L. Shelby

Posted by Rachel

https://www.rachelneumeier.com/2026/04/24/bloated-dialogue/

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A post by James Scott Bell at Kill Zone Blog: Dialogue Bloat

Which, in this case, means “As you know, Bob” dialogue. This post winds up with a delightful paragraph, which is why I’m sharing it with you. The post itself is brief, clear, and can be summed up as “Don’t do ‘As You Know, Bob’ dialogue.” Here’s the amusing last paragraph:

Great dialogue keeps readers in the fictive dream. Bloat pulls them out of it.  So never have a character answer the door and say something like, “Oh, hello, Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore. Thanks for coming to my home here on Mockingbird Lane.”

And I laughed.

However, as always, I think actual good advice in this realm is:

Write effective dialogue, and if you’re going to do “As you know, Bob,” dialogue, then do it effectively, because in fact this is not difficult. The above example is funny because it’s so wildly far from effective. So, how do you have one character explain something everyone knows, or at least his listener knows, effectively? I mean in a way that reads smoothly so that the reader doesn’t trip over the exposition, possibly doesn’t even notice the exposition? You can actually use the phrase “as you know” and the reader won’t think a thing of it. You do it like this:

A) I’m sorry, of course you know all this. I fear I’m a little fretful. = The character acknowledges that the person to whom he is speaking knows something and, bonus, provides an emotional cue that contributes both to characterization and to tension. At least as important — more important — this dialogue just doesn’t sound stiff, wooden, or fake.

B) I’m sure we all realize this, but let’s make sure we’re on the same page. = The character makes the same acknowledgment, hints that possibly he’s not sure we all do in fact realize this, or implies that he’s a belt-and-suspenders type who likes to dot i’s and cross t’s rather than taking the chance someone does not in fact know something. Also, this just sounds smooth rather than stiff or wooden — or it should, in the right context.

C) [Pedantic explanation here]. Another character: “Yes, yes, great, fine, I think we all know that, can we move on?” The author is being sneakier about providing information. The pedantic explanation has to be brief, or at least I think brevity generally helps in this sort of conversation.

D) As you know, Bob, [brief non-trivial explanation here].

The fact is, it’s not that hard to make “as you know’ sound smooth in dialogue. It doesn’t have to sound stupid. “That counts as usurpation, as you know,” means “as you know because you have a legal background so you’re the sort of person who does know things like this.” It doesn’t sound wrong to point this out as long as the person speaking has a reason to put this into words, such as setting this legal fact into the formal record of a legal proceeding, or making sure that other people listening also understand this legal fact.

Or, “As you know, she’s pregnant,” may mean, “I suspect you’ve forgotten this or might not have known it, but it wouldn’t be polite to suggest that possibility.” The Ugaro also specifically say, “As perhaps you may know” when providing information they suspect someone might not know, because it’s not polite to suggest someone might not know or might have forgotten some bit of information. “My name, as perhaps you may know, is Tano,” means “I’m not sure you actually caught my name, so just in case, I’m gracefully informing you.”

None of this is difficult, none of it sounds wrong, and actually that makes sense because people in the real world routinely explain things other people already know. Honestly, I think sentences such as, “Oh, hello, Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore” or “As you know, Bob, the US has been at war with China for fifteen years” sound silly just because of straight-up inability to write good dialogue or to hear when dialogue sounds silly, stiff, wooden, or otherwise wrong — not because there’s anything intrinsically wrong with or difficult about saying “as you know” in dialogue.

Back to Bell’s post.

Bell points out how stiff and boring exposition is (or can be) when the author tries to pack it into dialogue. Or, one could turn that around and say: Dialogue often becomes stiff and boring when the author tries to use it mainly for exposition and forgets that dialogue should be doing other stuff at the same time. Dialogue should be used to provide characterization or drama or humor, and it’s most likely going to be boring boring boring if ALL it’s doing is providing information.

On the other hand, one of the examples Bell uses isn’t really failing for this exact reason, or I don’t think so. Take a look:

“Because if my son had died as a result of finding out about something terrible that had happened to him that I had kept hidden to protect him, I would want to blame the person responsible.” Kate thought she would try the empathy tactic. She did feel a great sorrow for Betty and her tragic story. She watched as Betty returned her statement with a hard stare.

What do you think? Bell thinks this long, fairly awkward sentence is delivering information. I think it’s just long and fairly awkward. Bell says it feels unnatural. I agree, it does feel unnatural, but I don’t think that’s because of information-stuffing, I just think it sounds stiff and unnatural.

How would you revise that line of dialogue? I’d break it up, not in a conversation — this is something Bell shows, and sure, that can work, but I’d break it up just by breaking it up. And I’d probably turn it inside out.

