Sharon Bala's Blog, page 10

You know when you’re baking, cracking eggs into a bowl and one is rotten? This happened to me once: the green and grey ooze slipped between my fingers, the sulphur turned my stomach. A bad book is a rotten egg. That stink, it lingers. When I say bad book I don’t mean purple prose or dud dialogue. When I say bad, I mean dangerous. Recently I had the ill luck of what seemed like a carton, a rash of rotten eggs.

There was the historical fiction wherein the only Indigenous characters were dead, their ghosts floating around. The book where every female character was either a virgin or a whore. (The writer is a misogynist, I texted a friend. That’s it. That’s the review.) And the YA I can only describe as a smorgasbord fit for a glutton for punishment. The cast included a predatory gay man, a gay kid whose sexual assault was a weak plot device in service to the straight protagonist’s betterment, and a one-note single mother with a neglected child (Black, natch). By contrast, the two-dimensional trans character was a relief. At least the kid didn’t get killed or beaten up. The whole mess, slap-dash and badly written, reeked of what it likely was: a cishet author trying to capitalize on #trends and a publisher asleep at the wheel. Or worse: rotten egging the author on.

Then came the novel about two urbanites - a Black transgender woman and a bi-racial man - who, on a whim, take a cycling holiday in rural Spain. Naturally, the author is an old white guy. And like Lionel Shriver delivering a keynote in a Sombrero, every beat of his book twanged false. From the conceit of the trip to the characters’ ease on the trail to the cringe-worthy rap lyrics to the way the man repeatedly thought of his best friend as if she was a man. Trans women are women. The end. If you’re going to write about characters who are nothing like you, do your homework. Google hiking + Black and traveling while trans for a start. I get it. The book was an elaborate troll, the literary equivalent of Black face. Hint: if you drip contempt for Black and Trans people in real life, it’s going to show in your fiction. What’s amazing to me is a publisher (in 2019!) gave this pathetic temper tantrum a platform.

The heart breaker was the book by an author whose work I’d previously enjoyed. For 200+ pages it had me. Excellent prose. A propulsive plot. An Indigenous point-of-view character with a redemption story arc. But if you know even one true thing about the way Indigenous people are treated, you’ll guess what came next. The Indigenous character, the only one in the book, was murdered by the white protagonists who drugged him first to make it look like he was drunk, then set the building on fire, so that after he burned inside everyone thought he’d caused the accident. It was played off to the reader as a mistaken case of “self defence.” This is why Indigenous authors get up in arms when settlers write about them. THIS IS WHY. Because it’s not enough they are being murdered by cops and civilians in real life, writers must kill them on the page too. Look, I’m sure the author’s intentions were good. But you can’t be ham-fisted about Indigenous justice. You can’t prioritize plot twists over politics, not when the real life stakes are so high.

In this, the year of Our Lord twenty bloody twenty, I can’t believe I still need to spell this out:

The unrelenting imagery of dead Indigenous people in fiction desensitizes us to their deaths in real life so that we don’t hold killers or governments or oil and mining companies accountable, so we don’t demand justice.

Trans people are still fighting for basic equality because society refuses to recognize their genders. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Books that get this twisted, books featuring characters who confuse their best friend’s gender, are piling on to the problem, preventing trans people from having basic human rights.

Perpetuating the myth of the predatory gay man makes straights hysterical about their children’s real life teachers or the man next door.

Reading is a powerful education/ miseducation tool. Through a story, we step into someone else’s body and experience the world as them. And if we go gallivanting in Spain with two Black characters, one of whom is trans, who don’t at any point fear for their safety or get dirty looks or hassled at the airport then when the Black and trans people in our lives or on the news tell us about the bigotry they experienced, we are less likely to believe them.

But…but…I hear someone say. Yeah, you there in the front, Satan’s Advocate. I hear you arguing readers aren’t stupid. They know fiction is imaginary. Sure they do. That must be why readers assume every debut novel is autobiography, why people keep asking if I was an immigration lawyer. That must be why the husband of an author I know got dirty looks after she published a story about an affair.

