Basics of Micro-writing

A well rounded author has, in my opinion, a mastery of every level of writing. That said, if I was forced to identify one level as 'most important,' I would have to say it was the micro-level. Why? Because your writing skill on the micro level determines basic readibility. While it is important for stories to make sense and have interesting plots and unpredictable twists, if a reader picks up a book and finds that the dialogue is poorly written, and the sentences are too convoluted to follow, they won't get to chapter three, where they'd find out the amazing secret that makes this, inarguably, the best plot of all time.

So what skills do you need to develop to make your writing work on a micro-level?

A: Dialogue
1: Realism

Realism in dialogue is about making the reader forget that what they're seeing was made for their benefit. Well written dialogue makes the reader feel like they're listening in on someone elses conversation, an unnoticed voyeur, not a member of an audience, being fed information.

Pitfalls:
-Dialogue for the sake of the reader: I know what you're thinking, 'all the dialogue is for the sake of the reader.' Well, yes, but you want your them to feel as though they are listening in on someone else's conversation. And in a natural conversation people don't usually spell out everything. 'Oh George, my former boyfriend, whom I have not seen in twelve months and six days. It is good to see you again, though on our last meeting you made me very upset when you insinuated that my sister tried to seduce you three times in the course of our five year relationship.' While you don't want to keep secrets from your reader (at least not for too long), you should feel free to parcel information out to them.
-Too clever too often: One of the things I enjoy about my writing is that I can make characters who are far more clever than myself. It may take me months of writing, rewriting, and debates with my peer review group to get the perfect comeback line for one of my characters, but when someone else reads it, the reply is instantaneous. And yes, that's fun. BUT, unless you are writing a very specific style of story, you'll want too be careful not to make all of your characters too clever. Part of the joy of a story is feeling empathy for the strangers you read about on the way, if all of them are geniuses. If every character is fantastically clever, your story has the potential of alienating the reader, making them feel small and slow witted. And, of course, there is the problem that in the real world, not everybody is that quick with their tongue. Relax, feel free to let your characters make mistakes.
-Everyone-else-is-a-fool dialogue: Just as you can't make everyone a genius, don't make everyone a fool. Far too often, I find myself reading stories where there are entire sections of dialogue that seem to exist only to prove that the main character is brilliant, and everyone else is an idiot. Now, don't get me wrong, writing the occasional idiot is all well and good, but making your character the only person with any notable intelligence by reducing everyone else to the role of a halfwit alienates your readers just as much as making every character a genius. At best, it's a mediocre Saturday Night Live skit.

Exercises:
-read, read, and re-read: I know, I know, you read a lot already (and if you don't, you should), but there's a difference between reading like a reader, and reading like a writer. What's the difference? A reader is reading because they want to have some fun. They have some free time and they want to enjoy it. Good for them. When a writer is reading (specifically when they are reading as a writer, not reading as a reader) he/she is reading to learn something. To grow. So how do you read like a writer? Find a book you like, something with great dialogue, dialogue you wish you could have written, and read it. Don't read all the way through, though. Read it until you find a great section of dialogue. Read that section again. Read it slowly. Say each word aloud as you're reading. Ask yourself what the author is doing. Ask yourself why. Read it again. Think about it.
-read, read, and re-WRITE: Have you read, read, and re-read? Have you done it a couple of times? Great. Now for step two. Grab the book you love so much, find a section of dialogue you like, and read it. Ask yourself what they say. Not the words, the information. What are they telling the reader? Now, put the book down and go make yourself a sandwich. If you don't like sandwiches, make some mac and cheese. Eat the sandwhich (or the mac and cheese). Come back, pick up a piece of paper and a pen, and write the dialogue. Don't try to copy it verbatim, just write down what was said in your own little scene. Now grab the book. Read what they wrote. Read what you wrote. Compare. Which one is better? How are they different? Read them aloud. Compare and contrast. Now, go have some chips, come back, and try again.
-read, read, and write BETTER: For this, I recommend a book you don't like. Something you grabbed at the store because it had a pretty cover, or something you wrote yourself and aren't satisfied with. Read a section of dialogue. Go eat a sandwhich, come back and rewrite it. Compare, contrast. Ask yourself how your favorite author would have written it. Write it again. Compare it to a section of dialogue you love. Rinse and repeat.

