The Friday before Mother’s Day my wife and I had her parents and mine over for dinner. I grilled chicken breasts, we had asparagus and potatoes. We also had cobbler, pie and coffee for desert. Once everyone was fat and happy I read one of my latest short stories for them. Everyone was entertained – at least they said they were (of course a friendlier audience simply does not exist) – and I was reminded how reading aloud is a window on editing.

There is a lot in your writing that is invisible. You’ve experienced it. You read over something a dozen times and then hand it off to a friend and they find a glaring error within thirty seconds. Reading work out loud is one of the best ways for you to hear what you can’t see. It is not that you expect your readers to read your work aloud – of course if they want to read your books to their friends you might as well enable this behavior. No, the point is that you can hear the invisible rough edges in the tone and voice of your work, the unsanded planks, untrue joints, even the bold typos and awkward tags. Your ear is another reader. And it may be one of your best editors.

It is hard to read your work aloud. Usually by the time you get to this point with the piece you are sick of working on it. And you definitely know it too well to want to listen to your own voicing of it. But do it anyway. You’ll find edits that are hidden to you now.

I’ve heard creative nonfiction writers say that one of the things they find intimidating about writing fiction is that fiction has endless possibilities, and that this potential for fiction to go anywhere and everywhere overwhelms them*. I understand what they mean. I suppose there is a sense in which fiction has endless possibilities, but I’d suggest it really has only endless starting points. It is no different than their non-fiction efforts.

The very thing that makes writing fiction such a delicate and ridiculous undertaking is that there are in fact not endless possibilities. Each character and scene you write leads to a decision and this series of decisions moves the piece along on a unique journey – a journey that is (becomes, with each decision) the result of the specific needs of that piece. You role as a writer is to find out what the story needs in order to be successful. There is a right answer (or at least a very, very short list) at each cross-road along the way. The options are not endless. Each piece has elements that you must discover, elements that will make it pop. Successful story usually lies in one or two twists on reality or perspective on facts. There are factors that make story work and there are factors that make story fail. Creating fiction is not more mysterious or ambiguous than creating nonfiction.

(*I find that when writing creative nonfiction I am at constant risk of lying. I find myself straying off with some detail that fits so delightfully but didn’t happen. So I hold down the backspace key and sigh. It is difficult to stick to the facts. That stuff that the facts produce when left in the hands of a factionalist is what drives me along. That said, I am so thankful for books like “In the Heart of the Sea” and “Into Thin Air”, to name only a couple. I hope writers never stop writing creative nonfiction.)

So what is good dialogue made of?* It is made of voice. This is when the writer must earn his or her keep. Writing strong voice comes only with time, with hanging out for long hours with a character, with writing everything you know about a character and then writing the character’s words. At some point deep into this process you begin to learn (“hear”) – gain a sensibility of – what this character sounds like. You zero in and can ascertain what this character would say and how they would say it in any given situation.

This is not unlike collecting leaves. I venture into the woods to pick up pin oak leaves. I know what this leaf looks like because I have seen one before, maybe I have one at home. Of all the leaves, it is the leaf I want. I start by looking at every leaf I see and making a determination if it is a pin oak. This is slow and painful. I want to quit. I think that I’ll never find the pin oak. But then I see one, and sure enough, it is just as perfect as I remember. So I look for another leaf that matches. The next one I find is a bit bigger and has a slightly different color, but it is a pin oak and matches the one I already have.

So it is when working with voice. You have a specimen, an idea, so you begin to play along these lines. You try over and over to repeat the trick to develop the voice into speech. In time all you see are the pin oak leaves. All others are litter on the forest floor.

*I am going to assume you read my post of 30 January 2013. For maximum enjoyment of this post, if you haven’t, go back and read it first.

I have been asked a few times if I write longhand or on the computer. I have heard myself say that I do shorter pieces longhand and that I compose on the computer – I don’t know, I think I just make something up. But here is the truth. The real work is done away from the keyboard, off the computer – when I take a hardcopy (a print out) and sit down with it, when I hang my head over it, when I go one-on-one with the words. It is then that I can best manipulate them. With my pencil I prod and poke. I carve at the flesh of the words. I separate them, insert and graft new life. I can see their possibility as they lie naked and real on the page before me. I can hammer and chisel them on toward what they will become.

More than once, at the office, following an hour or two meeting, the tussle ended, I have looked at the cluttered whiteboard hanging on the wall and thought it to be a true art object. A thing of beauty like a woodshop covered in sawdust. The machines coated, glue applied, clamps tensioned. Such things are beautiful because of the hope they hold. The hope for what is possible. For what might be.

I think that of all that I produce as a writer, these edited, carved, sliced up drafts, ready for rekeying into the computer, are what I am most proud of. They are objects of beauty. Evidence that I am doing the work. The vessels holding my creative hope.

I recently completed a collection of nine poems that roughly cover my daughters’ lives from birth through high school. The project took about four months to complete. My vision was that theseI recently completed a collection of nine

I recently completed a collection of nine poems that roughly cover my daughters’ lives from birth through high school. The project took about four months to complete.

My vision was that these poems be ordered chronologically¹. I wanted each poem to give a different perspective, build on the one before, carry the reader though the girls’ lives. But, the final draft of the last poem turned so nostalgic and emotionally sweet, that I ground to a halt. The collection had turned into a struggle and was now ending in an overworked cliché. So, I did what I have learned to do any time a bit of writing turns into a slog – I cut it, just as I had several poems before it.  Only then did the lights come on and a door open that I had not seen. Now, with the ending gone, I saw my freedom. I printed all the poems and laid them out on the ping-pong table where I write and I reordered them, an order which allowed them to breath and find their own space. Once I made this decision, the collection fell² into place.

Writing is like this. As writers we can come to see that what we thought was useful structure is really self-imposed constraint that does nothing toward producing or realizing the final piece. Like all epiphanies of the craft, once this is spotted, nothing can happen until the structure (or whatever it is we’ve imagined) is thrown out. Also, like other realizations, once the thing is resolved, the piece is released, progress gushes and the writer has trouble keeping up. The piece jumps ahead toward the finish and you are off, bounding along again.

¹An artificial constraint which once appeared attractive and helpful.

² Normally “fell” would suggest effortlessness. Never true in writing. By “fell” I mean the next steps became rather obvious and natural and the piece (rather than I) regained control.