Michael Straczynski, the creator of the successful television sci-fi series Babylon 5, said he would hear his characters in his head as he worked on a script. While driving around Los Angeles, he heard arguments, complaints, discussions among his characters. The words, he claimed, were not his. He wasn’t creating dialogue, he was listening to his characters speak. I don’t know what trick he used to do this, but I have one.
I imagine what my characters look like. I search the Internet for pictures that resemble my characters. It has taken several months, but I have assembled a set of such photographs. When composing dialogue, I have these pictures before me. I ask, “Would this person say this? What words would this person use?”
As my characters meet each other, I ask, “How would they react to each other?”
Most of my readers/critics agree that dialogue is one of my strengths. Is it because of this picture trick? I cannot say. I only know that for me it works.
If you have a trick that works for you, I submit you cannot say why, either. And you do not know why a passage that you regard as particularly strong doesn’t register with your readers. Or why some scene, some few lines, some minor character that you added almost as an afterthought, readers find striking.
Many of us palpitate over little paragraphs. Struggle with a character’s voice. Agonize over individual words. And that work is glossed over, even ignored. Why?
If only there were some Genie, some elixir, some magic wand that would solve all these dilemmas. Is that what Straczynski had in his head? A personal little voice that did his writing for him? Where did it come from? He says he doesn’t know. I think he speaks for all writers.
I don’t think any of us—not Stephen King, not John Grisham, not Elizabeth Gilbert—knows. We just write and hope the words move the reader. And when they do, how does that happen? What was the trick? Can it be bottled? Copied? Stored?
If I only knew how. But I don’t. So, I plod along, all too aware that writing is putting one word after another. Yes, but which word?
Skipper Hammond
Recently, I heard a number of authors say they “write” in their heads while walking. I’ve heard of authors who see their sentences on an imaginary screen, like subtitles. Some “write” out loud, into a mic, and Dragon Naturally Speaking converts their speech into text. Others, like Mike, hear their characters and narrator. My head is silent; the words are spoken by my fingertips touching keys on the keyboard.
What amazing bodies we have, with language spilling from our brains, our eyes, our lips, our ears, our fingers.