Five Tools for the Structure of a Book

Dialogue

Dialogue is essential to a book. It lets the reader hear the characters, and it provides air (visual breaks) on a page. It should read naturally, but good, believable, dialogue is never a literal transcription. Most people speak with lots of a’s, um’s, repeated words, incomplete sentences, incomplete thoughts and jumps. Fortunately, we don’t hear them. When we listen to people, we tend to weave together what is being said, dropping the linguistic garbage. We can suggest some of that, but with discretion: a rare huh or a, an “I was just—” em dash to show an unfinished or interrupted statement; and the “But I was thinking . . .” ellipsis points to show an unspoken alternative, a non-enumerated sequence, a silence, or a trailing thought. Contractions are not only natural, but without them your characters will sound stiff.

Your characters should speak however they want to as it seems appropriate for each of them. However, the omniscient author, whose grammar and word choice should be impeccable, may not. Nevertheless, he should avoid sounding stuffy and pedantic.

Dialect (or foreign speakers) is a trickier matter. Mark Twain handles most of his characters well.  Jim in Huckleberry Finn is a different matter:

“Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn’ hear sumf ’n. Well, I know what I’s gwyne to do:  I’s gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin. . . . What’s de use er makin’ up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? But you got a gun, hain’t you”?  Den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries.

Setting aside whether this is insulting or degrading, this much authenticity is simply hard reading. Today’s readers are likely to give up and some might send you threatening emails. Arguably, a few contractions and dialectal words would have sufficed (perhaps in 1885 those examples were considerably easier to read) to suggest the dialect:

“Where is you? Dog my cats if I didn’ hear somethin’. Well, I know what I’s goin’ to do: I’s goin’ to set down here and listen ’til I hears it again. . . .”

Another difficulty with dialogue is character attributions: Bob said, Sally said. There is an approach today that puts an attribution after every line of dialogue. I think the better way is to establish who is talking and then to not use attributions except to keep the reader on track. A device, which helps with pacing, is to break up the dialogue with description or action, which gives you a chance to reinforce who is speaking:

“I think it’s important to be aware of pacing.” Bob paused and looked at the window. A light rain was falling. “But everything should seem natural.”

Now the reader knows where he is in the conversation, and has a little more detail. If you prefer to give an attribution with each line, please do not follow Miss Whitehouse’s admonish against repeating words. Repeating said draws far less attention to itself than what Fowler calls elegant variation: he said, she opined, he articulated, she replied, he enunciated, she averred, he alleged: “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” exclaimed the King of Siam.

When you have your characters talk, make sure you have a reason, and they have something to say.

Character

Many people get an idea such as:

“a bank is robbed and the police . . . .”

It could be good, but for as important as the plot is, it needs characters to bring it to life, to follow its trail, to take the reader with them. A good character has a beginning, middle, and now: that is, he is real and complete, with parents, a childhood, and schooling before we meet him in your book. Just as a good actor gives you that feeling that his character had a life before the curtain rose or the movie started, or when you hear a great singer, you feel there is another octave above and below his lowest and highest notes: your characters must be full and developed. At the opposite end are cardboard characters: two dimensional beings that have one purpose and have nothing that might deviate from that. Why should we avoid them? Because they are boring and not real.

Let’s get two types of characters labelled and out of the way. There is the protagonist, the main character (sometimes characters) of your story; and the antagonist, the person (persons, institutions, things) who opposes the protagonist. Opposes? Because there has to be some conflict, two dogs fighting over a bone, for there to be a story.

There is however, an exception to the “no-cardboard-characters” rule. Sometimes you want a character to interact within a scene – to move things forward – but you don’t want to spend time developing someone who really isn’t important. If your character has a flat tire and as he pulls off the road, he sees a murder take place in the park just past the road. You need something sharp to pierce the tire, a nail or a screw, but does it matter if it’s a flat, round, or oval head, brass or galvanized 1½ inch wood screw? In the same way, if you need your character to leave work early, you could introduce a jerk of a boss who threatens your protagonist, who then leaves work early in a huff. We’ve all had bosses like that, and as long as he is not much more than a nail in your hero’s tire, that’s fine.

