• This Month's Silly Picture: Writing Show Host Paula B.'s Old Studio
• Writing Dialogue, Part 1
• Literary Haunts in Pictures
• Capitalization, Part 2: Time
• Make Your Writing Sparkle: Be Specific
• Writing Show News
• Trivia Question: Line from a Play

With this issue, we begin a new series on writing dialogue, one of the most difficult and rewarding challenges a writer faces. Chris Roerden, author of Don't Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning Up D.O.A., offers some of the best advice on the topic I've seen. While she focuses specifically on the mystery, her principles can be used to good effect in other genres as well.

Roerden begins by warning that "Dialogue in a mystery is not whatever a couple of characters happen to say to each other. That's conversation, not dialogue."

Really? Aren't conversation and dialogue the same thing? No, and the reason is that "Talking that offers no resistance, no characterization, and no meaningful interactions to move the story forward is not dialogue. Neither is a lecture, discussion, or data dump."

Dialogue reveals character, expresses conflict, and otherwise accomplishes a purpose. It is there to let your characters work out their wants and motives, says Roerden. In a mystery, that usually means adversarial, tension-filled speech.

Tension can be achieved in oh-so-many ways, including:

• Innuendo
• Characters interrupting each other
• Talking past each other
• Attempting to control the conversation by pushing it in a particular direction or ignoring what the other person says
• Being snide or condescending
• Interpreting another's meaning in a negative way
• Leaving off affirmative responses like "okay" and "yes."

Here are some examples (mine, not Roerden's) of dialogue that evokes tension:

Here's a passage from Val McDermid's The Wire in the Blood. The participants are criminal profiler Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan:

"What time are we due to kick off?"

"Couple of minutes."

"Fancy catching up over lunch?" She'd
practiced the casual tone half a hundred
times on the motorway coming over to Leeds.

"I can't." He looked genuinely sorry. "We eat
together in the squad. But I was going to ask
you [ellipsis]."

"Yes?" Careful, Carol, not too eager!

"Are you in a hurry to get back?"

"No, no rush." Her heart singing, yes, yes,
he's going to ask me to dinner.

"Only, I wondered if you'd like to sit in on
the afternoon session."

"Right." Her voice bright, her hopes
squashed, the light in her eyes dulled. "Any
particular reason?"

"I set them an exercise last week. They're
supposed to produce their conclusions today
and I thought it might be helpful to have
your response to their analyses."

"Fine."

Tony took a shallow breath and said, "Plus, I
thought we could maybe have a drink afterwards?"

In this passage, we see two people at odds, but they don't want to show each other that's the case. Carol is attracted to Tony, and while he harbors some mutual feeling, his intimacy issues offer palpable resistance. He sends mixed messages that alternately elate and deflate her, feelings she attempts to hide by affecting nonchalance and professionalism. McDermid makes her characters thwart each others' expectations, say other than what they mean, misunderstand each other, and subtly attempt to control the conversation (and by extension their relationship). Not a word is wasted, even the "What time are we due to kick off?," which adds pressure to the scene because they will soon have to move on.

By the way, did you notice the third person limited point of view in that passage? Carol is the point of view character, and we get inside her head when we hear her think Careful, Carol, not too eager!

Here's a snippet from the "College" episode of the television show "The Sopranos." Carmela is the wife of mafioso Tony Soprano. Father Phil is her priest:

     FATHER PHIL
-- anyway Jean Cusamano said you were ill -

     CARMELA:
Ecch - was. That flu that's been going
around?

     FATHER PHIL
Yipes.

     CARMELA
I still have a little fever but -

     FATHER PHIL
I also have a confession to make.
        (beat)
I have a jones for your baked ziti.

     CARMELA
Sure, anytime. Think I got some in the
freezer.  I can reheat it.

FATHER PHIL
Ooh, it's better like that, eh? The
Moozadel' gets nice and chewy.

     CARMELA
I love that too. I was having a little
Fernet. Settles the system. Would you like
something?

     FATHER PHIL
Some wine if it's open? So how's Mead and
Tony's trip going?

     CARMELA
I should know? He doesn't have time to
talk to me for two lousy minutes.

It's obvious that the Mafia don's wife and the priest aren't really talking about food. Carmela's husband Tony is away, and she's pissed at him. But attraction to a priest as a substitute? Now there's a conflict, especially because Father Phil is obviously attracted right back.

More on dialogue next time.

The English Department at San Jose State University sponsors Literary Locales: More than 1,000 picture links to places that figure in the lives and writings of famous authors.

What a fun list! You can travel down the fairy tale road of the Brothers Grimm; visit the homes and haunts of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; stop off at Sarah Orne Jewett's house; tour W.B. Yeats' Galway; and so much more! You can even catch a glimpse of J.K. Rowling's childhood home in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire. (Sodbury. What a gift of a name! I couldn't have made up such a great word.)

How do you qualify for a listing? Offer a site about a writer that includes pictures relating to his or her life or work. The site's curator, Scott Rice, says, "If you think that a deserving writer has been neglected or treated inadequately, fetch your camera and set matters to right. We are constantly open to new additions." This could mean you!

Visit www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/places2.htm.

Last time, we initiated a new series on capitalization, starting with the rules for titles and offices, like president, professor, rabbi, and so on. Most people who write in English capitalize too many words. English isn't like German, where you capitalize every noun, so why do so many people veer in that direction? Let's continue to review the rules and cut down on excess capitalization.

Contrary to popular belief, you should not capitalize the seasons of the year. They should be:

• winter
• spring
• summer
• fall or autumn.

