Voicing (what others call dialog) for me is the main challenge of fiction writing. In Fishbein, all that was required was my recalling what teenage boys talked like in the rural Midwest in the late 1960s, one of
them being born and bred there with the other being an immigrant who’d earlier been around young gang members for a while in Long Beach before moving to Wichita and then Peck. Oh, and then the two protagonists should speak in polysyllabic words, seeming brighter and less given to nonsense talk than typical high schoolers in rural locations 50 years ago. (Also, Chago speaks some street Cuban dialect, while Matt later hangs with Italian speakers). Don’t make them sound professorial, but advanced, considering their ages, without their seeming effete or deadly dull.
I also had to deal with the protagonists reaching their 60s during later stages of the novel, accounting for their gradual advancement in vocabulary and other speaking skills without that impacting their basic personalities. Then, too, Matt, while in Texas, needs to sound as if he has a better than average scientific understanding, above the adult norm. Still, not too stiff – he’s still a boy, remember.
I’m condemned to revising dialog, wondering why I thought any character would talk as I’d previously recorded his or her words. That happens on the 10th draft as frequently as my second one. Why? Well, the characters evolve during my writing process. When I alter a character’s mood, for instance, I have to consider how that moment impacts their speech patterns and choices of words. Worse yet is when I decide their whole world view has changed as I’ve considered their role in the piece.
Another dilemma: I’m frequently deleting riffs, sentences or phrases that sound exactly as I’d say them were it me at a particular period in my life appearing in a scene. These riffs sound completely inauthentic spoken by that particular character speaking. Another thing, Tesoro Mio reminds me occasionally that riffs I think are funny often aren’t. (Apparently, my sense of humor is highly individualized; probably explains why I’ve never been approached about writing TV scripts.)
I take solace in John McPhee’s advice to writers so blocked they barely can push off from shore: To get something – heck, anything – on your page, “blurt out, heave out, babble out something.” With a first draft, you’ve achieved a nucleus, at least. The first awful blurting is set aside, quarantining the author from draft #1 before commencing the essence of the process – revising what you’re recording. Without blurting, you have no raw material to sift and edit. As I write this, I’ve put aside a later draft of The Termite Vector, my next novel. I’m letting it rest but I’m not ignoring it, because I’ve just modified the ending, enabling me to write its sequel. That means the plot threads have to integrate between it and the following “installment.” I’ll be thinking about it, but not micromanaging its components, especially character dialog, for another 45 days. Asi es!