Episode 15: The Prescription for Better Dialogue with Jeff Elkins

Cassie Newell (00:01.302)
Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is episode 15. I'm Cassie Newell and I'm here with my co-host Angela Haas. And this month, it's all about craft of writing. In this episode, we're talking to Jeff Elkins, all about dialogue. Jeff is an award-winning author of 12 novels and over a hundred short stories. He podcasts, edits, and coaches writers, helping them improve their dialogue and characterization as the dialogue doctor.

Since launching the Dialogue Doctor in 2021, Jeff has worked with over 300 authors in one-on-one sessions. He's speaking at InkerCon 2025 on June the 7th and at the Maryland Writers Association Annual Conference, October 11th through the 12th, 2025. Welcome, Jeff, to the show.

Angela Haas (00:34.326)
Why? no, what a great start. We've already alienated our guests. How neat.

Jeff Elkins (00:52.01)
Thanks for having me. That's awkward to have that red. That's weird. But it makes me very uncomfortable. But yeah. No, not really. Just, you know, just like, that's all that's about me. That's strange. Yeah, no, it's yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm pumped to be here.

Cassie Newell (00:56.334)
goodness.

Cassie Newell (01:11.682)
we're so excited to have you. And of course, Angela and I know you quite a bit for over the last several years, I would say, with the Dialogue Doctors and the Patreon group and a lot of the things you do for the community, which is so fabulous. And today, talking about dialogue, I just wanted to kick off with say, asking, what is the key thing authors get wrong when they're writing their dialogue? What do you see quite a bit?

Angela Haas (01:15.573)
Yes.

Cassie Newell (01:41.122)
Like, let's just dive into it.

Jeff Elkins (01:42.516)
Yeah, let's just jump right in. I'd rather talk about that than about me, so that sounds great. Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that I'm coaching recently, actually let me back that up and give you two answers. there's kind two levels of things you get wrong. Like when you're writing your first book, the thing that you usually get wrong with dialogue is you use it as flavor instead of backbone. So a lot of writers will like

Angela Haas (01:42.87)
Mm.

Cassie Newell (01:47.566)
you

Cassie Newell (02:10.062)
I love that. Back though.

Jeff Elkins (02:12.404)
Yeah, they'll start writing and they'll write like descriptions, they'll write summaries, they'll write plot beats. And then they'll be like, I need to put some dialogue in here. And they kind of add it secondarily. And the problem is that creates a story outside of character interaction because dialogue is your primary character interaction. And so your story ends up feeling very like prosy and expositioning. And you get, you get people telling you like, Hey, can you show and not tell? Like you get all of these like,

Cassie Newell (02:39.157)
Mm. Right.

Jeff Elkins (02:40.17)
Can we feel we're not feeling the emotional weight of the story. These scenes feel flat like so. When you're starting off writing, I always encourage writers like, hey, write your dialogue first, correct your character interactions first, and then move into adding prose and descriptions around it, because that'll keep your character interactions as the background of your story. Later writers who tend to like.

You know, once you're on like your third or fourth book, you're used to making dialogue the center of what you're doing. I find a lot of it's about pacing and a lot of like, where do I add in inner thoughts? Where do I put like inner reflections? Where do I drop that in? That can be really hard to kind of figure out and like, where's the right place to put that in without interrupting the dialogue? So that's, and what I tell them is like, you want to break your dialogue into segments, like topics or emotional tones.

And then at each emotional transition or at the end of each topic, that's a space for you to provide exposition. So you can put in inner thoughts, you can put in reflective prose, you can put in a description of something, you can put in like a summary of action, like that kind of stuff. But so waiting for the end of a segment or the end of an emotional tone gives the reader a natural breath in their dialogue progression to like slide that in there.

Does that make sense? So two, two for one, two answers for one. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (04:06.818)
Yeah. Wow. You kind of hit my second question too about the balance of prose and dialogue. And I kind of love that.

Jeff Elkins (04:14.888)
Yeah, you want it to be like, so it depends a little bit on genre. If you're writing like a heavy prose genre, which is like sci-fi or fantasy, I find like you want 60 % character interaction. So like 60 % dialogue of characters going back and forth. That doesn't have to be like characters talking. So.

Cassie Newell (04:20.525)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (04:37.79)
Dialogue is nonverbal as well. there's the just care when you're getting character exchanges, characters are interacting back and forth with each other. 60 to 70 % for like heavy prose books for romance, thrillers, comedies. You want to try to get it up to like 80%. You want it to be almost mostly dialogue with like the prose kind of giving nuance to the scenes.

