Scenes, POV & Dialogue Craft

Dramatizing scenes, chapters, point of view and dialogue

Rule for using this skill: These tips add to the answer; they do not replace it. Always give your full, normal answer to the user's request, using everything you already know about fiction craft. Then work in the tips below wherever they apply. Do not drop general advice because a tip here covers part of the topic.

Turning a scene description into dramatic fiction

• A scene is the dramatic telling of an event in one place at one time. A few outline sentences can become pages of drama.
• Begin the scene as late as possible, at the moment the drama starts. Skip driving, parking and entering the building unless they serve the story.
• End the scene as early as possible. Do not let it trail off; close on a punch that makes the reader turn the page.
• Orient the reader briefly near the start (where, and how much time has passed). This is not drama, but it prevents confusion.
• Put the reader inside one character's head, using internal dialogue (the character's thoughts). In a mystery this is often the sleuth.
• Show telling details, both ordinary (wallpaper) and extraordinary (a door scuffed as if by steel-toed boots). Some become clues.
• Use the senses (sounds, smells and so on) as the point-of-view character would experience them.
• Cut anything irrelevant: exterior descriptions, small talk with a doorman, backstory on an ex-wife, weather. Pointless dialogue, aimless introspection, unnecessary travel, setting, food or sex all go if they don't serve the story.
• Allow yourself to write beyond the planned scene. Unplanned elements (a missing dog, a ringing phone) can appear once you are in the character's head. Then decide how to handle them.
• Convey feeling by showing the character's reaction, not by naming the emotion.

The payoff

• Every mystery scene needs a payoff: something happens or changes that propels the main plot or a subplot. A scene with no payoff doesn't belong in the novel.
• Immediate payoffs include:
  • a clue
  • a red herring
  • a tension-raising event (a warning message)
  • raised stakes (a kidnapping)
  • a roadblock (the sleuth pulled off the street onto desk duty)
• Delayed payoffs plant a barely noticed detail early and pay it off chapters later. Example: a friend sends back a salad with peanuts, then later dies of a peanut allergy reaction her ex claims she didn't know about.
• The payoff of the opening scene is the narrative hook. The payoffs of the final scenes of Act I and Act II are the major plot twists.

Scene breaks and orienting the reader

• Within a chapter, mark the end of a scene with a double space or a place marker such as ** on its own line. Chapters end with a page break.
• Withholding who/where/when does not build suspense. It builds confusion and makes readers skim ahead, which ruins the drama.
• Within the first lines of every new scene, establish:
  • when it takes place, and how much time has passed since the last scene
  • where it takes place
  • who is in the scene and who is telling the story
• Do this unobtrusively. Avoid the clunky "Three hours later, Mrs. X and I were walking on the beach…". Better is Lippman's approach in The Sugar House: "Within a day, dental records…" plus "They were sitting in a sub shop…" gives time, place and people with no news-bulletin feel.

Chapter endings and pacing

• A chapter can end at the end of a scene (a settled ending: completion, a breath) or mid-scene at a suspenseful moment (a cliffhanger: breathless, hard to put down).
• Use settled endings early in an act. Use cliffhangers as the book heads toward an act-ending climax.
• Reichs-style pattern: end on a short jolt ("The line went dead.") and open the next chapter by resolving or continuing the moment in a new beat.
• Pacing means modulating speed and intensity. Don't bunch suspense and action together (numbs the reader). Don't pile up exposition and description (the reader drifts).
• Generally build intensity: more leisurely at the start, more tense and action-heavy toward the end.

Scene checklist

• Orients the reader at the outset to who/where/when.
• Starts as late as possible, ends as early as possible.
• Dramatizes what the point-of-view character sees, hears, smells, touches, thinks and feels.
• Has a payoff.
• Ends with a punch.

Choosing point of view

• Two decisions: first person vs. third person, and one narrator vs. more than one.
• Experiment with POV choices early. Switching after drafting means rewriting everything written so far.
• Ask whose story it is. That character should be a POV character. Usually the sleuth narrates some or all of it. Any other character at the center of important action is a candidate, especially if only they experience events you want dramatized.
• For a first mystery novel, stick to one narrator (first or third) and get that voice working before attempting multiple viewpoints. Multiple POV done by beginners tends to feel disjointed.

First person

• Creates a bond between reader and sleuth (useful for series) and the illusion of solving the puzzle together.
• Easiest to manage: one POV, one voice.
• Limitation: if the narrator isn't present, you can't dramatize the event. The narrator must learn secondhand (visiting the scene, another character's account, an autopsy report, a newspaper article, witness interviews), which hits less hard. If the narrator is confined, the story is confined with them.

Third person limited

• One narrator, with "he/she" pronouns. Adds distance: a narrator's filter, and the ability to draw the camera back for a bigger picture the character can't see.
• Harder to control than first person. It's easy to slip out of one head into another. You still can't show what the narrator can't perceive.

Multiple third person

• One character at a time "holds the camera", with different scenes (or chapters) narrated by different characters.
• Lets you dramatize almost anything by shifting to a character who is present, including the villain, and builds suspense by cutting between, say, a trapped partner and the one searching.
• The Peter Zak example: the first four books were first person; the fifth (Guilt) moved to third person and alternated chapters between Peter and Annie.

Omniscient

• A godlike narrator can go anywhere and be in every head at once, and can be inside and outside a character at the same time (a feeling plus how the character looks).
• Disadvantages: the reader can feel distanced and manipulated, the mystery can feel like a tease rather than a puzzle, and it is harder to bond reader and sleuth. Many consider it stilted or old-fashioned.
• Best used occasionally, to pull the camera way back (as S.J. Rozan does in Absent Friends).

