Mini Masterclass: 3 Authors to Read to Master Dialogue, Point of View, and Conflict

They say that writing is solitary, but it doesn’t have to be. Not only do we get to build amazing communities like Write or Die and Chillsubs, but we get to share with each other all of the authors, craft texts, and methods that help take our writing from mad scribblings on post-it notes to cohesive, themed, alive stories.  

When I wrote the first Mini Masterclass, I said my hope was that we could work together toward building a lexicon of writers to refer to when we needed examples of mastery. That is still true, and I am committed more than ever to continuing charting the course. In the first installment, we touched upon Voice, Pacing, Character, Setting, and Plot. But as we all know, those are just some of the elements that make up a piece of fiction. Throughout this installment, I walk you through authors I feel have mastered Dialogue, Point of View, and Conflict. 

As always, please feel free to share in the comments who you learn from, who inspires you, and who you want your work to be in conversation with. I am also curious, in what order do you tend to arrange these elements when writing? Does dialogue come to you, and the world gets filled in around it? Do you meet a character who takes your hand and won’t let go until you write the last word? And when you read, do you tend to recognize what elements have been mastered in the piece you’re reading, versus which elements that particular author was lacking in expertise? Everyone has their own strengths that we rely on, that make our work stand on its own, despite the areas we might wish to improve. 

Let this be a jumping off point for your writers’ notebooks - recognize the strengths of your favorite writers, and use those strengths to build up your own work.

Dialogue

 Dialogue is often make-or-break in fiction. Readers might find it anywhere from boring and stilted to realistic and relatable. The catch is that dialogue is so subjective, even more so than other elements of fiction. What one person finds to be engaging and accessible, another might find cringey, or trite. 

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times best selling author of adult novel Red, White and Royal Blue, a feature film of which is releasing on Amazon Prime’s streaming service in August, adult novel One Last Stop, and a young adult novel called I Kissed Shara Wheeler. Casey is known for their dialogue, and as a reader of their books, I can see why.  Casey writes realistic, witty banter between friends that flow off the page, and makes the reader forget that they’re reading a story rather than chilling at the waffle house with their friends. McQuiston immerses you, and there is so much to learn by how they write dialogue. 

Fair warning, there is not only profanity in their novels, but there are a few in the following quoted passages of Casey’s work. Ellipses mine, where they occur. 

One reason Casey’s dialogue works so well is that their characters have a really contemporary way of speaking. Somehow, they are able to introduce the reader to a friend group, and set the tone right away through familiarity, inside jokes, and cultural references. Cultural references are tricky. But ultimately, they make the reader feel like they are a part of the conversation, which makes them feel closer to the characters, and more engaged with the story, since they can drop their “reading” brains, and try on their “relaxing, hanging with friends” brains. 

Here is an example of a deft cultural reference that is also intimate and wholesome. In I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Georgia says:

“What I want is … I want to fall in love. I want to have a big, dramatic, ridiculous love story, like a period piece, and my love interest is played by Saoirse Ronan, and I get to wear a fancy corset. I want to write books about the way that feels. And I don’t know if I’ll ever have any of that here, but I know what I’ll lose if I leave.”  (Location 2831 Kindle Version I Kissed Shara Wheeler) 

To break it down, we have a) intimate desire spoken between friends, and b) a reference to a beloved actress who has starred in wildly popular movies that many people have seen. Even if they haven’t, they have heard of Saoirse (Ser-sha) even in passing, and can piece together the reference. Finally, the desperation of this character shines through the tone and cadence of the words McQuiston utilizes. Even though there is plenty of punctuation, it feels like one big heartfelt confession “in swooping cursive letters,” as Taylor Swift would say. Each phrase -  “big, dramatic, ridiculous love story,” “like a period piece,” “I want to write books about the way that feels,”  - is emotional, specific, and does a lot of heavy lifting to tell us what the speaker is interested in, and what her emotional thermometer is like. 

