Guest Post: Daniel Pinkwater on How He Exercises His Profession

I admit to being a sucker for the Ticky Box. Which is to say, I am perhaps excessively motivated by having Lists and Ticking Things Off Them. I like setting goals for myself, and I’m good at breaking those goals down into smaller steps, rewarding myself for them, all that sort of self-management stuff. I’m keen to write, to write more, to write better; so I use my goals to manage all those things. And as far as it goes (and for as long as it works), that’s great.

The trouble is that sometimes all those lists and goals instead get me stuck in fear: fear of not meeting the goals, fear of not improving “˜enough’, fear of not writing the book of my glorious imaginings. (Spoiler: I am never going to write “˜the book of my glorious imaginings’, because my glorious imaginings are a cloud of inchoate vibes, not a collection of real actual words, and a book is a collection of real actual words, not a cloud of inchoate vibes. The best I can do is to approximate it.)

Fear is not good for creativity.

Play, and freedom: those are good for creativity.

So I’ve been working, lately, on freeing myself (somewhat) from the tyranny of the Ticky List and the goals and all of that, and to find ways to engage in writing as play. For me, this still has to go along with a certain amount of structure ““ “˜pissing around on the interwebs for the morning’ is also bad news at least for my creativity (I know people who get inspiration that way, which is awesome; I just get my brain jammed up with everyone else’s thoughts). But it’s structure of the “˜put the internet down’ variety, not structure of the “˜achieve this, that, and the next thing’ variety.

So, here’s some of the things I’ve been trying lately to get my brain playing instead of freaking out. I can’t imagine they’ll all work for everyone, or every time, but hopefully they’ll spark further ideas to go along with them.

Alright, the first one is a bit of a cheat as it isn’t exactly “˜play’, but for me, morning pages or something along those lines (a stream of consciousness onto the page for 5 minutes or 15 minutes or 3 pages or whatever is feasible for you) does a great job of freeing up my brain before I start anything.

Multi-coloured pens! I have a lot of fountain pens with a lot of different inks (not to mention a pack of glitter pens); writing a line in each different colour is ridiculous and time-consuming; and looks REALLY PRETTY and makes me laugh. Win.

Try spending a few minutes before you pick up pen or keyboard on something creative that isn’t writing: drawing, colouring-in, knitting or crochet, whatever. Bonus points for being really bad at it. (Drawing, I can confirm, is most certainly not my strong point.) Embrace being bad at it, and lower the stakes for your creative brain.

I recently received the Story Engine deck, and I’ve been loosening up by pulling a set of cards as a prompt, then writing a paragraph story outline (taking no more than five minutes, and without stressing about how well it works) for each one. The idea isn’t to come up with Your Next Story, the idea is to let the idea-muscles have a bit of unweighted fun.

Try five minute writing challenges: challenge yourself to describe the scene outside (or the passer-by, or the coffee shop) with only concrete nouns (or abstract, which is trickier); or describe a colour without using any colour words; or describe your current situation as if you were in an epic fantasy or a hard SF story; or anything else that feels entertaining. I find that especially with that last one, it pays to remind myself that no one will ever read this, and throw myself into it as thoroughly and dramatically as possible.

Get one of your characters (or someone else’s, if you don’t have an active project or am super stuck on the active project) going on a good dramatic internal monologue. Personally I do rather love a good internal monologue, but often at the edit stage have to administer some cuts. This, however, isn’t the edit stage. This is a time to hang out in a character’s head and be really OTT and self-indulgent. A bit like morning pages, but for someone else’s consciousness.

Make a list of your favourite tropes and do five minutes of your characters (or, again, someone else’s) using each of them. This can be super sketchy / outline-y; I usually start off with bullet points, then get some dialogue popping up, then a bit of description, and sometimes it turns into a “˜real scene’ as I go. But it doesn’t matter if that happens or not; the point is to let yourself go on something purely enjoyable.

Write fanfic, of your own stuff or of someone else’s, as you prefer. (Writing fanfic of your own stuff can be surprisingly enjoyable.) Again, this is about being wildly self-indulgent. Lean hard into your favourite tropes, AU settings, vibes, anything like that. Keep it brief and sketchy; or get stuck into masses of dialogue and detailed description; do whatever feels like fun in the moment. This really is just for you.

In a similar line, you can dive into writing only the bits of your current project that really call to your id, without worrying about creating a Proper Scene or whether it needs any connective tissue. If you do need connective tissue, you can sort that out later. Maybe you won’t need it!

If you’ve got any further ideas for writing as play, share them in the comments! This whole thing is, after all, supposed to be fun. At least some of the time. Embrace the play.

BIO: Juliet Kemp (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, writer. They live in London by the river, with their partners, kid, and dog. Their most recent book, The City Revealed, the final book in the Marek Series, is out now; and their short fiction has appeared in venues including Analog, Uncanny, and Cast of Wonders. When not writing or
child-wrangling, Juliet knits, indulges their fountain pen habit, and tries to fit an ever-increasing number of plants into a microscopic back garden. They can be found at https://julietkemp.com, on Twitter as @julietk, or on Mastodon as @juliet@zirk.us

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

Have you ever read dialogue like this?

     "We'll need the Spear of Glorgon to kill the Pit-Fiend Czhnarboth."

     "Yes, we will. Do you know where the Spear of Glorgon may be found?"