Keeping point of view from sliding

• Anchor each scene in a single character's head. Another character can narrate the next scene, but don't slide within a scene.
• While drafting, keep asking: "Who is narrating this scene?"
• Write only what that character can know: their own thoughts and feelings, their observations of others, and their interpretations of what others might think or feel.
• Subtle difference: with Bob as narrator, "Bob was afraid he was going to throw up." With Linda as narrator, "Bob looked like he was going to throw up." She can't know what he feels.
• Common slips:
  • Describing the narrator's own face or voice as seen from outside ("addressed William with a solemn face, her voice ominous") slips to omniscient, because Cecilia can't see her own face.
  • Giving another character's thoughts ("She was so full of herself" as William's thought) makes that character the narrator.
• In a scene where the detective narrates, show the boyfriend's reactions and the detective's interpretation of them. His real thoughts require a POV shift.
• The same action told from different POVs becomes a different story. Dialogue can stay identical while internal dialogue changes the dynamics, suspense and surprise (stalker scene: victim = suspense, villain = known menace, observer = will he intervene in time).

Making a narrator's voice distinct

• Writing fiction means telling the story in a voice that isn't your own.
• Build voice from four elements:
  • Directness: first person speaks straight to the reader. Third person holds events at arm's length and examines them dispassionately. Pick the level that suits the narrator.
  • Sentence structure: punchy subject-verb-object versus complex sentences with subordinate clauses. Fragments or run-ons can suit particular characters.
  • Word choice and analogies: slang and plain comparisons versus literary references.
  • Tone: humor and sass versus eloquence and polite reserve.
• Show attitude through detail rather than naming it. "I waited in line at the post office till my feet felt like they'd grow roots" shows impatience without stating it.
• A strong passage can have little happening and still reveal a lot about the narrator (home, habits, finances, attitude). Test your own opening by listing what it tells us about the narrator.
• Keep the voice consistent to the end of the book.

Writing convincing dialogue

• Content and tone: what a character talks about and how they say it is the basic choice. A weird, threatening monologue can characterize a person on its own.
• Grammar and word choice: use them to signal background and personality (tough and uneducated, casual and hip, painstakingly formal).
• Dialect: a little goes a long way. Heavy phonetic spelling is distracting, hard to decipher and risks caricature. Use an occasional phonetic phrase for flavor and trust the reader to apply it to the rest.
• Attribution: use "said" and "asked" about 98 percent of the time, or none when it's clear who is speaking.
  • Don't hunt for varied verbs (chimed, chirped, hissed, retorted…).
  • Occasional "whispered" or "shouted" is fine when literal.
  • Don't use non-speech verbs as attribution: "Thanks," he grinned is wrong. "Thanks," he said, grinning or "Thanks." He grinned. is fine.
• Adverbs: hold them back with "said" (coldly, icily, scornfully). Show the emotion through the words and behavior.
• Dialogue/action combo: pack emotion into words plus gestures and body language. The combination means more than either alone.
• Relationship: the thrust and parry shows how two characters relate (e.g. evenly matched in bravado).
• Internal dialogue: sprinkle it in during exchanges to show the POV character's thoughts.
  • It need not sound like dialogue and can be more grammatical than the character's speech.
  • It needs no quotes, italics or "he thought". Keep the same tense and POV and just write the thought.

Making dialogue sound authentic (not merely realistic)

• Real conversation digresses, repeats, pauses and bores. Edit out meanderings, repetitions, digressions and irrelevancies.
• Keep the real-speech features: sentence fragments, dropped nouns and verbs, jargon, vernacular, sometimes profanity (e.g. a retired homicide detective: "Christ what a schlep… Pile of crap.").
• Dialogue shouldn't call attention to itself. If it's too clever, cut it.
• Read dialogue aloud. Wooden lines stand out more by ear than on the page.
• Paraphrase isn't dialogue. Without distinct voices, every character sounds like the author or like no one.

Showing emotion with dialogue ("presencing")

• A bit of physical action while a character talks or listens shows their inner state. Props change how identical lines read (stirring a drink and staring into it vs. knocking it back and slamming down the glass).
• Props: cigarette, tissue, strand of hair, necktie, belt, shirt buttons, ring, sugar in coffee, doodling.
• Propless gestures: wringing hands, cracking knuckles, picking at a pimple, a quick intake of breath, crossing legs and shifting position.
• Choose the action carefully to nuance the line (anger, resignation, disgust, sadness, ambivalence, grief, boredom).
• Drafting method for an exchange:
  1. Write 10–12 back-and-forths of dialogue only.
  2. List what each character is feeling.
  3. Add body language and gestures to show it.
  4. Add internal dialogue for the POV character.

When to summarize instead of dramatize

• Summarize necessary but unexciting bits ("He introduced himself and we shook hands") unless the greeting shows the relationship.
• Don't replay a previously dramatized event in dialogue. "I told him about my visit to Nina's house" is enough.
• Use dialogue only when it is dramatic, moves the story or develops characters and relationships.
• Never make a character deliver a speech about themselves, another character, or why something is happening.

Revision and study exercises

• Study a favorite mystery:
  • how it divides into scenes and groups scenes into chapters
  • which chapters end settled and which on cliffhangers, and what the next chapter opens with
  • how random scenes orient the reader, why they start and end where they do, and each scene's payoff
  • its POV choices (first or third, single or multiple) and the directness, sentence structure, word choice and tone of its narrators
• Revise your own draft:
  • Are you satisfied with first vs. third person and with the narrator(s) you chose?
  • Has the POV slipped within any scene?
  • Which dialogue should be summarized, and which summary should be dramatized?
  • Make notes on how each major speaker sounds (direct or evasive, self-assured or uncertain, worldly or naive, old or young, plus ethnicity, regional identity, socioeconomic status), then revise dialogue to match.
  • Read dialogue aloud and fix whatever sounds unnatural.