Anna's Writing Nook: Let's Describe Stuff... and Write About Winter!

  

 Hi writers! Long time, no blog. But seeing as how the holiday season is here and we all have a break from school (finally), I think it’s high time for some winter-themed writing fun.

Firstly, a little craft talk! With all the rambling I did in the spring and summer, I can’t believe I forgot to talk about writing descriptions. So let’s touch on that briefly! 

Describing things is, in my opinion, kind of the worst. It’s one of my least favorite parts of writing, and a lot of times if I’m on a roll with a scene, I’ll end up skipping descriptions and moving on to the next scene. Which, by the way, is a totally fine thing to do! But your future self will definitely shake their fist at you. 

But sometimes descriptions are necessary before you can move ahead, and even if you skip them you’ll have to do it eventually (ugh), so let’s talk about how to write some bomb descriptions.

First let’s talk scenery. The worst. I hate describing scenery. You try to make it interesting and flowery but all your brain wants to say is “There’s a tree. The grass is green. The sky is blue. It’s cloudy, probably.” Here’s a pro tip, though: assuming you’re not writing for a small child, your reader can assume what the grass, sky, and trees look like. The only time you absolutely need to describe things that are otherwise obvious is if there’s something different or strange about them. If the trees look the same as they always do, a simple adjective (like, if they’re red and gold because it’s autumn) is plenty. But if there’s something weird or unusual about the trees, and that detail is significant to your story, that’s when you show up with your Tolkien-esque word sprawls telling us all the weird things about those trees. 

Now what about people? Your characters need descriptions too. We gotta know what they look like, of course! The best way I’ve done this is in the past is to first write down, just for me, the basic details of my characters’ descriptions. Eye color, hair color/texture/length/style, height, build, skin color, any features like freckles, glasses, tattoos, etc. List all of that, and then to sprinkle it into your actual writing, we’re going to apply the same rule: when you can help it, don’t over-describe the obvious stuff. If there’s something about your character’s eyes or hair that’s particularly unusual, focus on that. Point out things like piercings and tattoos, because they’re unique and not everyone has them. Otherwise, again, using simple descriptors like this, “She had brown skin, dark eyes, and wore her black hair in a tight bun,” are totally fine and get the job done.

On a similar note, I often find myself getting hung up on describing what my characters are wearing. I kinda hate describing clothes, too, because it seems like it interrupts everything else going on. But a while back I saw a piece of advice from a fellow writer (can’t remember who it was, tbh) who said something along the lines of “When I’m reading, I assume the characters are wearing pants unless told otherwise.” For some reason, that little piece of advice blew my mind. It never occurred to me that I didn’t have to describe everything the characters are wearing, but it’s just the same as what I mentioned earlier: don’t describe the obvious, only the unusual. 

That being said, clothes are one of those things that can be fun to describe if you’re someone who likes describing things. If your characters are going to a party or a ball or some other special occasion, you might want to go into detail describing their outfits! Offering these descriptions and bringing extra attention to things you’d normally gloss over contributes to the overall once-in-a-lifetime vibe of the scene.

That’s really the biggest thing to remember with descriptions: they should almost always (like 95% of the time) contribute something that pushes your story forward. You don’t need to spend pages upon pages laying out what a room looks like if it doesn’t actually matter to the story. Focus your energy and attention on the things that are or will be important, and you and your readers will be happy.

All right! Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for some fun! And you know what that means:

❄️☃️ WINTER AND HOLIDAY PROMPTS ❄️☃️

Write about your favorite holiday tradition in the form of a diary entry or letter to a friend.

Write about a couple of friends baking cookies. Will it go perfectly smoothly or will it be a complete disaster? Up to you!

Let’s go on a winter walk. Describe the scenery around you, and how you/your character interacts with or reacts to the scene. Is it cold? Windy? Are there Christmas lights on the houses? Is it snowing? Have fun with some descriptions!

Write a review or tell us about a favorite book or movie that you love to read/watch around the holidays.

Write a story that takes place on New Year’s Eve. Even if we can’t have parties this year, your characters can!

