As 2011 draws to a close, we’re thrilled to welcome back Deb Kim Stagliano to the Ball to talk about her new romantic suspense titled House of Cards available for all Amazon downloads!
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Move over Morelli and Ranger, here comes Mass State Trooper Strohmeyer! Bounty Hunter Stephanie Plum would think her life is easy compared to Kat Cavicchio’s. When a car crash with a New England Patriot lands her sister in the hospital, Kat has to move in with her brother-in-law to take care of her young niece and nephew – with autism.
The windfall accident settlement should turn around her financial woes and help the kids too, until the football player kicks his last field goal in a gruesome murder that lands Kat’s entire family in the cross hairs of a drug dealer who thinks she is hiding something from the football player that he wants. Can a sexy State Trooper throw a Hail Mary pass and save her life before the clock runs out on her life?
Q&A with author of House of Cards, Kim Stagliano
Question: Which books or movies influenced you in writing House of Cards?
KS: My life as a Mom of three girls with autism is pretty stressful (understatement of the year there) and so I read and watch movies for entertainment and laughter. I’m a big fan of the Farrelly Brothers comedies and love offbeat, irreverent humor. I created Kat Cavicchio in the hopes that readers will want to meet her again and again, like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, Rita Mae Brown’s Harry Haristeen and Meg Cabot’s Heather Wells.
Q: You wrote a Memoir called All I Can Handle I’m No Mother Teresa and you blog and write for magazines. Why did you decide to write fiction?
KS: So I can kill people! OK, maybe not. Fiction gave me the freedom to have a character say things that would sound dreadful coming from me, a real Mom. It’s fun to create a world where you control the events – good and bad – and write the ending you want. If only life were so easy.
Q: Is House of Cards an “autism book?”
No more than Jodi Picoult’s House Rules would be called an “Asperger’s book.” House of Cards is about the growth of Kat Cavicchio and the arc of her Italian American family’s life. Sophie and Dom are characters whose autism shapes them – they help Kat learn who she is and how to grow up.
Q: Is House of Cards “your” story?
No. It’s definitely fiction. Kat is flakier than I am (though my husband might disagree). She is terrified of responsibility and hasn’t found herself even at 30-something. I’m much more uptight and buttoned down than Kat. And I prefer dark haired men like my husband to her blond State Trooper. I drew from my experiences with my girls, Mia (17), Gianna (15) and Bella (11), but Kat’s story is hers alone.
Q: You were in advertising and marketing, then had the girls and stopped working to care for them after you learned they had autism. What made you decide to start writing?
KS: My husband Mark was out of work, writing gave me a chance to vent my frustrations on paper and was more socially acceptable than tippling sherry at 9am. I learned I have a “voice” that welcomes readers, makes them laugh, and entertains.
Q: Where do you find inspiration?
KS: Friends, family, the news and favorite authors who’ve paved the road far ahead of me. As an author and Managing Editor of www.AgeofAutism.com, I’ve had the privilege of meeting parents all over the world, in person and through cyberspace. We share stories of the vagaries of raising kids on the spectrum; the joy, the love, the frustration, our hopes and dreams and even our fears. I incorporated those emotions into House of Cards.
Q: Anything you’d like readers to know about you?
KS: I drink far too much coffee, love kickboxing and am a prolific baker. I’m addicted to FaceBook and Twitter. I’m scared to death of what the future holds for my daughters – but keep moving forward. I’d love to have readers join me. And if you have a child on the spectrum, I’m always available to offer support at KimStagliano@gmail.com.
House of Cards is available for all Amazon downloads for just $2.99 or you can borrow for free. Click here to purchase! AND Kim is offering Chapter One for free on her blog!
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Kim Stagliano is author of All I Can Handle I’m No Mother Teresa which is now in paperback with added content including recipes and a book club guide. She blogs for Huffington Post, TodayMoms, writes for Autism File Magazine and other national publications. She lives in CT with her family.
