It was while contemplating this ambiguity in my own life that I jumped into revising my YA novel and noticed just how convoluted the dialogue in the opening scene was. Yes, that's right - THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MY MANUSCRIPT - was confusing.
After quickly thanking my mind for forgetting whatever kind of 'artistic statement' I was previously trying to pull off in that dialogue pre-vacation, I got down to a major overhaul.
Now, it's no secret that I struggle with beginnings. (See this post "Beginnings, The Bane of My Existence" as evidence.) But this time, it was different. I knew I was starting in the right place. My inciting incident was clear and defined and I had a complete grasp on it. I had worked tirelessly pre-vacation to make sure it was not-quite-as-subtle for readers.
But reading it over post-vacation, I noticed just how crappy - yes, downright crappy - the dialogue was. I couldn't even make out what the inciting incident was around all the convoluted dialogue. In the scene, the protagonist is having a conversation with her boss about her performance at work. Seems simple enough, right?
Obviously not for pre-vacation me.
When the protagonist spoke, the response from the other character didn't relate at all to what the protagonist had just said.
If I dramatize it, it looked something like this:
"I hate grilled cheese sandwiches," she said.
"Well, if you jumped off cliffs a little more often, maybe you wouldn't have that problem," he said.
Then, the stage directions (the things happening around the protagonist, or the action of the characters in the scene) were just as convoluted. Sweat was dripping, noses were being wiped, time and space itself was shifting in the dust motes around the refrigerator between every exchange.
Between the confusing dialogue and the excess amount of direction, I'm surprised any of my beta readers got through it at all.
But here's the lesson I want everyone to get from this:
I first tried to fix the dialogue by replacing and rewriting on the old pre-vacation version. However, I kept looking ahead to see, "what I really needed to keep" and "what passages were really beautiful".
It wasn't until I opened a new computer document and wrote the dialogue from scratch that I had a breakthrough. It wasn't until I let my characters free from their dust mote surroundings and artsy, thesaurus-heavy dialogue that the true magic of dialogue burst free. Suddenly, without me worrying about how I would fit in the burnt coffee metaphor, my dialogue and stage business basically fixed themselves. The characters interacted, the dialogue flowed, what stage business occurred was important and interesting, and most crucially, not distracting.
So, if you're stressed and tired and on the verge of tears over a section of manuscript - take a break, forget your intentions, and when you come back, start fresh. It'll be hard, but remember - that original version will always be there. Where else can you take the story? What other great things can you do?
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