Writing...or 'Not Writing' A Book

My friend, Terry has written and published a book. I won’t say he made it look easy, but writing is what writers do, so how hard could it have been? People occasionally suggest that I write a book. But I have no novel aspirations. Then again, sometimes I’ll read a really great book and think to myself, “I could do that!”

And so I started writing a book. I’ve got the basic outline of a plot, and an idea of the protagonist and supporting characters. Since I know a ton about aviation, my book would obviously be about motorcycles. Of course, right?

Immediately, I ran into a big issue: Dialogue.

I suspect that you are probably like me: When you read something, you probably “hear” it in your own voice. (Which brings up an interesting question: What voice do you hear when you read these words?)

My problem is that everybody in my book talks like I do. If there are two or three people in a scene, their speech is indistinguishable from each other...and from me, the guy at the keyboard dreaming all this crap up. I find it very hard to communicate a person’s personality onto the printed page. And so it ends up being multiples of me talking.

When my friends and I sit around talking, each one of them has certain idiosyncrasies to his speech. Maybe one person will curse/swear more than the others...maybe someone will use more slang - like the word ain’t, which I personally try to avoid. Up in Washington, one year we had a young pilot who…I shit you not…every other word out of the kid’s mouth was the f-bomb. We were, like, “Travis, was your father a sailor?” (He wasn’t.)

Or maybe he/she will have an annoying habit of using the word, like too many times. Some people have different accents. My friend, Brandon speaks like the surfer-dude he is, and on the other hand, Terry has a strong southern drawl. Some people talk super-fast…or loud…or extremely softly. Brandon mumbles softly when he gets pensive. You know people who get that “thousand-yard stare” in their eyes? Brandon gets it in his voice.

My friend, Eddie spoke with a perpetual “Oh gosh!” tone of voice, as if everything in life just amazed the shit out of him. Every sentence he uttered ended with an exclamation point. He was fun to talk with.

I have one friend who, when we’re talking about something technical, often says, ”That’s pretty complicating.” He means complicated, of course. But I don’t want to correct him.

The people in my book have none of those little conversational quirks. They all speak in bland, perfectly correct English, with no mispronunciations or Norm Crosby-ish malapropisms. They don’t curse and/or interrupt each other. In short, they’re boring. And to be honest, even I have trouble telling them apart. I wish I had taken a Creative Writing course. Or two.

And then I ask myself: How important are these things in telling a story? Isn’t the message more important than the way it’s delivered? I fear that including some of these conversational quirks would then require too much explanation or digression – both bad things when you’re trying to move a story along. I’m not trying to rewrite “War And Peace.” Terry suggests that I build a character’s personality into the story, and his or her voice will come out in the readers’ minds. Pffft – easier said than done!

But even in Terry’s book, he’s often got a half-dozen or so main male characters in every chapter. To be honest, all of their voices kind of blend together for me so that I have to refer back to see who’s “speaking.” Then again, I’ve noticed the same thing in some of Clive Cussler’s books (may he rest in peace), so Terry is in good company.

At this point, I’m not happy with the dialogue I've written. And since the book is not a travelogue but a character-driven work of fiction, getting the conversations right is pretty important. And so the novel-writing has stalled, perhaps for good. Maybe I’ll get back to it, but I’ve really just lost interest.  

I think I’ll just stick to these little first-person stories.


Terry's Book: The Broken Earth: America's Journey Home