A couple of years ago, I was at a literary festival watching an author read a passage from her novel. It was a sex scene between a woman and her Indigenous lover. He was described in animalistic terms. There may even have been references to bestiality. I was sitting with a group of Indigenous authors. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. I can’t begin to imagine what they felt, hearing this white lady read this passage and knowing that everyone else in the packed theatre (mostly other white people) was hearing it too. We were all made complicit then, in that display of settler arrogance, as we listened to yet another incarnation of the Noble Savage fever dream. Afterward, at the signing table, readers came up to the author and asked “So is this accurate? Is this what life is like in the North?” “Yes,” she said, and blithely scribbled her name in their books.

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.”

There is a contract we enter into when we read a story. The author assumes authority; the reader suspends disbelief. Using the tools of craft we train the reader to trust us, to accept every word on the page. Fiction shapes the way readers understand the world, thereby influencing the world itself. We have a responsibility then to tell the truth.

The truth is not a tired trope or a dangerous stereotype. The truth is something you discover with humility, research, empathy, and the wise counsel of Subject Matter Experts (or as some people call them, Sensitivity Readers). When you don’t tell the truth—

Sorry. Let me rephrase that.

When you lie.

When you lie and claim that Black people are as safe as white people in all spaces. That queer people enjoy the same privileges as straight people. When you stubbornly insist a woman is a man. When you perpetuate the idea that the only good Indian is a dead one or a Noble Savage. When you tell these lies in black ink, with the authority of the printed page, you are either incredibly irresponsible or an asshole. Take your pick. And in telling these lies, you are making actual people’s real lives more difficult, more fraught, more dangerous.

How to do it then, how to write from outside your perspective? Glad you asked.

Last week #publishingpaidme blew up on Twitter, highlighting the ugly truth Black authors have long known, that they are offered a fraction of the advances white authors get, even when the Black authors in question are well established award-winners with an international fan base and a history of successful books, and the white authors in question have untested debut manuscripts or less, perhaps just a single essay that went viral. How can this be, this appalling and unfair disparity? IT’S WHITE SUPREMACY. WAKE THE FUCK UP.

White supremacy isn’t just pillowcase-hooded lunatics and tax-payer funded terrorists who call themselves cops. Supremacy is an entire industry - publishing houses, literary journals, literary agencies, books’ columnists, Bookstagram influencers, the faculty at MFA programs - overwhelmingly staffed by a homogeneous group of people. Is it any wonder they unconsciously undervalue the voices and work and stories of authors who don’t look like them? Is it any wonder they publish books stuffed to the gills with moronic tropes? Is it any wonder the books about Black characters that net the big money advances are written by white authors and feature said tropes? Some publishers have vowed to do better, Penguin Random House included. And I’m sincerely rooting for them, not least because they have been a good home to The Boat People. But I’m not getting my hopes up prematurely. We shall wait. We shall see.

Fact is, I’ve already been down this diversity road to nowhere. Last year I was asked to join an advisory board for a literary journal. They wanted to diversify their content and created a new volunteer board. Except they didn’t have a plan for how this board would accomplish the job. There were no meetings. In hindsight: a red flag. And in requesting my unpaid labour, they weren’t giving me any decision making power (apart from the ability to curate 25 pages in a special issue). I had my reservations, a bad feeling in my gut that these were, well-meaning perhaps, but ultimately, empty words about diversity, perhaps only a check box on a grant application. But years of reading literary magazines have proven how few Asian and Black and Indigenous authors get fiction published. My own experience is the stories I’ve written featuring white protagonists are more readily accepted. So I said yes to the volunteer work I did not have time for, because holding the door open is important. As anyone who isn’t a naive fool might have guessed, my good intentions backfired. A year later it became obvious that despite being on something that purported to be an advisory board, my advice was not wanted, thank you very much, and they would publish a known and unrepentant plagiarizer, despite the fact that I’d made it abundantly clear on Day Zero that this was the one non-negotiable about my involvement. Surprise! They didn’t want my counsel so much as my on-trend brown skin and the false veneer of diversity it conferred on the masthead. (Related: Isn’t it curious how mediocre white guys keep getting second and third and infinite chances?)

