Writing with an Internal Perspective

Writing with an internal perspective won’t take me where I want to go…

Recently, I learned a hard lesson when it comes to my writing: If everything is internal instead of being verbalized, nothing happens. I believe I knew this for a fact, but the concept was buried deep inside of me and evidently inaccessible when I needed it most. This was at the top of the notes my writing mentor gave me after reading, editing, and critiquing the story I submitted to him through our group…

“Connie: The main problem I had with this scene is that literally nothing happens.”

He was right, of course. And I’m long past the point of having my feelings hurt when someone I care about, respect, and value for their expertise and willingness to work with me is brutally honest. I expect no less and see it as an opportunity for me to improve and grow as I hone my skills in this area. Taking full responsibility for everything that occurs in my life was the first step I took when I made the conscious decision to change my life almost two decades ago.

In this case, I am taking responsibility for not focusing on the art of writing dialogue. It’s been a struggle for me since I began my journey of writing scripts and screenplays, with the goal of becoming a respected professional. Instead of spending time every single day practicing my dialogue, I instead have been avoiding it as much as possible. It’s the elephant in the room, so to speak, and I regularly retreat to writing with an internal perspective when I share my stories in writing.

“If you’d include dialogue in everything you write, it would improve incrementally over time, just like anything else. It’s what you tell the people you mentor and work closely with in your business, so why aren’t you walking your talk?”

That’s my inner voice speaking. It sounds harsh as I read it here, but it’s honest. Honesty makes the difference, every time.

My first steps were to go through my resources; books, scripts, courses, other writing groups I’m in, and people I’ve become friends with since starting my journey. There were some that would be helpful, but not enough.

“Go back to your copy work. That made a difference when you did it every morning for half an hour. Why did you stop?”

That’s right, I used to copy sections of television scripts and screenplays by hand to get the feel and rhythm of the kind of writing I wanted to do. I know exactly where my notebook is and I will begin tomorrow morning doing this as a writing exercise each day.

With that, I Googled ‘how to write dialogue’ and found some excellent tips and strategies. I would tell you here that I was already familiar with all of these, but then my inner voice would feel compelled to chime in.

“Hey, what do you mean chime in? You need me more than you realize. I am sure that you were not familiar with these strategies on writing dialogue, or you would have at least added more dialogue to your story that bombed.”

The dialogue should enable the reader to hear the characters and get to know them. You know you have nailed this when you can write a chunk of dialogue without any speech tags but the reader knows exactly who’s talking! Yes, I was familiar with this, but my refusal to practice it every single day meant I had not internalized this as a part of the writing process… a crucial part that has been missing from my work.

Author Stephen King says, ‘It’s dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.’ You know you’ve nailed this when you can write a chunk of dialogue without any speech tags but the reader knows who’s talking! Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.

Author Katie Khan says, ‘When I’m considering how to write my dialogue, I like to ponder what two characters might call the same thing: a living room versus a lounge, a sofa versus a settee. This is all impacted by where they grew up (in the UK: north or south?), their social class (a peculiarly British obsession), their parents and childhood, and more.’

Dialogue also needs to be true to the character’s age. This goes beyond word choices and into the way things are phrased. A teenager in 2023 wouldn’t say, ‘What do you say, shall we hop in an Uber?’ He’d say, ‘Shall we just Uber there?’ His grandmother wouldn’t reply, ‘Sure, I’ll check the wait for a taxi.’ She’d reply, ‘Yes, that sounds good. How about you check the availability on your mobile phone?’ You need to pay attention to the vocabulary, phrasing, rhythm and tone of each sentence.

There’s a myth when writing dialogue in a story, that it must sound natural, ‘like how people talk in real life’. But truly realistic dialogue is simply not engaging, contrary to popular opinion.

Yes, there are key elements you should listen out for in how people speak in the real world in terms of flow, syntax, and regional colloquialisms. But good fictional dialogue is crafted to sound entirely natural in a made-up place, in a well-plotted story, said by imaginary characters. It is crafted to move drama on, push the story forward.

“Literally nothing happens in this scene. He nailed it, and now you need to turn this around. You can overcome any challenge. I believe in you.”

Sometimes, my inner voice not only makes sense, but gives me hope and makes me feel better.

“Be willing to do the work, the deep work that’s required if you want to achieve a level of excellence with anything,”

It now feels ridiculous that I have gotten myself into this predicament. But I’m going to follow my inner voice and focus on improving my dialogue, giving up my writing with an internal perspective, and put one index finger in front of the other as I move forward. My goal is to go from the ridiculous to the sublime and be able to look back at this moment as a turning point with my writing in the not too distant future.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, a work in progress and a student of life. Everything is possible and I know this for a fact because of the lifestyle by design I have created for myself.