Jeff Elkins, aka, the Dialogue Doctor, who is an author, podcast host, and writing coach. Jeff shares his experience of conducting over 200 coaching sessions to help authors improve their dialogue and create engaging characters.

He explains that the ideas and techniques in his book, "The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Now: How to Write Dialogue and Characters Readers Will Love," were developed through collaborative efforts within the dialogue doctor community. He emphasizes the importance of dialogue in immersing readers in a story and discusses the distinction between dialogue and exposition.

Jeff also provides insights on crafting character voices and building a dynamic cast of characters that excite readers. He suggests techniques like grouping characters together, using vocalizations, body language, and dialogue tags to bring characters to life, and introducing engines (characters that help growth) and anchors (characters that hinder growth) to create conflict and facilitate character development.Read the accompanying post at WritingPursuits.com: LINK

The question of the week is: Who are your favorite lone wolf characters?

Get your free copy of the First Chapter Rubric.

Jeff Elkins - https://www.dialoguedoctor.com

The book - https://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Doctor-Will-See-You-ebook/dp/B0C7D1WNZL/

(The Dialogue Doctor Will See You Now: How to Write Dialogue and Characters Readers Will Love)

Links:

WritingPursuits.com

Instagram: @WritingPursuitsPodcast

Three Story Method Certified Editor

KathreseMcKee.com

YourFirstChapter.com

Getting those hazard characters in there. And then showing them

repeat allows us to demonstrate that character growth over time

in a way that doesn't feel heavy handed to the reader.

Hey, Writing Pursuits Authors. Welcome back to the podcast. To

those of you who are new, I want to extend a special welcome. My

name is Kathrese. McKee. And I'm glad you're here. If you are a

writer seeking encouragement, information and inspiration,

this podcast is for you. Let's get to it. Today we're going to

have deaf Elkins, the dialogue doctor on the programs, and I'm

very excited. Yeah, Jeff. Yeah, Jeff Elkins is the author of 11

novels, the host of the dialogue Doctor podcast, and a writing

coach. Since launching the dialogue doctor in 2020. He's

helped more than 200 coaching sessions. Wow. With authors,

helping them write dialogue and create characters that will

engage readers, which is the main thing, Jeff is also the

author of the dialogue doctor will see you now. Great title,

by the way, how to write dialogue. And characters readers

will love a primer on all the dialogue Doctor community has

learned about writing great dialogue. Oh, wow. 202 Thomas's

the hate you give. And she's another one. Man, she has these

scenes of like five, six characters. The whole indie

climax are a string of scenes with like, six, seven and eight

characters at a time. And she just balances them so well. But

it is it is hard. And there's craft to it. And there's things

you got to pay attention to like, make sure it works for the

reader's imagination. I had a question about that. Because

yeah, when you get, let's say six characters on a page, and I

just had a book where there were like, frequently there were six

characters on age. And it was it it fell into this pattern where

it was either Sally said, Ben said, you know, whatever said or

it was

it was Sally nodded line.

Don did this line. And it went on in every, every every

paragraph started begin with a character's name or hat. Yeah,

it became can get tough.

Yeah, it can get tough. And the key is to work that like body

language. The key is to understand how your

vocalizations sound coming out of the character's mouth. That's

the first thing because you can work your tags and your body

language into the middle of vocalizations. As long as you're

finding the right beat of that vocalization, or as long as your

word choices, like it sounds like the character, it is

something they would say and the way they would. Absolutely. And

so having dynamic character voices really helps with that.

Because, you know, if you if you had let's say you have a scene

of Well, let's look at TJ clues of this, really and see where

he's got a scene of like, eight characters at a time of those

eight characters. One of them is nonverbal, and just

communicating and chirps and body language. So if something

chirps, you know that that's that character.