Make up a new holiday that takes place in the winter, and write about the traditions that come with that holiday. What is it celebrating? How is it celebrated? Have its traditions changed at all??

Write about some kids going sledding or making a snowman.

Snowball fight!!

Take a favorite Christmas movie or story (Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc) and change something about it! Rewrite the ending or place yourself in the story or do something totally wild with it. 

If you’ve ever watched or read A Christmas Carol, convince me why your favorite version of that story is the best one. 

Have fun! Write something great!! And enjoy your holidays!

 

Till next time,

Anna 😎✌🏻

Anna's Writing Nook: Short & Sweet Short Stories

Hi everyone! Happy Wednesday, aka Writer’s Nook day! I hope you’re all doing well and enjoying your summer. Last week and the week before I threw a lot of stuff at you about worldbuilding, so this week I’ll chill a bit. Let’s talk about short stories! And better than that, let’s write a short story!

Okay, first of all, disclaimer: short stories are my enemy. I can’t, for the life of me, write anything that could fall under the definition of “short,” which made my four years of being a creative writing major the WORST because of course I couldn’t throw a novel at my professors (even though I wanted to). But don’t get me wrong: I like writing short stories, IN THEORY, because I love writing stories in general, HOWEVER, the short part is where I falter. Because, in case you haven’t noticed by the, uh, everything about me, I like to ramble. A lot. I like to word sprawl. And a lot of times, the ideas I have are best suited for novels because my brain works primarily in big pictures and not so much in zoomed-in scenes. And zoomed-in scenes are exactly what make a short story.

So rest assured, friends of mine, that just because I eternally struggle with writing short stories doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t know how. I do, I just get carried away, hehe.

Anyway, let’s get into it. I’ll start us off with an activity I’m totally stealing from one of my creative writing professors (one of the best I had tbh): story kernels.

If you’re like me and don’t know how to write anything short ever, story kernels will (hopefully) save your life like they saved mine. We’re going to start with an anecdote: a short narrative of something that has happened to you. Just think of a memory -- it can be recent, or from your childhood; it can be sad or funny or weird or even just mundane and normal -- and tell us what happened. Plain and simple. 

As my professor said, “This is the what happened that will allow you to later imagine the what could happen.” The idea is to take one (very small, very short) experience that you had and just write it down. But here’s the catch: don’t make it longer than like, two pages. Yeah, I know. I hate it too. But that’s your absolute limit: two pages. Or if you prefer, 500 words. Single-spacing and tiny fonts count as cheating!

The great thing about the story kernel strategy is that it gives you a really easy start for a story: it starts you off with something you know better than anything – your own life. And it also helps you keep your story zoomed in and specific – because of the length limit and because you’re writing about a snippet of your life. 

All right, guys. Break time. I want you to grab a notebook and pen or your laptop or whatever it is you use to write, set a timer for twenty minutes, and just write. Don’t stop. Twenty minutes. I’ll allow you one (1) snack break. But then back to writing! Write your life-based story kernel. Remember, no more than two pages! And at the end of twenty minutes, stop wherever you are (but, like, you can finish your sentence, that’s fine). If you didn’t get a complete story down in that very short time frame, that’s okay! But hey, you have more words now than you did twenty minutes ago! And that’s an accomplishment!

Now that you’ve got something started, hopefully you want to keep going until you finish it! And if you are motivated and pumped and want to go do that right now, go for it!! I won’t be offended if you stop reading because you just NEED to get some more words down. In fact, I encourage it.

But if you wrote for twenty minutes and are like “Okay that’s quite enough for now,” I feel that, and that’s valid too. In that case, I’ll give you something (hopefully) worth reading up ahead!