2: Interesting

Keeping dialogue interesting is something of a contrast to keeping it realistic. That does NOT mean that they are mutually exclusive, it does mean that there is often a balance between the two. Where writing realistic dialogue often centers around focusing on the two characters speaking, writing interesting dialogue centers around remembering that the poing of the conversation is the enjoyment of the reader.

Pitfalls:
-Repitition: Don't feel that you need to write down every word of a conversation. Case in point: if John, Jack, and Jim are meeting Jennifer, Julia, and Jessica, in a real conversation Jennifer might say, 'hello John, hello Jack, good to meet you Jim.' and so might Julia, and Jessica. And Jim, John, and Jack, might reply back to each of them. This is true, but it isn't interesting. And it's easily summed up in narration. Feel free to tell us, as the narrator, 'the three women introduced themselves,' and move on. This is an extreme example, certainly, but it comes up from time to time.
-Excessive explanations: Sometimes taking two pages to explain how something works can be funny. Or it can be interesting. Most of the time, however, explaining how something works is just tedious. If it's Bob's first day at work, and Fred is showing him the ropes, Fred might take half an hour explaining how to work the problematic forklift. Please, sum it up, or just give us the highlights. No, seriously, please.
-Converstaion for the sake of conversation: This is important both for the micro, mid-range, and macro-levels of your writing. Sometimes in the course of writing we come up with ideas that just seem too damned clever not to use. They seem to be so fun and so entertaining that we will stop and look for a way to fit it into a story. BE CAREFUL. One of the most dangerous things you can do in a story is add a scene that doesn't exist for any reason. If you can fit a beautiful scene into a story in a meaningful way, go for it, but if you just stick it in because you think it's a beautiful scene, write it down on a piece of paper, tape it to your desk, and save it. Someday, years down the line, you may find a place you can put it, but don't sully your story with something meaningless. And don't sully a perfect scene by letting it be meaningless.

Exercises:
-See the exercises for Dialogue, many of them are the same.
-Cut, cut, and cut some more: Start with something you're not emotionally invested in, if you have a writing group or a friend who writes, take something they've done, read it, then make three copies. Go through the first copy with a red pen and cut every bit of dialogue you can. Cut every meaningless word. See if you can remove a character without effecting anything. Cut quickly, cut by instinct. Take the second copy and cut again. Slowly this time. Think about each line, think about each word spoken. Cut only what you really, truly feel is meaningless. Now, take the third, untouched copy and read it. Then read your two copies. Compare, contrast. Once you're comfortable with that, try the same thing on something you wrote.

3. True to the Characters

Something I've struggled with over the years is writing characters who aren't me. It isn't that I've tried to make carbon copies of myself, but I tend to fall back into my own voice. It's an easy mistake to make. I speak with my own voice, I think with my own voice, and I'm inclined to write with my own voice. But my characters aren't me. At least, they shouldn't ALL be me.

Pitfalls:
-Writing yourself: See above.
-Writing two dimensional characters: Frankly, most of us see the world as being our own, reasonable selves, our friends, who are usually semi-reasonable, and a whole bunch of people who seem to exist solely to get in our way. Guess what, to them you're a two dimensional bastard who exists solely to make trouble. Go figure. The point, however, is that when you have a character who exists for more than a few pages, you have to think about the world from their point of view. You don't have to agree with their point of view, but you have to understand it.

Exercises:
-Look, listen, think: People watch, baby! Pick a place, somewhere that you can listen without looking like you're listening. Food courts are good. Find a spot, sit down, and start paying attention. Not just to how people talk or move, but to how they think. Listen in on a conversation and try to predict where it's going. Try to understand the inner workings of the minds around you. Then try to write from their perspective.
-read, write, write: Pick a book you like, something with good characters. Read it, find a section of dialogue and read it a few times. Then write it. That exact section, verbatim. Write it again. Then try to write another scene, a made up scene, with those same characters. Try to write characters you know and understand while staying true to who they are. Read what you wrote and ask yourself just how true it is. Rinse and repeat.
-Be Bad Baby!: Pick a story or a scene in a story and write it from the perspective of the bad guy. If possible, make them the good guy of their own story.