Another so now we're down to seven, right that we got to use

tags with. One of them has a very distinct voice and in the

topics that he discusses, right, like, he's obsessed with

bellhops so if you if somebody has a line about a bellhop, you

know, it's that character. So like, now we're down to five,

right? Like, one of them is the Antichrist and is constantly

talking about setting things on fire and burning them and

maiming people. Again, another one that we can like, okay,

every once in a while this character can stand without a

dialogue tag, or without body language, because we know that

specific vocalization belongs to Lucy, right? Like, no one else

is going to say that. And if somebody else does say it, you

need to recognize that that's them. So now we're down to, you

know, four, well, a four person conversations way more

manageable, especially if you're spacing in these other

characters that don't necessarily need the tag or the

vocalization or the body language. But even with those

four, you know, another key I think, another mistake writers

make, and I do talk about this a little bit in the book. Another

mistake writers make with these big,

large scenes is they think that in every segment, so every

portion of the conversation, every character has to be

involved. And like in a routine, so like you have to have

character a character B, character C, character D

character a character B, character C character D,

character, a character B, and then you're like, Okay, wow,

this isn't this isn't how

real conversations work, right? Like,

yeah, a and b are gonna talk a lot more, and C and D are just

gonna not, right. So the key is like, let A and B have the

conversation. And then every couple segments touch back in

with C, and D, and just let us know how they feel about what's

going on through their body language. But you don't need to

put them all together. And if you've got, like, you know,

eight characters in a scene, consider grouping some of them

together in a chorus. And what a core speaking chorus is like the

Greek chorus in Greek literature, where a bunch of

people stood on the stage and spoke in unison, or like,

considerably. So going back to the example of how some of the

certainly and see it one of the later chapters Clune has a mob

scene. And so you've got two characters in the mob, that kind

of represent the mob, and they have their own voices coming out

of the mob. And then you have three characters kind of

standing against the mob. And then you've got the mob. And it

says, like the mob, yelled, the mob, shouted the mob, stomp

their feet, right, like, what you're doing is you're taking a

whole ton of characters, and you're putting them into a

chorus, so that they operate as a single character. And you

allow you that way you can cut down on the number of voices you

have to manage, you can manage a group as a single character. So

you don't have to have a mob to do that. You could be like, you

know, these Well, JP Ryan flesh, and I write a valid together.

And there's two characters that I will often group together.

And, you know, it's Doris, and Trevor blah, blah, blah. And so

like, they usually respond to things the same way. They

typically have similar opinions on things so I can put them

together, when like, you know, Doris, and Trevor laughed,

right, like, so I don't have to have like a door slam and Trevor

laughs like, I can rob them into a chorus, they can operate as a

single character. So the key is like finding us trying to group

characters in that way, so that you can check in with them and

not have to, like, keep bringing them back in the conversation

all the time. Well, and I think sometimes, one, one character

will speak for both. Yeah, if yes, by then by, at a certain

point, the reader is going to know that they have similar

opinions. And the if one of them doesn't disagree, well, then

they obviously kind of agree, you know, so that that's a good

way to do that. Why are the terms hero villain inside

character? Because we were talking about all the things?

Yeah, not helpful when it comes to designing your characters

growth. Yeah, so this is something we talked about, at

the end of the book, one of the problems we were having in the

community is we would sit down to like, plot out the novel. And

specifically, the problem would be like, my character doesn't

grow. And I don't understand my themes. Or like, I'm struggling

with the themes of my book, and my character is not growing. So

I'd be like, Well, if we can figure out how your character is

going to grow, we can go from there to your themes, right,

like so if your character is moving from innocence to

adulthood, then your one of your themes is coming of age, right?

