Writing a book

[fjwallace]

I am writing a book (hopefully) that I have been working on for two years. My characters seem a little boring. Any tips on how to liven up my dialogue and actions. It is a fantasy, by the way. And I have re-started it several times. I keep second guessing myself. How do you, any of you, get yourselves out of this quagmire?

[Frisca]

For me, I think of my characters as a mixture of characteristics of people I've met and those that I know as pick their good qualities for the characters I like and the bad ones for the enemies. It's also mental inventory of people I like and don't like ;]

[AdamRedWolf]

I've been there. Started over and over and over... finally I just decided to keep going. If it's your first book, you can't expect that it will be the best work you ever complete - it takes practice. Just keep going on this and don't look back until you're 100 pages in. Then reread what you have and make tweaks if you feel necessary.

I often get into the trap of using way too much dialogue. A great author can take a whole conversation and put it into a look or an action. Try keeping your characters engaged in actions that either cause something bad to happen, or that will at least make the plot move along. If you're bored from your own book, you might be getting caught up in too much detail.

Get your story out there and onto the page. You can always help it grow, but creation has to come first.

[KS Crooks]

Give each of your characters a dominant personality such as smart, joker, serious, curious, helpful, friendly, quiet, scared, etc. Have much of what they say or do start from that perspective and then branch out as needed or naturally comes out.

[Ndehani]

Know what your characters are before writing them picture them in your mind like he is a hero the other is the villian and write according to their persona

[SMAhmed]

I usually try to picture the dialogue in my head as if it were in a movie. Reading the dialogue out loud in the different voices of the characters also helps. If you're constantly stumbling over what the character is saying then you probably need to redo the dialogue but if you're able to say it with ease then your dialogue is fine. For characters, I'd do what most people on here already said, focus on a dominant part of the character's personality. Don't make the character only that personality because that takes away from them being more fleshed out but it's ok to rely on tropes like the rich boy with a heart of gold, or the morally gray thief, etc., so long as that isn't their only personality.

[davidvan1973]

There are a few different aspects here. First, get the story down on paper. I think the massaging of the mix of diagloue vs. narrative vs. scene description etc can be ironed out in the subsequent drafts. What has helped me is remembering that life is imperfect. I have a tendency to make my heroes always good and the villains always bad. contract, conflict, mistakes, those are what will make the characters start to come alive and become more vibrant.

[Folcro]

I find that the best litmus test for how boring something is, is how much I enjoyed writing it. If you had fun writing it, it may not matter how many swords parried or dragons decapitated, the reader will have fun reading it.

As for characters, the best way to tell how boring they are is to gauge how different one character us from the other. Throw some scenarios at them (not neccesarily scenarios that they will actually face in your story) and ruminate on how each character would handle said scenario, and what is their reasoning for handling it in that way?

[Samuel Windybank]

Every chapter I write, I get my partner to read it aloud back to me. It really helps hearing someone else read it out loud to find snags in the writing. I find it especially useful with dialogue because I don’t use dialogue tags. Give it a try if you’ve got someone you feel comfortable giving your work to.

[aruntr2001]

Character identification and introduction is a very important aspect which needs to be exercised well before writing a book.

[Rodel Barnachea]

My tip is that try to listen to real conversations by people around you. I watched a TED-Ed video about that. Maybe you can look that up and watch it.

[Rodel Barnachea]

Every chapter I write, I get my partner to read it aloud back to me. It really helps hearing someone else read it out loud to find snags in the writing. I find it especially useful with dialogue because I don’t use dialogue tags. Give it a try if you’ve got someone you feel comfortable giving your work to.

This is nice and quite smart. But not all of us have partners, haha.

[Rodel Barnachea]

Give each of your characters a dominant personality such as smart, joker, serious, curious, helpful, friendly, quiet, scared, etc. Have much of what they say or do start from that perspective and then branch out as needed or naturally comes out.

This is a good tip for beginner writers. I find that assigning your character a dominant characteristic would lead to a dominant role they will play when conflict arises.

[beatrice_mom]

I just find in my characters some real people that I like or dislike. The way to make your stories more interesting to read is not include too much dialoges. The dialoges really make stories boring. It's better to show the character's view to the situation.

[emidio125]

I think you should first go back in time and picture the you had design your character to be. Then read other people stories in order to learn different character development then try to absorb the ones you think will go along with what you want from your character.