If the story kernel is your first step toward a new, original, short (emphasis on short) story, then step two is to shift perspectives a little. Keep using the same story/scene/memory you used for the first kernel, and now write it again – but from a different point of view. If you wrote the first part from your own perspective (which you probably did, since you wrote about your own memory), write it this time from the point of view of someone else in the story. And yes, I’ll let you have a little more wiggle room. You can make it 3-4 pages now (or between 1000 and 1500 words). You’re welcome ;) 

So now that we’re shifting perspectives, your story is moving a little bit more toward fiction. It’s less autobiography, more making things up. Get into another character’s head (even if that character is someone you know in real life). When I did this activity in my class, I wrote the first kernel about going for a walk with my dog in a cemetery, where we saw a few deer. The first one was from my point of view, but I wrote the second one from the deer’s perspective, just to give it a different and interesting twist. So do something like that with yours! Think outside the box, really work your creativity and start to mold your personal memory into a new story.

Short stories can get overwhelming sometimes when you get wrapped up in how much you want to accomplish in such a small space, and then you end up writing a whole novel like me. Again, that’s why the kernels are helpful: they keep you confined to a single scene/event, and that you dig into details more than you would writing longer fiction. Short stories are about zooming in, taking a big world and focusing on something small. And then you make that small thing seem like the only important thing in this big world.

I hope you guys find the kernel method helpful! In my writing class, we went through like four phases of kernels, changing them and lengthening them with each rewrite. It really is a clever way to build a story, so if anyone’s interested I’d be happy to share the further steps. For now, I’ll leave y’all with just the first two, but feel free to reach out if you want more!

What I’m Writing: Since July is coming to an end it’s also the end of Camp NaNoWriMo! I’ve mentioned NaNo a few times before because I just love it, and this month I’ve been unusually productive. I started the month with a goal to write 80,000 words, and with two days to go I’m almost there – only 3000 words left! I’ve made a ton of progress on my fantasy book called The Oracle Stone, and I’m very excited to be done with it so I can look into self-publishing (and so I can go write something else).

What I’m Reading: I’m in the midst of The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski, and I’m enjoying it a lot! It’s an intriguing story with awesome characters and a really well-built world. I’m interested to see how everything will turn out; I love fantasy with a touch of mystery!

That’s about all I’ve got for y’all today! Try out the story kernels! Let me know how it goes! Tell me about the stories you write! And stop by the library to say hi :D

Oh! And one more thing: don’t forget to enter the Fanart Contest!!! You can find information about it here on the blog (right here!) or ask about it at the library.

Anna's Writing Nook: Worldbuilding Part 2

Welcome back to the Writer's Nook! This week we're delving deeper into worldbuilding. Last time, we went over the basics: where to start, where our inspiration comes from, and a fun way to make a map and visualize the world you're creating. Now we'll get into ways to sprinkle your worldbuilding details into your writing.

If you've taken any kind of writing class or even just read some popular advice, you've probably been told to "show, don't tell." That's easier said than done, but it is an important distinction. Telling, especially in regards to worldbuilding, is like giving your reader a big info-dump of everything you know about your setting. It's like dropping a history book on your reader's head. Readers don't usually appreciate that. You want to avoid lengthy info-dumps; instead, there's ways to gradually and seamlessly describe the setting, and that's what we call showing!

The best way to present your setting to your reader in a way that feels real and vivid is to find several little details of everyday life (and remember that ordinary life for your characters might not be ordinary for us). These details are going to anchor your setting. They help a place feel more real, and when describing them, you really want to rely on the senses: what a place looks, smells, and feels like.

Smells especially are grounding when it comes to places. Think about a place you know well - even if it's just your own bedroom. You probably associate a certain smell with it, right? I've begun associating the smell of hand sanitizer with the library (sad, right?). My own room smells like the candles I have on my bookshelf. If I were to smell either of those things anywhere else, chances are my brain would conjure up a thought of the library and/or my room. So think about what your setting would smell like. If it's a town by the sea, the air will probably have a salty scent (and taste) to it. If your story is set in a forest, it might smell like grass and pine. If you're in a city, well, it'll probably smell like a lot of things, especially depending on what kinds of places you walk by.

