Hosting an author on Mystery Mondays that I’ve actually met in person is a treat. Jo-Anne and I met at a writers conference in Calgary, Alberta last summer and became friends. We both write, we both live in British Columbia, Canada, and we’re bit on reading, too.  So, it’s very exciting for me to have Jo-Anne here today.

J.P. (Jo-Anne) McLean is the author of The Gift Legacy series, Awakening, Revelation, Redemption, Penance and, Betrayal. Reviewers call the series addictive, smart and fun. Within those pages, a young protagonist, Emelynn Taylor, tests the theory that what doesn’t break you makes you stronger.

Writing Deeper Dialogue by JP McLean 

Putting words in your characters’ mouths can make for an entertaining day of writing. Your characters say things you never would, in a tone your mother wouldn’t approve of, and using language that would raise eyebrows. It’s a bit of a power trip. It almost makes up for all those times you thought up the perfect comeback … moments too late.

But dialogue isn’t just the words in a conversation: it’s language, it’s context, it’s nuance. Dialogue gives the writer the opportunity to show a character’s education, origins, ethnicity, wealth, temperament, age, mind-set and so much more.

• Is your character gonna or going to?
• Is your character speaking in an east coast accent or a southern drawl?
• Is your character late because she was dealing with an incompetent sales woman at Holt Renfrew or teasing bubble gum out of her two-year-old’s hair?
• Are your characters using short, truncated sentences, or are they long-winded?
• Are your characters speaking in a clipped tone, or with the patience of a nun?
• How your characters describe something says something about them. Do they describe the homeless person as a rumpled waste of breath, or an unfortunate soul.
• Where are your characters situated while they have their conversation? You can keep your readers grounded in the scene by occasional references to place. Will your characters gaze upon an original Picasso or a McDonald’s Ball Pit? If you’re referencing clothing, are they smoothing the nap of a fine wool overcoat, or picking burrs from an old pilled sweater?

And a few final notes:

Make sure you are punctuating your dialogue correctly—a quick refresher never hurts.

Read your dialogue out loud to double check that it sounds real—people rarely speak in full sentences, or use grammatically-correct English.

Use simple dialogue tags (he said/she said). Readers expect “said” and therefore it doesn’t get in the way or pull them out of the story. I’m not saying don’t use other tags (whispered, rasped), but use them sparingly, and let the dialogue and body language convey the sentiment.

Make sure the reader knows who’s speaking. You don’t need to tag each line of dialogue if there are only two people speaking, but in lengthy conversations you may want throw in a character reference to keep readers on track.

You can also use what are called “beats” to identify who’s speaking. In a bar scene for example, if only one of your characters is drinking beer, then we know who’s talking in this line: He downed his beer. “That’s it for me.”

And that’s it for me as well. Now go stir up some mischief and put words into your characters’ mouths! Best of luck with your writing.

Who is J.P. McLean?

Jo-Anne and her husband live on Denman Island, nestled between the coast of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. J.P. holds a degree in commerce from the University of British Columbia, is a certified scuba diver, an avid gardener and a voracious reader.

The first book of her Gift Legacy Series, Awakening, received Honourable Mention at the 2016 Whistler Independent Book Awards. In 2016, J.P.’s body of work was included in the centennial anthology of the Comox Valley Writers Society, Writers & Books: Comox Valley 1865-–2015.

She would love to hear from you. Contact her via her website at www.jpmclean.net or through her social media sites. Reviews are always welcome and greatly appreciated.

You can also find her here:

Sign up for her Readers Club JP McLean’s Book News

Read and follow her blog www.jpmclean1.wordpress.com

Find her on Goodreads www.goodreads.com/jpmclean

Follow her on Twitter www.twitter.com/jpmclean1 @jpmclean1

Like her on Facebook www.facebook.com/JPMcLeanBooks

Farley here,

Something weird happened last week. Kristina and Mathew left the house, which they do on occasion, but late in the day, I started to get concerned.

