Write to Done

How to Make your Readers Sit Up and Take Notice

Raiders of the Lost ...

By Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of Write to Done

Let’s say you want to write about a dry subject like how to use backlinking for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

How can you make readers sit up and take notice – and entertain them at the same time?

Here’s a challenge for you …

Imagine writing an intro which weaves together the following topics: ancient civilizations, India, the jungle, mysterious temples, tigers, dark passages, snakes hanging from the ceiling, forgotten gods, altar carvings that reveal hidden secrets – and SEO.

It’s impossible, right?

Andy Fletcher managed to do just that in the intro to his report Backlink Leverage.

Here’s how he crafted his intro:

You’ve probably read the sales letters that have some … interesting stories to tell.

How the guy writing was on a holiday in India, how they were exploring the jungle, and how they came across this mysterious temple…

It was overgrown with vines. There was a tiger lounging by the door, they had to sneak past.

They crept through dark passages, wondering if every brush along their back was just a vine hanging from the ceiling or a poisonous snake.

And then they found it. The altar of some ancient, long-for gotten god. And carved into that altar they found a secret. The secret that has allowed them to exploit Google and made them rich …

Well, ain’t that just remarkable. A lost civilization that thousands up on thousands of archeologists have yet to discover, despite it being in a far more obvious state than all the other ones that are, y’know, buried…

And not only that, but this civilization was coming up with hot SEO techniques before there was an SE to O.

I’m sure impressed.

Or I would be, if it wasn’t so utterly ridiculous

I was thoroughly entertained by this introduction and it made me read more. What’s your reaction?

Have you written a creative intro that keeps readers glued to the page? If so, please share it in the comments.

Mary Jaksch is Chief Editor of Write to Done and co-creator of the A-List Blogging Bootcamps and the A-List Blogger Club. Enjoy more of Mary’s writing at Goodlife ZEN and in our free WDT book, The (nearly) Ultimate Guide to Better Writing! Just enter your name and email in the form at the top of the sidebar for immediate download.

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Categories: Craft

10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Dialogue

A guest post by Ali Luke

“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” – Lewis Carroll

I can manage books without pictures, but I know how Alice feels about the conversations. When I’m browsing, I flick through books to see how much dialogue there is. If there doesn’t seem to be much, I’ll put the book down and choose something else.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who does this, either…

As a writer, dialogue lets you:

Show rather than tell – when characters act and speak, they become real to us
Build tension and drama, furthering the plot
Reveal character in what’s said (or what isn’t said)
Create white space on the page – attractive to busy readers

But many writers list “dialogue” as one of the key things they struggle with. I love writing dialogue, and I still have to work hard at it – though thanks to the wonderful Lorna Fergusson from fictionfire, I’ve definitely improved.

So what makes for good dialogue?

#1: Watch Your Dialogue Tags

A “dialogue tag” is the bit you put before or after the dialogue, like:

he said
she asked
I replied

In primary (elementary) school, I was taught to vary dialogue tags with words like whispered, shouted, pondered … This might be great for encouraging kids to grow their vocabulary, but it’s poor advice for any adult fiction writer.

Normally, the word “said” will do just fine. Throw in an occasional “whispered” or “shouted” if you need to, but don’t get fancier than that. The reader will barely notice the word “said” – but when characters start “mumbling awkwardly” or “opining” then the dialogue tags end up distracting from the actual dialogue.

(I particularly dislike the use of words like “laughed” and “giggled” as dialogue tags. Does anyone really giggle a whole sentence?)

You can normally avoid adjectives and modifying phrases, too. If the dialogue is well-written, readers will know that it was “said happily” or “shouted furiously”.

#2: Ground Your Dialogue in a Scene

It’s easy to fall into the trap of “talking heads” – two characters discussing something in bare lines of dialogue, with little or no supporting text.

Every conversation that takes place needs to be somewhere. The location or scene makes a difference to the actual dialogue. Think about:

Where are your characters? In a busy coffee shop, driving in a car, on a train, at home…?
Who’s nearby? Nosy onlookers, young children, the boss…

You don’t have to have action or description after every single line of dialogue, but you do need a sense that your characters are physically located in a particular setting.

It can be tough to manage dialogue on the phone, where characters can’t see one another; you can use tone of voice or background noise to help add to the scene.