Cassie Newell (04:58.38)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (05:07.034)
And part of that is because the emotional power of the story comes through the dialogue. So when you're writing genres that have that real emotional flavor, like romance, where they're really coming to dig into the emotional journey, you want as much character interaction as you can get. We think a lot of times that the emotion comes from the reflection.

Cassie Newell (05:20.686)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (05:29.624)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (05:35.114)
Like, oh, I'm gonna write a paragraph of inner reflection. And that's where I'm really gonna feel the emotion. That's actually, so if you think about it like your dialogue, you are earning emotional coins. So as your characters are enacting, you're owning these emotional tokens. You can then spin them in your reflection, but you can't earn them in your reflection, right? Like you've got to earn them in the dialogue and then you can spin them in the reflection by like looking back on what just happened.

Cassie Newell (05:56.415)
I love that.

Cassie Newell (06:02.967)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (06:05.716)
but reflection alone doesn't do it.

Cassie Newell (06:05.89)
almost like unreliable things that you say versus how your internal monologue goes sometimes, things like that, which is a lot more richer, too. I've read some really good stories like that. Angela, what do you think in terms of dialogue? Do you feel there's anything that you see or have read or when you're writing that you get wrong with dialogue or that you f—

Jeff Elkins (06:12.22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Haas (06:19.318)
yeah, I mean, that's kind of a four hour episode if we want to like analyze what I'm getting wrong. But I'm like, okay, could we actually edit my manuscript? Do you have time? Or I was gonna just like...

Jeff Elkins (06:37.755)
I'm here all night.

Cassie Newell (06:42.178)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (06:42.602)
Just pull it up. Let's go. Yeah.

Angela Haas (06:46.198)
What I, I love writing dialogue. It's my favorite thing. It's the easiest thing for me. But where I struggle are the big cast sci-fi scenes where you have the Avengers at the round table, you know, doing their war plan because then I get in the weeds with too much of like, she's sitting in the chair. She's rubbing her chin.

I had a woman rubbing her stubble, she, it was clearly a woman. She didn't have a mustache, but I lost track of the character. And then I had someone sitting and standing. And then I looked at the scene and I was like, okay, who's talking? They're just like doing things. Like I lost track of trying to put so many, you know, body language modifiers in there that then I had to step out and be like,

Jeff Elkins (07:24.49)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (07:38.622)
Okay, does everyone need to talk or can I just have people listening or you know, that's maybe speak to that because I always struggle when it's two people. I'm great. You add, you know, the third and fourth, fifth person. How do I make their voices dist sink? How do I keep it flowing and then not confuse the reader? But you still have to have scenes like that. You know, you can't not have a scene like

Jeff Elkins (07:44.884)
down.

Cassie Newell (07:45.262)
conversational.

Jeff Elkins (07:58.26)
And I'm

Yeah. And it sounds like you're avoiding dialogue tags too. You said she said.

Angela Haas (08:04.95)
I got scared. Yeah, because that's part of the advice. They're saying like, you don't need dialogue tags. And then some people say you need dialogue tags every time. And that's what's part of this journey as being in your awkward sophomore year. Like, where is the lane? What do you listen to and tune out? know, that's it. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (08:27.188)
Yeah, so, I'm sorry, Cassie, we're gonna say something.

Cassie Newell (08:29.966)
No, no, I agree with Angela. I'm like, you you hear a lot of different information around dialogue, around dialogue tags, and even in the editing software too, which I find interesting. You know, I tend to like the said, the simple stuff, that's a me thing. And then if I want flavor of other things, it's after, you know, but yeah.

Angela Haas (08:56.272)
But I noticed in romance, it's not said. If you really read like the romance novels, it's always saying, he offered, she chimed in, he muttered, it's not said. And that threw me for a loop because sci-fi is said, but romance is all the fluffier words. Like who is in charge? Who is making these rules? You're in charge of this.

Jeff Elkins (09:16.286)
Yeah, well, that's, we're gonna dub you two in charge. can make the rule from now on. Yeah, so let's go to the rule first because I understand why people are saying that and I understand where it comes from. And I think it's important, especially in your sophomore year of writing, that you understand that there actually are no rules. That there's no, like, there are guidelines.

Cassie Newell (09:17.944)
Jeff, you're in charge, tell us.

Angela Haas (09:39.272)
All right.

Jeff Elkins (09:44.098)
And if you want to submit to an agent who's like, and I've seen agents do this, who are like, I hate dialogue tags. And if you have one, I'm not looking at your stuff. Well, then you better pull them all out of there. but at the same time, I read a lot of books. I've read a lot of classic books. read in every genre, the writers that we love and that we continue to go back to all use dialogue tags. I've never seen one not use them.

Angela Haas (09:47.158)
Okay.

