Library Listening

I came across a document I created almost two years ago while doing research at the library. A group of three teenage girls came into the area where I was working and I typed up the overheard conversation, unbeknownst to them. Reading over it again, I realize I should do this more often. The tone of their chatter and their personalities and viewpoints were so clear, so natural. I loved it.

I've changed some personal information for the sake of anonymity, and instead of labeling the dialogue Girl#1, Girl#2, Girl#3 I've taken the liberty of giving them names.

---

Ashley- (looking at a fashion magazine) How long until Joe gets home?

Becca- Thirty minutes maybe.

Ashley- Okay.

Becca- So tonight it’s you and Joe and Charlie and me?

Ashley- I think.

Becca- What?!

Ashley- Well Isabel told me today that there is a girl in second period who likes Joe.

Becca- But he doesn’t like her back…

(Silence)

Becca- …Right?

(silence)

Becca- Let’s hope.

Ashley- …and he likes her back. So she was going to call him and ask him out.

(silence)

Tara- Oo, I like those shoes.

Becca- I like the way she dresses.

Ashley- Yeah.

Becca- I don’t even like Joe anymore. I went to karate the other day and he didn’t even notice anything was wrong with me. I mean, look at this. And I was limping by them, like this. Limping! And he asked what’s wrong with your shoe?

(silence)

Tara- Joe is difficult.

Ashley- Joe is difficult.

Becca- Joe is confusing and flirtatious.

(silence)

Becca- Charlie takes so long to text.

Ashley- So do you.

Becca- It’s not my fault you text fast

Ashley- It ain’t my fault if you text slow. And I don’t even have a full keypad.

Becca- I don’t have a full keypad either. Look.

(silence)

Tara- I’m re-doing my room.

Ashley- You are? Cool. I rearranged mine.

Tara- Look at that book.

Ashley- Go get it.

Becca- I read those in like elementary school

Ashley- I like the moral of the story.

Becca- Look at this text I just got. I don’t even know who sent it to me.

Ashley- What does it say?

(grabs phone)

Ashley- If you send this to 15 people you will get $100. If you send this to 25 people you will get $200.

Tara- Those things don’t work.

Ashley- Of course not, if it did the whole world would be happy.

Becca- Please promise me that if you can’t go out with Charlie you won’t go out with Joe.

Ashley- I won’t.

Becca- Then why do you want his phone number?

Ashley- Because I like to text people.

Tara- You are going to have to tell me about this whole Joe/Charlie thing.

Becca- Charlie is a new guy from Arizona who she likes and I do too. And I went out with Joe earlier in the year…

Ashley- But she broke up with him

Becca- … because he was a total flirt with everyone.

Ashley- And the weird thing is that he totally kept to himself when he was single but whenever he was with someone he flirts.

Becca- Yeah he’s all loud and saying “Hey, what’s up!”

Ashley- And smacking their butts!

---

... now, with drama like that, don't you wish I'd gotten more??

If you are going to attempt this, the key is to remain as invisible as possible. Avoid eye contact and do not, I repeat, do not react to anything they say to each other, or your cover will be blown. They will feel your intrusion on the conversation and it will lose its natural ring.

Happy dialogue stalking!

Gate Key Word Cloud

This is my word cloud for Book One in my first YA series.

(created at www.wordle.net)

The Joy of Polishing at Year's End

For the past five years or so I've noticed that my writing tends to taper off once November rolls around. I was determined not to let this happen this year. At least not to the degree that it usually does.
It appears that I have not picked up my "regular broadcast" of the remaining 44 days of Pen on Fire, but, I am happy to declare that I have been writing and editing consistently still and am pretty pleased with the results.

As I was entering my penned edits from my hard copy into the digital file I was frustrated with the slowly increasing word count. Grrrrr. My manuscript is already longer than most agents are going to want to see for a first time author, and first book in a series. So, I decided to set myself a reasonable goal in order to downsize. Cut five words per page. Five words. That's so achievable. And that's almost 2,000 words less.

Snip, snip.

And wWhen I am finished, I can do it again.

:) Make every word count.

New Page-- "Sound"

Check out my new Page: Sensory Words-- Sound for a list of examples of onomatopoeia!









Sensory Words Pages soon to come:
Sight
Taste
Touch
Smell


From,
the word nerd

PS After a long absence from the blogosphere, I will be returning shortly to a regular broadcast of the remaining 44 days of Pen on Fire, as well as other writerly musings. Thank you, most ardently, for your enduring patience. Adieu!

45 days of Pen on Fire

Inspired by the chapter "create a written snapshot" from Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's Pen on Fire.

Chapter Take-Away: How can I verbally evoke emotion while describing the mundane? Connect with a memory where I encountered similar feelings to that which my character is experiencing and extract empathetic details for the reader to latch onto as well.

Most of my friends "create a written snapshot" every time they post a Facebook Status, which is a great exercise at being vivid with imagery while adhering to an economy of words.

Who doesn't recognize the cuteness factor of a two year old pointing to a picture of Shamu (Sea World's famous killer whale, or orca) and calling it a "cow mermaid"?

Who doesn't understand what a three year old means when he says he feels "like a burned up french fry and a dead fish" right before throwing up?

Who wouldn't crack up at a four year old boy running through the house naked, yelling, "Michelangelo! Michelangelo! Michelangelo!"?
OR
Being torn between a laugh and a sympathetic whimper when a woman is afraid she has somehow become invisible because of the way people look past her and one of her friends sets a picture of a blank wall on his cellphone to display when she calls.