Fast forward to the present. In the overdue cultural reckoning that has resulted from George Floyd’s brutal murder, many an empty word has been uttered. Companies large and small are preening for back pats while simultaneously doing nothing. Or worse. An indie clothing store in St John’s posted their commitment to anti-racism on Instagram along with their grand plan to start a book club, of all things (this store that doesn’t sell books save the kind of amusing trifle you might find in a downstairs loo). Punchline: They want a black/ indigenous/ person of colour to lead said book club. It is what my mother would call a “goo contract.” Naturally, there is no mention of payment. Hey guys! We’re looking for slave labour. Spread the word. #blacklivesmatter.

“The right acknowledgment of black justice... won’t be found in your book clubs... It will be found in your earnest willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way.”

Tre Johnson, in a searing and thoughtful Washington Post essay on book clubs, writes (emphasis mine): “The right acknowledgment of black justice, humanity, freedom and happiness won’t be found in your book clubs, protest signs, chalk talks or organizational statements. It will be found in your earnest willingness to dismantle systems that stand in our way — be they at your job, in your social network, your neighborhood associations, your family or your home. It’s not just about amplifying our voices, it’s about investing in them and in our businesses, education, political representation, power, housing and art.”

Dismantle the systems. This is the work. The revolutionary work. Organizations could scrutinize their staff, their leadership teams, their payroll, their tenured faculty, their editors and gatekeepers, the merchandise they choose to not just sell but heavily promote. Companies, yes, even an entire industry, could diversify all of this if they wanted. If they were earnestly willing to tear down the systems that artificially prop up one group’s supremacy at the expense of everyone else. If.

Because there’s always some fragile bro piping up ”but…but…” here are:

Pie charts, bar graphs, and hard numbers illustrating demographics from the 2018 Canadian Book Publishing Diversity Baseline Survey and America’s Lee & Low 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey Results.

Here’s a first person video account from someone who works inside the industry. Here’s another.

Finally, you don’t have to be on Twitter to pay attention to @BIPOCPub.

One evening in early March my writing group came over for tea and cookies. We usually meet on the university campus, in the dusty closet of a tiny storage room that I joke is The Room of Requirement because it is stuffed to the gills with cast off furniture, books, and plants. But this meeting was special because that night for four hours in my living room, the Port Authority took the first draft of my new novel apart and put it back together. Weak characters, uneven pacing, excess scaffolding, the jumbly ending — they ferreted out all the flaws, asked smart questions, offered opinions on theme, shared insights, things I had not known about my own story. When four fellow writers with their own work and families and projects, read your garbage first draft, magnifying glasses in hand, then share their honest and constructive feedback, it is an immense act of love and generosity. I stayed up long after they left, scribbling notes for revisions. I left the living room exactly as it was, with their print outs of my manuscript and all their notes in situ, to keep the energy alive (and because I’m lazy) and worked right there all the next day, in the spotlight of sun that shone through the window, with the ghosts of their presence still haunting the air.

For a week after that meeting, I was face and ears into my manuscript, pulling nine and ten hour days entirely focused and deep in the zone (I have no small people to look after and a CCA grant, which is how this is possible). Then the pandemic changed everything and for a while, it was impossible to focus and even less possible to work. Even shallow concentration was gone, forget the deep and creative variety. But then mid-way through Week Four, Covid news fatigue set in. I started working again, beginning each day with my book instead of the latest news updates. Focus. Absorption. It came galloping back. Week Five and those nine and ten hour days were now stretching to eleven and twelve. Characters and plot and prose were my first thoughts in the morning, my last thoughts at night. Every writer understands that this level of immersion is fragile and rare. If you can, you must stay under for as long as it lasts. On Friday I submitted a second draft of the manuscript to my agent. HOORAY!