The look and feel of a location is also going to affect the vibes of that place. If your setting is a big city, a simple description of the jumble of buildings and zooming cars and people in a hurry sets up an energetic scene. We sort of expect a city setting to be chaotic and busy, right? So a neat way to offset that expectation and make your setting more interesting is to break that expectation. Your story is set in a huge city, BUT it's dead silent and the streets are empty. The buildings loom over the streets, watching, but there's no honking from cars or shouting from the hot dog guy on the corner. This break of the norm immediately makes your reader want to keep turning pages and find out why this place is not as they expect it to be. This is a situation where feeling is your best friend. If you offset your reader's expectations of how a place should be, you instantly change the vibe and set it in line with the type of story you're trying to tell.

Visual details are also your best friends. Obviously we gotta describe what a place looks like, right? But how do you do that without describing every single thing in front of you? The answer: your reader isn't stupid. Remember last week how we talked about writing what's familiar to you, and enhancing a setting by building it up with things you know like the back of your hand? We're going back to that, because that is how you describe a setting without info-dumping. This is easiest if you're writing a story that takes place in our real world (but it also works with fantasy worlds; we'll get to that). If you're writing contemporary fiction, chances are your reader is already familiar with pretty much every general element of your setting. Again, they're not stupid. You don't have to describe every facet of the local grocery store (unless it's an unusual grocery store), because your reader has probably been in a grocery store at some point in their life. You don't have to go to unusual lengths to describe things that are familiar; instead, focus your attention on things that are extraordinary or break the norm.

Let's say we're in a typical, run-of-the-mill small town in rural America. There's fields, there's cows, there's long country roads and probably a tractor rumbling down the side of the road. There's big, old houses with wrap-around porches, and the town itself is so small that you'll miss it if you blink while driving by at 70 miles an hour. You know, normal stuff. But then there's something decidedly... not normal. There's a church in this little town, which might be expected, however, no one can actually agree on what the church looks like. Most people in the town, especially those that have lived here for generations, adamantly believe the church is white with a bell tower on top. But the kids and the newer residents of town claim that it's a brick building that probably once had a tower but it looks like it was destroyed a long time ago. And there's some, just a few, who whisper that that church burned down fifty years ago.

Do I have your attention yet? This kind of juxtaposition, between what we know and an alteration of what we know, makes a setting and a story way more interesting. In this example I only gave the briefest descriptions of the normal aspects of the town, because I trust that you guys can imagine the scene without me having to tell you what the fields or each house looks like. You don't need a detailed description of those things, because I'm not asking you to focus on the wider scope of the town. I want you to focus on the church. And while I didn't describe the cracks in every brick of the building, I gave you some key visuals: white with a bell tower, brick with the remains of a bell tower, and perhaps the burned-out shell of a building that's hardly still standing. Those are still pretty simple descriptions, but they work to set the vibe of the story: there's something off, something wrong, a mystery that may need to be solved. That simple setting description sparks a bunch of questions that build the framework for your story - and that's exactly what a successful setting should do.

Now, excuse me while I go actually write this story about an odd little church.

Okay, maybe later. Let's talk about exposition again, because like many things in writing, it is not inherently evil (no matter what you've been told).

Exposition is going to be necessary at some point. You are not banned from ever explaining anything to your reader. Quite the opposite, actually: you should explain things to your reader. But like I said earlier, you should try to avoid dropping everything at once. Ease into it; only explain what you absolutely need to in the moment, and then keep your story moving until you have to explain more. There’s really only so much you have to explain; the readers can fill in the blanks. Like I said, they’re not stupid!

Also, if you wanna cheat, there’s a really easy way to lay down the workings of your world to your reader: have the main character be an outsider to that setting. When they arrive in a totally new place, there’s gotta be someone there to answer questions and show them around, right? Boom, there’s your easy peasy exposition. Perfect loophole. I fully encourage you to use it 😉

We got through a lot today, so I’ll wrap up here and leave you with some final, parting wisdom: the biggest worldbuilding thing to remember is that characters are a product of their world. Just like each of us is a product of our upbringing and little bubble of the world that we live in, your characters will be molded by their settings. Keep that in mind as you’re writing; there should always be a sense of a bigger world outside your character’s personal circles. 

Okay actually, one more thing: have some worldbuilding sites that have saved my life a million times!!