Jeff Elkins (10:12.362)
The reason that is, is because like dialogue tags aren't magic. They're just a tool and they're a quick way to identify who's talking. Um, they actually have three purposes. One is to identify who's talking. Two is when you use them in a creative way, they can enhance the vocalization. So they actually like, like he offered blah, blah, blah, or, you know, she, um, you know, I I'd love to, she gasped like that kind of creative flow can like,

Angela Haas (10:28.978)
my.

Jeff Elkins (10:42.41)
What's she offering to do? But there's that like kind of creative moment that can enhance the emotional tone of the vocalization. And then the last thing they do is you can actually move them or we won't get into this, but you can move them around the vocalization to like make the vocalization feel different to the reader by putting them like in the middle or at the beginning or at the end. So they're just a tool.

Angela Haas (10:42.64)
Jeff Elkins (11:05.82)
If you're not going to use the tool, let's say you're in that camp. That's like, I don't want to use any dialogue tax. You're going to like, it's kind of like saying I'm going to build a house, but I refuse to use a screwdriver. It's fine. Like that's great. But I would recommend you keep most of your conversations to two people. Because anything like what, what I call a big cast conversations, anybody more than three. And the problem we have as writers is that.

visual storytelling thrives in large cast conversations that like movies, television, you know, streaming, they can do a big cast conversation because you can take in what all the characters are doing at one time on the screen. It's much harder for us because everybody has to participate in the conversation or they disappear from the reader's imagination. So there's that like.

Cassie Newell (11:39.534)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (11:59.816)
So when you're if you're going to get rid of dialogue text, you're just using body language. Body language slows down the pace of the dialogue and it makes it feel heavier. Right. So you're losing what's great about dialogue is it creates this like emotional energy. Those tokens I was talking about when you start adding body language obsessively, it makes each utterance that a character gives slower and slower. So like weighs it down.

So you fight against your own dialogue. If you're, if you're into using tags, like, you're like, okay, I am going to use tags. I'm not going to use body language. The advice I give is like, Hey, hold your body language until you really want something that character says to have weight. Because there's a weird rule that the more words you give something, the more time a reader's brain has to spend on it. And the more weight it has for the reader. So medium weight things.

Cassie Newell (12:48.718)
Mmm.

Jeff Elkins (12:58.886)
use a little bit bigger tag, heavier things, use a little bit of body language, things that you really want to resonate, pull it all in body language, tags and inner thought, like just weigh that utterance down and it'll create a lot of like emotional impact in that scene of dialogue. And then when you're writing that big cast conversation with like three or more characters, if it's between three and five.

The trick is every segment, everybody has to participate once. So every topic or emotional set, everybody gets to play one time at least. Right. Like, so you might if you have three characters like A, B and C, you might have like an A, B, A, B, C, A, B, A, B. Right. Like, and then that's the end of a segment. So I just got C in there once, but I got it in there and it keeps that character alive in the reader's imagination.

Cassie Newell (13:33.432)
Mm.

Angela Haas (13:34.294)
Okay.

Cassie Newell (13:39.95)
All

Cassie Newell (13:47.969)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (13:57.566)
Right. Like if you think of your scene as like a stage filled with smoke, the less a character speaks, the more they drift back into the smoke and the reader will kind of forget they're there, especially in longer scenes. So you want to pop them at least every segment. Now, if you have more than five characters in a scene, five is a lot to manage six, seven, eight characters in a scene. Like you're talking about the Avengers. It's it's too much. So.

Angela Haas (14:09.728)
Gotcha. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (14:26.036)
You have to start grouping them into choruses, which by chorus, I mean the like Greek drama technique where characters speak in unison. So you start pulling them into choruses so that they speak as a group. And that way you can treat like three characters as one. So like, you know, Hawkeye and Black Widow smirked at each other.

Cassie Newell (14:35.662)
Mmm.

Cassie Newell (14:43.393)
Interesting.

Jeff Elkins (14:49.832)
Right. I've got them both into one utterance. I've referred that they're both there. They've been pulled into the conversation. I don't have to pull them in again later. Or like everybody but Iron Man laughed. Right. Like I've covered the whole group. You're reminded that this is a big group conversation and I didn't have to like go through everybody in each piece. So like having when you have that big group utilizing them in like a chorus mentality.

Angela Haas (14:50.0)
Gotcha. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (14:57.454)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (15:17.82)
If there's, if a sci-fi readers reading, then they want to go look at somebody who kind of does this masterfully in a really quick space, something you can read like in 10 minutes. All summers in a day by Ray Bradbury is a fantastic example of a chorus conversation. And he's got a group of school children and watch how in every segment, the children say this or the children all laughed or.

Cassie Newell (15:30.862)
Mm.