Well, I mean, if my own son found out I’d kept a secret from him — some terrible secret — something that had happened to him, but I’d never told him — if my son found out and killed himself, I’d never forgive whoever who told him.

This version makes extensive use of interruption and repetition. In fact, it’s using anacoluthon, a great word, which I had to look up again because I knew there was a word for this, but couldn’t remember it. Anacoluthon. I need to remember that. Regardless, is that better? It’s not shorter. It doesn’t contain less information. It contains an explosion of dashes, meaning I could care less that someone might fret that generated text may contain dashes. I would say this multiple-interruption version is not necessarily better; that depends on what the reader thinks “better” means here. I would say it’s more lively. Dashes, I might add, create liveliness. Or, at least, they can.

If someone told my son a terrible secret about his past and he killed himself, I’d absolutely blame them.

That’s much shorter and much more direct. It loses the idea that the mother deliberately hid the truth from her son. Is that a problem? I have no idea; that depends on the context.

Problems with the original: “something terrible that had happened to him that I had kept hidden” — I bet you mean “a secret.” There is no reason to use a long phrase to say “a secret” because we have a term for this concept.

“Had died” — do you mean “committed suicide,” because if that’s what you mean, say so. “My son had died” is passive, indirect, and leaves out essential information. Did he commit suicide? Say so. Was he murdered? Say so. Did something else happen? What? Be clear.

“as a result of finding out” — do you mean someone told him? Say so. Do you mean someone carelessly let it slip? Say so. Say what you mean, and try to say it more directly. That’s what I’d say, rather than saying, “You’re trying to deliver too much information in this sentence,” because I think indirectness and passiveness are obscuring the information. I think obscurity is the problem, not information overload.

Personally, I’d also move the tags around. I’d be inclined to put Kate’s intention in the front, before she opens her mouth. Intention first, then speech, then reflection on what she just said, then Betty’s response. I’m thinking too much about this, probably. Bell says he suggested to the author who wrote the above sentences, try cutting everything from the dialogue that isn’t necessary, plus everything that’s not true to the emotional beats. More important, he asked her to consider What would either of them really say?

That, I think, is actually the key. Even though dialogue isn’t supposed to be realistic, it’s supposed to feel realistic. What would people really say? If they wouldn’t really say that, then possibly the dialogue is too wooden. If the dialogue isn’t realistic, that should be because the dialogue showcases more wit, humor, liveliness, or meaning than is typical in actual no-kidding real dialogue. It surely helps if the author hears it internally. It’s hard for me to imagine writing dialogue if you don’t hear it.

Regardless, dialogue is very important for me as a reader. I have seen novels that succeed despite wooden dialogue and wooden characterization — which I think go hand in hand — and conversely, I’ve seen novels that succeed despite silly plotting because the dialogue is especially lively. It’s almost always worth focusing on dialogue — on liveliness of dialogue — on making sure dialogue is doing more than one thing.

Things dialogue can and should do: provide information; deepen characterization and contribute to voice; clarify, deepen, and move relationships; provide humor and delight the reader. I think discussions of what dialogue is for tend to leave out that final item, but I personally think advice to cut unnecessary dialogue can lead to authors tending to devalue bits of dialogue if the main function of those bits involve wit, humor, or delight — but all of those aspects of dialogue are in fact wonderful, lively, and well worth keeping.

And honestly, it’s not hard to use ‘as you know’ in dialogue without the reader ever thinking about Bob.

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Posted by Rachel

https://www.rachelneumeier.com/2026/04/23/poetry-thursday-swinburne-2/

https://www.rachelneumeier.com/?p=22063

Oh, looks like Swinburne was born in April! Great, that’s an excuse to feature one of my favorite poets. Swinburne does not tend toward the perky, but I bet he has a springtime poem somewhere in his massive body of work … Yep, here. All four seasons are available in this one poem if you click through, but here’s the Spring section.

What do you think of the repetition here? I mean the way a single word or phrase may repeat at the beginning of many lines. It’s not the same from stanza to stanza. It jumps off the page in stanza three, then again in a different way in stanza four, then different again in stanza five. Then Swinburne stops emphasizing repetition in the beginning of lines, but in these stanzas, what is the effect of the repetition? Well, it makes this poem fall into a litany-like rhythm. That’s what I feel. Even when the elements at the fronts of lines become less repetitive, the internal alliteration is so strong that there’s still a singing feel to the lines. The lowlands laugh with delight of the highlands, Whence May winds feed them with balm and breath … I almost want to take it back! This may not be quite perky, but it’s as joyful as I think Swinburn ever gets. He slides into farewell in the last lines, though. I think the person who’s changing this poem is leaving Tuscany. Yes, if you click through, you’ll see each season takes place in a different region. Wonderful poem! Here’s the link again — click through and read the whole thing. But here: Spring!