     "Sadly, it was lost centuries ago in the Empire of Cardel."

     "Then finding it will be the ultimate test of our powers."

     "True, and surely the gods of light will favor us."

One of the most common reasons dialogue gets boring is that it turns into a type of conversational ping-pong. Speakers volley lines of speech back and forth at each other. Each serve is neatly and appropriately returned. You’ve probably played a game or two of ping-pong like that yourself.

Think about the first time you ever picked up a paddle (in my mind, you’re in your uncle’s shag-carpeted basement.) You’re immensely proud of yourself for just getting it back and forth over the net. But it is also, effectively, a kind of stalemate””the ball goes back and forth, but nothing changes. And, after a while, it’s boring.

But a professional game of ping-pong, when you watch talented, competitive players? Not boring at all. After talking to ping-pong players and reading about the game, I think I know one reason why.

More than once I’ve come across the phrase “ping-pong is a game of spin.” If volleying the ball back and forth is the beginner level, then spin is at the heart of competitive ping-pong. It alters the movement of the ball so that the predictable becomes unpredictable. It’s what makes play volatile, explosive, unexpected””interesting.

Spin has the same effect in dialogue. It’s basically what it sounds like: a turn, a twist, a deviation.

The problem with ping-pong dialogue is that it’s so predictable: everyone stays on topic, everyone responds to the questions they’re asked, everyone provides accurate information. Dialogue with spin, in contrast, goes in unexpected directions. Since one of the reasons readers read is because they want to know the answer to a question, dialogue with spin draws readers into a story by raising (and partially answering) new questions.

How do you generate spin? A few ways, actually. Let me offer you three.

Give your characters an agenda.

When each character in a conversation has an agenda, it means that they have a goal””and, since you’re a talented writer and you have conflict bred in your bones, you know that these characters have different goals. Those goals help produce spin as each character attempts to steer the conversation toward their desired end. If, for example, you are working on dialogue between an exhausted detective and an amorous witness, you might have a great deal of fun as their competing agendas inflect their conversation in different ways.

Allow for subtext.

While subtext often naturally arises from giving characters an agenda, the two are not interchangeable.

Subtext is the text around and behind and between the words””the text that never makes it into text. When a character says exactly what they want, you’re dealing with on-the-nose dialogue, which is the clinical condition of having zero subtext. Subtext is about hidden meanings, unverbalized desires, buried insults.

To extend the example above, let’s imagine that our amorous witness is married and can’t directly proposition the detective. The spoken conversation might be exclusively about the crime, while the subtext might be the unspoken thrust-and-parry of an attempted seduction.

Employ “No” Dialogue.

I find this technique to be a great deal of fun. It’s exactly what it sounds like””one character wants something, and the other refuses to give it to them. The fun comes in finding ways to make the refusals””and there should be a number of them””indirect and distinct, without the character repeating themself. Often, this becomes part of both the competing agenda and the subtext; the three work together beautifully. In our example, perhaps the amorous witness is also the police chief’s romantic partner, and the detective’s refusals must be firm but indirect enough not to humiliate and enrage the witness.

Bonus technique: Third-ball Attack

To wrap-up our ping-pong analogy, I’d like to offer you one more idea: the third-ball attack. In ping-pong, this refers to a strategy that goes like this: Player A serves the ball (ball #1), Player B returns it (ball #2), and Player A attacks (ball #3).

Think of this as both a heuristic””a rule-of-thumb diagnostic””and as a technique. If you’re writing dialogue, and you can tell it’s starting to drag, look at the first three lines. If the first three lines are ping-pong dialogue, the likelihood is that the rest of the conversation is, too.

You can break it up by turning that third line into an attack: give the dialogue stakes no later than the third line. One character makes a difficult request, issues an ultimatum, attempts a threat, initiates a seduction””whatever it is, it has to commit them to a risky course of action so that, succeed or fail, there are consequences.

Final Considerations

Is the sky the limit with spin? Not exactly. There’s a point of diminishing returns, even a point where it becomes counterproductive. Too much spin produces conversations that are hard to follow (whether because of non sequiturs, or because they break genre conventions, or because they become illogical or incomprehensible). These all threaten to alienate the reader. More spin is not necessarily better.

The important things to remember? Ping-pong bad. Spin good. If nothing’s happening, third-ball attack. And remember, just like real people, fictional characters are rarely as good at communicating as they think they are.

What kind of dialogue bores you to sleep? What are your go-to strategies for pepping it up? Who writes your favorite dialogue? Share some examples and tell us why!

Want to improve your dialogue even more? In January 2023, Gregory will be teaching the Odyssey Online class, Angled Dialogue: Crafting Authentic-Sounding Dialogue to Convey Information, Escalate Conflict, and Advance Character-Driven Stories.

Odyssey Online classes combine deep focus, directed study, intensive practice, and detailed feedback to help students learn how to best use the tools and techniques covered to make major improvements in their fiction.

Apply by November 21 at odysseyworkshop.org!

BIO

Gregory Ashe is a bestselling author and longtime Midwesterner. He has lived in Chicago, Bloomington (IN), and Saint Louis, his current home. He primarily writes contemporary mysteries, with forays into romance, fantasy, and horror. Predominantly, his stories feature LGBTQ protagonists. When not reading and writing, he is an educator. He is a graduate of the Odyssey workshop and has returned to teach there. For more information, visit his website: www.gregoryashe.com.