Guest blogger: Author F.M. Meredith on Dialogue

I’m joined today by prolific author F.M. Meredith, whose new book Unresolved (Rocky Bluff P.D. Series #13) is available now. She’s here to share some tips on how to write compelling dialogue. Take it away, Ms. Meredith:

Though you want dialogue to be realistic sounding, don’t copy how we really talk such as: “Hello, how are you.”  “I’m fine, and you?” Leave all this greeting stuff and comments about the weather out unless it is important to the plot.

Dialogue should do one of two things: Move the plot along or reveal character.

Said and asked are better than the multitude of other dialogue tags such as responded, agreed, etc.

Better still, use the character’s action as a dialogue tag instead: “No way.”  Dan pulled out his gun.

Legwork Wednesday for April 26, 2017

Legwork Wednesday is a weekly writing/reading/general life update. By recounting my week’s activities, I can chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable. You’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

Writing: My short story for the OBPO What’s Your Story? contest is finally done and edited. It took a lot out of me! Finding the balance between description and emotion, and trying to convey something actually happening to someone I hope the reader cares about in the space of 1400 words was not easy. Now I’m working on a draft for the Malahat Review Far Horizons short fiction contest (3500 words, deadline May 1). It’s a story that came out of nowhere, the first thousand words dropping fully-formed from my brain in twenty minutes of typing. Figuring out what happened next was something of a challenge, but I like where this strange little story is going. Ideally I’d also like to finish something for the Cosmonauts Non-Fiction Prize, mostly because it’s judged by the glorious Roxane Gay, but I don’t think I’ll have time. It’s also due May 1st. We’ll see how the weekend goes…

Legwork Wednesday for April 19th, 2017

Legwork Wednesday is a weekly writing/reading/general life update. By recounting my week’s activities, I can chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable. You’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

Life: I was on vacation last week in the nation’s capital. I love Ottawa. It’s a beautiful city, lots of museums and points of interest, very walkable, and great restaurants and cafes for lounging. The trip was a combination anniversary gift to ourselves and much-needed break. Ottawa is just far enough by comfy train ride from Toronto to feel like you’re genuinely away while also being cost effective. We checked out the Alex Janvier exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada, Parliament, Rideau Hall, the Byward Market, Chinatown, and many other places. We ate poutine and strolled along the Rideau River. We even walked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his way in to work! I did a lot of reading, napping, relaxing, and…

Writing: This has been a rewarding couple of weeks. I completed and submitted a short piece to Paper Darts’ microfiction contest on the theme of cleanliness and a draft for the OBPO’s What’s Your Story? contest. One thing I’m really focusing on is plot: it’s great to have an image of X as a starting point, but that setting or character sketch isn’t often enough. I ask myself all the time now: “Why is this something someone would want to read? What is interesting here? What keeps someone from putting down a book or closing a tab?” From that focus on “but what happens, and why is that interesting?” I’m finding more depth to characterization. The OBPO story needs a lot of refinement, but at least it’s down on the page.

Legwork Wednesday for April 5, 2017

Legwork Wednesday is a weekly writing/reading/general life update. By recounting my week’s activities, I can chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable. You’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

Writing: I’m hard at work on a short story for the Ontario Book Publishers Organization’s 2nd annual What’s Your Story? Short Prose and Poetry Competition for Emerging Writers (deadline: May 1st, 2017, 1300 to 1500 words). The very short word limit and the setting (one of four main Toronto neighbourhoods) makes for a unique challenge. As a new(er)comer to Toronto (I’ve been here about a decade and lived in two of the four neighbourhoods), I’m thinking a lot about authenticity and what story I want to tell. My goal is a workable draft finished by Friday. I’ve also set up a calendar of interesting story competition deadlines for May. Having returned to writing after a five-year hiatus, I want to build up a new portfolio of work, so writing a new story for a number of deadlines creates a helpful schedule and structure. Finally, I’m planning some site research for my novel, visiting a few places that I can walk through and take in to help the setting for my mystery novel come to better life in my head.

Legwork Wednesday for March 29, 2017

Legwork Wednesday is a weekly writing/reading/general life update. By recounting my week’s activities, I can chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable. You’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

General writing: I’ve officially sent off my short story for the Alice Munro Short Story Competition! I’m really excited about this. It’s the first completed-and-sent story I’ve worked on since returning to fiction writing after a five-year hiatus. Now I’m doing some research for the Ontario Book Publishers Organization’s 2nd annual What’s Your Story? Short Prose and Poetry Competition for Emerging Writers (deadline: May 1st, 2017, 1300 to 1500 words). This is a neat one, as the story needs to set within one of four defined Toronto neighbourhoods. I have the germ of an idea and the faintest whiff of a main character, so I’ll be spending some time teasing out what kind of plot might come out of the germ.

Legwork Wednesday for March 22, 2017

Legwork Wednesday is a weekly writing/reading/general life update. By recounting my week’s activities, I can chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable. You’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

General writing: I finished a short story draft for the Alice Munro Short Story Competition. I’d been having some trouble with it because I could see where it started and why, but not how it ended. I spent some time thinking about GMC: Goal, Motivation, and Conflict. That really helped me think about what was going on. I knew my character’s goal, but I hadn’t worked out the motivation or conflict. Thinking about those brought the other main character to life and fundamentally changed the thrust of the story, turning it from something sort of meditative to something sort of weird. The weird is okay with me! I’m planning to edit, get some feedback, and polish over the next couple of days, and maybe even send it in early for that April 1st deadline.

Finding a lump. Finding perspective.

I’ll start this post with a spoiler: everything’s fine.

Four weeks ago I found a lump in my left breast. I sort of willfully ignored/explained it away. PMS, sometimes things feel a bit funny, probably nothing to worry about. I didn’t want to deal with it, but it hummed away in the back of my mind. I was always aware of it.

After ten or so days, it was definitely still there, a tangible something. My partner felt it and gently suggested I get it checked out. I admit, I had an ostrich response: stick head in sand, pretend nothing is wrong, maybe it’ll go away.

But I made the appointment. I didn’t have any luck with cancellations, so it was another week and a half’s wait. Then an ultrasound and a wait for the results. I’m so relieved and happy to say that it’s turned out to be a benign fibroadenoma. Fibroadenomas are cysts 10-15% of women in North America have. We’ll keep an eye on it with checkups every six or twelve months, just to be sure, but my doctor was very clear that this is nothing to worry about.

Super great news. A little creepy to know there’s just this weird, quarter-sized mass of differentiated cells in there that didn’t used to be there. But it’s not cancer.

Legwork Wednesday: a weekly reading and writing roundup

Starting this blog is part of a healthy writing habit I’m cultivating. By recounting my week’s activities, I’ll give myself a way to chart my progress, update any of you who might be interested, and keep myself accountable! I’ll cover my general writing, my novel, what I’m reading, any mystery-related news, and what else I’m working on.

Why Legwork Wednesday? Because like the great detectives, you’ve got to do a lot of legwork to solve the puzzle and reach your goal.

 

Getting started

I’ve been writing in various capacities for a long time, and working with other writers for the past decade as an editor. I used to harbour dreams of writing and publishing a novel, but somehow those got lost in the general hubbub of life. Moving to a new town, pursuing a career, classes after work, setting up house, time with friends, freelance work after my in-house job….somehow in all of that, I convinced myself that my role was as amanuensis for other writers and let my own writing aspirations go.

But somehow even though I had decided I probably wasn’t a writer, I was still writing all the time for work. Blog posts, book reviews, newsletters, back cover copy, handouts for workshops on writing (irony), even children’s books and short stories (under a different pseudonym).