Similarly, in One Last Stop, a character confesses their love to another thusly:

“I fell in love with you the day I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s magic[…] You’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s […] because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my fucking hero, Jane. I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.” (Location 5858 Kindle Version of One Last Stop) 

McQuiston’s characters casually insult each other while confessing their love. They stumble over their words, and say awkward things. And maybe sometimes, it’s a millennial When Harry Met Sally confession. But isn’t that why When Harry Met Sally endures? It’s dramatic, it’s romantic, but it’s relatable. And this quote tells us so much about what August feels about Jane, and what she values in other people. She values kindness over niceness, and stubbornness over giving up. 

Besides being a portal into our characters’ thoughts and ideals, dialogue also might reflect a character’s outer world, and this can include cultural references. Cultural references are tricky. Some readers despise them. And some publishers fall into the trap of updating certain books every decade or so, overhauling the most outdated references and throwing in something modern that not only will become outdated itself by the time the book goes back to print, but might not even make sense in the context of the books. This happens often with Intellectual Property works, such as Sweet Valley High and Pretty Little Liars.

So to avoid that from happening, it’s crucial that the references within a book are more universal or general than not. 

Here is an example of a general one:

“Isn’t there something else we could do first? Like - can I pour a ring of salt around her or splash her with holy water or something? But like, in a subtle way?” (Location 1388 Kindle Version of One Last Stop) 

The zeitgeist is, and has been, obsessed with witches and magic for… ever. The speech also is very natural to how people the age of Casey’s characters speak, both in cadence and wording, and is a representation of the current dialogue of our culture. 

A more specific cultural reference is in Red, White, and Royal Blue, when Alex and Henry snark at each other about star wars. 

“To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.”

“Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.”

[...]

“How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.”

“It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.”

[...]

“[Empire is] the most theatrically complex. It’s got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking Lando Calrissian, and the best twist in cinematic history. What does Jedi have? Fuckin’ Ewoks?” (P52 Red, White, and Royal Blue) 

Star Wars might be a 45-year-old reference, but it is still relevant today. We have been talking about, writing about, watching, and loving, Star Wars as culture for the past 45 years. This is unlikely to stop anytime soon, and even if it did, people would still continue to understand the reference, at least superficially, for many years to come. It’s a safe reference, because it’s accessible to readers of all ages, and many cultures. 

Another reason readers gravitate toward McQuiston’s dialogue is that they include a lot of teasing, jabs, and sarcasm. It’s not that every bit of dialogue is revelatory, it’s that it’s natural and true, and they do a great job at giving us the dialogue without too many tags and adverbs. Chloe is talking to her friend Rory in I Kissed Shara Wheeler about breaking rules at school when he insinuates that her form of rule breaking is more or less pointless: 

“You should wear your [septum piercing] to school,” [Chloe says.]

“I wear it every day.”

“I meant visibly.”

[Rory shrugs…] “Yeah, I don’t know. If you’re gonna break rules, I don’t really see the point in dress code violation. Low-hanging fruit. Draws too much attention. Doesn’t inconvenience anyone that bad.”

Chloe frowns. “Feeling subtweeted right now.” (Location 1792 kindle version I Kissed Shara Wheeler) 

I love this piece of dialogue for so many reasons. When Rory says “If you’re gonna break rules, I don’t really see the point in dress code violation. Low-hanging fruit,” it is a direct call-out to Chloe and how her rebelliousness has not always served her in the past. Rather than make statements and inspire change, her rebelliousness has positioned her as a brat, and someone who is not respected by those whom she seeks to inspire. So when she says, “feeling subtweeted right now,” it’s not just a cute statement that references social media, or the way we communicate there, but tells us that she understands Rory’s message and how it applies to her. 

Finally, and my favorite part, is that Casey uses epistolary elements in their work, which add to the spoken dialogue with written communication. McQuiston includes not only loads of emails and texts exchanged between characters, but also passed notes, hidden clues, craigslist ads, and even a shared Google doc. While these elements are not right for every genre or style, they make the reading experience more intimate when employed right, and I see them as non-traditional dialogue, because the characters are speaking to each other even without their voices or proximity. Finally, epistolary elements allow the characters to be more vulnerable with each other than they are with their direct speech.  It’s also a realistic part of our world - especially the texting - and I thought the shared Google doc was a clever touch. 