Do not say Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall unless you're writing corny poetry and addressing the season by name, as in "Oh, Winter, thou art blah blah blah."

Do not capitalize the names of equinoxes and solstices:

• the vernal equinox
• the summer solstice

Do not capitalize time zone designations. Do say:

• central standard time
• eastern daylight time

However, the abbreviations for time zones are capitalized, as:

• CST
• EDT.

The exceptions are Pacific time and Greenwich mean time. Note that with the latter, only the geographical designation, Greenwich, is capitalized.

The names of holidays should be capitalized, including the Fourth of July, or "the Fourth."

Do not capitalize the names of non-holiday days such as "election day" and "inauguration day."

Most of these rules come from The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition.

One way to punch up your writing instantly and exponentially is to get really specific. Neither vague nor general sentence never grabbed a reader.

Here's an example of some very specific text from Steve Reilly's The Fat Lady Never Sings: How a Football Team Found Redemption on the Baseball Diamond:

"At the meeting, he ripped a single sheet of lined white paper from a cheap one-subject spiral notebook for the freshmen coming out to print their name, address, phone number, and position played."

Steve tells us blow by blow exactly what his character is doing, with what, how, and to whom. He rips one sheet of lined white paper from a certain kind of notebook that doesn't cost very much and tells the students exactly what to print, not write, on it. He did not say, "He asked the freshmen to sign up."

Here's another one from Steve's book:

"The red and silver Coke inside the machine banged and crashed its way to the bottom. I pulled the cold can out, popped the tab, and returned to the table."

Here he describes the can, including its contents and temperature; tells us exactly how it came out of the machine with some nice sensory detail; and follows the character's every action down to the last body part and prop. He did not say, "I bought a Coke from the machine before continuing the discussion."

See what a difference specificity makes? You can see the actors, the props, the set, and the actions, just as though you were watching them in a movie. And so, one way to enhance your ability to think and write specifically is to emulate the filmmaking process. Think as though you're a set designer, property manager, director, or actor.

Your set must be designed to give the film a particular look, which might be realistic or fantastic (as in "fantasy"). To achieve the look, the designer fills the set with specially chosen objects and structures. If on location, the process is the same, but what appears in the camera's view is carefully selected and sometimes enhanced to paint just the right picture.

You too must decide on the objects, structures, and other elements of your environment, just as the set designer, property master, director, and other film professionals do. Pretend you must acquire the objects, scout locations, specify the sets to be built. What will you buy, borrow, or otherwise obtain for use on your set? What time period are you trying to recreate? What colors, styles, shapes, and textures will do the job? What price/socioeconomic level are you aiming for, not for budgetary reasons, but because the script calls for it? Do the objects reflect a business-specific environment, like a cubicle-filled insurance office, Gilded Age bank, or the frantic floor of a major stock exchange? Will they be featured in a residence like a California bungalow, high-rise condo, or brownstone? A public place like a funky café, five-and-dime store, or Broadway?

You'll also need costumes, actors, lighting, and maybe special effects, like weather. When an actor creates a character, he employs highly specific gestures, action, and modes of speech. These don't occur by accident. If he's sloppy and you can't tell his performance from that of umpty others, we say he "phoned in" his part. Don't phone in your words.

Here are some more examples of specificity:

This passage is from "Church Going," by Philip Larkin:

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, but
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

This paragraph is from Michael Braun's book Love Me Do:

They plastered five million 'The Beatles Are Coming' stickers on telephone poles, washroom walls, and other appropriate places throughout the country. They distributed the record the Beatles had made in London to every disc jockey in the country. They issued a four-page newspaper on the Beatles and sent out a million copies. They photographed their top executives wearing Beatle wigs and distributed 'Be a Beatle Booster' badges to all their employees. They offered Beatle haircuts free to all their female employees and persuaded Janet Leigh to get one. They even tried, unsuccessfully, to bribe a University of Washington cheerleader into holding up a card reading 'The Beatles Are Coming' to the television cameras at the Rose Bowl.

Here's a bit from White Sister by Stephen J. Cannell:

I met Sally Quinn at a restaurant called The Turf House, in the Valley. She chose the place because it had a history of health department violations and the food was so lousy it was cresting on dangerous. Cops, who are notorious chow hounds, never ate there so we had a good chance of not being seen. We sat in a booth in the back, nursing lukewarm coffee in chipped mugs.

Upcoming shows:

November 15, 2007. Contest Awards Show.

November 18,2007. Writing the Sports Memoir, with Steve Reilly, author of The Fat Lady Never Sings: How a Football Team Found Redemption on the Baseball Diamond."

November 25, 2007. Screenwriting, with Scott Fivelson, writer of "American Reel" and "Route 666."

Have a question or topic you'd like covered on the show or in the newsletter? Want to write for us or be a guest host? See mistakes in my writing? Let me know.

--Paula B.

Last month we asked:

What blockbuster comedy film of the 1970s was almost named "Anhedonia?"

The answer is "Annie Hall."

Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman considered as many as 100 possible titles for the film before settling on "Anhedonia" ( which means the inability to feel pleasure). United Artists fought against it (among other things, they were unable to come up with an ad campaign that explained the meaning of the word) and Allen compromised on naming the film after a central character three weeks before the film's premiere. The New York Times, 4/20/77.

This month's trivia question: In what play does this line appear?

"If only I was born Italian...All the best Yankees are Italian."

Answer next month.

Remember: you don't have to have an iPod to listen to podcasts!

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