II. SPRING IN TUSCANY

Rose-red lilies that bloom on the banner;
Rose-cheeked gardens that revel in spring;
Rose-mouthed acacias that laugh as they climb,
Like plumes for a queen’s hand fashioned to fan her
With wind more soft than a wild dove’s wing,
What do they sing in the spring of their time?

If this be the rose that the world hears singing,
Soft in the soft night, loud in the day,
Songs for the fireflies to dance as they hear;
If that be the song of the nightingale, springing
Forth in the form of a rose in May,
What do they say of the way of the year?

What of the way of the world gone Maying,
What of the work of the buds in the bowers,
What of the will of the wind on the wall,
Fluttering the wall-flowers, sighing and playing,
Shrinking again as a bird that cowers,
Thinking of hours when the flowers have to fall?

Out of the throats of the loud birds showering,
Out of the folds where the flag-lilies leap,
Out of the mouths of the roses stirred,
Out of the herbs on the walls reflowering,
Out of the heights where the sheer snows sleep,
Out of the deep and the steep, one word.

One from the lips of the lily-flames leaping,
The glad red lilies that burn in our sight,
The great live lilies for standard and crown;
One from the steeps where the pines stand sleeping,
One from the deep land, one from the height,
One from the light and the might of the town.

The lowlands laugh with delight of the highlands,
Whence May winds feed them with balm and breath
From hills that beheld in the years behind
A shape as of one from the blest souls’ islands,
Made fair by a soul too fair for death,
With eyes on the light that should smite them blind.

Vallombrosa remotely remembers,
Perchance, what still to us seems so near
That time not darkens it, change not mars,
The foot that she knew when her leaves were September’s,
The face lift up to the star-blind seer,
That saw from his prison arisen his stars.

And Pisa broods on her dead, not mourning,
For love of her loveliness given them in fee;
And Prato gleams with the glad monk’s gift
Whose hand was there as the hand of morning;
And Siena, set in the sand’s red sea,
Lifts loftier her head than the red sand’s drift.

And far to the fair south-westward lightens,
Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers,
At sunset over the love-lit lands,
The hill-side’s crown where the wild hill brightens,
Saint Fina’s town of the Beautiful Towers,
Hailing the sun with a hundred hands.

Land of us all that have loved thee dearliest,
Mother of men that were lords of man,
Whose name in the world’s heart work a spell
My last song’s light, and the star of mine earliest,
As we turn from thee, sweet, who wast ours for a span,
Fare well we may not who say farewell.

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Posted by Rachel

https://www.rachelneumeier.com/2026/04/22/how-do-you-open-a-story/

https://www.rachelneumeier.com/?p=20835

A post at Jane Friedman’s blog: Plot, Character, or Situation: Your Story’s Entry Point Determines Next Steps.

Bold in the excerpt below is mostly mine:

I find writers approach stories from one of three entry points: plot, character, or situation.

A writer may be very clear about what they want to happen in the premise (plot entry point) or they may clearly understand who their protagonist is (character entry point) or they may want to explore a particular event, place or circumstances (situation entry point). Your entry point is usually where you have the most clarity on your story. But so many writers falter with next steps, and that makes for a more painful revision process later. However, if you identify your story entry point, you can avoid some of the most common manuscript missteps.

And then the post discusses this, and, as always, it all seems more analytical than necessary to me. I do suspect the essential point about what’s in your head when you start might be pretty accurate most of the time. At the same time, this “pick one of these three” idea seems off to me. Let me see if I can figure out why.

I think I mostly write in scenes and make my way from one scene to another. I ALSO think I have a pretty clear idea of the characters at the beginning, but it’s vague, just a gestalt type of understanding. The whole “lay out your character’s backstory and name the dog he had as a child” thing seems not just unnecessary to me, but also silly and probably counterproductive. (I don’t mean that it necessarily is silly and counterproductive. Probably some authors find this sort of “get to KNOW your protagonist; what’s his favorite flavor of ice cream?” thing helpful. It’s just impossible for me to understand why.)

I usually do not know much of anything about the plot when I write the opening scene. Sometimes (often? I think it’s pretty often) I know nothing at all about the plot when I write the first couple of scenes or the whole first chapter. If I have a vague idea about the plot, I might completely change my mind around the time I get to the third chapter.

But I’m not sure I quite get the “situation entry point” idea.

If the character is in a specific situation at the beginning of the novel, then this is a character entry point — a character plus a situation, which is to say, a scene. But I don’t think that’s what the linked post means. “Explore a particular event” or “explore particular circumstances” implies something else — that the author starts somewhere else and then makes their way toward some central event. The author wants to “explore” something like “breakup / rebound / second chance” and wraps a romance story around this series of events. Or the author wants to “explore” an issue such as “teen pregnancy” and wraps a contemporary YA around this circumstance. To me, this seems more like picking a preoccupation or message to lean into and then everything, including the broad plot, the basic character and their situation, and even the genre (romance / contemporary YA / whatever else) emerges from this.