Like, if your character is struggling with coping with

their depression and finding healthy ways to cope with your

depression, then a theme is depression, right? Like so, we

find our themes like finding how our character grows. And so if

we, we started looking at it and be like, Okay, well, so, you

know, who's encouraging your character to grow and who's

hindering your character to grow so that when we build a scene,

we can say, like, Okay, I need my character to struggle here. I

got to put somebody on the scene to hinder and be like, well,

this is the villain with the villain doesn't really hinder

character growth, the villain kind of encourages character

growth, and she's not really the villain, not really, like, you

know, she's actually just, you know, misunderstood and she's

got, you know, this, she has her own perspective. And, and that

way, this is the best friend so, I guess if I needed an ally in

the scene, I should get the best friend but the best friend's

extra kind of a jerk and doesn't really, like get along with the

character and you know, and you know, this per character is

gonna be the villain of the first book, but then by the time

of the end the book The character is actually going to

be redeemed. Right? Right. So I just described like some

problems and Angie Thomas's the hate you give, right? Because

there are no villains. There are no like there is a hero. But the

allies aren't always allies. The villains aren't always villains,

people are constantly Trading Places in the book, which is

great. It makes for a super dynamic story, but it stinks

when we talk about how do you get her character to grow right

in comparison to these other characters, because it makes all

of the characters feel a little schizophrenic. So because

sometimes this character is helping sometimes this character

is hurting, hurting what's going on. So we started using the

terms engine anchor, engine beam, you know, addition not

your lead character, but other characters that help your lead

character grow are in

gens, they help your character go. And then anchors are

characters that hold your character back. Right? So Oh,

yeah, okay. Yeah. So if you want a scene where your character is

going to be tempted to behave as the worst version of themselves,

and not grow or remain static and not grow, put an anchor in

the sand. And then you have somebody who's going to

encourage that character not to grow. That anchor might be the

villain, that anchor might be an ally, that anchor might be, you

know, that anchor could be the character's mom, that anchor

could be the character's best friend, right? Like in the hate,

you give the anchor. One of the anchors is the character's best

friend at school, right? Like, every time she comes around star

the lead character is, is tempted to be the worst version

of herself, right, like so. It's that and then if you want to see

him doing things, right, yeah, if you want to see where you

want your character to be conflicted, put into a scene

with an engine and an anchor, right like and let the edge of

the anchor fight it out. So like Lord of the Rings, we have this

in The Lord of the Rings saga, which people love. There is this

like section of the book, this plotline of the book that is

very slow in comparison to the frontlines it is Sam and Frodo

marching to Mordor, right? It's a lot of walking through swamps,

walking and walking. Trudging, trudging through the desert. And

Sam has an engine to Frodo. Sam is constantly like, let's go

let's do it. We got this we can do this right like Mr. Frodo,

you've got to keep going. You can't give up? What about the

Shire? Remember the things you love? If it's just Sam and

Frodo, than we are on an encouraging and slow walk with

little conflict, besides will they catch us, which stops being

fun after the third time you don't get caught? So that

what you do is you take an anchor of Gollum, and you throw

Gollum into the mix, or smuggle. And now you've got a character

who's constantly telling Frodo take the ring for yourself

become the worst version of yourself. It's our precious we

can have it, you know, stop sharing it with the filthy

hobbitses. And then you've got Sam that's like, Hey, we got to

keep going into the Shire. And now you have conflict in every

scene, just with the presence of these two characters. Right,

right. Absolutely. So I see in your book that there's vehicle

engine, anchor and hazard, what are the vehicle and the hazards?

Oh, so we talked about the vehicle as your lead character,

because they're the character you're on the emotional journey

with, right. And then the hazard. hazard is defined that a

lot of times in, in when I'm working with authors, they'll

have like side characters, right, that third character or

whatever, yeah, and the side character will, like, you know,

you'll have your two characters are in an Uber, and there's an

Uber driver. And a lot of times the scene will be a little

bland, because you've got to get you gotta get like your engine

and courage in your vehicle in the back of an Uber, right,

like, and it's like, yeah, you have to have this scene, you

have to have this moment of encouragement, but not a lot of

fun is happening, right, like so. If you want to seem to be

more fun, make use of that side character and turn them into a

hazard make their voice super big. Take one trait from their

voice and blow it up, make them big and loud. And then they're

either super shy, or they're super passionate about

something. Or they're, you know, super nerdy, or they're super,

take a trait from them make it huge blow their voice up. And

now you have a hazard in your character's journey that your

character has to navigate around it during the same so it just

makes it seem more fun. Like save the cat does this too in

their plotting line, they'll say like, Okay, now whenever you you

have a slow point in the plot, put a pope in the pool, right,

like, put something crazy happening in the background. And

so it's the same here. Like, if you've got a scene that feels

kind of dud dovish, you know, there you've got your two

characters sitting in a coffee house, trying to have a serious

conversation with you like, Man, I don't want this to feel so

heavy. Make the waitress fun, right? Like make them make the

barista big hazard character that your vehicle is gonna have

to swerve around in order to in order to create a seat and what

I find what's funny about us as writers is, when we successfully

write a hazard character, we end up wanting to bring them back

all the time. Oh, absolutely. Because they're super fun to

ride. It's fun to do. Yeah, they're super fun to ride so

we're constantly wanting to bring them back. So you know,

they end up being a great tool for character growth. Because

you ever repeated seen with the hazard character. You can put

them at multiple times in your book and we can see how your

lead character responds to them. Different time the way he grows

along way so I love it. One of my

favorite authors, Friedrich Bachman, who wrote a band called

oath, he has a repeated scene at the beginning of the end of the

book, where oh goes to the Apple store to try to get his iPad

fixed. The Apple store employee is definitely hazard character,

he is a generations separated from of the just the pure

stereotype of that generation. And so the first time he goes

out, he gets angry, and he ends up not getting what he needs.