World Anvil is a virtual notebook for keeping all your worldbuilding stuff in one place. It's excellent, and allows for a lot of detailed development. It's been most useful to me as a fantasy writer, but really it could work with any kind of genre.

And here are some fantasy worldbuilding questions that are really detailed, but hey if you wanna go ham, I won't stop you. Even if you don't answer every single one, it's a good road map for the kinds of things you might want to know about your world.

Last but not least, if you want to make cool maps that don't involve you having to throw pasta around or actually draw something, check out Inkarnate! I've used this site for years to build maps for my books, and I love it.

Now I am actually going to go write that story about the church. I’ll let you know next week how it goes xD

Until next time!

😎✌🏻 Anna

Anna's Writing Nook: Worldbuilding Part 1

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Writer’s Nook! I know it’s been awhile, but I’m back with a new topic for y’all: worldbuilding!

Since there’s a lot to cover here, I’m splitting the topic into two posts, so be sure to check back next week for Part 2! This week we’ll cover the basics of creating a compelling setting for your story, whether that setting is in our world or in a completely new one. A vivid setting is important in any kind of story, fantasy or otherwise, because it’s one of the best ways to build authenticity in your writing. If the reader can easily place themselves in your setting, there’s a much better chance of them emotionally connecting to your story on a deeper level. We all want to feel engrossed and enveloped in the things we read, right? Effective worldbuilding is a major key to that. So let’s get into it!

Approaching worldbuilding is different for every writer. Personally, developing the setting is the last step in my writing process. I do characters first, then plot, then world. And honestly, that hasn’t always worked out, so I’ve been trying to be better about developing the world a lot earlier in my writing process. One of my first steps is figuring out names for everything: countries, cities, towns, individual buildings, even streets. You don’t need a name for everything, of course, just things that are most important, but attaching a name to every significant place is a great way to build authenticity in your setting. Especially if it has a fun or meaningful name. My favorite thing is to name restaurants/taverns alliterative things like “The Salty Salmon” or “The Grumpy Gull.”

Sometimes I make up names out of the blue, but most of the time this website is my best friend: Fantasy Name Generators. I know I’ve thrown this site at y’all before, but I cannot sing its praises enough. And in spite of its name, it does have name generators outside of fantasy things. It has generators specifically for places (inspired by a lot of different languages and cultures), and narrows it down to cities/towns – in real life or fantasy settings. Really, it’s great. It’s my BFF. It’s the love of my life, probably. 

Setting development should be somewhat similar to character development. One of the best pieces of worldbuilding advice I’ve ever heard was to treat your setting as if it’s a character itself. It should have a sort of personality, it should have history, and it should change and evolve over time. You shouldn’t have to write an entire history book (unless you want to, I mean, I won’t stop you), but it helps to have a general idea of the major events that have defined a place’s past. Just like you’d look at a character and ask, “What has happened in this person’s life to get them to where they are today?” ask the same of your settings. 

Another helpful means of developing your setting is to base it on something you know. Familiarity is a key to authenticity. The better you know a place, the more accurately and vividly you’ll be able to write it. That’s not to say you can’t write about places you’ve never been to (we can’t all hop on a plane to take a research trip to New Zealand or whatever), but you always want to have an element of familiarity in your settings. Even if you are writing about a place inspired by somewhere you’ve never been, it helps to build it with details of something you do know. 

For example, say you’ve made up a fantasy world that’s based on France, but you’ve never been to France and the breadth of your knowledge doesn’t extend far past Wikipedia. Since your setting isn’t exactly France and probably won’t have the same history and culture as France, you can totally fake it with just a baseline knowledge of the country. Look up pictures and descriptions of what the streets look like, what kinds of shops there are, what kinds of food and plants are native to different areas of the country, and take your inspiration from those details. Don’t copy them exactly, and you should avoid trying to replicate a culture that isn’t yours/that you haven’t studied extensively, but you can certainly take bits and pieces and apply them to your own made-up world. 