None of this really seems like saying “start with a scene.” Start with a character in a scene and see where you go from there. Generally, the character’s situation in that scene includes a problem. I’m starting to really dislike “start with the situation” because to me the word “situation” means scene, not “event or circumstances that you want to explore.”

But aside from all that, here’s a totally different idea: start with the setting. That’s none of the above. That’s an image.

Snow falling upon water makes a sound so close to silence that no heart exists it cannot calm. It fell across the Chesapeake and in the harbors and inlets and far out to sea, surrendering to the waters with the slightest exhalation and a muffled hiss. Though few are there to see it, in winter this happens often.

In the construction and maintenance of warships in Virginia’s Tidewater, now veiled in steady snow, engines throbbed, cranes swivelled, and barges plodded over black waters. The spacious anchorage of Hampton Roads is ringed by naval stations, air bases, and shipyards making up the largest concentration of naval might in existence. Interwoven with civilian cities and commercial waterways, this sinew of steel is a world of its own. Even so, its powerful present cannot overwhelm images that upwell from the past: the sails of the French fleet in surprising bloom off Yorktown; the Monitor battling the Merrimack; and within living memory the Battle of the Atlantic, when ships burned offshore and corpses washed up on the sand.

From these docks and quays millions left for the World Wars, half a century of Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. And for the scores of thousands who did not return, the flat coast of Virginia was the last they would ever see of their country. In summer and from war to war, as their ships passed by, young sailors would fall in love with girls on the beaches even though they could hardly see them.

None of this can be erased. Absorbed in their tasks, people do forget, but ofttimes spectral images suddenly appear. Across the water in the vast shipyards, cascades of sparks rooster-tail from the darkness of a cavernous shed or beside a massive hull. As if descended from the flash of guns, they seem to escape the underworld so as to insist upon the eternal presence of battle. And a warship headed out, as in uncountable times before, can arrest a watcher onshore as the ship speeds toward harm’s way across the world and far from home.

Sailors find it hard to explain how they were changed by the sea; how even on a carrier, in the company of five thousand souls, they came to know the ocean’s loneliness, and how war at sea unaccountably bound them to all others in every age who have sailed in fighting ships. The Navy’s stories are different and differently understood. Nonetheless, the stories unfold, and must be told.

That’s the opening of The Oceans and the Stars by Helprin.

Or this one:

It had stopped raining.

Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dreeping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the grey vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgement, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes – why not? – on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them.

All of which, to attest to the one truth: in Faha, it rained.

But now, it had stopped.

That’s This is Happiness by Niall Williams. It’s brilliant! It’s PURE setting! The protagonist appears a few more paragraphs in.

Here’s another one:

In the border regions of northern Shaftal, the peaks of the mountains loom over hardscrabble farmholds. The farmers there build with stone and grow in stone, and they might even be made of stone themselves, they are so sturdy in the face of the long, bitter winter that comes howling down at them from the mountains.

The stone town of Kisha would have been as insignificant as all the northern towns, if not for the fact that Makapee, the first G’deon, had lived and died there. His successor, Lilter, had discovered the manuscript of the book in which were laid out the principles that were to shape Shaftal. During the next two hundred years, the library built to house the Makapee manuscript had transformed the humble town into an important place, a town of scholars and librarians who gathered there to study and care for the largest collection of boos in the country. The library had in turn spawned a university, and the scholars, forced to live in the bitter northern climate, tried to make their months of shivering indoors by a smoky peat fire into an intellectual virtue.

Emil Paladin considered frostbite a small price to pay for the privilege of being a student at the university of Kisha.

This is the opening of Fire Logic by Laurie Marks, which I know some of you have recommended repeatedly. After writing this post, the book is now, once again, close to the top of my virtual TBR pile.

The fact is, I’m a sucker for setting. I don’t know how many authors open with setting in these days of emphatic and wildly overstated demands to start in media res and in the action and with the plot. I bet if you picked at random a hundred recent posts of writing advice about how to begin a novel, every single one would say: Pick a character and give this character a problem and get moving! Doublequick! Modern readers have short attention spans, so start with action and grab the reader at once! I bet none would say, Hey, how about starting with snow, with rain, with farmers who build with snow and grow in stone and might even be made of stone themselves. But I really like openings like this. Why is that?

I think opening with scenery offers a very specific invitation to the reader. Come in, settle down, relax. This is somewhere far away. Let me tell you a story. I think there is a strong element of calm invitation in this kind of opening that you really aren’t likely to get in any other kind of opening.

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