There are flaws, at least one structural issue that I don’t know how to resolve. Definitely a few darlings I haven’t yet murdered. Pace is a problem and the book is approximately seven thousand words too long (but which words? that’s the question). But breaks are important. Distance is necessary for clarity. And without clarity, there’s no hope for revision. Being a writer means getting comfortable with imperfection, knowing that it too is essential to the process.

I joined a webinar on editing recently and came away with this pearl of wisdom: every first draft is a success because by definition, its only job is to exist. To which I add: a second draft need only be better than the first.

How are you guys doing? Elisabeth texts. Best of times/ worst of times, I write back. Sometimes, truly, life feels like it’s being lived in a saccharine snow globe. On a drizzly night, we dance in the living room. Fire blazing, Spotify crooning a private Bill Withers concert (segueing into 90s R&B, then Kendrick Lamar. Somehow we always end up at Kendrick Lamar).

One afternoon the weather is glorious. Clear skies, verging on double digits, and I bring my laptop and a glass of wine to the front step. Fiddling with a scene, I overhear a six year-old admonish a friend: “We have to stay in our bubbles.” A neighbour comes by - keeping her distance - and tells me that they’ve been sleeping in every morning (why not?) and her husband, a chef, has been making elaborate meals, and they miss their family and their friends, and sometimes, okay, yes, the children are a lot, but it’s kind of nice too. I know, I tell her. It feels like sacrilege to say but yes. Sometimes it is kind of nice too.

Not zombies

On a walk, I pause to watch a mother in a garden, blowing bubbles for her daughter. A stranger sits at his window and we wave to each other. A friend has hurt her ankle and I drop off an ice pack. She has a cooler on the doorstep, a receptacle for contact-less deliveries. The sign on top - “piss off covid-19” - gives me a chuckle. I ring the doorbell, wave from the sidewalk. All over town, windows are gussied up. Rainbows and stuffies and jolly homemade posters that say “Thank you!” and “At least it’s not Zombies.” Indeed, Tom says, when I tell him about the sign. At least it’s not bombs dropping on our heads.

And still.

But also.

I chew the inside of my cheeks raw. And bolt awake at 3am, roused from innocuous dreams and terrible nightmares, all of which are set in the pre-Pandemic world. I refuse to think about the worst case scenarios but their prospects loom all the same. A freelance job gets cancelled. I worry about an upcoming project, a big pay cheque that was practically guaranteed, psych myself up for its inevitable cancellation. Friends text to say they’ve been laid off, are worried about their jobs, their books, and indie book shops, the future of our industry, are our careers utterly and irreparably fucked? Everything is contracting. Our lives. The economy. Any sense of time beyond today.

My sister calls on FaceTime so my niece won’t forget what I look like. Rachel is one and thinks I live in the phone and this would be funny if it wasn’t heart breaking. I’m so envious of anyone who can visit their families, who can trade stories from across the expanse of a driveway or wave through windows.

Shag off Covid

But we have phone calls and text. Zoom movie nights and Skype coffee dates and virtual role playing games, which is, yes, a thing I did for the first time last Saturday (it was nerdy and fun). Technology keeps us tethered. On Wednesday nights I video chat with my oldest group of girlfriends. Across four cities and three time zones, we catch up on our weeks, share news from our bubbles. Tash crouches in the basement, hiding from her kids. We laugh at the absurdity of our lives. In the pre-Pandemic world, we could barely synch our schedules for a coherent group text but now this standing date is the one constant in my calendar. I miss everyone so much and if I think about it for too long the sadness is overwhelming.