And he's mad, and he kind of storms off. The second time, he

goes in with a friend. And we see that of his grown, he's

learned to embrace community, which is a part of a big part of

the plot of OBEs AUVs character growth. So it's that getting

those hazard characters in there, and then showing them

repeat, allows us to demonstrate that character growth over time

in a way that doesn't feel heavy handed to the reader. Right,

right. Like, it doesn't feel like something. The reader is

not like, Oh, I see what you're doing here. The readers just

enjoying the scene. It seems organic. It seems organic, if

you want to see this, like if you want to see this on

steroids, the old movie with Bill Murray, Groundhog Day,

right? Oh, my God is Bill Murray, his love interest and

then an entire cast of Hazzard characters. He just keeps

they're all big personalities. They're one note, right? Like,

and he just keeps encountering them over and over and over

again. And that's the whole that's it. Yeah. That that that

Flanders, right, like, it's just this like constant. You know,

let's repeat the same characters over and over. And we can see

Bill Murray like change around them. So grow, change and grow

as he encounters them over and over, finally, becoming the kind

of person who could like function in this community in a

positive way. Right. And actually deserved the girl, you

know. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's a I have questions about

the ethics of that movie, but it's great for hazard

characters. Not so great for morality. That's a whole

different

question, especially the part about the piano. Yeah. Yeah. So

weird. Yeah, totally convinced us that piano teacher that she

does eat. Yeah. And there's a it's funny, there's a, there's a

theory online or not a theory. There are blogs online dedicated

to figuring out how long he is in that movie. It has to do what

it is, it is hundreds of years to do the things that the master

the skills that he masters, hundreds of years of living that

same day over and over again. Awful

fun to watch. So when you pull him back to the dialogue and the

balance between dialogue and exposition, how should dialogue

look in your novel, and I think it does have an appearance. It

does. I feel like well, the first thing I do when I edit a

piece is I just open the Word doc up and scan it. Because I

can tell. I can tell like, Oh, if this is exposition heavy, I'm

gonna see a whole bunch of heavy pod like heavy paragraphs

paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. I tell writers like,

hey, try to keep it less than a, if you keep it less than five,

three to five is kind of the sweet spot of like how many

expositional paragraphs you can have in a row. Try to keep it

less than a bit, I'll get documents especially in like

fantasy and sci fi. Were were like 15 to 20 paragraphs in

weird pages. And before Yeah, I have a line before we have a lot

of somebody talking. But the best writers, you know, I just

picked up a John Grisham, he has a book of short stories. He's

one that I grew up with love read his work. And I was just

again, like, every time I pick up a new book by a writer who's

you know, made an impact. I'm always like, I wonder if these

things play out. So I picked it up and I was reading it and sure

enough, he never goes more than five paragraphs without having

somebody speak to somebody else. And it's not necessarily that we

need them speaking is that we need them interacting with each

other, right? Like we need a scene, we need a moment where

they can get together so when I'm looking at dialogue and

exposition, the first thing I do is I skim the page with my eye

and I can tell like okay, this there's a lot of exposition

here, we got to figure out why. There's or there's there's not

enough dialogue. The other thing I can see right away is like,

are you giving the good segments of dialogue? Are there like good

interchanges between characters? Or are you breaking those

exchanges? Those interchanges up with exposition in between? So a

lot of times authors write like, you know, good, you know,

exchange. Character A says this character B says this paragraph

of summary of character A's thoughts. Character B says this

character a says this paragraph of somebody of character A's

thoughts, and when you drop in those paragraphs, you lose all

of that great energy you're getting from these characters

interacting, that the reader really wants to be present.

You're keep zooming in and out of the scene and you're good

To give the the reader whiplash by like, pulling them in the

same tone of malice and pulling them and pulling them out. So

when I scan a document, I'm like, Alright, do we have a ton

of exposition? Or do we have good segments of dialogue where

I can be like I can see in this manuscript, where the characters

are interacting, if I can get those two things down, then we

have something to work with. Otherwise, I'm having to do like

seeing or construction, like, all right, we're gonna rebuild

these scenes from scratch, right? I think people who are

very able to have a single character on the page, and it's

very dynamic, but there's generally something else going

on in the background, to help them along, and they're

interacting with their environment in some way. And

also maybe having an inner exchange. But that's pretty much

the only thing only time I want to see them kind of alone. If

they're really fighting it out with themselves, and a dog that

they can talk to.