#3: Use Dialect and Accents with Caution

One mistake that newer writers often make is to go over the top with dialect words or accents. This can make the text incredibly hard to read – and it can also be unintentionally comic, or even offensive.

Generally, less is more. If you have a Scottish character, they don’t need to sound like a Burns poem. Use the occasional dialect word like “wee” and the reader will get the idea.

Similarly, if you have an uneducated or lower-class character, using non-standard grammar or phrases (e.g. “ain’t”) will establish their voice – you don’t need to start knocking letters off every word.

#4: Don’t Let One Person Speak for Too Long

In real life, we don’t normally give long speeches during regular conversations. There are some circumstances where one person might speak for several minutes at a time – during a lecture, sermon, etc – but this is limited to special occasions.

If your characters have long blocks of speech, break those up. Other characters could butt in or simply ask for clarification. You could also have non-verbal responses from the listeners (nodding, sighing, frowning, etc).

When your plot requires a character to speak for some length of time, don’t give us the whole speech! A few lines from the start and end, plus a narrative summary of what was said, will be enough.

#5: Realistic Doesn’t Mean Real

This was one of the areas I struggled with in my novel. I tried too hard to make my dialogue realistic – with lots of “ums”, hesitations, repetitions and so on. It was over-the-top. Dialogue is supposed to give an impression of real speech; it’s not supposed to be a transcript of how we really talk.

When I went back and cleaned up the dialogue, my text flowed much more smoothly. That meant having my characters speak in realistic-sounding but clear sentences. They did hesitate or stumble at times – but only when it was really warranted by what was going on.

#6: Give Your Characters Distinct Speech Patterns

Do all your characters sound exactly the same? If so, you need to do some tweaking.

Think about:

Age: a 13-year-old will speak differently from a 70-year-old
Gender: women and men may use different vocabulary
Social background: does your character use down-to-earth words or “posh” ones?
Education level: does your character have a wide or limited vocabulary?
Geographical area: where do they live?
Particular catch phrases: don’t go overboard here, but consider whether your character has any common phrases (things like “for sure!” or “good good” or “awesome”)
Verbosity: some people tend to babble, others will be taciturn

One good trick is to take just the lines of dialogue in your short story or novel – cut out the action and dialogue tags – and see whether you can work out who said what.

#7: Don’t Put Exposition in the Dialogue

Sometimes, you need to convey information about the characters. Don’t try to force this into the dialogue – it’ll come across as stagey and fake. Avoid having characters tell one another things that they logically should already know. This sort of dialogue is a particular problem for sci-fi writers: “But captain, if the unobtanium runs out, the whole ship is gonna blow…”

If you’re really keen to get information across during a conversation, then make sure that the set-up for the conversation is appropriate. If two friends are catching up after 10 years apart, they might well fill in one another on the details of their work, family and lives in general.

#8: Use Silence as Well as Words

Sometimes, what’s not said is more powerful than what is said.

If one character says “I love you” and the other person doesn’t say anything at all, that’s often stronger than a response like “Oh, okay” or “Yeah, right”.

When a character refuses to respond to a particular question, or refuses to speak to a certain person, we immediately know that there’s something going on – without the author having to say “James didn’t want to talk about his marriage” or “Mary hadn’t been on speaking terms with her mother-in-law for years.”

#9: Get in Late, Leave Early

I’m indebted to Lorna for this particular tip: you don’t have to begin the conversation at the first word and end at the last.

If someone’s talking on the phone, cut out all the “Hi, how are you?” “Fine thanks, and you?” bits at the start. Yes, they’re realistic – but the reader isn’t interested.

Often, it’s powerful to end a scene on a line of a dialogue. We don’t need to see how the other character responds. We definitely don’t need the conversation to tail off into “Bye” and “See you next time.”

#10: Punctuate Your Dialogue Correctly

This is crucial if you’re going to be submitting your work to publishers, or if you’re entering writing competitions. It’s also vital if you’re self-publishing – you want your story or novel to be as professional as possible.

Dialogue should:

Begin on a new line for each new speaker
Have double or single quotation marks around the words (be consistent with which you choose – as a rule of thumb, the US standard is double and UK is single)
Have punctuation inside the quotation marks
End the dialogue line with a comma if you’re adding a dialogue tag, but with a full stop if you’re adding an action.

