Blog Post #4

Day 5: Adding tension to dialogue

So this is going pretty much exactly how NaNoWriMo always goes for me, so I feel this is excellent NaNoWriMo prep - I start out really keen and write a lot, I do pretty much nothing through the middle of the month, and then I frantically rush to get everything finished over the last week.

The fact that I avoided this exercise for so long should indicate how much I hate writing dialogue. This exercise really stumped me, so it's good, I suppose, that I finally did it.

And once I did, it turned out to be super enjoyable. I picked two characters who weren't originally going to interact much in the novel, although now I've written this scene I might write more.

It was great having to consciously think about what they would say to each other and how they would say it, all the while practising adding tension to my dialogue. I attempted to use all three suggestions made in the original exercise - defensiveness, teasing, and answering questions with questions. This was great, because it really added variety to the scene, and it made me think about different ways the same sentiment could be expressed. It also made the scene longer, which added more tension as I drew it out.

For this exercise, I only wrote dialogue. This made me appreciate how much description can add to a scene, however - the actions accompanying the words are just as important, especially because they are all we get - we can't see the characters or hear their tone of voice after all. I'm planning to go back later and add in extra description in an effort to add more tension.

Although it wasn't part of the exercise, the other thing I did was switch which character was asking the questions halfway through the scene. Done right, this hopefully serves a bunch of different purposes: it disarms the character originally asking questions and changes the balance of power in the scene (again, hopefully adding to the tension), it shows character and gives the lead-in for future interactions between the characters, and it hopefully engages the reader more, making them want to know if the shift will happen again. I also found it good for giving the reader important information without making it too boring.

Consciously thinking about dialogue in general is extremely useful. However, I'm not sure if I'll do it during Nano - I'm usually writing a lot of words in a short amount of time, which doesn't leave much space for musing. It's a good exercise to have in your repertoire, though, and it'll be great practice for writing in general and for post-Nano novel edits.

A fun fact before we go: to get in to the mood for this exercise, I listened to Quartet from the musical Chess. This is a great example of some of the techniques I talked about,, and also of other techniques to add tension to a scene. Also, Chess is a great musical, and well worth a listen.

Now, I have to do eighteen exercises (if I skip all the free writing) in 12 days. Let's see how we go.