What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer?

[Liomsa]

I was asked this recently (on an application form) and found it hard but interesting to answer. The external stuff is easy enough - I have a ferocious work ethic, I take criticism well, but I could procrastinate for Ireland at times! - but what about inside the work?

I'm poor at dialogue, and have a bad tendency to 'write up to' big plot events - I need to remind myself constantly about 'getting in late and out early', otherwise I would narrate the heroine meeting her future lover from the moment she woke up that morning and dampen down the drama of their encounter by following her to the supermarket afterwards!

Harder to say what I'm good at. I think I'm good at place and atmosphere, and I've got a lot better at characterisation-in-action and showing a character through action, rather than telling the reader what he is like.

Anyone else?

Strengths - dialogue, characterisation, tension, pace, structure.

Weaknesses - settings, over complicating, info-dump, repetition.

I must say I envy those who are naturally good at dialogue. I'm improving, though.

Tension and pace are interesting ones, because so much depends on genre, doesn't it? I write character-driven literary fiction, which no one would read in order to see whether the asteroid takes out the earth, but of course you still need both, even if they're not, maybe, as acutely important as in, say, a crime thriller.

liomsa indeed.

All novels need the right level of tension and pace. And the ways of developing them, are applicable to all genres.

Indeed, I was recently writing a radio play where essentially two people make a journey post apocalypse. Nothing 'happens'. And I really needed to keep an eye on both.

Strengths - character and dialogue.
Weaknesses - structure, and a tendency to allow my characters too much introspection. Although of course it partly depends on genre - there's more scope for introspection in a romance than in a crime or mystery novel - but too much of it slows the pace.

Yes, I tend towards introspection, too, Harriet, but as I write literary fiction, I suspect more latitude is given. What is your genre?

And in my latest revision of the novel in progress, I think I've made some strides in managing to convey interiority/introspection as part of the characterisation and action. The worst fault of my very first version tended to be that a character would pick up a cup of tea and stare into it, thinking, for several hundred words, while the action around them went into suspended animation .

In fact, I realised fairly recently that the scenes I've always struggled with are the static scenes where there is a lot of unspoken, uncomfortable emotion. And that action is the solution. I was writing a deathbed recently which was really flat and inert, so I had the dying woman's scapegrace husband disappear overnight and it gave an immediate focus to the other characters' actions.

Any thoughts on improving one's dialogue?

I 'act out' all my dialogue in my head as I'm writing it; if it doesn't sound like something a real person would say, it doesn't make it onto the page. I think that's why there's so much sweariness in my current WIP...

Hmm. That's interesting, Cel. I wonder if my issue is that mine is a historical novel, so - while I hear the narrating voices of my two narrators clearly - I'm not trying to write the actual dialogue as pastiche spoken English of the period, which would I think seem stilted and a bit outré.

Also, no sweariness!

The next one will be contemporary, so ithe relationship between narration and direct speech may be more seamless.

Liomsa, I write mostly historical crime/mystery, sometimes with a bit of romance.

I realised I had a habit of writing a scene, then following it with a passage where the character thought about what had just happened. I make a conscious effort not to do that now, or at least keep it brief.

Yes, historical dialogue is tricky - not being all 'forsooth' and 'egad' but also not being too modern, and not having the character use an anachronistic expression.

I try to establish a 'voice' for each character then make sure all the dialogue is in the right voice. It might take two or three revisions to get it entirely right.

What period is your novel set?

Yes, Liomsa, I can definitely see the challenge in making historical voices come alive. My issue is in trying to keep the contemporary voices realistic without every other word being 'like' or 'umm'...

Between the late 1880s and 1907. So not Egads and God's Blood territory, but not 'now' either. And with the added complication that a significant chunk of one of the two strands takes place in France, with an Anglophone character functioning in initially poor, later fluent, French.

I know what you mean about writing a scene then having a 'pendant' scene about what just happened. My version involves a scene showing character A behaving in a certain way and ending with character B telling us that, sure enough, character A is mean/crotchety/self-willed/talented, just to make sure the reader hadn't missed anything. I think I have now learned to trust the reader.

I think with dialogue, what I'm aiming for is the essence of reality.

I try to capture how real people speak, but OTH I edit out all the things that make most real people quite dull (in fiction terms). As a general rule, I don't allow anyone to speak for more than two sentences (which of course they do frequently in real life).

If someone needs to say a lot, I break it up with action, observation of setting and internal reflection. But as a preference, I'd avoid it if at all possible. A conversation, especially a conflict heavy one, is my preferred method.

I agree with you there, SheGot re dialogue. I can't bear to read novels where someone talks for paragraph after paragraph with no relief.

Liomsa, my current work includes (made up) letters and newspaper articles from around 1900. I'm reading actual newspapers from the time to make sure I get the tone right That's no good for dialogue, of course, unless the paper gives a verbatim report of something. Would popular fiction published at the time help? There's probably quite a selection on Gutenberg.

I think I have now learned to trust the reader.

Yes, I tend to want to explain every detail - mostly for my own satisfaction, to try to ensure I have no plotholes!

Yes, I think I'm heavy on the explaining-to-make-sure-the-reader-has-really-got-it thing I'm on a fourth revision of a WIP at present (decided I had sent it to agents too soon so having another go at an edit) and this was blaringly the case when I looked for it. I cut out a couple of great chunks of info-dump and decided to trust the reader, and it does read better for it.

I think I'm OK at dialogue, I also don't tend to go for great swathes of speech, but shorter sentences/paragraphs framed and interrupted by descriptions.

I think I need to look at the introspective world of my characters, now. One of mine does a lot of thinking, quite possibly too much.

It's tricky letting a character shine through actions, dialogue and description without going heavy on this kind of thing - but I guess it comes with practise.

Apart from that, I think I'm good at scene setting and tension building, particularly emotional tension, but bad at scenes of catastrophe (they need to sound more believable) and at technical detail type scenes.

I think one way to make info dump/introspection etc less clunky is to get the voice right; a very consistent yet interesting voice.

I'm currently listening to A Dark and Broken Heart by R.J Ellory and the opening is all set up, very introspective (we learn a huge amount of info). Yet the singular voice of the character engages us. All his observations/asides are told through that voice 'who am I trying to kid? I couldn't pour piss from a shoe if the instructions were on the heel'.

Maybe that's key?

SheGot, I think that's right about voice. It's blindingly obvious, of course, but my descriptions only stopped being inert when I realised they needed to be 'in character'. Not with pathetic fallacy 'raining on the street and in my heart' guff, but if your pov character is agoraphobic and foreign , she's going to see the Champs Élysées differently to a Parisian man about town.

Harriet, I've decided my novel can't honestly be called 'historical' in any real way - it doesn't pay any attention to its times, it's entirely set inside some quite 'set apart' circumstances - and of course much if what I'm writing in English is meant to be happening in French.. I'm not obsessing about authenticity in dialogue, just trying to avoid obvious anachronism, really.

Mad, I think I've got better at 'character in action' over time. I do remember when I started this novel thinking 'Character X is wild - now how do I show this? but I started thinking more naturally about it. Again, I think it's trusting the reader, isn't it? Does anyone need to be told how wild X is and then have it neatly illustrated with three instances of zany behaviour, with other key characters clucking about how crazy X is?