When writers get together, we talk and talk. Perhaps because we spend so much time normally behind our keyboards typing? A quick interview about Science Fiction and Fantasy author Rachel Swirsky’s recent Hugo and Nebula Award nominations turned into a four-part series with too much useful information to waste. Here, she shares her best advice on the craft of writing genre fiction.

What advice do you have for beginning writers beginning to develop skill at dialogue, plot and character development?

Rachel Swirsky on dialogue… I think the best dialogue approach is probably eavesdropping. Go into a public place with a notebook; write down what you hear. Or take the organic approach to it–if you’re bored in line at the bank, or sitting in the airport, or whatever, just listen to people’s conversations. Do not–obviously–be a jerk about it.

I’d also say that the advice that people rarely speak in complete sentences is only somewhat helpful. When I first heard that, I started writing everyone as if they spoke in rushed, overlapping sentence fragments, and it was like my characters had all developed nasty anxiety disorders. Writing fiction doesn’t always mean being totally mimetic. You don’t want to, for instance, write in as many “um”s as people actually speak. You have to find a way to make the dialogue sound real, and also sound good on the page. Eavesdrop anyway.

On character development… Start with Nancy Kress’s Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints. Also, it can be useful for new writers to write up a profile of your character, particularly if you’re doing genre fiction and you never actually show them at “normal.” They may be space adventuring now, but what was their home life like? Where did they come from? Do they get along with their brothers? What are their hobbies? I always liked to ask my students what would a character kill for? What would they die for? Are they the same thing or different? Why?

On Plot… Plot is weird because it means different things to different people in different stories in different genres. If you’re writing a literary story, it’s perfectly legitimate to use some kind of non-traditional plot that would map out as a checkmark if you made a graph of how the tension mounts. When people say they want to learn to plot, though, usually they mean that they want to learn how to plot traditionally–which is a good tool to have, since then you can use traditional plotting when you want to, and set it aside when you don’t.

Start by looking at the traditional plot arc, with exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, and ending. Map your stories–do they fit it? How can they? Do outlines, even if you hate them. Remember it’s a writing exercise. Then outline your finished stories–do the outlines look like exciting plots? Look at the try/fail method which I first learned about in Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It involves your character wanting something, and then trying to get it and failing and making things worse. You do that a couple times, until the climax character finally succeeds (in a happy ending) or fails (in a tragic one).

The best formula I was ever given is used in screenwriting. Your character is introduced to the plot at about fifteen minutes in, at the point of complication, and soon thereafter is at the point of no return, where they can’t get out of the plot. Then, at the halfway point, you resolve the initial plot question, and reverse or complicate it. So, for instance in When Harry Met Sally, the question at the start is will they get together, and then at the halfway becomes, will they stay together?

You can read stories and poetry by Rachel Swirsky at:

Tor.com
Subterranean Magazine
Fantasy Magazine
Weird Tales
Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Find out more at RachelSwirsky.com

Learn basic plotting tools like reversals, when something that should be good turns out to be bad instead (or vice versa), and complications, which is when things get even worse than they were. Remember that coincidence is a great tool for getting your characters into worse trouble, but a poor tool for getting them out of it. Then there’s Octavia Butler‘s much simpler, but equally important rule: “Don’t bore the reader.”