Tuesday prompts

Take a previously written short piece and add internal dialogue (main character) responding to each action your supporting character takes.  Put the internal dialogue in italics.  This action will help you flesh out the personality of your main character.  Choose a response type:  examples – loves the supporting character, hates the supporting character, finds the supporting character boring, thinks the supporting character is hiding something. By choosing a response type, you will add depth to your character and interest in why he or she feels that way as well as cause the reader to begin to evaluate the actions of the supporting character: is he worth loving, hating, suspecting, and so forth?

When you have finished, add behavior cues, tone to dialogue, expressions that support what is being thought internally. Then remove all the internal dialogue and see if the additions created greater complexity to the piece.  Note: You may find you want to keep some of the internal dialogue.

The wrought iron stairs twisted twice before reaching the top of the aged brick building, but that was not what made them interesting. What caught the eye was the woman below turning slowly in a white strapless wedding dress with flared hem, her graceful arms extended out, head thrown back and the videographer leaning out over the rusty twisted metal twenty feet above her, his heavy camera extended even further out on a cantilevering arm strapped to a brace mounted to his chest.  I wondered who would fall first, her dizzy with the arching spin or him unable to pull back if the rail were to give way or his balance was thrown off by a sudden flinch of the sagging bolts.

Which one fell or did something else occur?  Take it from there.

Start with this dialogue:  “I can’t find it.”

Have only one character to start with.  He or she will respond to imagined comments made by someone else not really present.   Perhaps you will want someone to overhear this conversation, maybe the person imagined to be responding.  In any case, let the one character carry both sides of the conversation until you feel that the situation has been fleshed out.


Remember not to let your characters answer any questions directly unless the question is important.  See my post on 3/7/12 (How to write good dialogue) for more ways to make dialogue have a natural feel.

How about fishing in the Baltic?

I had a friend who was suffering from some medical problems that the doctors were having trouble diagnosing.  After some months, it was suggested she see a psychiatrist to make sure she wasn’t causing her difficulties.  She went and was told that what she needed to do was change the color of her hair so she could start with a new outlook on life, and then she would feel better.  I don’t think she left the room until she had vented much of her long built-up frustration on the fellow. I am sure she felt much better after that.  Any way it was a wheel chair and a couple months later when she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease and finally given proper treatment.  But that is not the point I am making.

Sometimes a character does go a bit stale.  Try changing something about them.  Add some hidden complexity that did not show until now:  an old interest in poisonous spiders conveniently useful; a tendency to daydream at odd times, say while driving a car; bothersome warts.  Start out with the character you have come to know too well and find some equivalent to changing her hair color.  Either the character will change or the reaction of other characters to her will.  If all else fails, have one character say something stupid to her.