Since my lovely sister Debs have already covered the subject of dialogue in books so thoroughly this week, I thought I’d talk a bit about a different kind — the dialogue between author and reader.
Now more than ever, writers can freely interact, via various forms of social media, with their readers and potential readers. Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, personal blogs, and, yes, group blogs like this very one, all provide fantastic forums for actual back-and-forth discussions with the people most important to a writer’s career.
The thing about being a writer is that it can be isolating. Sitting in front of a computer, tapping the keyboard and watching words unfold on the screen in front of you is satisfying, yes–otherwise why would so many of us do it? barring that whole being a masochist thing, I mean–but it can also lead to some lonely moments. Playing with the people in your head is fun, but face it — they’re all, strictly speaking, “you.” (Yes, even the evil ones.) (Okay, in my case, especially the evil ones.)
And sometimes *cough* playing with talking to yourself just doesn’t cut it.
For most writers, the easiest — and fastest — way to interact with a mind other than their own is to pop onto Twitter, or over to Facebook, and begin a dialogue with some other lonely slob writer or reader. You can always commiserate with other the writers, which is indispensable in navigating the rocky road to publication, but it’s the readers you meet online who provide an invaluable peek into the minds of the people you’re trying to reach through your books.
I met every one of my beta readers online, and without the dialogue that sprang up between us, my books never would have been completed, much less sold. Our conversations let me know when I was on the right track and, even more important, when I was way off-base. For example:
Beta Reader: Gawd! You really think Ciel would do that?
Me: Um … I guess not?
Beta Reader: I mean, it’s just a little … you know.
Me: I think you may be right. Consider it undone. Thanks!
(Or something like that.)
And you know what I’m really looking forward to? Meeting new readers after In a Fix is out there in the world. I couldn’t be happier that the internet line of communication is there, waiting to provide the opportunity for more dialogue. (Frankly, it’s a lot less intimidating than random people showing up on your doorstep with a bone to pick about an ill-chosen plot point. *grin*)
Obligatory end-of-post questions:
If you’re a writer, how has being able to establish a ready dialogue with your readers/future readers helped (or hindered — I suppose that’s possible, too) your writing?
If you’re a reader, does easy access to writers via the internet make a difference in the books you choose to read?
The winner of last week’s MWF Seeking BFF giveaway (chosen by a random number generator) is Jonita! Thanks, everyone, for sharing your very best days with us.
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I haven’t seen The Artist yet, and, until yesterday, I didn’t really want to. The silent film, out now and on the short-list for basically every Oscar nod, is getting rave reviews, but what did I want with a film with no dialogue? I was pretty confident I would get bored and not be able to follow the story.
But then, my mom and aunt saw it and oohed and aahed enough to change my mind. And while reading this week’s posts from the other Debs, I kept thinking about this movie. If we rely on dialogue to move our story forward and give insights into our characters’ personalities and motivations, how is it that The Artist works so well?
I did some research on the film. Specifically, I was curious what devices the film uses to replace the dialogue. How does it communicate emotion? What about the lack of dialogue makes The Artist so standout?
I was struck by this quote from creator Michael Hazanavicius: “I loved the format [of silent movies.] The audience really participates in the storytelling process. That makes something very special in the way you (as an audience member) stick with the story – you do half the job, you create the voices, you create the dialogue, and you do it with your own words, your own reference. That makes the movie closer to you.”
There’s an interesting question here, I think, regarding how much work you want to demand of your reader/viewer, etc. We never want to explain too much, because we want a reader to use the lens of her own experience to ingest a story. But if we don’t do enough in our storytelling, if readers are left with so many questions that it’s distracting and confusing, then we haven’t done our job.
A book with no dialogue can’t work the way a silent movie can, of course. Words are all we have. But I wonder if there is an occasion when less dialogue is more?
What do you all think? How do you balance the line between telling too much and not telling enough? And, has anyone seen The Artist? Verdict?
