I have this little stack of books, see, that refuse to stay shelved for too long. Sometimes I try to tidy the apartment, to find the flat surfaces underneath the piles of books (I’m only half to blame for this–we both have an addiction), but within a few days this certain little stack always finds itself migrating back to the dining room table where I do most of my writing.

The stack changes depending on the project I’m working on, but lately for me it’s been all-novel, all-the-time. Here’s a little survey of the stack’s current makeup:

The Etched City by K. J. Bishop

I thought a friend recommended this book to me ages ago, and so I picked it up at the bookstore. It turns out that he’d recommended a different book entirely, but I am so incredibly happy I made that misunderstanding. The Etched City is a gorgeous book, full of beautifully descriptive passages that make my mouth water every time I read them. Whenever I get stuck for description in an urban scene, I think, “how would Bishop have written that?” and I flip to one of the many bookmarked passages for inspiration.

More Terrible Than Death by Robin Kirk

Robin Kirk’s book has taken decades of violent history in Colombia and turned it into a powerful, gripping narrative of corruption, massacres, drug lords and hope. Her book is one of the most lyrical books on South America that I’ve read, and she does an amazing job at focusing the reader on the big picture, then driving it home with visceral interviews and portrayals of the people she met. I’ve devoured this book cover to cover many times since I first read it in college. You should, too.

Coming Home to Eat by Gary Paul Nabhan

Nabhan is one of the best writers about local food, traditional agriculture and sustainability in the American Southwest. He’s based out of Tucson, AZ, and as the environment of my novel is based on the Sonora desert, whenever I find myself staring out at the drizzly Seattle cityscape with my photos and research notes in front of me, trying to recapture the magic of the desert, I search through one of his books.

(Total NPR nerd alert, but check out this interview he did a few months ago on KUOW about native Northwest foods.)

Honorable mentions

Those three books are dogeared and marked up, but I have plenty of other books I turn to in my time of need. If I’m looking for inspiration for making my dialog better, lately I’ve been turning to Tana French and to Stacia Kane’s Downside books. For historical inspiration, I bring out Bitter Fruit by Stephen Schlesinger, Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara, Violent Politics by William R. Polk (definitely check that one out), and of course, anything by Eduardo Galeano.

What are you reading?

Dialog is tricky for me. I find it hard to juggle expressions, exposition, thoughts and speech in a way that reads seamlessly and natural, and since my current novel has a large element of mystery to it, my main character does an awful lot of conversating in her hunt for information. How to keep it interesting?

Dialog scenes have (more or less) three elements: The dialog itself, the stage business surrounding it, and the characters’ mental reaction to what’s going on.

Today I’m going to tackle the stage business end of things.

When I edit my manuscript, I go through with a green highlighter and tag every boring stage business placeholder. I have a few favorites that I find myself using over and over, but generally anything that’s a simple two-word sentence describing a mundane action can go on this list:

• She shrugged
• He nodded
• He looked up/she met his gaze/he looked away/etc.
• She sighed
• She cleared her throat
• He frowned
• She hesitated

Why do I put those in? Because it seems like there should be a break in the dialog. If I was writing a script, I’d just write “beat” and let the actors give my dialog life, but in a novel I can’t be so lazy. At the same time, I don’t want to bog down my dialog with long-winded descriptions of my characters doing mundane tasks. “How was your day, babe?” she asked, sliding the key into the ignition with a single crisp movement, turning the key and letting the clutch out slowly. “It was fine,” he said, leaning over to kiss her and then fastening his seat belt with a sharp click. The engine shuddered to life….

It’s time to turn to the experts.

This week’s exercise: Photocopy several distinct dialog scenes from a writer you admire, then go through them and underline the attributions and the stage business in two different colors. Note both the frequency of use, as well as the words and phrases that are used.

I used The Likeness by Tana French, which I just devoured. French does a lovely job writing a conversation between multiple characters without losing the reader, and using stage business to bring them to life. For a big chunk of the book the main character Cassie bounces back and forth between rambling conversations over dinner or cigarettes to late-night phone conversations with her handler back at the police department. And rarely, if ever, does French throw out a “she shrugged,” “he sighed.”

“Look who’s feeling better,” Daniel said, smiling across at me.

“Chatterbox,” said Justin, putting another slice of toast on my plate. “Just out of curiosity, have you ever stayed quiet for more than five minutes at a stretch?”

“I have so. I had laryngitis once, when I was nine, and I couldn’t say a single word for five days. It was awful. Everyone kept bringing me chicken soup and comic books and boring stuff, and I kept trying to explain that I felt totally fine and I wanted to get up, but they just told me to be quiet and rest my throat. When you were little, did you ever–”

“Dammit,” Abby said suddenly, looking up from her paper. “Those cherries. The best-by date was yesterday. Is anyone still hungry? We could put them in pancakes or something.”

“I’ve never heard of cherry pancakes,” Justin said. “It sounds disgusting.”

“I don’t see why. If you can have blueberry pancakes–”

“And cherry scones,” I pointed out, through toast.