That, to me, is something that sets Casey McQuiston apart. Their writing is clever, it’s compulsively readable, and it always feels thoroughly modern even though the stories themselves are universal and timeless. Their books might contain elements that seem fantastical and current, but at the heart of all are problems we’ve been dealing with as humans forever and a half. Whether it’s being forced to pretend to be someone you’re not, kept apart from someone you love by physical or temporal distance, or feeling like an outcast, we can all relate to the scenarios McQuiston presents in their work. While Casey masters many elements of storytelling, I believe the dialogue in their work really elevates the stories they are trying to tell. Dialogue helps us learn a lot about each character. It can tell us almost anything about them - what they love, what they hate, what they desire. It’s especially helpful for getting to know characters who don’t have a point of view in the story.

Point of View 

 One author who I find particularly skilled at point of view is Tia Williams. Tia Williams’ book Seven Days in June is written in a close third person POV, and tells a story about two authors who had a love affair when they were nineteen, and have been writing to each other through their fiction ever since. This novel tackles addiction and chronic illness empathetically as well as lineage. With her candor and grace, she elicits empathy from the reader, and makes them truly feel along for the ride with her characters. In addition to dual point of view, Williams employs a dual timeline as well, which enhances the perspectives even more. And even though Tia Williams has written Seven Days in June in the third person, it’s such a close third person it feels like first. 

By using such a close third person, she gets so close to the root of the characters’ emotions and parts of their lives that they keep close to the chest. One way Williams elicits empathy from the reader with the close perspective is the way she narrates main character Eva’s chronic illness. Eva suffers from chronic migraines, both physically and personally. One way she has suffered personally is that her ex-husband left her, because he didn’t want a “patient” as a spouse, which as a reader I found terrible, but realistic. This is something people with chronic illness face every day - the idea that they may be a burden to the ones they love, the ones who are supposed to love them. 

Throughout the novel, Williams, who also has chronic migraines, is able to immerse the reader in the pain, rather than just saying “She had a headache again.” Here are some key examples:

“Eva couldn’t imagine dozing off within the next hour. Sleep called for five milligrams of Ambien, an ice pack, a painkiller shot, and her white-noise app” (161). 

“In seconds, her migraine went from annoying to obliterating. Vision starting to blur, she grabbed her purse off the table and fished for her bottle of pain pills. She swallowed two dry and reminded herself to breathe. The numbing effect rolled across the pain like the tide, sweeping it away, where it was unreachable - at least until three hours from now, when the effect would wear off and the pain would come crashing back to shore” (191). 

“My head’s worse when it rains. An intense rainstorm can land me in the hospital for a week,... I went to a million doctors. Desperate to get better, to be normal… Some kook even put me on methadone, which is illegal now.” (215). 

In the examples, we see a range of descriptions from practical to metaphorical. Williams uses different methods to submerse the reader in Eva’s pain. Each small quote from the text is so telling. When she tells us that sleep calls for “Ambien, an ice pack, a painkiller shot, and her white-noise app,” she is telling us that this is a character who has had to build an arsenal of tools to deal with her chronic pain. When she tells us Eva’s been put on methadone, it’s another sobering way to explain that this pain is serious and threatening. As we follow Eva through her story, we piece together how much her illness has affected her life, and how much she has thrived in spite of it, and lost because of it. I found it to be a realistic portrayal of someone who is sick but ambitious. Many times, the sickness wins. Sometimes, it does not. As someone who lives with my own chronic illness, I appreciated seeing a character continue to find joy and purpose in life, even when she was knocked down. The fact that Eva, and Tia, made it as a writer despite the pain that wanted to hold her back, inspired me and made me feel seen and held. 