I was working with one author. Yeah, well, so you know, the

ideal is characters interacting, because we get the exchange of

emotions and expectations between the two characters. If

you really have a lone wolf character who's by themselves

all the time, then there are some cheats you can use to like

substitute that character interacting, you can get them

talking to inanimate objects, right? Like you get them talking

to things that are around them that they deal with, like a

famous example of Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway, right? We

cannot watch him for two hours on a beach by himself will go

insane. Nobody will tolerate that. So the game of volleyball

they put a face on it gives the most dynamic conversations with

this stupid volleyball. And the way they do it is that the

volleyball actually at times looks like it's responded to

him. So it's that like, you know, you can get them talking

to inanimate objects. A lot of times they'll see authors have

them talk to pets, or talk to other animals that don't

respond, but kind of get like a personalization. That's not the

right word. Personification, there we go, that they give you

they give the animal personification where it's not

speaking, but it's cocking its head, it's, you know, whining,

it's barking, or if they're like me, they actually say the lines

for the animal. Yeah, my animals are always talking to me because

I give them voices. Yeah. Why not? But it's that key to like,

have your giddiness in the scene by showing the character

interacted with something. Andy Weir's The Martian. That, yeah,

he interacts with all kinds of things. And the better example

that I think is his book, Holy, Holy Grail, holy grail. No, Hail

Mary. Hail Mary. Exactly. Hail Mary project. Yeah, where he's,

he's constantly interacting with a spaceship, and he's talking to

it. It has a computer voice that talks back to him. But he's

starting to do it even when the computer voice doesn't interact.

And then an alien comes into play that can't talk back with

him. But they're interacting constantly, and their

interactions are so interesting. And that's what we want, we want

the thing about interactions is that it's not that people

talking to some magic thing was like, Oh my gosh, we gotta be

talking. It's that character interactions drive us into a

scene and we want to be in the scene, the easiest way to do

that is to get characters interacting. You know, if you

don't have to characters interact, you got to start

figuring out like, don't have to care just talk to each other.

You got to start figuring out like, Okay, what is the lead

character interacting with? What's the vehicle interacting

with, that allows the vehicle to communicate expectations and

emotions, right? I've seen, I've seen books where the vehicle

talks to themselves, and you have their inner thought and

their exterior vocalization, right? Like so. They're

literally having a conversation with themselves, like it's, you

know, but you just have to get that vehicle interacting with

something when he says vehicle, he means like, the main

character, the main character, yeah, the lead character.

Sorry about that. Not the spaceship. I folded the

dialogue. Dr. Lego, the dialogue is, you know, you have the main

character. Yeah. Not the vehicle. Yeah, the main

character gets him like interacting with something. I

love that. Yeah. And I thought the Tom Hanks Castaway example,

was really great. And people should go study it when they're,

how am I going to write my characters solitary scenes,

because there's almost always at least, there's almost always one

scene where they really need to kind of be alone with themselves

and figuring stuff out. But that doesn't mean you can't add

hardship. Yeah, interaction with the environment. And again, I

wouldn't go Yeah, and I would encourage you don't have one,

have if you're gonna have one have several, because we want to

see the character change over time. So you have to give us

those repeated scenes. So you can see that changing come over

time. So don't just if the character is going to talk to

their car, don't talk to the car wants. Talk to the car four

times, have four conversations with the car. So we can see at

the beginning and at the end how the conversation

The car changes over time, right? Like, if your character

is going to talk to the dog, don't just talk to the dog one

time, talk to the dog multiple times so that we can see, you

know, in the house of this really and see, the character

lioness is alone a lot he talks to his cat. And the cat is

definitely personified in its body language. Right like, so

it's that like, figuring out how to get that character

interacting with something, I think is so important for those.

For those lone wolf for those lonely isolated characters.

Writing pursuits is run by Kathrese. McKee, who has been

trusted by fiction authors since 2014. To take their writing to a

new level of excellence. Guthrie's is a three story

methods certified editor who specializes in story

diagnostics, coaching, and line editing to help you prepare your

story for the journey ahead. For more information, go to writing

pursuits.com. The link is in the show notes. And now, back to the

podcast. One more question. Yeah, in the process of writing

a book, do you recommend just writing from the top, you know,

as it comes to scenes, exposition, dialogue, whatever?

Or do you, you know, in your personal writing? Do you do it

like a screenplay, where you're writing the dialogue? And maybe

a couple of beats along the way? I'm going to answer it in two

ways. The first way, the first I'm going to answer is like, how

do I recommend you write the second one, I'll give you an

exercise to improve your dialogue. So I recommend you

write in whatever way motivates you to write Writing is hard

enough. If you're big into plotting, like I'm a big

plotter, I cannot start a book until I have a spreadsheet. And

my spreadsheet will have every major plot point. Now as I'm

writing, they all change, I can't start until I know where

I'm going. Right? That's part of my personality. I also can't go

on a trip until I know where I'm going. Right? Like, it's part of

who I am. I know writers who like if they know where they're

going, they feel like they've already been there, they can't

know where they're going, they have to just sit down and start

writing and figure it out as they go. That is also beautiful.