My bedtime is 9 PM. I like Kristina to tuck me in. She rubs my back until I fall asleep on the floor beside her bed. Sometimes I sneak in her bed once she’s asleep. She never seems to notice.

One night, it’s been dark for hours. I’m getting tired. I want to go to bed, but I can’t find Kristina. I sniff each room. Her scent is in the house, but she’s nowhere to be found.

Kristina’s brother and sister-in-law are here. They feed me and walk me, but I think Kristina forgot to tell them how to tuck me in bed.

I poke my nose at Kristina’s brother. He pets my head but doesn’t follow me when I leave the room.

Next, I try Kristina’s sister-in-law. She loves dogs. She might help. I snuggled up to her, rest my chin on her knee, and turn my brown eyes up at her. She pets my head, too.

I give up on being tucked in, but there’s no way  I’m sleeping alone. I sneak by them, head up the stairs to their room, and hide between the bed and the wall. I’ll be really quiet and they won’t notice I’m in the room.

Someone please tell me where humans go at night. I’m not sure how many nights I can stand tucking myself in.

This is how I started my life with Kristina. I’m used to certain standards.

Woof Woof

I once read a book where I didn’t skim any of the setting description. Afterward, I wondered why. I admit, I’m impatient with too much description. To learn what captured me, I re-read

the book and highlighted every sentence that described the setting. What I realized was the author only described things or places that were relevant to the plot.

That was the moment I went on a mission to learn everything I could about setting and how to use it to make my novels more enjoyable.

Most writers know setting creates the story world. But in the context of novel structure, it can do so much more for you.

Once you’ve determined the setting for each scene, ask yourself if the setting is the best place for emotional impact. This one little question helps you:

• increase or decrease conflict
• increase or decrease tension
• set the mood
• show characterization

That’s a lot for a setting to do for you, but thinking about setting in terms of emotional impact will wake up your creativity. Let us give you an example.

Suppose you have a character who is afraid of the dark. Imagine the character is about to have a confrontation with an employee. If the character feels confident being in his/her own office and you want the character to be in a position of strength, then use the office as a setting.

If you want the character to feel vulnerable during the confrontation, try locating him/her outside, at night, in an isolated parking lot. And make it very dark. The streetlight is broken. There is no moon. Maybe it’s windy, so a cry for help won’t be heard.

Do you see the difference? The setting can help you bring out emotion in the scene by showing conflict, tension, mood, and characterization. You decide what emotion you want the reader to feel, then decide how the setting can help bring forward that emotion.

If you think the setting is not the best place for emotional impact, it’s time for a rewrite. Set the scene where you can elicit strong emotions, then rewrite the scene in that location.

This is only the beginning of how setting used properly within the structure of your novel can help you rewrite a novel that readers will love.

How will Feedback help with setting?

You can see in the screenshot above that Feedback will get you thinking about different elements of setting and how they fit into the structure of your novel.

Feedback will guide you through your manuscript, illustrating weak areas in plot, character, or setting that will lead you to make changes to your novel. With a guided approach, you’ll know which areas of your manuscript you’ve addressed and which you haven’t. This will speed up your rewriting process by enabling you to focus only on areas that need revision.

Feedback will save you money on future editing. If an editor works on your novel before you’ve finished addressing structural issues, the editor will spend time on changes you could have already made. By doing this work yourself, you’ll learn how to write better fiction and you’ll receive higher quality comments from an editor.

Find out more:

Our goal is to launch Feedback in the spring of 2017. In order to create an app that is valuable to writers, we’d like your input on building Feedback. Sign up at http://www.FeedbackForFiction.com, and we’ll send you updates on the development progress and ask you the occasional question to help define the product. As a bonus, we’ll send you rewriting tips available only to our subscribers.

Your support means a lot to us, so thank you.

Source: Feedback For Fiction | Setting, Novel Structure, and Revising Your First Draft