I found this link on Roger Ebert's site. It's about screenwriting to a great extent, but also enough about writing in general that it's well worth a read to any fiction writer.

How to Write a Screenplay, by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Here's a piece of it that I really liked and for whatever reason had to read more than once for the full effect of it to sink in:

Good points, and that last part especially cracks me up.

And here's another classic from the 70's that has become hugely popular over time. Very funny! I love the last line especially.

How to Write Good

I've been trying to rewrite a couple of stories that I started awhile ago. What I've discovered is that I can't write female characters (or female dialogue) for ****. It just sounds terrible. I'm not even kidding. They are the weakest part of my stories. My male characters sound pretty cool if I may say so myself. All my female characters sound fake. I'm about to throw in the towel.

What do you think is wrong with the dialogue of your female characters?

oh where to begin. They sound fake, phony, annoying and whiny. Lol, they all end up sounding like my friend Paige. She has a lot of spirit but she is selfish.

I wonder if I'm better at writing male characters because I've been reading these forums for so long. It doesn't make any sense. You'd think I would know how women talk.

What's so bad about having characters sound like they're jerks? Is it really necessary that they don't?

The fake part sounds much more worrisome to me than the annoying and whiny parts. Life is full of annoying and whiny people.

Besides, some of them are pretty good people, and in different situations could be the strongest ones in the room. There can even be a rewarding irony in discovering as a story progresses that someone has contradictory or even opposite layers to herself and does not always behave the same way regardless of the company she is keeping or situation she is in.

I'm just hoping you don't want your characters to be too flat or likeable. Often those characters ring least true and are the most boring.

Dom and other screenwriters, here's another post I thought you might like:

Why Do You Care?

Blargie -

I can't get your linky to work.

This is sort of what I was thinking too, Blarg. I wanted my main female character to have contradictory layers. The problem is, I find the dialogue too forced. When I go back and reread it I just groan. It's pretty bad

One difference is that I love my male characters. Their entire personality is well formed in my head. I don't feel the same way about my female characters. They are too flat, they aren't 3-dimensional.

I think this is a problem I have. I want my female characters to be likable and it is not happening. And you're right, one of my female characters is pretty boring. but my main problem is with the dialogue for sure.

I will have to think about it some more. I know exactly what my male characters are thinking...how they talk, what their motivations are...but I really can't say the same for the female characters. The only thing that I've noticed is that some of my minor female characters are actually better written than the major characters. Maybe I'm just trying too hard.

The Why Do You Care? one? If so, that's weird, cuz I just clicked it from inside this thread and got it to open up in Firefox for me. First by left click, then another time by right click and open in new tab commands.

I'll put it in again right here, but I'm not sure why it's working for me and not you.

Why Do You Care? second attempt to link

Sleeping on things often does do wonders.

But it sounds like you have nailed part of your problem for yourself already.

1. You want your characters to be likeable or acceptable, rather than who they are. When creating character, writing toward an end can create a hollow result. Sometimes dear old Aunt Hortense who makes sugar cookies for all the neighborhood kids is not all sweet and really shouldn't be. Once in a while it helps the story to find a vibrator in her nightstand.
2. Yet you admit you don't care for them all that much compared to your better-written characters.
3. Why then should we the readers care about or like somebody you do not?

The last one is hard to swing. Sometimes that happens when you know characters so well that you leave too much of them out. This happens a lot when they are based on real characters we know or even on ourselves, and we don't want to talk about their private spaces because it makes us uncomfortable or unhappy or leaves us feeling embarassed or exposed. Or else we don't think we have to say anything more about them because they are who they are and it's obvious already. And maybe it is, if you live with them or have known them for 15 years in real life.

Don't forget a good writer is a filthy brutal wh*re and a betrayer of friends and family! If you've got a story, you get it out there, or choose a different one. Half measures are trickier by far and people can often tell if you leave the dirty parts out.

I suggest you just use a character that best enhances the story.

If you find your story needs a Grandma that seems perfect (and is, because that vibrator is a Rabbit), then cut out the 40ish surfer dude that's really a math whiz on the run from the FBI.

Sounds like you already have a good sense for when these characters don't work. Just ask yourself what or who would work and go from there. What I find in my own work is that the story rarely changes, just the details that support it.

wow, great post above Blarg. You are really making me think about my approach to character development. Haha i got to this line and was like huh? what the hell is he talking about? lol!




i'm going to have to give this more thought but I think I know what you are saying. yes, I am definitely getting a hollow result with 2 of my female characters.


I love this post. Thanks for helping me think about my character dilemma.

I realized last night that there is one female character in my story who I'm actually pretty happy with. She is the "bad" girl. She's the one who breaks my hero's heart. So I have done a decent job showing the bad girl to be complex and interesting, but a lousy job with my two so-called "good" girls. I will have to think a lot more about how to effectively make these characters jump off the page. It's tough.

Katy,

I wish I could remember the short story (I heard it read aloud), but I loved the way the writer portrayed one of the female characters. Two old friends meet, and one does all the talking, and the other says barely a word. Finally, the talker stops and says, "Oh, but I've talked so much about me. So tell me, what do you think of my dress?"

One of my favorite lines of dialogue comes from the movie Pennies From Heaven. In one scene, the music salesman encounters a blind girl. He begins to talk to her, and then realizes she is blind.

He says, "You can't see, can you?"

