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/lit/ - Literature

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3919795 No.3919795 [Reply] [Original]

Writers of /lit/, what is your #1 most difficult thing to write?

I hate writing dialog. I can never make it "look" right by having the right balance of exposition and conversation. Either the words are obscured by the characters moving or reacting or it ends up looking like a screenplay.

>> No.3919803 [DELETED] 

Shaggin'

>> No.3919805

>>3919803
You should go to r9k for that. They're experts on getting laid.

>> No.3919815

fightan'

then again I'm writing a superhero novel so i kind of set myself up for this

>> No.3919824

>>3919795
I know your feels and pain, OP. Why does my dialogue look like wood? I can talk to other people, I have friends and a girlfriend. I know what socializing is. Why am I so shit at writing it? Jesus it makes me feel like a retard.

>> No.3919834
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3919834

>not moving into a one room shack in new mexico and spending your days sitting in cafe booths listening to migrant mexican workers converse to pick up the subtleties of conversation
>not being cormac mccarthy

DYEL bro

>> No.3919835

Dialouge is the only thing I feel truly comfortable writing, and it allows me to both convey information and humor as well as truly show what kind of character each person is.
Describing setting is difficult for me, especially when its something abstract and not common.

>> No.3919840

>>3919795

The most difficult thing is not getting stoned. I love getting stoned - I can't for zeus when I'm stoned.

>> No.3919841

>>3919840

*can't write for zeus

*cough*

>> No.3919842

Try cutting your exposition. If you struggle to balance dialogue and exposition, it's likely that you're writing too much of the latter. Let your reader use his imagination.

>> No.3919851

>>3919835
What's your issue with setting, Anon? I am
>>3919824
maybe we can come to an understanding and better our crafts.

>> No.3919856

>>3919851
I guess just trying to convey a setting that seems like an actual place is well, not DIFFICULT, but definitely not very fun to do and I feel like it waste space and paper spending all this time just to build the scene, especially if the setting is only there for a brief moment.
I think it's because I'm used to writing screenplays, where in 1 second the location of the scene is shown directly through the picture, but in prose you have to spend like a full paragraph building everything.

>> No.3919866

>>3919856
My advice - only detail what's important. The screenplay thing is actually a good way to think of it. If your novel was going to become a movie, what would be in the foreground? What's the most important part of your scene? If a character is leaning into a well, say the stones are rough or mossy - one-word descriptors that add a little something to the scene but don't bog your writing down. Keeping it short and simple is, at least in my opinion, incredibly important.

>> No.3919885

>>3919866
That's good advice, and generally what I try to do. But sometimes its hard finding those exact details to give that would convey as much information and feeling an the briefest way.
Whats so hard about writing dialogue?

>> No.3919899

>>3919885
I feel like my characters talk 'at' each other rather than 'to' each other, if that makes sense. Here's a sample of what I consider some of my better dialogue.

---
Tav stepped out the back entrance for some fresh air. The night was sticky and close; his temples began to throb and he felt sick. He used a rusty ground pump to get some water – he threw it in his face, running his hands down his jaw and neck. All the water in the world won’t clean me up. The door squealed on old hinges and footsteps crunched dirt underfoot.
“What are you doing, Tav?” It was Tallulah and a good question. He was on his knees in a dirty backyard, his hair dripping, with a gut full of beer and a woman waiting for him to come back. He blew droplets of water out of his mustache and twisted his neck to look at her.
“Me? You know. Nothing really. Can’t a man kneel in a dark, dusty plot just because?” He flashed a grin and turned back around. Her footsteps came closer.
“Is this about the gambling?” Tav shook his head and grunted.
“The drinking?” He put a hand out and gestured so-so.
“About earlier? The Blackout?” Silence. Tav shrunk in on himself.
Tallulah knelt and put an arm across his shoulder.
---

>> No.3919911

>>3919885
You could try reading Flaubert, he is truly a master at writing settings.

>> No.3919928

>>3919899

Seems just fine to me buddy.

>> No.3919934

>>3919899
>all the water in the world wont clean me up
Is Tav supposed to be saying that?

Heres some dialogue from my most recent work:

“Well, you’ve done an extraordinary job here,” said Mr. Deter. “You started out in sales, worked your way up, and now at twenty eight years old you made it to A.I Checking. That’s something to be proud of. Now as a general procedure, I have to ask you how you liked it working here…,” continued Mr. Deter before Franklin quickly cut him off.
“I’m being let go?” blurted out Franklin, sounding slightly shocked.
“What?” asked Mr. Deter, putting the pile of papers he held in his hand down on the desk.
“You’re speaking about my career here in past tense. So you’re letting me go? I’m getting fired?”
Mr. Deter let out a hint of a smile and picked up the papers in front of him. “Oh no no no, that was a mistake,” Mr. Deter began to say.
“So I’m not being let go?” asked Franklin.
“Oh no, you are. But I wasn’t supposed to let you know that yet,” said Mr. Deter in a very matter-of-fact voice.

>> No.3919935

>>3919928
Hey, I really appreciate the kind word Anon. Do you have any samples of your work?

>>3919934
>is Tav speaking?
He's thinking it. I lost the italics when I copy-pasted.

>> No.3919937

>>3919935
Oh ok.

>> No.3919945

>>3919934
You do have a better grasp on dialogue than I do, for sure. About the details, there's a little here and there I would trim.

"in his hand" from "“What?” asked Mr. Deter, putting..."
It's just an extraneous detail you don't need to include. Generally speaking, if something is a no-brainer and can't enhance the scene, I just don't say it. In this case, it stands to reason that Mr. Deter is holding the papers in his hand.

"sounding slightly" from '“I’m being let go?"
Alliteration is a pet-peeve of mine, take that as you will. More importantly, it's an excess detail (sounding) piled on top of an intensifier (slightly) that keeps your reader away from the real word you want him to see - shocked.

"very matter-of-fact voice" from the last line of Mr. Deter's dialogue.
I'd identify his tone of voice as 'matter-of-factly'. You're running into the same thing I noted above, with intensifiers keeping your reader away from the important stuff.

>> No.3919954

>>3919945
I enjoy alliteration a lot. It's used a lot more in my prose, as well as several rhyming sentence structures, idk I just like playing with words in that way. As far as adding too many words to try to stress other words, I get that complaints, and most of the time I feel like its a problem, albeit a minor one since the story is still in early stages.

>> No.3919961

>>3919954
It is a minor problem, as you say. It's just one of those things I pick up while I edit, but it won't disrupt your story to leave it as-is.

>> No.3920017

Anything, really. I'm an absolutely, positvely atrocious writer.

>> No.3920053

>>3919945

I like you. Your advice to that guy makes me think of a part in the last Wheel of Time book.

>> No.3920059

>>3919795
You should read JR by Gaddis

>> No.3920077

Pacing and plotting. Sometimes I become overly wrapped-up in the style of what I'm writing rather than what's happening, and I always have to find a good proof-reader to remind me that my narratives need to build up with some of tension. Also, I used to have a bad habit of writing characters that served as stand-ins for certain ideas, and though that may have "worked" in Blood Meridian, I now know it's just a cheap way to get away with flat characters