Like any good Chicagoan, I’ve studied improv (improvisational comedy, of which Chicago is the motherland) and I’m married to an improviser, so improv is a frequent topic of conversation in my house. Much of what I know about writing fiction I learned from doing improv. I often find myself telling my fiction students, “It’s like in improv, when….” and then looking around the workshop. “Wait, you mean you’re not all improvisers? Okay, so in improv….”
Improv and fiction have a lot in common. They’re both concerned with human relationships. They both work best when they trust their audience to help them build a story together — my fiction professor in college used to talk about building a bridge halfway to your reader; improvisers begin by asking the audience for suggestions, and they talk about playing to your audience’s intelligence. They both build stories around scenes — in fact, improv almost never uses summary (telling instead of showing). And just like writers, improvisers strive to create moments of truth, even in the middle of the wackiest scenes.
And though you don’t have to study improv to write good dialogue, it certainly doesn’t hurt!
A major rule in improv is not to ask questions in a scene. Questions don’t add anything to the scene, and they (unfairly) shift the burden of creation from you to your teammate. If you start a scene by asking a question — “What’s in that box?” — your scene partner has to decide what’s in the box and respond by telling you, thus carrying the creative burden. However, if you begin with a statement — “If that’s another box of blind kittens, you are uninvited to my bat mitzvah,” — you’re helping your scene partner by giving her something to play off, a relationship and conflict to add to.
Of course in writing, you’re in charge of all the dialogue, but I still think statements are stronger than questions. “Where were you tonight?” versus “I know you were at the Quarry with the Jenkins brothers tonight.” The latter jumps right past all the boring stuff (“Nowhere.” “Don’t play around with me, mister, I asked you a question.” etc etc) and into the meat of the conflict, which helps to move the plot forward. Much better!
One of the most common scenes you see in amateur improv involves a bunch of people standing on stage talking to one another. Turns out, this isn’t usually the most fascinating thing to watch, and when you’re just standing around, it’s easy to get stuck. In improv, the trick is to build your setting around you: instead of just standing and talking, start slicing a loaf of bread, or sanding the bottom of your canoe, or polishing your shoes, or flossing. Suddenly, you have a setting, which helps to develop character and further plot. Two guys standing around talking about their wives might be sort of interesting, but if they’re talking about their wives while they’re performing surgery, or while they’re robbing a bank, suddenly you have a whole new layer of insight into who these people are and what their relationship is with each other and with their wives. The same goes for writing. Often, when I find myself stuck in a scene, I think about where the character is and what she’s doing, and the setting helps me move the plot forward almost every time.
This, incidentally, is what I use instead of Erika’s beloved dialogue tags: character movement and setting description. For example:
“I’m not going with you,” I exclaimed. “I have plans.”
versus
“I’m not going with you.” I leaned over my canoe, avoiding his eyes. The wood was smooth from weeks and weeks of sanding. “I have plans.”
In the second example, you don’t even need dialogue tags — the action and setting tell us who’s speaking. And now, instead of empty tags, we have more information about what’s happening in the scene. We can read the character’s body language and interpret her descriptions to guess at her plans and her emotions.
And finally, characters should have wants. In every human interaction, each person wants something. Approval, acknowledgement, obedience, understanding, love, an admission of guilt, respect, revenge, sex…the list is endless. Often you have more than one want motivating you at any given time, and often you don’t fully realize all the petty and noble desires that drive you at any given time. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Onstage, knowing what your character wants can help you to react more honestly to everyone else on stage, and as we know, truth=funny. The same thing goes for writing. If your characters have strong wants and needs driving them, your scenes will be more complex and more interesting, especially when we get to see the ways your character reacts to the inevitable obstacles standing in his way.
But of course, we rarely come out and tell each other what we want. Instead, we try to get people to say what we want them to say, without letting them know that we want them to say it. Few people would come out and say, “I want you to tell me that you still love me and you’re feeling sorry that we broke up and you realize that I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.” Instead, they dance around the issue, they talk about other things entirely, they say things they don’t mean, they hear what they want to hear. “So, you went bowling with Rita? She’s really pretty, isn’t she? After a while, you don’t even notice that mole on her nose….”