Weather and climate are also effective worldbuilding details; your fantasy worlds/countries will differ tremendously based on their climates, because weather decides what kinds of natural elements are native to the place and what kinds of things need to be imported or might be unfamiliar. It also adds a strong sense of place and atmosphere if you sprinkle weather into your writing. What’s going on in the sky can totally change the vibe of a scene, and there’s a hundred ways to use weather to set the mood of your story.

All of that being said, research is critical. Yes, even if it’s Wikipedia. I’ll be the first to say that Wikipedia is not evil, but definitely try to use other sources for deeper research that goes beyond basic stuff like geography, climate, etc. Like, you probably wouldn’t want to use Wikipedia if you’re researching a specific culture; instead, try to find a resource provided by people from that culture for the most reliable information. And again, you can take inspiration, but don’t copy. Be careful of appropriation, especially when you’re dealing with cultures that aren’t your own. Avoid telling a story that isn’t yours to tell, but that’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t have diverse worlds and characters. It’s a fine line, for sure, but use your instincts. If you feel like your settings and characters fall into stereotypes or you’re making lots of assumptions, you might want to go back and revise. That’s where beta readers come in handy! An extra set of eyes is always helpful.

I’ve talked a lot about fantasy settings, so let’s touch on real-world settings for a hot sec. Developing settings in contemporary/realistic fiction takes a different kind of worldbuilding. In a way, you’ve got it a bit easier than us fantasy writers! Worldbuilding for contemporary fiction is more about details than about the bigger picture. Since we’re already familiar with the world we live in, the most important part is going to be the specific setting in your story, whether that be a town, a house, a store, whatever. You really want to get into vivid descriptions that make your setting more tangible – and that’s where familiarity comes in handy. The easiest way to accurately and authentically describe a place or a thing is if you’re familiar with it yourself. So again, even if you're writing about a small rural town but have never actually lived in one, you can zoom in on some part that you do know. For example, take a local park that you frequented when you were a kid and place it in your story’s setting. Describe the colors of the slides or the way the swings squeaked. Find a detail – in any setting – that is easily recognizable and relatable to a wide audience. 

All right, that was a lot of things, so I’ll stop here and save the rest for next week. In Part 2, we’ll dig a little deeper and talk about how to incorporate worldbuilding details without info-dumping, how your characters interact with your world, and some reminders about showing vs telling. For now, I’ll leave you with a fun and useful activity!

MACARONI MAPS!

I can’t take credit for this idea because I first saw it on tumblr, but it gives us an excuse to play with macaroni as if we’re in kindergarten. 

So you want to draw a map of your brilliant, extensive fantasy world, but you don’t know where to start. I’ve been there, I feel that. Time to make a mess. 

Grab some pasta of the uncooked variety. Elbows are best, but anything other than spaghetti will probably work. 

Grab a large sheet of paper, and something to draw with like a pencil or marker. 

Take a handful of pasta and throw it on the paper. Throw some more. Dump the whole box on the paper. Go wild. Then get your hands in there and spread it around in the vague shape of a continent (or multiple continents). 

With your writing utensil, trace around the edges of your pasta continents, especially the uneven edges and weird shapes. When you’ve traced all the way around, sweep away the pasta (but save it -- you can probably still cook it and eat it) and boom, you’ve got a map! Add cities and landforms and oceans and such and you’re on your way to having a world worthy of an atlas.

I know this sounds kinda silly, but I promise it’s a lot of fun and you’ll get some really cool maps out of it! Give it a try, and if you make something really cool, I’d love to see it! Email me a picture of your map at acallari@pls-net.org, and you just might see your map featured on the blog!

Also keep an eye on this blog in the next few days, because I’ve got another fun activity coming up that I think you booklovers will really enjoy. Stay tuned… 👀

Lastly, a little update of what I’ve been up to! 

What I'm Reading

Just finished: Dig, by A.S. King. What an absolutely brilliant book!! I've been a fan of A.S. King for years, but I honestly think this book is my new favorite of hers. It's truly excellent, and I highly recommend!

Currently reading: Nothing, actually, because I just finished Dig yesterday and I haven't decided what to read next 🤣 anyone got any recommendations?

