your very moving words could appear on the screen. And rest assured that the e-book will have a much better cover than the awful one you displayed or the only marginally better one the publisher stuck onto the paperback. 

Squee!

Squee!!

Ahem... So, after giggling like a twelve year old girl at a Justin Beiber concert, I read every word of Stephen Manes comments out loud to my husband, while the children looked on, and the meatloaf slowly congealed. During dinner, spastic little giggles escaped me, and then after I  left the table, I analyzed every word he said, and every word I said, and then every word he said again, also like a twelve year old girl.

Calm down, I told myself. You've written books as well. Four of them. He's a human being, and he's just another writer.You know writers. You know a lot of writers. He's not Justin Bieber, and you are not a twelve year old girl.

 I have a lot of friends that are writers, but they are all wannabe writers like me. I don't know why, but once someone gets published, I freak out and get nervous in their company. I was invited to join a book group that had a ton of awesome writers, including the brilliant Jessica Day George, and after going once I panicked over the depth of the awesomeness, (My little duck feet paddling at the top, like a creature that's full of hot air.), and quit.

To calm me down, I thought of guest Proser Karen Tiberius Smith's post some of my best friends are authors, and reminded myself to breath (yet again).  Then I thought of Sarah's post foray into fandom, and congratulated myself on not saying something idiotic ...unless that's what I'm doing right now...breathe Sheena, breathe.

But, mostly, I thought about how glad I am to be a Proser. If I hadn't been brave, even for a second, and emailed MaryAnn about maybe starting a blog together, I would never have had my voice heard by some 17,000 people, including the person who wrote one of my favorite books. I'm so grateful I was able to say thank you to the person who wrote the book that made my life better. I'm so glad he was able to hear how much that sweet funny book means to me.

Part of the advice you hear as a wannabe writer is the need to find your voice, but for me what I'm learning right now, is the need to make my voice heard.

I've had stories in my head my whole life. As  I began my writing adventure, those stories were kept between me, my computer, and the imaginary people at Hatrack. And that's the way I liked it. Now, I'm trying to open up that imaginary world a bit more, and let in people who will pay me. :)

It's scary pushing against the safe boundary of being silent. No one can criticize me when I don't say anything. But no one can hear me either.


And I'm ready to make my voice heard. Even if it sounds like a twelve year old girl.

So thank you, Mr. Stephen Manes for commenting, (and to google for sending you here). You are welcome back anytime. I'll try to keep the Squeeing to a minimum.

But no promises.
~Sheena

Finding Your Writing Voice

If I could give one gift to every writer I know, it would be a workshop with Jack Grapes. I can't, because writing workshops aren't cheap (though his are worth every penny and more) and I’m still saving up for my next one. So, you all are on your own.

In his Method Writing class, Jack has two fundamental rules:

1. Write like you talk.
2. Do the exercise.

Every day, open your journal, follow the instructions for that week’s exercise, write like you talk, and stop after 2 pages. Period. If you write crap, it won’t matter, because you were practicing a technique, not going after a Pulitzer. Through practice and process, you will find a product... eventually.
 

A Moment of Glory

Jack has an exercise for extending psychological time in a moment of tension, which he calls image/moment. The first week he assigned it, my husband was having a horrible time at work and the kids were needy and exhausting. I was too tired to think of anything interesting, but I did the exercise anyway.

I wrote about running in the rain at night, while listening to rock music about sex and drugs and other facets of the fast life I've never sampled. I wrote about the freedom that comes from being out on an empty street alone after dark. I wrote about coming home to find my stressed-out husband asleep in a lump on the bed when it wasn't even 9 yet, and about the moment I wished I could go back outside and run away from real life, but instead I turned off my iPod and did the dishes.

I did not use a single word that my second grader wouldn't know how to spell. There was not a single sentence I thought was beautiful. Reading it for the class, I fought not to cry, partly from the sadness I'd felt the night I wrote it and partly from embarrassment at exposing such a raw part of my life.

I finished, tear-free, and Jack said, “Raise your hand if you know how good that was.”

The whole class raised their hands. How much was peer pressure, I'll never know, but the response was positive.

Jack went on: “And do you know why it was so good? It’s not because Sarah’s a good writer.”

(I knew it! He never liked me...) It didn't matter. I was pleased as punch. Surely at least some of it was my writing. Right?

“It’s because she did the exercise,” he said. “She used the technique, she followed the instructions, and the result was powerful.”

Well, yes, okay. But I wanted to believe it was because I was a good writer. I really, really did.

The next week we repeated the same exercise. I was nervous. I needed to WOW the crowd. I needed to top what I did before. I wrote about an edgier topic, I was clever, and I edited until every word sang for me.

The group's reaction? “Meh.”

Hey, Macarena!

I never wrote another piece that was as noticed and remembered by my classmates as the running one. At our end-of-class party, everyone brought it up. I understood how Los Del Rio must feel when people start doing the Macarena.

They are crying on the inside. (From www.Billboard.com)

Two years later, I ran into a classmate I idolized. He was an accomplished screenwriter, and everything he wrote was effortlessly funny and poignant and brilliant.

He was with his wife, and I was with my husband. I introduced him, but he didn’t remember my name. (That’s okay. He’s a big deal. I’m a little deal.)

He turned to his wife and said, “She wrote that thing I told you about, remember? The one where she was running, and her husband was in bed, and his socks were on the floor?”

His wife smiled. “Oh, yes, I do remember.”

Oh my golly gosh they talked about me!?! My insides went smooshy.

Enter, stage left... Mixed Feelings:

• Positive: WOW, big-time screenwriter and king of cool remembered something I wrote and TOLD HIS WIFE about it!

• Negative: He doesn't remember a single other thing about me. 

I could tell you almost everything this guy read for the class, because it was ALL memorable.

The Answer to All Life's Questions, Except the Ones that Aren't Answered Here:

I re-read my one-hit wonder a while ago, expecting to be floored by my own brilliance. And... Not so much. It needs tightening. It wanders. Some lines are redundant, some flabby.

What was the magic, if it wasn't my talent? Jack was right - almost. The exercise was the core of what worked. But I did the exercise the next week, too, without the same result.

Years later, I think I know the answer. My writing was honest. It was pure, unadulterated truth. It was me, writing in the voice I’d use to talk to a friend, and not holding anything back. Not covering up a feeling with a clever turn of phrase. Just laying it out there.

Poetry and memoir have taught me the power of truth, but I struggle with how to apply it in fiction. After all, a novel is just lies I've made up about people who don't exist. That makes honesty hard to measure... but not impossible. Even in fiction, some lines have a ring of truth to them, and some don’t.

Often, as writers, we can’t hear when we are most honest and when we are writing what we want to sound like, instead of who we really are. The reader always knows. Listen to your feedback, listen to your heart, and be simple. Be honest. That’s how you write something that no one else can imitate, that makes readers fall in love. That's how you find your voice.

~Sarah

Edited: If Jack read this, I believe he would point out that everything I said about voice actually falls under Rule #1: Write like you talk. Which went hand in hand with doing the exercise. Which means Jack was, in fact, 100% right. He always is. I can't even win an argument with that man in my head.