One afternoon, the doorbell rings. A friend waves from the sidewalk. She’s left two cupcakes on the stoop. They are homemade, with root beer in the batter and the perfect icing to cake ratio and for a while I forget to be sad and anxious and, licking icing off my fingers, think fondly of Meghan, going on to the next delivery, pausing to appreciate the teddy bears in someone’s window. Oh, this terrible, beautiful time.

Signs have begun to appear around St. John’s. “Six feet apart or six feet under. Your Choice” they scream in scaremongering black and red font. Five hundred of these things have been stuck to poles and park benches and nailed into trees (ouch!) and five hundred more are reportedly on their way.

As of today, April 7, we have 228 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the province (49 have recovered, 2 have died). By no means are we out of the woods but there is a lot of reason for cautious optimism. We locked down quickly and efficiently, around the time the first case was reported. I never get to say this about our provincial government but they are doing a cracking good job. And as citizens, the vast, vast majority of us are conscientiously following the rules, going out only when necessary, keeping our distance on walks. I credit this in large part to the fact that a) it is still bloody winter and there’s nothing to do outside except freeze your tits off and b) if there’s one thing we are good at here, it is staying the fuck home. Hunkering down indoors is a part of the culture. To whit the following quintessentially Newfoundland phrases:

“come home year”
“go home out of it”
and the enigmatic: “go home, your mother’s got buns” (or, more likely in these pandemic days, sourdough)

Still, some public health vigilante has decided to plaster the town with one thousand shouty posters. No, wait. That’s not strictly accurate. Mr. Public Service Announcement is self isolating after returning from the Dominican and has dispatched his employees to do the dirty work (literally sending them into large grocery stores, an act that actual public health experts have agreed is a risky endeavour better embarked on sparingly) while he’s cosseted at home, crowing about what a Covid-19 expert he is and bemoaning other people who aren’t “playing by the rules.”

Yeah. That’s right. Trudeau politely asked everyone to haul ass back to Canada but Mr. PSA was sunning himself in the Dominican and couldn’t be bothered to cut his vacation short. Nah, I’ll just ride this thing out here, he thought. What could possibly go wrong? But when the Dominican declared a national state of emergency, he was forced to return, and now is in isolation. Which okay, we don’t have to throw shade. People mis-calculate. Especially while on holiday. But why can’t he binge watch Tiger King and pay his employees to do the same? Why does he have to force them to go out into the world and perform this wholly unnecessary, and arguably risky, exercise? "People are not taking this seriously, there are lives involved," says the guy who only recently decided to take this seriously. (Sadly, NOT a Beaverton headline)

Anyway, I think I understand Mr. PSA’s motivations. He’s feeling hard done by about his lost holiday (aren’t we all? In the alternate universe that is my day planner, I’m opening a bottle of red in a Montreal loft with my best friend right now) and feeling put out about house arrest and probably worried about his small business. He’s making sacrifices and wants his service to be recognized, ideally with virtual back pats and publicity for his business. Perhaps I’m psychoanalysing. I’m a writer. It’s a professional hazard. I’m also currently working on a book about an employer with a hero complex so it’s amusing to see some of the character dynamics I’m inventing play out IRL.

We all get to be heroes now. Gold stars all around. But the superheroes? They’re the cashiers and truck drivers, healthcare workers, janitors, pilots, and flight attendants (because yes, yes, somehow people are still even now trickling back home). The scientists racing to find a vaccine or a cure. The political leaders putting aside their petty power plays to do right by the country and the civil servants who are keeping the place running. The utility and postal workers. The reporters and podcasters bringing us information. That guy who checks the microphones before the daily presser. The blood donors who have beat the virus and are giving others their plasma in the hopes that it will be a cure. There is no shortage of people to cheer. So forget the bombastic Johnny-Come-Latelys. Let’s save our kudos for the real super heroes.