On the planet Writing (which I’m fairly certain wasn’t one of the two new “Earths” they recently discovered) there is a general feeling that dialogue tags should be kept to the basics.
He said, she said. He asked, she asked.
Now me, I’m what you might call a recovering tag-a-holic.
When I first started writing—and writing dialogue—I was a big fan of the “exclaimers” and the “shriekers”, the “whisperers” and the “demanders.” After all, my protagonists must have been passionate about one another–they didn’t just “say” things, they “snorted” and “screamed” them. I could practically feel the heat from the pages singing my fingertips! Show me a singe-worthy “said” or a scorn-worthy “ask” and I’ll show you a sleeping reader!
Then came the day when I learned a terrible and beautiful truth: Turns out, readers can get stuck on those pesky, overwrought tags. Turns out, when you use “said” or “asked” the reader actually rolls right over it, un-stumbling, through the line of dialogue, which is, of course, what we writers want.
Gulp.
It was a tough transition.
I don’t know about you all, but I have some kind of Pavlovian thing with dialogue tags. I get so wrapped up in my dialogue, I can’t bear to put something as understated as a “said” on the heels of a scorned woman’s three sentence, bawling rant. How will the reader know my character is outraged/hurt/appalled/stunned unless I use a like-minded tag?
Wait…what did you say?
You mean I can just trust that the words will make that clear?
Really?
Oh.
I didn’t believe it at first either. (Heck, some days I still don’t.) So I did an experiment. I took a single scene and replaced every tag with “said” or “ask” and the result shocked me.
Turns out, your dialogue should—and can—stand on its own.
The following scene should read as um, dramatically, with simple tags:
“You knew all along, Peter. I saw the way you looked at Julian tonight,” Helena cried. “You were incensed. Your skin practically bubbled with it!”
“How dare you lie?” gasped Julian. “I know for a fact you need glasses for distance, and yours were on the table the whole time!”
Now, without the gratuitous tags:
“You knew all along, Peter. I saw the way you looked at Julian tonight,” Helena said. “You were incensed. Your skin practically bubbled with it!”
“How dare you lie?” asked Julian. “I know for a fact you need glasses for distance, and yours were on the table the whole time!”
Cool, huh?
Now, this is not to say I never use dialogue tags other than “said” or “asked”—LITTLE GALE GUMBO has plenty of examples to show that I do—but I like to think I use them sparingly. And I do agree that less is more. I also agree that like so many bad habits, it is one that I will continue to fight. But I do believe admitting the problem is half the battle.
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So what about you all? Do you dabble in diverse tags? Do you stick to the basics, or do you think dialogue tags get a bad wrap? (Yes, that was a bad post-holiday pun. Is there a good one? she demanded? Er, I mean, asked.)
Let me start by saying I love writing dialogue. I’ve been told I’m good at it and have a good ear, so let’s just go with that and assume it’s true. But when I stop to think about writing dialogue and what it takes, I’m kind of stumped. I mean, it’s a great topic for us writers to talk about (ha ha – talk about!), because there aren’t many books without any dialogue and I think that’s on purpose: we are humans and we crave interaction with other people. (Even in that chunk of time during Cast Away when Tom Hanks is completely alone, he still has conversations with Wilson). We need dialogue to know what a character is thinking, to reveal what’s inside his head, both his conscious thoughts and sometimes, more importantly, his unconscious ones. Think of how much we learn from things unsaid or by how things are said. Dialogue can be so revealing of events AND characters. I think that’s what I love about it. But I know a lot of people struggle with it. I, myself, struggle with scenes with more than two people in them—so hard to keep track of who is speaking without putting onerous tags on every line! But that said, what I’m going to focus on here is the mechanics of speech as it relates to writing.
Because dialogue in writing isn’t just straight transcription of people talking. I think this is a surprise to new writers, but to illustrate, imagine two music-loving twelve-year-olds talking at a wedding about the band:
“Ugh, I, like, totally can’t, you know, believe anyone would, like, want to play a wedding gig,” Alex said.