She replies, "No. (Slight pause.) Not really."

Here the added "Not really" says worlds about the character, a crucial, yet minor one in the film. The "No" would have sufficed to convey the information, but the final line conveys the blind girl's sense of self much better than a simple "No" can.

You'll have to give the "good girls" some angst or some kind of dilemma. That gives their characters depth plus enough contrast for them to stand out otherwise I think you're right they will fade out into pale boring nothingness.

I've moved parts of a couple posts from this year's short story commentary thread here for further comment, because they involve an effect and often a style of story construction -- even reason for story genesis -- that is pretty tricky to pull off exceptionally well, and that I admire a lot when well done. They also involve an understanding of story itself that I'd like to touch on in more detail. First, the quotes:

This is what I said in response to a question about the value of studying authors and styles of writing that may not be especially modern or accord with one's own taste:

From John Cole in response to that and the larger post the above quote is embedded in:


What I had been trying to do, which includes what John was saying, was illustrate how authors of different time periods and nearly polar opposite styles can, despite stark differences between them, use the same story structures and the emotional effects those structures make possible, and use them to accomplish the same goals.

They can do this because while all storytellers are individuals, storytelling itself is universal. Certain structures, techniques, rhythms, viewpoints, emotional effects, and other aspects of storytelling are basic to the nature of storytelling itself, no matter what time or culture or particular story they manifest in.

An aspiring writer does himself a great service by paying attention to writing explicitly as a potential writer. It is not enough for a writer to read a work; he does well to seek to discover it. He should be able to look past the surface sheen to what lies beneath. When he does, he will find surprising correspondences in what would seem to be the most unlikely of places. And then he might begin to do the valuable favor to himself of asking why they are there, and what he can learn from it. This is not the sort of thing required of a reader or a critic. It takes place on another, sometimes deeper, and definitely more practical level. It is what informs the vision and understanding of a creator.

The particular effect in the structures of the Carver and Miller stories mentioned above has a name that I stumbled across on wikipedia and hadn't known before. I thought I would share it.


The last paragraph was so good that I felt it hard not to bold almost everything in it. The ideas expressed there are powerful and involve potential emotional, moral, and spiritual, even intellectual catharses.

You can see why I think a story that can pull something like this off can be so moving and exceptional.

Interesting discussion of writing from a Charlie Rose interview with John Grisham that took place in town the other night:

Charlie Rose interviews John Grisham

"...withstand the temptation to use too many words."

Gold.

My general advice?

Guideline 1.

Tell a good story. Be a good story teller. The rest comes later.

I'd say, tell a good story and don't interrupt its momentum with sloppy grammar or punctuation.

Agreed. Too many aspiring writers think all it takes is a good story when, in fact, most stories have already been written. I think Campbell on myth articulates that point fully and explains it a lot better than I ever could.

Regardless, there is a foundation to writing that can not be ignored or diminished. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, format and style are all required basics that have to be mastered. Admittedly, me preaching about that is the equal of Haggard preaching about gay marriage. But, in addition to every 8th-grade English teacher in the country, there are many respected sources making that same point.

Strunk and White, King's On Writing, John Cole's recommended "Style" are all excellent sources of how to, and more importantly, why one should write correctly.

Yup. I often think of the way a good story works with the simple visual metaphor of going down a slide. If it's done right, whoosh! and there you are at the end, wide-eyed and delighted. But every little fault is a pebble or dent that snags your clothes or scratches you on the way down. The writer's primary job is to make sure that the reader's experience is all about the whoosh and not about the snags and scratches.

well this is a little depressing to contemplate. I always tell myself the opposite, that there are endless number of stories waiting to be written.

I have a HUGE problem with grammar, structure, and style. Basically, I lack them. And my big problem is that my ideas are too grandiose. They involve a ton of characters, back stories, usually a futuristic plot, betrayal, jealousy, sometimes even gay love (nothing wrong with that). I like to think that my stories have not already been written. hm. maybe i have borrowed all my ideas from movies or other stories. OMG.

Don't think of it that way. Think of it as there being a basic structure to human experience, and people being around for a zillion years, so all those basic structures get used up sooner or later. That doesn't wear them out for the next guy living life, though. Being born and all that junk that comes before dying is still gonna hit him like a ton of bricks even though he didn't originate them.

And his stories can still reflect his individual take on them. That's what's precious. We all know what a life is, and what a story is, already. But there's still a reason to care about another or read another once you know how the system works. It's all in the telling.

Having a beginning, middle, and end? Yeah, it's been done. It's still as good as ever, though. The heroic cycle, as described by Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces? Done to death, but it will always be good.

You can study grammar and structure, and it's doable within a fairly short amount of time. And it pays huge dividends. Kind of like having manners in a social setting can. Good manners are a social lubricant that smooths out any wrinkles between people and lets everything go off without a hitch. Good grammar and punctuation are the good manners of writing. When you have the humility and concern to like and respect your reader, you'll want to use your good manners, too.

There's also nothing wrong with having complex stories, so long as you can bring them off workably well. If they recall other stories fairly clearly in some parts, that's still not necessarily bad either. Think of it as thematic rhyming, if you like, or perhaps even ironic counterpoint. You can play off what's come before and use it to add extra resonance to what you're doing.

Slow and steady wins the race. If you love language and story, and have a good work ethic, progress is inevitable.