Free The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M Bickham Page A

from where he now led the quaking girl, the granite escarpment simply stopped. Beyond the brink was the windy vastness of a sheer, thousand-foot drop, straight down .
    Annie's shaking became more violent, and her eyes glistened with sudden, frightened tears . "Don't make me go any closer!"
    Joe stepped back a step, leaving her alone on the brink. He had to make her confront this terror or she could never forget what had happened here last summer . "There's nothing to fear," Joe soothed. "See?"
    Annie's wide eyes took in the space between them—how much farther back from the edge he had moved, leaving her alone . "That's easy for you to say!" she said bitterly.
    Suddenly Joe couldn't be cruel to her any longer. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, intent only on protecting her, always, if she would just let him . "Is that better?" he asked.
    "Oh, yes!" Annie murmured gratefully, snuggling against him. "Much!" Still crying, she raised her face to his and gently kissed him. Her perfume,  mountain flowers, surrounded them. Joe could scarcely believe the glad certainty that swept through him. She clung more fiercely .
    Her response told Joe everything he needed to know. Her fear was gone in this instant, and so was his worry that she had never really cared for him . "Annie," he said, touching her face with his fingertips , "you do love me, after all!"
    Annie sobbed and buried her face against his chest. "Yes! "
    Her fear was gone. But Joe knew he had won far more than the battle against her past. Still holding her close, he led her back off the cold, windy cliff and into the sea-green shade of the woods... .
    I thought then—and still think—that my student Wally might have overdone it a bit with his revision. But he put in some sense impressions and thoughts, as well as intentions and an indication of emotions. As a result, I the reader now saw where we were, could somewhat sense the physical impressions of the place, knew what viewpoint Joe wanted, and why he was acting as he was, understood a little of Annie's plight and emotions—and in general could get involved .
    Sure, student Wally might need to tone it down a bit on final rewrite. But he was now on track, writing dialogue the reader could follow.
    If this episode with Wally rings any kind of bell with you, I urge you to examine your own dialogue in a story. You must not make your readers deaf or blind. You must provide them with sense impressions from the viewpoint character. And you must tell them some of what the viewpoint character wants, thinks and feels emotionally, too. Otherwise the dialogue will get as meaningless—and float in as abstract a space—as Wally's did in first draft.
    Of course there will be times when the dialogue transaction, or other story action, is very simple and straightforward, and the challenge to you the writer will be easy because you won't have to put down very much to keep the reader oriented. But there will be other situations where the movement of the characters, the complexity of the setting, or the depth of the viewpoint character's thoughts, feelings and changing motives may require considerably more author interpretation than Wally's did. In other words, how much you put in, in addition to the dialogue, may depend on how complicated the transaction becomes.
    In any case, however, you can't ask your reader to play blind man's bluff. Just because you see and hear details in your imagination as you write the scene does not mean that the reader will by some magic guess the same details. You have to give her enough hints to go on.
    Perhaps you will want to check some of your own recent fiction copy at this point to see if you have provided enough sense-emotion-thought detail to keep readers oriented during the flow of the dialogue.

19. Don't Be Afraid to Say "Said"
    There was another point to be made about student Wally's dialogue as shown in the preceding chapter. It's such a basic point—but one so often