Sometimes, in a scene, the dialogue falls flat. Feels forced, as if characters are trying too hard to engineer the outcome the writer wants, because Act Two is supposed to end on a certain emotional note, or because if these two characters don’t break up right now they can’t get together later, even if they don’t actually have anything to fight about. This manufacturing of emotion is easy enough to spot, and I’ll bet if you asked any author about that kind of scene, they’d cringe and admit, “I know. They wouldn’t cooperate.”
Why does it happen? How do we fix it? I had a scene like that in the draft I’m working on now, and I put it aside in frustration to go visit my niblings. This morning, I spent some time with my niece, who I once taught to read. She loves stories, possibly even more than I do. She reads novels easily, but there’s something she likes even more. Imaginative play, where we each embody a character and improvise a scene together. These scenes are both silly and compelling. Today Stella Rabbit wanted to sell ice-cream from a truck, but the kids were confused because Stella Rabbit wasn’t charging them any money. She and my brother got into the strangest confrontation, laughing themselves silly the whole time.
“I haven’t had any complaints! Everyone loves my mint chocolate chip!”
“Do you even have a license to sell ice-cream?”
“I don’t need a license because the ice-cream is free! Just take it!”
“Who gives away free ice-cream? You’re just getting away with shenanigans because you’re married to the Mayor!”
“I work at the mall during the week for money. This is just my weekend hobby! I LIKE GIVING KIDS FREE ICE-CREAM.”
There’s something immediate about storymaking, about acting and improvisation, that forces you to live a story rather than tell it. The closest I’ve come is fan fiction, which is something nobody writes unless they feel the character so completely in their bones that there is no question about what they might say or do. Plot falls out of character with inevitability.
Writing a novel makes you forget that immediacy in the interest of engineering structure. Especially when you’re writing a novel in spurts over the course of months and years, it’s hard to stop being the writer, and become the character instead. To live the novel, not write it.
But the novel, I was reminded recently, is a modern invention. It is about as ubiquitous as the television and the smartphone, but harkens back only to the 18th century. There was a period recently where we feared its extinction, as if we didn’t get along just fine without it for millennia. As if the first stories weren’t told, recited and drawn on cave walls, before the invention of the printing press.
I still need to learn more about this, and increase my willingness to live the experiences I put on the page. Today, during the imaginative play, my niece decided everyone who wore pants would be immediately imprisoned, and pulled the pants off all her dolls. I said, “You and I are also wearing pants.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t ruin the story, Auntie.”
Apparently author insertion has become second nature to me. I have a long way to go.
Storymaking prompt for any bold commenters: Sparkly (pictured below) is sad that she can’t touch the reflection of her sparkles. Everyone else can touch them, but they’re always behind her. When she turns, they’re gone. Dejected, she went to…