Dialogue: My Favorite Aspect of Writing

There are many reasons why I love writing (world building, the research process, etc) but I believe my favorite aspect has to be constructing dialogue.

For me, that’s when I see my characters’ personalities come alive as their words jump from deep within my imagination to the page. It’s like they materialize before my eyes as the book progresses. Of course, they’re always there in my head, my nearly constant companions, but once their words have come out into the tangible realm of our world, they become real. Well, as real as fictional characters can be 😛

For example, I’m definitely seeing that one of my characters is incredibly harsh and cold, and this often comes out in his deeply critical remarks to my MC, Kaiyo. I must admit I enjoy writing their arguments as both of them don’t react well when provoked (and they have the uncanny ability to do that to one another quite easily). I never really realized the strain between them until their words tumbled out onto the computer screen. It’s fascinating!

I’ve read that a book should be about half dialogue, as this is how the character’s personalites are truly portrayed. I’m glad for it, since I often find myself quickly carried away with it.

I know I have to be careful with this though because a book cannot have too much dialogue, otherwise it would be a screenplay. Someone once told me I ought to try my hand at that, but I would have no clue on how to even begin 😛 That and I believe I probably have a better chance at getting my book published than getting a screenplay bought and accepted.

So, as a writer, I’m curious: do you like writing dialogue or do you find it difficult? Is there another aspect of writing you like more?

How to Improve

The contest winner over on Nathan’s blog has been chosen. Congrats to Natalie! I voted for hers because it was the most unique (in my opinion) and catchy.

I also discovered one of the likely reasons mine did not place (and I kind of thought this before I entered the contest too). 

It fell into a prevalent, and often predictable, pattern–the weather pattern 😛

Unfortunately, I tend to use this one way too often–I’ve even been told so by my critique group. One of the most difficult things for me is starting a scene. It always starts slow–either because I’m using the often cliched weather description or it just isn’t catchy enough. Of course, I’ve been told after the first paragraph or two, it jumps into action and gets pretty good, but I’ve got to work on the starting part.

So, when the book is finished and I start the revision process, I have to focus on (among other things) perfecting my beginning paragraph, whether it’s for the book or for the scene. I believe this may also fall on the outlying regions of setting the mood and description–the latter which I always have problems with too. If a book could be all dialogue, I’d do wonderful since I think it’s one of my stronger areas. But alas, that would make for a very dull book 😛