Shane, the other perspective in the novel, is the boy Eva spent a week with many years ago, only now he is also a renowned author, and a teacher in inner city schools. When we first meet Shane, he is accused of writing outside of his lane, because his prize-winning books are written from the perspective of a young teenage girl. But, it turns out, he is writing about Eva, trying to send her messages through his work. This is another way Williams uses point of view with skill. Rather than have the characters tell each other everything they’ve been thinking all these years apart, she shows the reader through organic narrative. Of using his writing to explore his feelings for Eva via his character ‘Eight,’ Williams writes:

“His characters were whimsical, vivid, practically mythologized humans. And through ecstatic attention to detail, emotion, and nuance, he artfully manipulated readers into becoming so invested in his characters’ every thought that fifty pages would go by before they realized there was no plot…Just a girl named Eight, who lost her keys. But they would weep from the beauty of it. Eight could’ve seen a dude shot dead in the street while she was locked out, but readers would’ve cared only about her” (55). 

This shows how he views Eva - as a whimsical, vivid, mythologized person. He thinks about her deeply, and it shows through his “attention to detail, emotion, and nuance” with which he writes her character. When confronted, he tells Eva, “I’m not writing about you,[...]. I’m writing to you […] I wrote my books like you were the only one who could ever read them. My books did what I couldn’t [… ]talk to you” (96). Throughout the novel, Tia Williams builds an almost Romeo and Juliet like narrative about her star-crossed lovers, and she does a fantastic job of making the reader believe it. Believe the love they have for each other, and believe that they truly could not be together, until now. 

Of Eva’s feelings for Shane:

“Eva watched Shane… and her heart stuttered. She couldn’t help it…Eva tried to play down how delicious this felt. How domestic. Because hope was coiling up into her brain, like a snake piercing her with its fangs. Just like when she first met him…” (212) 

Here, Eva compares Shane to her illness when she compares him to a snake. He is a part of her, something that will never leave her body or heart, no matter how hard she tries to run in the other direction. 

Finally, one of the best ways the dual, close point of view works in Seven Days in June, is that it allows Williams to tell a whole story rather than just one perspective or perception, allowing for a fuller story. For example, as we slowly hurdle toward the big reveal of what happened when Shane and Eva were nineteen that led them to be apart, it turns out that Eva’s interpretation of the event is not exactly correct. Because we get Shane’s perspective to fill in the details, we empathize with why she thinks what she thinks, and we are also able to empathize with Shane - Eva felt abandoned by him, and he was unable to explain why. This event led to misunderstanding that rippled throughout the plot, but once it was resolved, it was a relief to the reader as well as the characters. 

If you’re looking for an example of close third point of view, or dual point of view (or a book with accurate, caring representation of chronic illness and addiction that’s also fun and romantic), you cannot go wrong with reading Seven Days in June. 

Seven Days in June’s expert point of view did a lot for the novel, including introducing conflict through the character’s different perceptions. But there is one novel that I feel stands in a league all its own when it comes to conflict. 

Conflict

Felicia Berliner has written one novel, Shmutz, which the New York Times called “a dirty book with a pure heart.” I couldn't agree more. A voicy work, Shmutz presents a hell of a conflict: A young Hasidic Woman is allowed by her family to work and attend school, which enables her to have a personal laptop, which is otherwise forbidden to her. The laptop opens her world, but enables her dark secret when she becomes addicted to pornography on the internet. How can she prove to herself and her family that she is responsible and impenetrable by the outside world when she is consuming the very thing they were most afraid of? Obviously, getting help from her family is out of the question. So she confides in her therapist and leans on the support of a group of kids she meets in college, who also expose her to the “real world” and the culture of people her age outside of her religious bubble.  How can she turn back now, and go to the life that is waiting for her - the life of a married woman with no connection to the outside world? This is a high stakes conflict, expertly written. 

The conflict in this novel is like a tree through which many branches grow.  

First, conflict arises out of the fact that Raizl (Rye-zelle)  is not supposed to attend college in the first place. This is against the tradition of her family and culture. At her age, she is meant to find a husband, and start having children. As an offshoot, her family fears that she may become undesirable for a suitable husband, and therefore, her mother employs a matchmaker to help her find a husband. This gives Raizl a lot of anxiety about her future - she is allowed to go to college now, but will her future husband be as flexible with her as her family is turning out to be? Each conflict in this novel begets more conflicts, and the secrecy Raizl must uphold gives a claustrophobic effect to the novel as the shame starts to suffocate her and the reader. 

