Writing and Dialogue: How my Role Model Does it

I first got into writing because of my mother. She encouraged me and sometimes offered me advice. So, for this interview, I went with my mother and how she writes her own stories.

Q1: What are the hardest scenes to write?

It’s romance because the emotion for a romance scene is very delicate. You really have to get it right for the scene to come across as something romantic and believable and not cliche.

Q2: When you write dialogue what trick do you like to use?

I like to write what the character is doing and feeling in a separate paragraph before the character says something. It makes the dialogue less redundant.  

Q3: What type of POV do you like to write in?

First person is easier to write but I hate it. I can’t explain what the other characters are thinking and feeling. I like to talk through the eyes of multiple characters and show how each of them is feeling. So, I like to write in 3^rd person.  

Q4: What is one thing you recommend doing when writing dialogue?

Give each line its own paragraph. If you stick your dialogue in a giant paragraph its hard for the eyes to follow.

Q: What is your writing process?

I come up with the general idea and the plot first and then jot down the scenes I want to happen in each chapter. After that, I decide and make my characters. Usually, I use an outline to keep everything organized.

 

Do Not Use This as a Plot Device!

Recently, I’ve been on the manhunt for some good stories. But as I started to read more new stories, I’ve noticed that a good portion of them has this very disgusting plot device. There’s a lot of bad examples of this in many stories but there was one so bad I feel rage when I see it. It was romance/drama about the MC atoning for what they did to the person that they married which included a lot of things like blackmail, threats, manipulation, etc,.

So, I became interested and thought, “Ok, how is the author going to solve this?” because I know this can end up great or horrible (no in-between). Safe to say, it ended up horrible for a multitude of reasons. One of which was that the male lead and the female leads relationship made me feel like I was reading a fetish story of domestic abuse that never got better.

But the main reason was because the side couple (that took up the other 50% of the novel) was the disgusting trope of the victim falling in love with the *TRIGGER WARNING * guy that SA’d her! And the author tried to whitewash it! I can understand using it for an educational standpoint (like awareness, coping mechanisms) but NOT AS A ROMANTIC PLOT DEVICE. Unless you are writing a revenge story or for educational reasons do NOT use this as a plot device! There are other ways to push the plot of your story. 

Critique on Grammer: Periods are Important!

Before, in another post, I mentioned that grammar is important. Well, its so important that if you have none it might just make the reader stop reading altogether. Periods are a part of grammar, and they are essential for a story. You might be thinking, “well yeah, obviously,”. However, so many times, I’ve went to an online writing site like Wattpad and have found several stories that do not have any periods in it what-so-ever. But even so, at the time, I tried to read it just to see if it was possible.

The result? It was incredibly difficult. To the point that I just stopped reading. My eyes hurt trying to read it. So, my advice to you as a writer (and it may seem silly) is that if you forget to put a period at the end of the sentence as your writing (or thought you did but didn’t) for the love god, please, go back and put it there.

Not only that, if you post the story on a site like Wattpad or Scribblehub and someone comments that you need a comma, a period, etc., and you agree then fix it. If one person saw that mistake, then so did several others. Granted, when posting a story online you can slack a bit on the rules but if you have a serious grammar error (mainly misspelling error) it might break the readers immersion. 

Note, this applies to all stories in all genres.