“That’s a different principle entirely,” Daniel said. “Candied cherries. The acidity and moisture levels–”

“We could try it. They cost about a million quid; I’m not just leaving them to rot.”

“I’ll try anything,” I said helpfully. “I’d have some cherry pancakes.”

“Oh God, let’s not,” said Justin with a little shudder of distaste. “Let’s just take the cherries into college and have them with lunch.”

“Rafe’s not getting any,” Abby said, folding the paper away and heading for the fridge. “You know that weird smell off his bag? Half a banana he stuck in the inside pocket and forgot about. From now on we don’t feed him anything we can’t actually watch him eat. Lex, give me a hand wrapping them up?”

One thing that French does well is that her dialog is charming and witty to read. All of her dialog scenes count toward the book, but to be honest if she’d written a 40-page scene where the Whitethorn House housemates talked about nothing but squid, I’d still have loved it, because listening to them talk was so enjoyable. But more about the dialog content in another post.

Now that you’ve got things underlined, go through and take note of the frequency of the attributions and the stage business. Is the scene centered around an activity that keeps the characters busy? If they’re just sitting around (as in this scene), what stage business does the author give them to do? Does it distract or add to the dialog? Does it give you extra clues as to the meaning behind the dialog?

Take a scene that’s good and long–ten pages or so. On a separate paper, classify the types of stage business into different categories. I used another housemate conversation near the end of the book (no excerpt, because I didn’t want to include spoilers). It’s an incredibly tense conversation, and the housemates do nothing physically except for drink and smoke.

My categories:

• Looking: She was watching me carefully. She met Rafe’s eyes calmly, unblinking.
• Sighs and Breathing: Justin whispered, a tiny devastated breath. Rafe said, on a long-suffering sigh.
• Body Language: Justin opened his mouth, then shut it again and bit his lips. Rafe said helpfully, flopping back onto the sofa.
• Smoking and Drinking: Rafe said, through a cigarette (2x). Rade said, tipping his head back and blowing smoke at the ceiling.
• Laughing and Smiling: Rafe laughed, a small rough sound. Rafe said, grinning at me.
• Adverbs and Vocal Descriptions: Justin said, softly and very sadly. Abby said softly, almost to herself. There was a high precarious wobble in his voice. My voice was rising and I let it.

Now go back and edit your own dialog scenes with this new arsenal of descriptive phrases, keeping in mind the rhythms and frequency of usage you’ve seen in the sample conversations.

So go off now and study the greats! May your dialog attributions sparkle and glow.

I’ve been engaged in the above process on two levels for the past few days–first in working my way through the latest draft of my novel, and second in designing a sporty cycling dress (because everyone needs something to wear with their new Teva Stilettos

I was reminded last night that there are no short cuts in either of these processes. I’d spent all day revising the pattern for my new dress, and when I finally announced that I was done, my husband asked me if I was going to mock up yet another dress from the new pattern before cutting into the expensive wicking DryFlex fabric I intend to make the final dress out of.

“No, I think it’s fine,” I said.

“I really think you should,” he said.

I came up with a half-dozen weak excuses, and then finally grumbled back to work. I spent about an hour mocking up the new dress, and when I put it on my dress form the neck was still funky. Fixable after a couple hours worth of swearing, but funky. My pattern was close, but still not right.

Tweak and cut and revise and draft and tweak and cut and revise.

There really are no shortcuts for putting in the hours, are there?

My recent visit to Yakima for my niece’s birth meant an opportunity for a visit to Fiesta Foods, which is in my opinion the best grocery store in the world. I grant them that status almost entirely because of their vast mountains of tomatillos and jalepeños in the produce section. Show me another grocery store that has more than a weak handful of wrinkled tomatillos tucked in the corner of their “odd foods” section. Fiesta Foods, obviously, wins.

My default is Mexican cooking, on account of my mom’s cooking, and the prevalence of Mexican food around me when I was growing up. But in the last few weeks I’ve started thinking about how little I actually know about Mexican food, and I’ve pushed myself to learn to make the four dishes which make up the title of this post.

This is inspired by the tortilla press you bought me, mom. Really, I have only you to blame for the six hours I spent in the kitchen today alternately frying dried chilis and swearing as I scrubbed mole spatters off my kitchen cabinets.

I served the rather delicious mole to my writing group tonight with a sigh of relief. In the last week I’ve forced myself to make leaps and bounds in my Mexican cooking repertoire.

One more procrastinative excuse to check off the list.

Time to get back to writing.

Making babies apparently can take an awful long time. C’mon, sis. You’ll get that thing out of you soon.

Update 10:30 AM, Wednesday December 29th

The little tyke weighs in at 4 pounds, 3oz, and looks like one of those frogs that lives in a cave and has never seen sunlight. Which makes sense, I suppose. She’s being incubated and tested to see if she needs to stay here for a week or so, but overall she’s healthy, if ridiculously small and wrinkly. I’m an aunt!