What I'm Writing

It's July, which means it's another session of Camp NaNoWriMo! This month I'm trying to write 80,000 words of my current fantasy wip called The Oracle Stone. It is... a hot mess at the moment, but shh that's what revisions are for (and this one is going to need a lot of them!). I'm at 36,000 words for the month so far, so I'm on track to get to 80,000 if I sacrifice a few nights of sleep later in the month 🤣

I hope you're all doing okay and enjoying your summer! Leave a comment with future Writer's Nook suggestions (really, please do, because after worldbuilding idk what else to tell you guys lol), tell me what you're reading, and if you try the macaroni maps, send me a pic!! And now that the library's open again, I hope to see some of y'all in there too.

Till next time! 

Anna 😎✌🏻

Anna's Writing Nook: Talkin' About Dialogue

Hey guys! Welcome back to the Writer’s Nook! I hope y’all have had a good week. Last time, we talked about point of view and I recommended some exercises to play around with POV that I hope you enjoyed if you tried them! Today, let’s dive into dialogue.

For some writers, dialogue is easy and fun and the best part of writing. For others, it’s the bane of their existence. Whatever your opinions on dialogue, hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful, and if you’re a dialogue-hater, maybe you’ll find it a little easier after reading this. So let’s chat!

First, I’ll give you the basics for formatting dialogue:

1. Always start a new paragraph when a new character speaks.
1. For example:

“What’re y’all doing after school?” I asked, catching up with the group.

“Homework,” replied Julie. “What else?”

2. Dialogue is shown with phrases in quotation marks, usually (but not always) followed by a dialogue tag like “he said.” 
1. For example: 

“Do you guys want to get some ice cream later?” Martin asked.

3. Punctuation, like commas, periods, question marks, etc. always go inside the quotation marks.
1. Examples:

“Can we please get a puppy?” Gina begged.

“Looks like rain later,” Dad remarked, standing at the window with his hands on his hips.

Alisha raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”

As you can see in all of those examples above, there’s a number of ways you can format dialogue. How and where you place the dialogue tags is up to you and depends on the the tone of the sentence. Sometimes you can interrupt dialogue with a tag or an action to create a break in the character’s words, like this:

“Oh, and by the way––” Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate –– ”anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”

This example interrupts Jason’s words with an action as he’s talking, using em dashes to interject and abruptly cut off the words. It’s a different visual effect than writing it like this:

“Oh, and by the way…” Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate. “Anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”

Or like this:

Jason reached across the table and stole a bunch of fries from Kelly’s plate. “Oh, and by the way, anybody got Mr. Thompson’s homework? I dipped that class today.”

See the difference? None of these formats are incorrect or less effective, but they all tell the scene just a little bit differently. 

But you can also do something like this, that’s a little bit less of an interjection but still a break in the middle of the sentence:

“Are you really sure,” Terri said, drawing out her words, “that this is the only way?”

That kind of interjection tells the reader to take a breath in the middle of the sentence, and adds emphasis to the description that Terri is deliberately drawing out the sentence. Instead of simply saying that Terri is talking slowly, your mind reads it that way because of the interruption in the middle of the sentence.

As an additional note, if you’re writing a full-on conversation, you don’t always need dialogue tags after every sentence. For example:

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” Jamie snapped, fixing me with a glare. “How could you keep something like that from us?”

“Because it wasn’t my thing to tell,” I argued. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it. You found out when Maddy was permitted to tell. That’s the best we could do.”

“Yeah but you knew,” Jamie shot back. “And you should’ve told us.”

“I’ve already told you, I couldn’t. Sworn to secrecy.”

“Right, like I’d believe that.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Come on, man. You’re blowing it out of proportion.”

Okay, I’ll stop before I get out of hand and write an entire story right here. But I used an argument because the rapid-fire exchanges are best to show a situation where dialogue tags aren’t needed. I started with them, of course, to introduce who’s talking and what the general mood of the scene is. But then once the conversation gets going, I have the characters exchange words in turn so you still know who’s talking despite the absence of dialogue tags. In those two lines, the tags would’ve been redundant and clunky. Unless I wanted to show one of the characters completing an action or shifting the tone, the tags are unnecessary. The words alone add emphasis to what’s being spoken, in this case, emphasizing the snappy tone of the argument.