Hey look! It’s the French edition of The Boat People on sale now from Mémoire d’encrier (translated by Marc Charron and Véronique Lessard). There was a review in Le Devoir a few days ago which I’m told was positive (3.5 stars out of 4!). Since my French is hopeless, I have no way to know for sure and also no way to judge this book except by its cover, which, fortunately, is très chic. For Halloween, I might wear a striped Breton top, toss a red scarf over my shoulder and spend the day in costume as my own book. :) Seriously though, it really is a gorgeous edition and Marc and Véronique put a lot of thought and care into their work. I hope French readers find it très bien.

Cuddling babies
Full houses and standing ovations
The din of a busy restaurant
Running into a friend at Sobey’s and lingering by the tomatoes for a chat
Sweating in a yoga studio with a dozen other people
Greeting friends as they walk through the front door
Cooking for a crowd
Thursdays with my writing group
The sound of kids playing in the street
Knowing when I will see my family next
Touching my face
The illusion of a certain future
Pay cheques that are contingent on a microphone
Hot showers after the gym

The gym
The departures lounge at Pearson
The Air Canada safety video
Homesickness
FOMO
Manspreaders
Close talkers
Creepy strangers
Feeling anti-social in a crowd

Daily death tolls
Worrying about friends who work in healthcare
Worrying about my parents
The fear of missing a loved one’s funeral
The complete inability to focus (on writing, on books)
Crossing the street to avoid people
Standing six feet apart
Pandemic grocery shopping
Dry hands
Covid-19 deniers who have been unfriended/ blocked

The memes
Deep cleaning the fridge on a Saturday night and feeling pro-social
Tom’s baking
Group videochats with friends in other time zones

The deep and abiding solace of friendship, even at a distance
Human ingenuity
The Italian mayors who give zero fucks
Our elected leaders putting aside their differences to do their best for the country
Listening in on Tom patiently explaining complex mathematical concepts to his students
That there’s no one I’d rather be cooped up with than my husband
That at this crucial moment, Canada’s chief medical expert, the most important voice in the national conversation, was an Asian woman. (Thank you, Dr. Tam)
To appreciate every hug
The town cheering/ clanging pots and pans/ playing musical instruments in gratitude for front line workers
That for a while millions of us around the world acted as one, making sacrifices for the common good
The bittersweet solidarity of this shared experience
To revel in the present
Because the future is uncertain

This post was inspired by this Instagram post and my friend Erin who assigned these lists as our homework.

This is the fifth and last in a series of posts about writing dialogue. If you’ve missed the previous posts, start here.

So now you’ve got your three screwdrivers. You know how to use them. Let’s get to work. I’ve already beat this dead horse but one more smack for good measure: direct dialogue is the most over-used, slow moving, and difficult type of speech to write well. On trick is to use it sparingly and nestle a few sparse sentences inside a passage of summary and/or indirect.

Here’s an example from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy:

“Ammu asked for the Station House Officer, and when she was shown into his office she told him that there had been a terrible mistake and that she wanted to make a statement. She asked to see Velutha. Inspector Thomas Matthew’s moustache bustled like the friendly Air India Maharajah’s, but his eyes were sly and greedy. ‘It’s a little too late for all this, don’t you think?’ he said. He spoke the coarse Kottayam dialect of Malayalam. He stared at Ammu’s breasts as he spoke. He said the police knew all they needed to know and that the Kottayam Police didn’t take statements from veshyas or their illegitimate children Ammu said she’d see about that. Inspector Thomas Matthew came around his desk and approached Ammu with his baton. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d go home quietly.’ Then he tapped her breasts with his baton. Gently. Tap tap. As though he was choosing mangoes from a basket. Pointing out the ones he wanted packed and delivered.” — The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This scene is an important one. An innocent man is facing execution and Ammu must stop it. Here we have the highest stakes possible. Still, if the Inspector was polite and simply said: ‘Ma’am I can’t help you’ the scene would have fallen flat. Remember what I said in the first post: if Character A wants something, the tension is higher if Character B refuses the request.

