Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 229

You guys,

Sam dropped a dirty dish in the kitchen sink when he said the four words that always make me stop and give him my full attention: “I read your newsletter.”

Sam is the only person to read and edit every edition I write. After I share the draft I wait expectantly for the next forty-eight hours each time we cross paths in the house. I’ve learned not to ask, “Have you read my newsletter yet?” the next time I see him—sometimes only an hour later—because Sam is busy. He has a job. He’ll get to it when he gets to it. And anyway, if I do ask if he read my newsletter yet—when I know he checks his email compulsively—he will often sigh and remind me of the whole having-a-job thing. 

His next sentence after, “I read your newsletter,” would determine whether he liked it or not. I stared at him, hopeful for a glowing review of my gripping prose, desperate to stave off an impending rewrite. 

“It was okay,” he said, as he refilled his coffee. “I liked the content but it was choppy. It didn’t flow.”

I stood still at the end of the island, one foot propped up on my other leg in tree pose, and watched as Sam continued to flit back and forth through the kitchen. “What do you mean it didn’t flow?” I asked. It didn’t flow was about as useful as, It just didn’t do it for me, which Sam had told me plenty of times before. 

“The dialogue,” he said, then finally stopped moving and sipped his coffee. “The dialogue was choppy. Have you been looking at how they use dialogue in the memoirs you’ve been reading?”

“Uh, yea, I have,” I said, putting my foot down and holding onto the counter with both hands. “I’ve been very aware of that. I’ve been trying to write it the way I’ve seen it written.” 

I’d been studying memoirs for months and thought I was mimicking what I’d learned but now that Sam mentioned it, I supposed I never broke it down at the sentence level and dissected it. I thought of the book I’d been reading, My Salinger Year, by Joanna Rakoff. I was halfway through and while I really enjoyed it I hadn’t taken a single note yet and wasn’t sure why. The night before, I’d gotten completely engrossed in a scene that had a bunch of dialogue in it. I ran to the bedroom and retrieved the book, then found the page and plopped it down on the counter in front of Sam. 

“Here, read this, starting here,” I said, pointing to the passage at the bottom of the page.

Sam was quiet as I watched his eyes move over the words. “Yea, this is good.” He nodded and turned the page. “This is really good. You should write it like this.” 

It was a five-page scene between two people. I transcribed it, studied it line-by-line, and when I was finished, recorded today’s podcast to share what I learned about dialogue. 

The reason, I think, I hadn’t taken any notes on My Salinger Year was because Joanna Rakoff wrote in a novelistic way which made it read like fiction. I got lost in the scenes without realizing I got lost in the natural flow of her writing. 

In the passage I wrote today I implemented some of the tools she used in order to make the writing more visual, more cinematic. Listen to the episode to hear the in-depth breakdown, and elevate the dialogue in your own writing. 

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Until next week,

Charlie