So last year, as I was preparing to go off to college 3,000 miles from home, I undertook an effort to digitalize my notebook collection so that, should I require my notes while at school, I wouldn't have to lug a metric fuckton of paper cross-country, or *sticks nose in the air, places steepled hand on chest* send for them.
This meant that I was exposed, in a four-month period, to aaaaaallllll the writing I had done (read: kept) since late middle school. Also pictures I drew, but I didn't learn all that much from that. Some things I did learn are as follows:
- Write down your scene ideas wRITE THEM DOWN
In digitalizing my collected notebooks, I came to find that there were A LOT of places where I obviously knew where I was going with something, but because I knew where it was headed, I didn’t bother to write it down because why would I and let me tell you, should I have ever! I have no idea now where SO many of my stories were headed, huge plot points, entire scenes, choice juicy dialogue, all disappeared from the earth forever because I thought I’d remember those ideas in perpetuity. Or at least until I got to that point in the story.
Make sure you take lots of copious, fully-detailed notes, kids, especially if you’re about to move onto the next WIP.
- Don’t just toss things--you'll need it as soon as you do
RELATED: Don’t throw out old ideas or notes until you’ve at least procured (and backed up) a digital copy. You never know what you might need later. Even if you think it’s trash, keep those old notes and scene corpses and half-started stories; you might be able to revive, reuse, or repurpose those bits and pieces later, and the minute you toss something is the minute you’ll have an AMAZING IDEA that requires that you have those pieces. It’s a pain in the ass.
- Too many dialogue tags muck things up
Dialogue tags are those little things like “said” and “insisted” and “proclaimed,” the parts of language that let you know someone is talking and how they’re doing it. Most young writers start out wanting to use TONS, because you always want the audience to know how your character is saying what they're saying--are they yelling this line? Whispering this other one? Growling hissing demanding commanding interrupting?
And dialogue tags are great! … In moderation. But it doesn’t take long before dialogue tags reach a point of diminishing returns. They get in the way, start gumming up the works, slowly leaching all the fun out of the work and reducing the novel’s pace to a snail’s crawl.
Most of the time, guys, said will do. Said and Asked are the meat and greens of the meal, and the rest of the dialogue tags are spices. You can use as many saids and askeds as you want, and it’ll be fine. A few more diverse dialogue tags are nice to keep things interesting and variegated, but if you use too many you’ll over-spice the dish and it’ll become unpalatable.
A good rule of thumb: If the audience can tell from context how a character is speaking, use “said” or “asked.” If they can’t, stick a spicy spicy dialogue tag in there for some flavor.
- Make sure things are HAPPENING
I came across MANY points in my re-reading where chapters go by and just NOTHING is happening--it’s all just DESCRIPTION, and not even that interesting. It makes my soul die a little. But it’s okay, because I learn from my mistakes usually probably maybe. This time at least. Hopefully.
Don’t go too long without letting something important occur--conversations, action sequences, a montage of family activities, make something happen sooner rather than later, or you’ll lose the audience. The audience who may just be future you, quietly shaking her head at present you's sad, boring tomfoolery.
*waves nervously at future me*
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