Torrefaction

It's good that I'm actually getting my teeth into the book, and putting words on disk, but I hate having to push forward through the most incredibly crappy dialogue ever. Bad diologue is painful enough to read when someone else wrote it.

I totally rock at plotting.  I'm pretty good at characterization.  I can generally muddle my way through scene structure.  And I suck like an industrial-grade Hoover at dialogue.  I suppose this is what I get for spending my formative years writing poetry.

Unfortunately, as with so many things in life, the only way out is through.  So I'm putting my clunky, blather-laden scenes down on paper so I can push my fairly engaging characters through my cool plot arc/meat grinder and watch them come out at the other end, deeply changed, yet-still-flawed, with nothing memorable to say for themselves.

Then I'll do a second draft and hopefully learn something about dialogue between now and then. In the meantime, I soldier on.  The knitty among you will understand how I feel  about this when I say:  Imagine knitting your first Fair Isle sweater, using colors you hate, in a yarn that catches on your skin a little bit. And knowing that you can't switch to the pretty, soft yarn until you've mastered the pattern and are ready to knit a second sweater.

Partly in the service of my terrible first draft, and partly because it's fun, I've been reading the wonderful Jane Espenson's blog. She wrote a lot of the funniest Buffy episodes, and her blog is full of succinct lessons about writing.  In particular, she breaks down bits of dialogue and explains exactly what makes them work, or not work.  There's also nice slices of LA life in there, and answers to all kinds of interesting questions about how to make it as a TV writer. Writers of all stripes should check it out.