If that's what excites you do that. The key is, however you

write however, whatever we are motivated to write, keep the

dialogue centric, keep the character interactions that like

zooming into scenes, the majority of what you're doing so

if you're a plotter, I tell writers like okay, every scene

you plot, it has to be this character and this character are

what are like these characters are what right, like, we got to

get that conflict, we have to get that scene described as the

characters interacting, just go ahead and do it in your plot

that you know Jake meets with X character and this happens or

like, Jess goes to find a new apartment. And don't stop there.

Be like and sits down on a couch with code Coach Nick and Schmidt

to and they interview her right like take it to the take your

plot beat all the way to the character interaction. Because

that's the scene you're actually writing. Don't start with

Jessica is to find an apartment, give us like what happens, like

go ahead and plot out what happens. If you're a pantser.

Start with the characters talking to each other, you can

always come back later. And add in whatever scene you know,

whatever description you need, or summary you need. Or if you

have to start with a summary because I know writers I've

worked with writers that are like I have to summarize what's

been happening before the scene to get into the scene. I'd be

like, great, write your four paragraph summary. Get into the

scene. And then before you save it, go delete those first four

paragraphs, theater, like if that's what you got to do to

write. Do what you got to do to Write Right Just be ready to

like I'm deleting all of that. Like for me. I have to I have I

have a weird thing in my brain. I have to start a scene

describing the room. It's the weirdest thing I cannot not do

it. i Every scene I write. I start describing the room there.

And so I've just learning to the rule though, because I have seen

so many writers who they're just, you know, bla bla bla bla

bla bla bla and you don't know where they are? You don't know.

Yeah, gotta give them special context. Yeah, well, I in the

book I talked about you need four things in a scene you need

spatial context you need to, we've talked about it is in the

dialogue or community is like the stage of the reader's

imagination. So in the book, I talked about the stage of the

reader's imagination. on that stage. I have to have the

scenery. I have to have the characters I have to know who's

in the room. If the Toby who's there. Do not surprise me. Three

pages in that Carlos has been here the whole time. Don't do

that. If Carlos has been there the whole time. I better know a

couple paragraphs in that Carlos is also here.

You know, I'd already Carla's talking. He was sitting Carlos

sitting over in the corner silently brooding, that's fine.

I just need to know that he's there in the room, because his

presence in the room changes the scene. So if he's not there,

like, if you give him to me three pages in that I have to

reimagine the whole scene. Oh, crap. Carlos has been here the

whole time. So no wonder Willie was acting really weird. So

that's like, I need the scenery I need who's in the room, I need

the emotional tone, I need to understand how I'm supposed to

feel about this. Specifically, how that vehicle character that

lead character feels about what's going on. I need to know

that I need to know what the conflict is, I need to know and

all of the all four of those things I got to know early, I

got to know like, what is the problem here that this scene is

trying to solve? So if I can get those four, but that being said,

there is an exercise I encourage writers to do, which I tell

writers, if you write 10,000 words this way, my experience is

you'll never go back. So not you'll never go back to writing

your normal way. You'll never go back to writing non dialogue

centric scenes, right? So write 10,000 words. Yeah, right,

right. 10 scenes to 10. Because we usually, I find writers

typically write 2000 to 3000 words in a sitting, I do. Yeah,

write for 10 times, write only the dialogue, initial the

character's name, what they say initial character's name, what

they say what the initial, what they say initial what they say.

And then after you write only the dialog, then come back and

fill in the exposition you need. If you and then then you can be

done with your scene. If you do that 10 times, you will

transform how you see scenes, because you will start thinking,

okay, what are we talking about? What are we talking about in

this soon, you'll start getting there. And now also more than

ever, because we're so we're living in this golden age of

visual media, visual media, I was gonna say the same thing

where we can, we can binge to our heart's desire. And, and and

if it's not gripping, we can turn it off and go somewhere

else. Absolutely. I realized that.

This was just a couple of weeks ago, I realized like, Oh, crap,

I live in Baltimore. And I love Baltimore, there's a Baltimore

movie in the diner that's very famous that launched a ton of

careers that I've never seen. I was like, I should go watch

that. I had it in 30 seconds, right? Like it is a movie from

the 80s. There's no reason when I was a teenager, if I wanted to

watch the diner, I might have to get like two to three different

blockbusters to find the one that might have it in stock, and

then I could rent it. But I can get a hold of whatever I want.

