by
Jerome Stern
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Let your character talk not simply for plot or exposition, but to create the person for the reader. Then she starts to live. Talk alone can create a character and a story.
Even single words can be clichés. All words are created equal, but some words have grown more tired than others. That’s true not only of adjectives like unique or azure but even of certain function words. As, for example. Over the years writers have used as to get more information into their sentences:
“No,” he said, as he leaned back in his red leather chair.
That use of as as a coordinating conjunction between two main clauses looks harmless and certainly is not toxic. But there’s something so familiar in it that it reminds readers of commercial magazine stories. There can’t be anything intrinsically wrong with as used in this way, but look for it in opening sentences of admired, anthologized stories, and you’re not likely to find it. The same thing is true for while:
Fiction writing is less susceptible than journalistic writing to another class of problematic words. These are vogue words that seem to spring into general use and then are heard everywhere. They come from the political bureaucracy, from science (popular psychology especially), and from news events. Soon all sorts of people are assuming postures or networking or defining windows or undergoing devolution or getting in touch with their feelings and so forth. This sort of language can be useful to a fiction writer. If you listen for trends in usage, you can suggest a great deal about a character or a social group through conversation. Then you have recognized the cliché, not succumbed to it. But you need take care—vogue words can date your story as fast as they disappear themselves.
The familiar phrases of conventional fiction signal to readers that the work is going to be as predictable as its prose. For some readers and writers that is a virtue. Jean Kent and Candace Shelton’s The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book is a perversely helpful book. Designed for romance writers, it is filled with suggested phrases like “the thought froze in her brain,” “something clicked in her mind,” and “she shuddered, bristling with indignation.” It suggests descriptions such as “her hips tapered into long straight legs” and “his ruggedly handsome face was vaguely familiar.” For romance readers, that language signals that the book is what they are looking for. But for other readers, those phrases can mean that the work is not going to be fresh, original, and thoughtful. In fact, The Romance Writers’ Phrase Book might be a useful anti-dictionary for writers. Phrases of this sort often simplify reality. They do not describe what is seen but substitute a convention for the observation.
If you don’t create evocative settings, your characters seem to have their conversations in vacuums or in some beige nowhere-in-particular. Some writers love description too much. They go on and on as if they were setting places at the table for an elaborate dinner that will begin later on. Beautiful language or detailed scenery does not generate momentum. Long descriptions can dissipate tension or seem self-indulgent. Don’t paint pictures. Paint action.
Variations on said, like answered, commented, added, replied, asked, queried, muttered, snarled, roared, are best used sparingly. They call attention to themselves and sometimes seem strained. Adverbs in speech tags often sound corny—she said kittenishly, he responded sneeringly, she hissed angrily.
An economical and effective way of tagging speech is to follow the line of dialogue with an action or a thought by the speaker:
“I’m surprised you came here.” Frank jumped up from his chair.
“I am too.” Eva looked past Frank, out the window, as if she did not want to admit that they were in the same room.
People speak variously. Some talk in clichés, some talk like the authors of philosophy tomes. Some people slip back and forth between dialect and formal language. Writers can signal that they know that the character’s speech is idiosyncratic:
Proget was a weird mix of garret and gutter. One minute he’d be holding forth about post-modern discontinuities and the next he’d be asking if you noticed the receptionist’s bazooms.
The result is that readers accept the peculiarity of the speech and, in fact, see it as a distinctive feature that helps establish the character.
Arguments are most nerve-wracking when the characters imply what they feel instead of coming right out and saying it. In fact, the more intense the feelings, the more likely people are to say the opposite of what they really mean. If you want to keep up a high level of tension, keep the dialogue evasive, filled with suppressed information and unstated emotions. Once people really are candid, once the unstated becomes stated, the tension is released, and the effect is cathartic. If you’re trying to build pressure, don’t take the lid off the pot.
We read for delight, for insight, for thrills, and for comfort. But how do we read as writers?
The answer is—differently. Some writers read gingerly, fearful of being overwhelmed by the eloquence of others and losing confidence in their own powers. Others read savagely, looking for weaknesses that betray the inadequacies of the text and its creator. Many writers won’t read while they’re writing for fear of echoing the voice of the book they are reading. Others are afraid of finding that their own territory has already been worked over. But some writers love to read. They aren’t intimidated or inhibited by writers, whether classic or contemporary. They are inspired as their own imaginations leap up at the achievements of others.
As a writer you can read in the traditional way, giving yourself over to the fictional world, getting caught up in the characters’ lives, suffering with them, and sharing their emotions and adventures. Or you can read more analytically, trying to understand how these writers handle the problems of narration, how they make time pass, make characters memorable, or embed their own social observations. You can learn a great deal from this kind of reading. You begin to see the devices writers use to make scenes and dialogue vivid or to get into the minds of their characters, and you recognize that it is a magic you can learn yourself.
When writers try to manipulate their readers by making them feel emotions that the writers haven’t honestly earned, we call the work sentimental. Certain situations will make readers teary-eyed—the death of a child, the reunion of long-lost loved ones, the call to action of a group of unjustly oppressed people, the cruel disappointment of an old person, the self-sacrifice of a courageous animal. Using such scenes is like pushing a button that causes an emotional reflex.
Readers value fiction that moves them emotionally but may resent being set up and manipulated. Some stories, like those involving loss and grief, love and death, are intrinsically deeply touching. In those cases, it’s more effective to use restraint in your telling and to avoid overemphasizing what readers are already feeling.
Writers often respond to the charge by conjuring up reality. Perhaps a story has a high school principal who is a pompous, rigid, overweight person in a bow tie who fails to understand his students and thinks them worthless.
“A stereotype,” say the readers.
“But I know a person just like this,” argues the writer. The writer may be telling the truth, but if readers feel a character is a stereotype, it means that the writer has not perceived anything new, that she has simply described the obvious traits. The writer is unaware of her own cultural bias—she’s finding only what she’s been taught to see. Therefore, the character, even though based on life, doesn’t come alive as an individual.