Conversations and dialogue

Posted on by
1

I have a habit of posting conversations I have had throughout the day on my Facebook wall. I don’t know why I do this, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say it has to be because I like to laugh. What I share are tidbits I found amusing, usually no more than I few lines, that tend to end with a silly little punchline. I don’t know if anyone else finds them funny, but I write them for myself and I find them hysterical.

Take yesterday’s heart-stopping installment:

I had a co-worker tell me that she didn’t have any friends. Being the nice guy that I am, I told her I’d be her friend. Then being the guy that I am, I asked her if it was a paying position. She just laughed. I’m guessing no.

Or this one from a few weeks ago:

In today’s installment of My Job
Me: (As I complete putting in an order) Skadoosh!
Coworker: You say that too! You’re my new best friend.
Me: Sorry, I already have a best friend, but I’ll keep you in mind in case I piss mine off.
Coworker: (laughs)

There seems to be no real substantive reason for writing it, either than to amuse myself, but I can’t help wonder if there may be a hidden payoff.

I write a lot of dialogue in my works. The dynamics the two people have fascinates me. Inner monologue bores me, but a conversation between two or more people engages my imagination. Conversations are conduits to discovery for the readers and for the characters engaged in the conversation. I see the scene in my head, much like a movie, and dialogue is essential to moving the story forward.

The trouble I have with my writing, and it’s one that those who have read my works have commented on, is that my dialogue tends to be stilted. When I’m rereading a scene, I have to agree. I write how I would like to speak, not the way people actually speak. I use a vocabulary that’s a bit beyond what we use in our daily life, and I’m fine with that. I want to elevate the way we speak, not dumb it down. There’s an element of wish-fulfillment in that I am a horrible verbal communicator. I wish I could speak as well as I write. I hope I write as well as I think I do. I just have to learn how to write it a bit more conversationally.

So I actively listen to how people talk. What are they saying? How are they phrasing it? Can I adequately replicate their style of speech, their inflections and such? Am I over-thinking it? Can someone help me!

Maybe sharing the conversations I find funny will help me learn how to better write dialogue, but maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. In the end, I think I just like reliving what made me laugh in the first place. Whether or not you or anyone else finds it funny doesn’t really matter. Except it does. I really want to be a more effective writer.

Obsessed

Posted on by
Reply

Obsession. That’s what’s fueling my character Eli, his obsession with Jasmine. He’s a man so in love with her, that he’s ignoring everything around him, risking his own relationships and his job security for a woman who wants nothing to do with him. He’s following her, stalking her, fooling himself into believing he only wants to keep her safe while becoming a danger in his own right.

I know how it feels to become obsessed with something. I often fixate on things to the exclusion of everything else. Usually it’s a certain subject or maybe it’s a book. I became obsessed with The Lord of the Rings and I read almost anything related to Middle Earth. I did the same with Harry Potter, and I became fixated with Catholicism that I read everything Wikipedia had to say about the Popes, from St. Peter to Benedict XVI.

I also know what it feels like to free fall into an obsession with a person. Though I never went so far as to stalk her, I would imagine it would be a very short slide from interest to full-blown psycho. That’s a scary confession to make. It happened after my split with my ex, and I wanted to keep tabs on her even though the thought of her with someone else hurt me. Seeing her happy without me stunted my own road to recovery. I eventually shut her out, not wanting to feed the madness that threatened to consume my sanity. Eli never makes that decision.

For me, that’s what scares me about Eli. He loved her once, and now that love has become a perverse mockery that threatens Jasmine, her new beau, and even Eli’s own relationship with Cyndi. He doesn’t care. Could that happen to me? Could I become that obsessed that I’m willing to lose everything for a love that doesn’t even exist? Could it happen to you? Has it happened to you?

I hope not, but it’s a legitimate fear. It’s too easy a trap to fall into. We can obsess over an ex-love, an unrequited love or crush, or even a celebrity. Have you felt that pull into madness? Have you felt yourself drawn down a path that leads to oblivion, where reality ceases to matter, and only the object of your desire does?

My characters tend to be an exaggeration of my own flaws. Eli is so myopic that he fails to see the damage he is causing even to the object of his obsession. He willing follows the road to perdition whereas I turn it inward and chose to walk away. I don’t believe in hurting others if I can help it. I don’t believe in pursuing a love that does not return my affection. That’s a masochism, pure and simple.

I write about my pain, and I write about my fears. I write about the betrayals that hurt me and I write about the hope of finding love on the other side. I write about my experience in life and love. As I write them, they become separate from me, a creation born from my experience, but made to fit a story I’m trying to tell. There may be elements of truth in the telling, but a fiction all the same.

But obsession scares me. It’s like a drug whose call burns in your veins. It’s a longing that’s hard to ignore, and it’s a perfect way to fuel the madness one Elias Grey.

Thoughts at work

Posted on by
1

I’m stuck at work, my mind lost in thoughts of plot machinations, character development, and how to improve my novel. It’s almost at a place where it needs to be. I just wish I were in front of my laptop instead of at work.

Oh hail!

Posted on by
1

What a storm! I’m glad I missed it. I was a to work yesterday when I got a message from my mother telling me that hail broke out the window to my bedroom. Father boarded it up, since I couldn’t really do anything about it while I was an hour away. When I got home, the house looked a little worse for wear, especially the trees. Small branches and leaves littered the street and the yard.

I didn’t have much time to deal with the catastrophe of the broken pane since my nephew was celebrating his First Communion, and my the time I got home the sun had set and I just went to bed. Today, I needed to deal with the gaping hole on the wall.

I bought a roll of plastic and furring strips to keep the wind and rain out. My brother helped me take out the broken window, which is no easy feat. The trim around the window was already rotten, and my plan has been to replace them when I could, so the fact that the hail broke the window isn’t that big a deal. My main concern, as I inspected the framing, was that the outside wall and the frame be free of rot, which I’m happy to report it is.

I covered the window frame with plastic before covering it with plywood. Since the window is gone, we’re having to up the exterior project up. The back of the house, for whatever reason, has stucco which needs to be removed. As long as that’s happening, my other window will need to be removed, along with all the windows on the south side of the house which also sustained damage during the storm, but didn’t shatter as my south side window.

We’ll remove the stucco, ensure the walls are clean and free of rot, use a house wrap, then install the new windows and trim before installing new siding. It’s a lot of work, a job that we had planned on completing on one fine someday, but looks like Mother Nature decided to expedite the work. So be it!

Luckily, we have most of the siding already. It’s going to be a big job, and it’ll get rather expensive, but it needs to be done. For the short-term I’ll be down a window, but I’m fine with that. As long as the elements don’t enter the room, I can slum it for a while. The other issue I have to deal with is what to do with my truck that we worked on last year and painted. The hail dented the heck out of it! That, I’ll admit, has me a little more upset, but that’s a topic for another time.

Today’s update

Posted on by
1

I just finished rewriting the first scene of the second chapter, where my main character run into who will fast become her love interest. Doing so, I hope, will jump-start the action, like I stated on my previous post, but also resolve a persistent question that has been bothering me. Can two people fall so quickly in love that they immediately begin a relationship?

Maybe it is possible, but I’m not a fan of the whole love-at-first-sight story arch. Instead, I rewrote it so that I introduce the idea that they were classmates back in high school, and though Jasmine shoots down the idea that they were an item back then, there is an obvious chemistry between the two, one I hope to exploit to make their quick transition into becoming a couple a little realistic.

Of course, such a monumental change means adjusting everything that comes afterwards. I believe I can do the necessary work without disturbing too much of what I have already written. Further, I hope it succeeds in drawing the reader into the story sooner rather than later.