And so knowing that, we just have to take into account that

like, our books need to feel more like movies than they have

before. Right. And that's so that means they have to be

dialogue centric, they have to be screenplay ready. So I

encourage writers like take 10 turns, take 10 writing sessions,

and just write write it as a screenplay. First, you don't

have to do all the formatting, you don't have to do the leg

loglines none of that I don't want any of that. I just want

you to write the characters talking first, and then come

back and fill in the exposition. And it'll change how you write

after you do it. 10 times you can go back to writing how you

normally do. I actually tried that experiment, by the way. So

how did you did it? How did it work? Yeah, it worked great. And

I thought it strengthened strengthened my grasp of writing

entirely. I mean, I have written, I've written five

books, and I'm writing a six. And the sixth one is the one I

did that with, I just use it as an experience. And yeah, I can

testify here, that makes me super happy. sure about the

verdicts we have. And all those things about the big seats with

a lot of characters. You know, I I bit off more than I could do

there. Yeah. Yeah. Where I had like, six people on the six or

seven people, they almost all the time. Say, Yeah, you know,

after struggling and struggling, it was oh, you know, split into

groups have some Yeah, that are on stage, have some that are off

stage. If they come across the stage, well, then, you know,

that's fine. But

you know, it's been an interesting byproduct of all of

this work I've done over the last two and a half years on,

like understanding dialogue and building these tools and you

know, it's down. I appreciate the Masters so much more than I

used to. Right. Now. You know why they're great. You know why

they're great. Now, I picked when I pick up a Stephen King

novel, I'm like, Man, this guy, nails character interactions, he

crushes character interactions. He makes you feel so much that

his lead characters feel and it is you're like yeah, that's why

Yeah, he writes horror. Yeah, he's you know, he right. He's

kind of defined the horror genre. Yeah. But the reason he

could do all that is because

As this guy can just slam character and actions, right,

you know, I read toward Toni Morrison. And I'm like, Yeah,

Toni Morrison stands the test of time we continue to read her

work, beloved is a forever classic. Because Toni Morrison

can write hell of some great dialogue. Like it's just, and

you're just blood, her character Sethi and Paul D, have such an

Denver have such amazing voices. And beloved, the four characters

in the book have such amazing voices, and their scenes with

all four have a minute, and they're incredible scenes.

They're just, and it is what reading is like reading a map.

It is reading a master work, you're like, Yeah, this is a, I

am watching a true artist wield these tools in a way that I

can't do it on my own. Or it's like, we study it, and you study

it. Yeah, I study it, I read it, I improve and I watch it. And

I'm like, Man, this is incredible. Or I tease the dial,

we have a running joke in the dialogue, Dr. community that,

you know, I always bring up Infinite Jest by David Foster

Wallace, because it is it is the prime example of a book with no

plot. It has no plot, it is just a it is a insanely long book of

scenes that are taken completely out of space and time. They are

just, there's actually a mathematical formula. I've one

of the dialogues sent me one time that like, well, if you do

this mathematical equation and rearrange the chapters based on

this equation, you get to find the plot of the book.

And so I was like, I'm not doing that. But people love people

love that book. And the reason I love that book is because he is

a master of dialogue. There's a scene, one of the opening

chapters, there is a scene of a character who is being talked at

by he's a tennis player, and he's being talked out by his

parents and professors and their like, his coaches are there and

they're having this big conversation. And as they're

talking, he's going he feels like he's having a seizure. It

is the most amazing scene that you know the conversation is

just the dialogue is incredible. The way he works all the

characters integrate their the modulation of their voices to

express emotion is just flat out mesmerizing like it is and you

read it you're like yeah, that's why people read this book, even

though it has no plot like this is this or like I really like

Cormac McCarthy who's has weird grammatical things going on in

his books, man. The character interactions in the road are

incredible. The father and the son on the road are just

heartbreaking to watch these two characters interact, or like I

just read I just reread Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. All

right, I had forgotten talk about authentic and well

designed character voice, I had forgotten how powerful because I

watched the TV show and the TV show that will kind of blended

in my head together. I forgot how powerful the vehicle

characters voices. And she's got these scenes, these chorus

scenes where ALL OF THE HANDMAID'S are together in the

room and the two odds lady and I can't remember the other answer.

I can't either. Yeah, are talking or putting these women

in the center of the room. And, you know, saying this, kind of

having them confess their sins, and then the chorus that they

don't it's not called the course of the book, but the chorus of

voices that you know, and we all said Shame, shame, shame, right,

like grouping all of the other handmade sales to get

together in that singular voice, right. And then to allow the

lead character, one sentence of reflection about how it felt

good, and just crushes you, just like this is that it's just that

understanding. You know, Margaret Atwood knows how to use

her tools. And she is just a master craftsman swinging those

tools around and it just you know, is I think studying

dialogue in this way has not just made me a better writer but

makes me a more appreciative reader. More readers will speak

in a book so like, talk to me about the book and when and how

people can get it and Okay, before Yeah, so the book, it's

weird to transition talking about Master writers to talking

about my book because

this is the funny truth.