Another note, while we’re on the topic: the word “said” is not evil. A lot of advice out there says to always avoid the word “said” when writing dialogue. That advice is bad. You are allowed to say “said.” If you’re constantly replacing it with other terms, you lose the meaning of those terms and the emotion you’re trying to convey. “Said” is a sort of filler word that the reader’s eyes can glance over. It’s a simple note to say who’s talking, and it doesn’t bring any attention to the way the character is talking. If you do want to note that a character is speaking in a certain way, you can either use an adverb –– ”said quietly” –– or replace “said” with something like “murmured,” “whispered,” or “mumbled.” Keep in mind, though, those verbs are all very different connotations of “speaking quietly.” If you’re going to replace “said,” make sure you’re choosing the right term.

Now that we got the basics down, let’s talk about dialogue as a tool for conveying emotion. Dialogue builds authenticity in your characters, especially when you’re able to show their personalities through the way they talk. It’s a great tool for following the “show, don’t tell” rule. If your character can show the way they feel rather than you saying something like “Katie was saddened by the news” or even “Katie said sadly,” it boosts the emotion you’re trying to get across.

Some ways you can show emotion through dialogue are by using things like ellipses (...), em dashes (––), italicizing or capitalizing words (though be careful with this and don’t overdo it), and having your character stutter, start their sentences over, or cut off in the middle of a sentence. Those are all tells of high emotion. Like this:

“W-Wait, no–– No, stop––”

In just this short sentence, it’s clear that the speaker is desperate, afraid, and possibly shocked. They start with a stutter, speak only in short words, and cut off before they finish a complete sentence. I didn’t write any action around it, but you can tell that this line would show up in a high-tension, high-stakes scene where something or someone the narrator cares about is on the line. There’s a sense of danger and fear. And all of that was conveyed just by using some funky punctuation.

I won’t go too much more in-depth, because this stuff can be nuanced and complicated and I don’t want you to feel like it’s super difficult. Don’t overthink it and give yourself writer’s block. These are just some things to keep in mind if you’re trying to figure out how best to frame a conversation in a story, but they’re obviously not straight-up laws. 

The best way, in my experience, to test out if your dialogue sounds right is to read it out loud, using the inflections and emotions you imagine for the scene. If the words don’t feel natural, as though this was a real-life conversation, that might be a sign to go back and simplify some stuff. Your characters shouldn’t sound like robots; they should sound like people. Think about how conversations carry on in real life and in movies and such. People often don’t speak in perfect, complete sentences, and in groups, they talk over each other. You don’t want your dialogue scenes to be hot messes, of course, but try to tap into your characters’ voices when they speak. Speech shows a lot about a person, and the same is true in fiction.

Okay! Now that we’re through that, let’s talk about books! This is a library blog, after all. While perusing Twitter today, I came across a couple threads of awesome books featuring Black protagonists, many of which are written by Black authors. A lot of these I’d never heard of despite them being out for awhile, so I want to uplift these writers. Black lives and Black stories matter, always. Here’s a thread from FierceReads of YA books by Black authors:

https://twitter.com/FierceReads/status/1268209909449003008?s=20

And here’s another thread of YA fantasy and sci-fi with female Black protagonists (I’ve already added like all of these to my TBR, they sound awesome!):

https://twitter.com/KerbearDraws/status/1257343715309477892?s=20

As for what I’ve been reading lately, not a whole lot lol. I haven’t finished or started anything since last week; I’ve been writing more than reading these days. I am so close to being done with the second draft of my wip, THE DIVINE SAINT. I only have a few chapters left to revise, woohoo! 

That’s all I’ve got for ya today! Try out writing some dialogue scenes!! Read some good books! And leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions for next week’s post! 

Till next Wednesday,

Anna 😎✌🏻