B: Description
1. Physical (People and Places)

Description in general is one of my areas of greatest weakness. In fact, if people in my peer review group read this, they'll probably laugh at the idea of me advising other writers on how to write description. I don't tend to think in terms of how things or people look, but readers like to be grounded, connected to the story. They like to have an image in their minds, and while they'll fill in most of the gaps, they want something from you, too, just to make sure that you're both, for lack of a better term, on the same page.

Pitfalls:
-Too much: A lot of older stories will have pages and pages of description. Why? Because they were paid for their stories by the word, so six lines explaining just how horrible a lawn looked was money in the pocket. I'd advise against doing that.
-Too little: This is where I tend to screw up. It's pretty self explanatory, give people images to connect them to people and place.

Exercises:
-For places: My advice, when you're describing a place, is to figure out two or three things that you want the reader to understand about the location, then find a way to express those ideas without saying them. Does the house look like crap? Don't say it looks like crap, tell me that the floor is covered in dirty clothes and the disgarded remains of old meals. Is the clearing beautiful? Don't tell me it's beautiful, tell me that the grass is tall and green, and that the stalks seem to dance to some unheard music with every breath of wind. Also tell me if there are contrasts, if the floor is dirty but the desk in the back of the room is immaculate, or if the only thing marring the clearing is a tomb covered in weeds.
-For people: I'm totally stealing this from Jim Butcher's blog, and I think he stole it from someone else, but this is the best thing I've read for describing people. Give me two to four characteristics of a person, and every time that person shows up, use one or two of them. And try not to repeat between characters unless you want to draw a very specific connection between them.
-A real exercise: Try to write brief physical descriptions of real places and real people, no more than two lines on a notebook page. Then pick a friend and see if they can guess who and where you are talking about based on the little information provided. If you really want to get good, I'd advise you to try writing the descriptions in less than one notebook line.

2. Emotional

Describing a place briefly is a good and important skill, but it's every bit as important to be able to describe a place's meaning through your description. This not only tells a reader what something looks like, but what it means to a character.

Exercises:
-Take a real person or a real place and write a description of them. Then try to view them through the eyes of somebody who hates them, and rewrite the description. Then try to view them through the eyes of someone who loves them, and rewrite. Do this with several different people or places, then compare. Ideally you want to write different characters from different perspectives without relying on the same descriptions (beware of beady eyes and hunched shoulders. Also, avoid the word 'perfect').
-Pick a physical object or a person whom you are emotionally connected to. Write about them. Then write about something similar that you are not connected to, compare the descriptions, try to find the phrasing that indicates the emotional connection and replicate it for something you are not attached to.

C. Word Choice
1. Story Oriented

This I can keep short and sweet. Back in school my teachers used to give us new words to learn and make us use them in stories or sentences or whatever. That was fine. Having a good vocabulary is important, and good, and using a good vocabulary in your stories isn't a bad thing. But don't force things in. People can tell when you're being pretentious in your writing, so use words you're comfortable and familiar with.

2. Reading flows

Again, short and sweet. Sometimes word usage can seem offputting, it can jar the reader and take them out of the story. Avoid that. How do you find out if your wording is off? Well, read it a few times yourself, and give it to friends and other writers to read. If several people feel that a particular word is odd, or a sentence reads awkwardly, they're probably right.

D: Sentence Structure
1. Avoid Confusion
a. Ambiguity

Ambiguity, for those of you who don't know, is when a section can read two different ways. "Ronald punched Steve in the stomach. Steve stepped back, gasping for air. Ronald stepped forward, swinging hard. Steve put his fist through the window." Steve put whose fist through the window? Did he put his own fist through it, or did he catch Ronald's fist and stick it through the window? Words like he, her, his, their, it, can be ambiguous.

Advice: Read through your stories with an eye for ambiguity. Take some time off between writing a story and editing it so that you can look at it with fresh eyes, and see if you can find places where you aren't as clear as you had thought. Also, get advice from other readers.

b. Elaborate sentences

Variety is good. Switching back and forth between complicated and simple sentences is important to keep your writing interesting. But you need to be careful. If your sentences are too complicated, the reader will find that they have a hard time following your ideas, which takes them out of the story, and makes them more likely to put your book down. It is possible to have extremely long sentences which are easy to read, but it takes a certain amount of skill which the novice writer rarely has. As a rule, I'd advise against sentences longer than two lines. If you make a sentence much longer than that, I'd advise reading it carefully to be sure your meaning is clear.