I snorted. “Uh…like, you know. We haven’t even, like, started our band yet and like you know, oh my God, already you’re, like, too good for weddings?”
“Uh, yeah, you know. Like, no weddings or bar mitzvahs for us, my dear Lilah. Oh my God, you know. We’re going big time, you know what I mean?”
I had my doubts since we could barely play, still needed instruments, and hadn’t even had our own bat mitzvah’s yet, and so far it was only the two of us. Our dreams of having a band were still just that: dreams.
“Oh my God, you know, you’ve got quite an, uh, you know, inflamed ego, like, for someone who doesn’t even, like, own her own guitar.”
Alex held the cool glass up to her forehead and rolled it back and forth. It was hard to believe it was only May.
“Like, whatever, we’re going to be huge, if you know what I mean. And the guys are, like, going to be all over us, you know. Oh my God, like, you watch, you know. We will, like, get to choose our boyfriends from the cream of the crop.”
If you’ve spent any time with kids, you know that they use a lot of extraneous words and phrases like what I’ve written above (okay, so maybe it’s an exaggeration, but not by a lot, and I’m guessing you get what I’m talking about). It’s exhausting to read and you really want to keep this kind of kidspeak to a minimum, to spare your reader having to muddle through the extra words to figure out what your characters are actually saying (I would say the same for accents, too. Diana Gabaldon uses a Scottish accent so beautifully in OUTLANDER that it’s not at all an impediment to reading, but she uses it very sparingly and I have to think this is a very conscious thing. I would warn against using heavy accents as they can be very hard for a reader to understand and will take them out of the story in way you want to avoid).
Here’s the same scene as the one above, as it actually occurs in SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE:
“Ugh, I can’t believe anyone would want to play a wedding gig,” Alex said.
I snorted. “We haven’t even started our band yet and already you’re too good for weddings?”
“Uh, yeah. No weddings or bar mitzvahs for us, my dear Lilah. We’re going big time.”
I had my doubts since we could barely play, still needed instruments, and hadn’t even had our own bat mitzvah’s yet, and so far it was only the two of us. Our dreams of having a band were still just that: dreams.
“You’ve got quite an inflamed ego for someone who doesn’t even own her own guitar.”
Alex held the cool glass up to her forehead and rolled it back and forth. It was hard to believe it was only May.
“We’re going to be huge. And the guys are going to be all over us. You watch. We will get to choose our boyfriends from the cream of the crop.”
Sure, kids don’t speak this concisely, like, ever, but we get a sense of the voice from the tone of speech and the choice of words without bogging down the dialogue with extra words, so it’s not exactly accurate, but it works.
So tell us, do you like writing dialogue? Do you find it a challenge or hear it in your head as you write?
Since it’s Christmas Eve and the middle of Hanukkah, we thought we’d give our amazing guests the holidays off and instead gift YOU, our faithful readers, with something special.
Welcome to The Debutante Ball, a group blog for debut authors, now in its seventh season. Join us daily for our takes on bookish and not-so-bookish topics and celebrate with us as our debuts approach.
Sunday - News Flash!
Monday - Kerry Schafer
Tuesday - Dana Bate
Wednesday - Kelly Wimmer
Thursday - Susan Spann
Friday - Amy Sue Nathan
Saturday - Guest Authors
The Dance Card
April 2013! 1-5: April Fool! 8-12: "April Showers" - Tears & Rejections 15-19: "The best writing advice I ever received" 22-26: Home improvement ... or not... 29-May 3 "I've got a secret" (To share!)
As 2011 draws to a close, we’re thrilled to welcome back Deb Kim Stagliano to the Ball to talk about her new romantic suspense titled House of Cards available for all Amazon downloads!
Kim Stagliano is author of All I Can Handle I’m No Mother Teresa which is now in paperback with
added content including recipes and a book club guide. She blogs for Huffington Post, TodayMoms, writes for Autism File Magazine and other national publications. She lives in CT with her family.
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