RomanceEverAfter

Featured Author

Robert W. Walker
www.RobertWWalker.com

On your website under "Tools & Tips" you discuss creating dialogue. Explain to non-writing readers why dialogue is so important to building a good story? What role does it play?

When dialogue is perfectly executed (rare indeed), it does not require he saids and she saids, as the line is obviously hers or his. It is made so by the body language, facial expressions, and action lines molded in and around the dialogue lines. 

Attributes are not given with LY words as in -- he smartly said, or she snapped. The smartness of the line or the snapping needs to be in the words, inside the quotes every bit as much as inside the balloon in a comic strip. Masters at this are our classic authors -- read their dialogue and more recently read mine! But all kidding aside, look closely at Mark Twain's masterful dialogue in the opening chapters of Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.

Look at Dickens's dialogue sections. Great dialogue illuminates character. What other character could possibly talk like that, say those things and get away with it? Character is revealed in what a character says and does, and so if you mix dialogue with action in the same paragraph, and we know it's his/her action, then we know it is his/her speech, so SHE SAID, HE SAID can be avoided. Dialogue is in itself action as it lets your character do the strutting, the walking and the talking across the stage you've set.

Each character has his/her own gestalt...psychological makeup...and "ain't it true in life"? When a character sums up an abortion with a flip phrase like, "Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs..." well damn doesn't that make us detest this fellow? Is he crooked in his head, or stupid, or unfeeling or all three? Is he worth setting straight. Can he be set straight? Or is he doomed to be an unfeeling jerk...or worse a serial killer on the side? 

Every character stands differently, walks and talks differently, and so each one has his or her own 'language' within the language. If all your characters walk and talk alike, that's deadly to fiction; if characters cannot be distinguished from their words, their dialect, their dialogue, their verbal ticks, unnecessary Ahhhs...or I-think-in-my-opinion maybe... qualifiers or undercurrents in their language, then this is a story that will be put down by an editor before it ever sees light of publication. Once again Dickens, Twain, Shakespeare...their characters have distinctive voices.

Generally, for whatever reason, people want to attribute my evil characters to my personal self, life, etc...but actually my admiration always goes out to characters who save lives, admirable in itself. To characters who show courage under fire.  My main characters also show intelligence in the war they are in with the evil they hunt. A story is a war (read Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern) and in any war you will have two sides.

The protagonists are only as good as their antagonistic and the antagonists are only as good as their protagonists. Good guys need flaws and foibles, and as bad as Alastair Ransom is, as scared and beaten and downtrodden, he must rise to meet the cunning and horror of his terrible adversary, an adversary who knows far more about him than he does the evil Phantom of the Fair. 

In City for Ransom you are guaranteed that every character of import to the story has a complete, whole psychological makeup and distinct voice as a result. Photographer Philo Keane is one of my favorite characters of all time because I absolutely identify with Philo on many levels. Dr. Jane Francis ditto, although she be a she and not a he. I admire her grit and determination to make it in a man's world at all costs, and her devotion to her daughter. I admire Ransom as a comeback character, a man whose scars of his past determine who he is (not unlike Abe Stroud in my Caine series, or Lucas Stonecoat in my Edge series, or Dr. Jessica Coran in my Instinct series).

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Photo courtesy of www.RobertWWalker.com

Rob has written in many genres, including historical, mystery, YA, and horror under four frightful personalities. In calendar year 2003 and 2004 Robert saw an unprecedented seven novels released on the "unsuspecting public" as he puts it. Walker saw Final Edge, Grave Instinct, and Absolute Instinct published in 2004. This December sees the release of Absoltue Instinct in paperback, and CITY FOR RANSOM from Avon. The author lives in Chicago and Charleston, WV, where, between books, he enjoys all that city and country mice enjoy. You’re invited to visit Rob for your personalized Ransom Note (signed book plate) at www.RobertWWalker.com and Rob will be at Love is Murder this year – www.Loveismurder.net.

*Check out Rob's article on 
writing compelling heroines at 
Creating Compelling Heroines.