This pace is quick here because the dialogue is mostly indirect. There are only two lines of direct dialogue and as a result they stand out. Can’t you hear the Inspector saying these words? The condescension drips. It makes the reader feel protective of Ammu and nervous for the innocent man on death row. The reader is stressed. Roy has saved up her direct dialogue for the lines that count, the ones that will elicit emotion.

In the first post, I said that the best dialogue is multi-tasking. Here, the dialogue is creating tension, evoking emotion, and conveying character. The Inspector’s dialect marks him out as lower class. But Roy isn’t just wielding the screwdrivers here. She’s reaching for other tools in her box. Through narration she reveals the Inspector’s bustling moustache, his greedy eyes (note the disconnect - this man pretends to be friendly but really he’s a snake in the grass). Through body language we see his eyes on Ammu’s breasts. Through action she shows the weaponized the baton.

When you are reading, pay attention to which tools the author is using and how they are being used. Then apply what you’ve learned to your own work.

Dialogue is the single most difficult thing to write well. Even experienced authors who write books full of beautiful prose and compelling drama, fall flat on dialogue. I’ve asked authors who do the job well for their secrets and they always say some version of the same unhelpful thing: it just comes to me/ I hear the characters in my head. To be honest, this is my experience too. In fact, I don’t like to write direct dialogue until it flows free and easy, until it strikes like lightning.

My theory is that poor dialogue is a symptom of a bigger issue, which is incomplete character development. You must do the work of building your character, of knowing them better than you know yourself. And once you have done this, created a Pinocchio so realistic he could be a real boy, he will come alive of his own volition and surprise you with what he says.

If that fails and you’re stuck and think the dialogue (and anything else) in your manuscript could benefit from professional feedback, I’m available for hire and taking bookings for the spring and summer.

This is the fourth in a series of posts about writing dialogue. If you’ve missed the previous posts, start here. I know I promised this post on Monday but I’ve been a bit pre-occupied.

Direct dialogue is the one we all know and tend to overuse. It’s word-for-word what the characters are saying. It’s useful when you want to get in real close, write from within the scene, at a moment of crisis, discovery, decision, or climax. Direct dialogue not only ups the drama, it is more precise at revealing character because we have their exact words.

Word choice indicates education, class, age, familiarity with language, ethnicity. When you are writing direct dialogue, think about this: who is this character? What life do they live? What’s their background? The more you know your characters, the easier it will be to put words in their mouths. Where so much dialogue falls down, I think, is when characters are skeletons without flesh, when they haven’t been fully imagined by their authors. As a result, their dialogue comes off as a poor ventriloquist act and the reader only hears the author saying all the words. You want the dialogue to sound authentic, like something this character would legitimately say.

In Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion, a young woman called Zee talks about her hero Faith Frank:

“I know she represents this kind of outdated idea of feminism,” said Zee, “with more of a narrow focus on issues that mostly affect privileged women. I totally see that. But you know what? She’s done a lot of good, and I think she’s amazing. Also, the thing about Faith Frank,” she went on, “is that while she’s this famous, iconic person, she also seems approachable.” — Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

Normally, I’d be skeptical of such a long passage of dialogue. Long passages of dialogue have a habit of being information dumps, which is why one tip is to pare it all back. But overall, I think Wolitzer’s dialogue here is pretty good. It’s doing more than just conveying information about Faith, who becomes a central figure in the book. Look at what is revealed about the speaker, Zee. Hers is a millennial and current take on feminism. It’s woke. It’s mature. But lines like “I totally see that” and “But you know what?” signal that the speaker is still young, in that liminal space between girl and woman. (Zee is a first year in college). Also, note the change in register. “Narrow focus on issues that mostly affect privileged women” sounds like something that could be in an essay. But then Zee switches to simple language when she gets earnest and speaks from the heart: “She’s done a lot of good, and I think she’s amazing.” See that? Head and heart. The dialogue is working hard and multi-tasking and it’s sounds real.

1. Don’t forget about body language. Gestures and ticks reveal character. A character who constantly rubs their nose as they speak is indicating something. A penchant for cocaine, a lie, nerves, a pimple.