So the book is, don't do that.

Okay, well, so let me say I Kevin intentionally short, I had

a debate with some of my editors. About like, should we

Hey, call these masterworks we've been looking at it and put

it in there and make it like a Robert McKee size book of like

700 pages, right? And I was like, you know, the problem with

those is that I read them slowly, and I read them like

reference material, I don't read them like a book. And so it was

like, well, let's get, let's keep all of those, like, let's

keep all of that big weighty stuff out. And let's just get to

the principles. Let's keep it hard and dirty, and, and fast.

And like, Hey, here's the concept, here's the tool, here's

what here's the way to use it. That's good. Here's some

exercises to do. Like, here's some examples. Here's some

exercises to do. So I is a incredibly practical book,

there's eight tools, you're gonna pull out of it around

dialog, we go big to small, it looks at the first set of looks

at like the construction of dialogue, versus exposition, and

then the actual like components of dialogue. And then we talked

about the different types of scenes, we talked about the

different ways to open scenes, and then we get into character

voice. We talked about character voice, we talked about voice

modulation. To show emotion. We talked about voice modulation to

show character growth. And then finally, we talked about

Cassville. They're like, let's put it that tells me is that is

highly usable. That's the goal. This is something you can read

the day and will ideally walk away going like okay, there's a

couple concepts in here. I can start trying immediately.

Yeah, so it's, and you can get it anywhere. It's it's wide. So

right now as as of this recording, it's on preorder as

an ebook everywhere, people find you, oh, people can find me the

dialogue doctor.com That's the best place to find me. And you

can find me in a lot of ways there. There's a free newsletter

that comes out once a week, there's the podcast that comes

out once a week, the podcast is a lot of me. Part of what I'm

excited about for the book is that, you know, like I said, the

community has been going for two and half years, and we have

developed our own shorthand. And even people who like aren't part

of the Patreon, who just come on the podcast to do editing

sessions. It's really fascinating me if you if we

listen to our early editing sessions, I do a lot of work of

like, Hey, don't summarize, hey, pull this summary out, Hey,

don't, you know, let's take this summary. And let's make it into

a scene. I don't I haven't done that for like a year, because

the people doing sessions with me have been listening for a

year. So they have the shorthand. Yeah, they all have

the shorthand, and we'll get on a call. I realize a lot of times

like, well, this last episode, I was on with Ponterio. And

they've been a part of the community for a long time. And

they are an excellent writer. And then I've done tons of

sessions together. And, you know, we were just throwing out

like engineer include anchor vehicle hazard without

explaining them. And I was like, Man, I gotta get this book into

people's hands so that they can actually listen to the podcast.

So you can find me on the podcast, I do master classes on

August 8, sorry, August 5. I think it's August 5 is a

Saturday, I'll be teaching a four hour masterclass on using

the Enneagram to design character growth. So we'll talk

about like the nine archetypes and then for 30 minutes, we'll

look at the nine archetypes and then we'll spend three and a

half hours talking about like, what is character growth? How

does character growth work? Like how can we use these archetypes

as examples of like showing characters that grow like so?

Yeah, so there's all kinds of places you can find me there.

And then I will say, if you're gonna buy the book, I recommend

the paperback because there's a lot of charts in the book. And

it's tough to know how big the charts are going to be on your

ereader. So if you're reading it on your phone, I cannot

guarantee that the type of those charts will not be 2.4. So

microfiche? Yeah, I would recommend getting the paperback

because the paperback I can't control the size of the charts.

So right, right, right. There's a lot of there's a lot of charts

where we're like comparing things. That's awesome. Okay,

well then that's called the dialogue doctor will see you now

how to write dialogue and characters. Characters readers

will love they would get the whole subtitle and by Jeff

Elkins e LK ins and you can find Jeff at dialogue. dr.com Thank

you so much for Thank you. This was fantastic. I love talking to

you every time. I enjoy it. You. Well have a great evening. You

too. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Bye. Thank you for listening to

the podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please

leave a star rating and follow the podcast. If you're new

around here. I hope you will sign up for writing pursuits

tips for authors, my newsletter that comes out most Thursdays

when health and life permit that link and all the links mentioned

in today's episode are in the show notes and writing

pursuits.com

Please join us on Wednesdays for new episodes and keep writing my