The choice to allow Raizl to go to college gives way to other allowances, or branches - college is too modern and too secular, and this sends the plot into a tailspin. Because this novel takes place in the modern day, where everything we do at work and school and even at home to an extent is online, Raizl must have a laptop to complete her schoolwork. This means she must also have access to the internet. Out of isolation from her peers when she enters the new world of school, because she has spent most of her life sheltered, and a desire to know more about the world, Raizl starts googling. What starts with an innocent search, looking up God, turns into a nightmare when she comes to find pornography, to which she quickly becomes addicted. 

Raizl quickly discovers her own sexuality, and it is a tap that cannot be turned off. But moreover, she has no one to talk to about her desires, as it is against her culture to speak of such things as a young woman. The branch of addiction in the conflict tree of this novel is a fruitful one that has many offshoots.The addiction isolates her more than she has already been isolated, both by her religion, and the outside world she thought would save her, but has now forsaken her. She has one person she can confide in, a therapist who becomes a proxy for her angst and pain. To the therapist, she reveals a girlish fear of marrying the wrong person. If she admits her impurities, she worries she will have no match, or worse: “the nebbish, some pitiful boy no one else wants” (6). This would sully her reputation and mar the life she dreams of for herself. The therapist is also someone whom Raizl rebels against, finding her the only safe space not only for her desire, but for her anger and desperation. No matter what the therapist recommends, or how she tries to quell Raizl’s fears, nothing is good enough as Raizl can’t see her own hands in the darkness of her new life. 

Worse, when she goes home, there is no privacy in which to process and face her problems. Raizl lives in a small home with her parents, grandfather, and younger sister, Gitti, whom she shares a room with. She must always be “on” at home, engaging with and taking care of her family, rather than processing her emotions and liabilities. As they share a room, Gitti inevitably becomes aware that Raizl’s internet adventures have taken her to some forbidden places. If Gitti tells, or if anyone sees her laptop open to an incriminating page (she is rarely alone), her whole life as she knows it is over. 

While the main conflict asks, how can Raizl stay connected to her family and her roots when she is tempted and intrigued by the modern world, it begets many stakes that keep the novel compelling and compulsively readable.

If she is found out, some of the stakes include:

• - She can be disowned by her family and shunned by her community.

• - Or, she will lose her connection to the outside world, including her job which is her access to cash and security. 

• - She will be undesirable for marriage which is really important for a woman her age in her community

• - Her family will never take chances like this again on herself, or her sister, whom she cares about deeply. 

All of the above - the pornography, the fear of being discovered, the introduction to a new world with new social rules and regulations, trying to juggle working to help support her family while attending school - leads to something even more terrifying. Raizl is failing school, and as her grades descend, so does her psyche. As she tries to juggle homework, familial obligation, her addiction, friendships, and finding a match, her grip on reality and the world is slipping. And if she fails school, it was all for nothing, every single bit of it. 

When you begin to think of conflict as a tree, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Berliner does a phenomenal job of juggling all of the conflict, and showing how it intersects and interacts with itself, while never demonizing Raizl’s religion or pornography itself. She also infuses a lot of heart, empathy, and sensuality into the fraught prose, rendering the novel a multi-faceted piece of work that takes the reader on an adventure of thought and emotion. 

Here is a call to action: can you take your work-in-progress, and map out a conflict tree? You might be amazed at all the ways each conflict dominoes into the next, or you may identify gaps where more conflict can be added to create a fuller story. 

All of the authors discussed in this piece have unique perspectives, which I believe lend to their mastery of craft, specifically the elements of which they’ve demonstrated superb capabilities. Casey McQuiston’s queerness and youthfulness help them tap into the dialogue and speech of the culture; Tia Williams’ experience navigating this world with illness enables her to write about a character who is othered in an ableist society; and Felicia Berliner’s religion allows her to write with sensitivity and heart about her characters’ conflicts. Their perspectives have all affected how the authors see the world, enabling them to write how they write. So I encourage you, to look within and see what you might have that can offer itself to your prose, and help you speak from a place many others are unable to visit. 

What authors and works do you believe we should study in order to write about the human experience as authentically as possible? And what elements are you interested in exploring more in other masterclasses?