2. The way a character speaks is revealing too. Is she loud? Are they quiet? Are his sentences choppy and short or long and convoluted? Remember: if you’re stuck on dialogue, the problem is you don’t know the character well enough.

3. When you are revising a scene, read all the dialogue out loud. Every single word. Read it all slowly. If you get bored, have the urge to skip sections, if you are squicked out by how awkward and false it sounds, those are strong clues something’s wrong.

4. A common problem with direct dialogue - which you can hear when you read it out loud - is that it comes out inert (aka boring). Rule of thumb: dialogue must do more than one thing. It can reveal character, advance plot, create tension, enhance mystery etc. etc. Writing instructors talk a good game about multi-tasking but I haven’t yet heard anyone articulate HOW to perform this sleight of pen. Listen, I don’t have a good answer for this either. For me, it’s more like, if the dialogue is weak, I ask myself is it multi-tasking? If not, maybe I just do the easy thing and erase it. Fall back on summary or indirect or try to write the scene without dialogue at all.

5. Direct dialogue is the most difficult type to master because it’s slower and more precise than summary or indirect. My advice is to use it sparingly and in passages with lots of talking, combine it summary and/or indirect.

Next week, in my final post in this series, we will look at how to do this - take summary and indirect and direct and put it altogether. In the meantime, if you have a manuscript that could use a new set of eyes and critical and constructive feedback, I’m available for hire and taking bookings for the spring and summer.

My parents were travelling in the States this week. Which is another way of saying, I’ve been quietly panicking for seven straight days. Wednesday night, I lay on the couch twisted into a pretzel of existential dread, texting with friends, all of whom also have parents who are a) overseas and b) shockingly blase about the global pandemic Twitter has dubbed The Boomer Remover. Did Gen-X ever, in our wildest fever dreams, imagine it would one day be us, the children, begging our parents to stay home and be safe, anxious 24/7 about where they are going and where their hands have been? The CDC has advised people over 60 to stay home out of it but good luck telling that to a 70-something with a pre-existing chronic condition.

But hey, you know who is taking Covid-19 seriously? ISIS.

So anyway, all this social distancing. This is tailor-made for writers, huh? Think of all the books we’re going to read, all the bestsellers we’ll write. I’ve got a dystopian romcom in mind. YA of course because those are the only readers who will be left post-pandemic. Love in a Time of Corona. That’s the title. Lovers kept apart by social distancing. In dark times, dark humour is our only friend. And these are dark, dark times.

One of my oldest friends is a respiratory therapist. She takes oxygen to shut-ins and nursing homes. Ten years ago, she caught H1N1 and almost died. But she’s still here, bringing life into people’s houses and bedrooms, into their most intimate spaces, the ones covered in all of their germs. When the case load ramps up and hospitals are at capacity, people with Covid-19 will be told to get their oxygen at home. And my friend will be there. At the front line of a pandemic.

We are all connected (surely that’s obvious now?) each of our individual actions reverberating out and impacting everyone else. We keep our distance in solidarity. With the humility that we are all in this together. Even if we are young and healthy and not particularly worried about our own chances, we do it do keep each other safe. Social distancing is a privilege. It’s a thing some of us get to choose on behalf of all the doctors and nurses and home health aids and hospital porters and the cleaners who change the sheets in the ICU. We cancel our readings and festivals and book launches, suspend basketball and hockey, close the swimming pools and theatres, skip the gym, bump elbows instead of hug. We take these precautions to give our friends on the front line a fighting chance. And because it’s not a question of IF. It’s a question of when.

Last night, Tom did a quick bit of math, looking at doubling rates of the confirmed cases and correcting for population, and announced that we are two weeks behind France and three weeks behind Italy.

I’m worried people are going to die, I said.
Most people won’t, Tom said, because he’s unfailingly logical and sometimes that’s re-assuring.
I’m worried people we love are going to die, I said.
I know, he said.