Here’s an example:

“Joe, please come here,” Sarah said. “We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“You know what.” She folded her arms.

If you’re struggling with dialogue, try writing a new scene that involves an important conversation. And if you’ve already written lots of dialogue that’s not quite working, go back through with these ten tips in mind – see how you can strengthen it.

Got any questions, or any advice to share? Just pop a comment below…

Ali Luke has just launched her first novel, Lycopolis, in ebook form. It’s a supernatural thriller with a good dose of online geekery, and it’s been described as “fast and furious” and “absolutely gripping” by readers. You can find out more – and get the first five chapters for free – at www.lycopolis.co.uk.

Registrations for the spectacular training environment for bloggers, the A-List Blogger Club, have re-opened. Join the winning team and create an unforgettable blog. Click below to find out more:

Categories: Fiction

The Importance of Inserting the ‘Mistake’ In Your Article

A mistake?

A guest post by Sean DSouza of Psychotactics

I remember the time I was watching a video on the ‘water test’

The ‘water test’ is a method to accurately gauge if a pan is exactly at the right temperature, as the accurate temperature prevents the ingredients from sticking.

As you might have realised, I had my nose to the video to make sure I wasn’t getting the steps wrong. Yet when I tried it on my pan at home, I couldn’t replicate the water test. No matter how many times I watched the video and tried the exact steps, I still couldn’t get the ‘water test’ to work.

The reason? I was using a non-stick pan

Yeah, mine was non-stick and the pan in the video was a stainless steel pan. Heck! You think I would have seen the difference. But I never did, and your readers have the same problem when they’re reading your articles.

And that’s because they’re not just reading. They’re trying to read, assimilate and execute the learning at one go.

And in doing so, they miss out some valuable points

In effect, they make ‘mistakes’. And those in-attentional mistakes can be avoided if you take the trouble to educate your reader. Of course the easiest formula to achieve this goal is to do the following:

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow.
Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way.

Step 1: Give the reader the steps to follow

Let’s say you’re teaching the reader how to cook a delicious chicken tikka masala. Obviously, you’d give them steps, because the reader is now following a recipe. And that’s what most recipes do. They tell you what to do. But they don’t tell you what possible problems or mistakes you could make while executing the dish. Which is where Step 2 comes into play.

Step 2: Point out the hurdles along the way

So ha jee, we have shown the reader how to make the chicken dish, but now we need to point out where they can go wrong. They may fry the spices too long, causing a bitter after taste. Or the gravy may turn a bit sour. And when we point out these mistakes, we help the reader avoid the obstacles in advance.

This gives your article two solid advantages

Any article that covers both the how-to as well as the mistakes immediately marks itself out as a solid, enduring piece of information. The second advantage however, is that if your article instantly gets beefed up to a nice, solid consistency every single time.

But what are the mistakes you can make when adding ‘mistakes?’

The problem with article-writing isn’t that you have less information. In fact the reverse is often true. You have the curse of knowledge. So you try to stuff your article with a whole lot of how-to information. And then while the reader rolls around with indigestion, you proceed to add even more on his plate.

And there’s a way around this problem

You want to balance out the how-to with the mistakes. If you have two or three steps involved in the how-to, then a mistake or two is fine to slip in, just to balance things a bit. But should you find yourself generating half a dozen mistakes or more, it’s probably a better idea to write an article (or two) that covers the mistakes alone.

Pointing out the mistakes a reader can make are crucial

I sure as heck should have known that I should have been using a stainless steel pan. The pan was right in front of my eyes in the video I was watching. And yet I missed it. And so will your reader.

So point out the mistakes and both you and your reader will go on to make many more perfect chicken tikka masalas for a long, long time.

To read more articles by Sean DSouza—and get a very useful report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go toPsychoTactics.com

Categories: Uncategorized

How to Show (Not Tell): A Writing Lesson from John LeCarre

Can you show (not tell)?

By Mary Jaksch

I’m sure you agree that whether you write fiction or faction, stories are a great way to convey your message.

Even in fact-focused blog posts, a good story can engage and inspire readers.

As all storytellers know, a good story conveys mood, touches emotions, and holds the reader captive. A skillful storyteller sets the scene by showing – not telling. As a writer, you need to reach for one of your most important writing tools: description.