***

Now there are also ways of drawing a word picture by forming correlations with the things around a character. When my character Dannen is contemplating being sent away while laying on his back in an open field behind his grandpa's house, he finds a parallel between his situation and the clouds above him:

' Wide blue sky and pale wisps of cloud swept above him. These clouds weren't quite as impressive as the billowing pillar to the east, still visible, still unchanged. But he could relate to these-- disconnected, blown about by the wind.
Soon they'd be gone too. '

TRY YOUR HAND: Write a scene about a character standing outside a building.
Where are they? Insert sensory details: sight, sound, smell, touch...
Why are they there?
Now what is the character struggling with internally?
Is he trying to talk himself into going in? What is preventing him?
Is she trying to convince herself to walk away? What is she tempted to do in there?
Or has he just left and he's afraid of the consequences of what just transpired?
How can your past experiences add richness and authenticity to the scene?

46 days of Pen on Fire

Inspired by the chapter "first lines" from Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's Pen on Fire.

Chapter Take-Away: Find a good first line to work with-- if it hooks you and pulls you through the story it's done its job even if you end up using another first line in the final draft.

If you're going to write, you need an arsenal of good first lines, you need good first lines at your Book's opening, at chapter beginnings and after section breaks. As author Jack Cavanaugh said at the San Diego Christian Writers' Guild 2009 Fall Conference, you don't want to give your readers a good place to put down your book, rather you want to give them every reason to blame you for sleep-deprivation.

These are the series of first lines which got me through my first and second draft:

* He knows, she thought.
* As he sat in classroom 4-A listening to the other kids talking about their summer plans, his spirits dug a ditch and crawled in.
* Fifteen-year-old Dannen Pyke broke into a run.
* A shadow passed in front of his eyelids and he opened to see a figure looming over him.

I am now down to the following two for my opening options in my final draft:

* The Watcher perched on the roof of a convenience store, his wings extended behind.
* The first time Dannen noticed the clouds that didn't change was on the way to Grandpa Joe Moses' house to be dumped for a summer of exile.

And as I look through my short list of first lines for future projects I find the following:

* The doctor leaned over her open palm.
* Let me make this abundantly clear: this story is not about me.
* Tomorrow my life ends.


Here are some good first lines-- let's see if we can dissect them and find out why they are good.

1)That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. (Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine)
WHY is it good?
It shows personality.
It tells the genre (fairytale).
It presents a problem-- a curse,
and reveals Point of View: first person.

2) Late on a full-mooned Sunday night, the two figures in work clothes appeared on Highway 27, just outside the small college town of Ashton. (This Present Darkness, by Frank E. Peretti)
WHY is it good?
It gives the location
and time of day--
with a hint of mood in the details.
It gives a ring of the mysterious:
these figures "appeared"
as from out of nowhere,
so we can expect the extra-ordinary in this book
and it begs the question Why have they appeared?

3) It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to four children.(Half Magic, by Edward Eager)
WHY is it good?
It, again, gives a time frame
and season.
It tells who the main characters are going to be
and hooks the reader with the detail "it happened"--
You naturally have to know what "it" is.

4) When the city of Ember was just built and not yet inhabited, the chief builder and the assistant builder, both of them weary, sat down to speak of the future. (The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau)
WHY is it good?
It states the place.
That it was just built and not yet inhabited are
intriguing details.
And the fact that the chief builder and assistant are both weary
is a telling fact as well,
when you would expect excitement
even celebration
over their finished project,
whose purpose is about to be realized,
their somber mood suggests something about
the city's perhaps less-than-bright future.

5) Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. (Eragon, by Christopher Paolini)
WHY is it good?
The detail of howling wind anchors the reader in an expectation of something ominous.
It grips the reader with a need to know what the scent is?
And it announces a promise: the world is about to change.

Reader Input:
What is your favorite first line? What book? What author?
And, alternately, what is the first line of your favorite book?
Finally, can you pinpoint WHY it is good?

47 days of Pen on Fire

Inspired by the chapter "harvesting words" from Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's Pen on Fire.

Chapter Take-Away: You must know a word intimately before you can use it and make it authentic. Same goes for your characters. If they haven't been exposed to a word correctly and impactfully, they can't use it with any degree of believability.

I love words. I love the way they sound, the way they play with the words around them, the way they sketch images in our minds and ignite fires within us.

I'm determined to keep a word journal, and I might just attach it to this blog for posterity and for the use and enjoyment of my readers. The journal would be made up of--
1. Words overheard
2. Words read
3. Words harvested from the dictionary
and lastly,
4. slang, or what I will from now on refer to as faux-cabulary

So, here are the words that I gleaned this week which have stuck with me.

Faux-cabulary
My first example was a misspoken term in Sunday's sermon, but I think it is delightfully valid.

ambassenger \am BASS en jer\ noun 1. A representative of his or her Sovereign who communicates a message of Truth.

other great words of the week...

Overheard:

conflagration \con fluh GRAY shun\ noun 1. Fire, especially a large disastrous fire.
2. War, conflict.

Read:

profligate \PRAW flih geht, -gayt\ adjective 1. Completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness.
2. wildly extravagant, prodigal.

vitriol \VIH tree uhl\ noun 1. a sulfate of any of various metals (as copper, iron or zinc), especially, a glassy hydrate of such a sulfate.
2. something felt to resemble vitriol especially in caustic quality. Virulence of feeling or of speech.

Reader Input: What were your favorite words you heard, read, or looked up this week?
Do you have any faux-cabulary to share?