Remember that even if you see your character, your reader doesn’t, not without your help. Ask yourself if someone could read your work and pick out your character from a group of a hundred other people. Does your character have a twist of fate? Let the reader know. Make it interesting and bring it back again, and again.

The remarkable thing about fully developed characters is that they are action and plot. They drive your story. They may also change it in ways you didn’t anticipate. They may rebel. They may move in with you and make your life miserable. But if they are complete and full, your life will be richer for it, and your reader’s too.

Description

Description can be long and rolling like a vast Western landscape. It can be short glimpses like a quick slide show, or the blur of passing countryside seen through a fast moving train window. You need to paint the scene for your reader—not so completely that he sees every blade of grass or knows the name of every book in your character’s library. You need to show enough that your reader enters the dream and becomes part of the story unfolding before him. It is part of pacing. It inhabits your narrative, characters, and dialogue. Think of a beautiful drawing: it rarely shows everything, but it shows enough. Often, lines aren’t complete; shading is suggested here and thick there.

You use description to show the characters, places, and things that make up your story. You have five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing. Most of us learn in school to add colour: the red wagon. But good description includes more:

The wagon abandoned in the front yard, half buried by the fallen mouldering leaves and the patches of snow that hadn’t melted away yet, isn’t just red. It has rough, rusty-brown scabs where the paint had chipped off when it was pulled carelessly past the jagged rocks in the back yard by the compost pile. It’s wheels squeaked and sighed along with Mrs. Jackson when she pulled it about the garden last summer. The black metal handle curves awkwardly like a broken limb from when it was run over by the UPS truck. It’s not just red.

Taste and smell are evocative. We remember smells and tastes from our childhoods in ways that immediately transport us, more than by what we see, although sight is the most common descriptive element. At first glance, English might have more visual descriptors than for sight or smell, but I think that it is lazy thinking that keeps us trapped into thinking about the red wagon. One word separates our wagon from all those of different colours and it does bring to mind the ubiquitous red wagon. That one word is effective and efficient, but is thin. If pacing permits, its description should be longer, assuming it has some significance in our story.  

Use description to create distance between the beginning of a scene, the red wagon in the front yard, and the climatic action, Mrs. Jackson tripping over the handle. Use description to break up dialogue and identify who is speaking.

In the example above, we could have broken up the description, expanding the sensory information, and spreading it out over a longer scene.  Don’t try to get all five senses into every description though, in fact, sometimes just one is right.

Exposition (Narrative)

Narrative is telling your story. You will start with some sort of introduction; the action will rise towards a climax; there may be a falling action followed by resolution, or just the resolution. This arc includes the conflict, characterization, the setting, sequencing and transitions. In a broad sense it includes dialogue, description, and characters. We are using the word here narrowly to suggest that aspect of your book where you, the omniscient author or whoever is telling the story, is doing just that, telling the reader: John went to the grocery store for cat food.

Just as you can’t show every blade of grass, you cannot tell everything that happens in your story. You should summarize those portions of the action or story that aren’t as important, to move from scene to scene. You don’t need to describe how John parked the car, opened the door, put his left foot on the pavement, and then got out of the car. You don’t need to show the order of his footsteps, right-left-right, or right-right-left if he skipped. But if it’s important that the reader knows he went to the grocery store, say it. If something happens in the parking lot, then slow down, and flesh out the scene with details, description, action, dialogue—whatever you need.

There is a good reason for the omniscient author to sometimes state things in a straight forward declarative manner. In the book of Job, we need to know that Job is a good man. In the style of the Bible there wasn’t time to develop and show Job’s goodness through a few fully fleshed out scenes. We are told,

“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”

Without more, we believe it unquestioningly. And when he is tested, we are told “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” Admittedly, few authors come to mind with the omniscience and authority of the Bible, but this demonstrates how it is both possible and sometimes desirable to make a simple, forceful summary.

What you want to avoid are long pages, one after the other summarizing the story, unless for example, much time has passed, and you need to fill the reader in.