Show (not tell) – how to do it?

You can find the slogan ‘show – not tell’ in every writing book. But how do you do it? How to make a story come to life?

A few days ago, I chose Smiley’s People by John LeCarré as my bed-time book.

It was a mistake.

Just as the story slid from harmless to menacing in the space of a couple of pages, the lights went out.

I fumbled for a torch, but couldn’t find it. The growling wind, the sheets of lightning – everything seemed to spell danger. I couldn’t sleep.

How did LeCarré do it?

How did he weave his story so well that its mood colored my experience? Well, LeCarré knows how to show. His descriptions get under the skin.

People: how to describe what lies beneath the skin

Describing people can be tricky because it’s easy to slip into clichés.

So often we read stuff like this: “She was tall. Her dark hair …”
Jabber, jabber, jabber. Such descriptions don’t show what’s beneath the skin.

In contrast, here are some examples from Smiley’s People:

Barley looked at Clive, who had one of those English faces that seemed to have been embalmed while he was still a boy king, at his hard clever eyes with nothing behind them, at the ash beneath his skin.

And here’s how LeCarré introduces a new character:

There was a knock at the door and Wintle came in, an eternal student of fifty-seven. He was tall but crooked, with a curly grey head that shot off at an angle, and an air of brilliance almost extinguished… He sat with his knees together and held his sherry glass away from him like a chemical retort he wasn’t sure of.

You can see and feel Wintle, can’t you? One of the interesting things here – apart from the brilliant characterization – is that we get a sense not only of the character, but also of the observer’s experience.

But what about mood? That’s when landscape becomes a major player.

How to use landscape to create mood

LeCarré is a maestro of menace. Here is how he describes the landscape of an interrogation facility:

The gates opened electronically and beyond them lay mounds of clipped grass like mass graves grown over. Olive downs stretched towards the sunset. A mushroom-shaped cloud would have looked entirely natural.

Bleak. As a reader you know right away that there are no happy voices here.

A description gives the reader a moment to reflect, to feel, to intuit. It’s like a pause in the forward momentum of a piece.

What you need to know about pace

A description slows down the pace. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As the great Sol Stein says in Stein on Writing:

The best of good books have purposeful slowdowns in pace from time to time because the author knows that readers, like athletes, must catch their breath.

But you need to crank the pace up again. Here is how LeCarre changes the pace in a dialogue between Barley and Ned. In the story, Barley has just heard a strange message on the phone.

‘It isn’t a joke, I’m afraid,’ Ned said. ‘It’s actually very serious.’
Lost once more in his own contemplations, Barley slowly replaced the receiver. ‘The line between actually very serious and actually very funny is actually very thin,’ he remarked.
‘Well, let’s cross it, shall we?’ said Ned.

Notice how the long sentence with its hypnotic repetitions slows the pace, and the crisp remark that follows picks it up again.

**How descriptions solve the talking heads problem**

If you describe a conversation, you are in danger of the ‘talking heads’ syndrome. This means that the reader only gets a floating interchange of ideas – without the grounded context of flesh, bones, feelings, and ambience.

This is where a good description can save the day. As you can see in the examples by LeCarré, descriptions can set the scene, convey the inexpressible, and turn the reader into a witness, instead of remaining a mere bystander.

Please share interesting descriptions (good or bad) in the comments. You may want to add your thoughts on why a particular description works – or why it doesn’t.

Categories: Craft

Nominate Your Favorite Writing Blog: 6th Annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest

The ANNUAL TOP 10 BLOGS FOR WRITERS

It’s time to open up nominations for the 6th annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest—the blogosphere’s biggest contest for writing blogs.

How to Nominate Your Favorite Writing Blog:

→ Nominate your favorite blog in the comment section.
→ You have only one vote (only your first will be counted).
→ Please include the web address of the blog.
→ Explain why you think the blog is worthy of winning this year’s award.

To make the cut, a blog must be nominated more than once.

Nominations must be received by 10 December, 2011.

Check out the finalists here.

Click here to see the winners!

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Grab your copy of the FREE WDT book The (nearly) Ultimate Guide to Better Writing! All you need to do is to enter your name and email in the form at the top of the sidebar for immediate download.

Categories: Blogwriting

How to Make your Readers Sit Up and Take Notice

By Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of Write to Done