Jeff Elkins (15:44.518)
they didn't like that she said that right like he's grouping like 20 kids into one character yeah

Angela Haas (15:45.718)
Why haven't I been taking notes? I'm trying to play it cool, but I really wanted to write all this down. I've got it, I've got it, Angela, just calm down. Okay, such good information. No, that's really helpful, yeah.

Cassie Newell (15:49.536)
Right. That's great. I love that.

Cassie Newell (15:58.254)
Don't worry, you can play it back.

Jeff Elkins (15:58.844)
You have a recording.

Cassie Newell (16:07.79)
around since I know you you write so many short stories is there a difference in how you attack dialogue in short stories versus full-length novels?

Jeff Elkins (16:19.818)
There is, and I don't think anybody's ever asked me that question. So good question. There really is. So in a short story, you want your voices bigger. In a short story, you have less space to make an impact. So like in a novel, we've got 60 to 90,000 words to really dig into the character. So you have a lot of space or you have a lot of time in the story.

Angela Haas (16:21.91)
you

Cassie Newell (16:30.098)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Elkins (16:47.114)
for the reader to get to know the character and for the character to really like ingrain themselves in the reader's heart and soul. In a short story, especially, you know, because I, I wrote really short ones, like 2000 to 5000 words. I need you to know the character now. So leaning on tropes and making voices bigger. And by bigger, mean more exaggerated, like shy characters are ultra shy. Expressive characters are

Cassie Newell (17:04.173)
Right.

Angela Haas (17:09.366)
Okay.

Cassie Newell (17:12.737)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (17:14.844)
absurdly expressive, right? Like commanding characters are a little mean, right? Like you have to like really drive home because you just don't have enough utterances to paint a rich and dynamic picture. So characters become more one note, you lean more on tropes and stereotypes to like get those characters across.

Cassie Newell (17:29.557)
Right.

Cassie Newell (17:33.858)
I love that. That's some great information. Thank you for that.

Jeff Elkins (17:36.616)
Yeah. It works too. If you have a character that's just appearing like two or three times in your novel. So a technique that a lot of writers use, which I personally love is the repeated start and end scene. like, in a man called OVE by Bachman, the, the, book starts with him talking to a, like you get the feeling they're like a 20, early 20 something teenager in an Apple store trying to get, fix his iPad.

Angela Haas (18:01.978)
you

Jeff Elkins (18:04.208)
And he like yells at him because he's all alone. The character is by himself. He's all alone and angry. And the story ends with him now that he's built community and changed and actually become a different person. The story ends with him in the same place talking to the same person. But now he has like the teenager that lives across the street, helping him translate what he has to say. Cause he's like showing his character growth that he's not alone. So repeated the end and scene that repeated character needs to be super exaggerated. They need to be like big voice, really dynamic.

Cassie Newell (18:22.902)
Right.

Angela Haas (18:28.534)
All right.

Cassie Newell (18:30.382)
Mmm.

Jeff Elkins (18:32.714)
whatever personality trait you want them to have, like turn it up to 100 because we're only going to see them twice. So we need to remember them, especially if you're doing the repeated character, the beginning and the end of the book. want them to remember like, yeah, this was somebody I remember this obnoxious dude in this Apple store who's the most apathetic of any apathetic 20 something. Right. Like it's that kind of like ramping it up or T.J. Klune does it on the house in the Cerulean Sea.

Cassie Newell (18:55.128)
I it.

Jeff Elkins (19:01.3)
Toward the beginning of novel, Linus goes home and meets his nosy neighbor, who is the most nosy and gossipy of any nosy and gossipy neighbors. Linus goes away to the island. He has his life transformation. He comes back and we immediately get him again with his nosy neighbor. And we see in that instance, Clune uses it to show how life hasn't changed, but now Linus is incredibly dissatisfied with where he lives and where he is. So.

Cassie Newell (19:05.037)
Right?

Cassie Newell (19:16.738)
Right.

Cassie Newell (19:27.298)
where he was.

Angela Haas (19:28.615)
Gotcha. Right.

Jeff Elkins (19:28.81)
Before he's just annoyed by the neighbor, in the end he's like angry and frustrated at the neighbor. And the frustration is communicating like, I've made the wrong decision. I don't wanna be back in this place. Yeah, but you gotta turn that neighbor up to like 150. Like you just gotta crank your voice up. Otherwise we forget, we're like, wait, have we seen this character before? You know, so yeah.

Cassie Newell (19:40.066)
right.

Cassie Newell (19:51.266)
Interesting. Ugh.

Angela Haas (19:53.084)
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I love it.

Cassie Newell (19:55.618)
Yeah, I love that.

Jeff Elkins (19:57.726)
Yeah. And with all these character voices, like, you know, you're creating an emotional when you're writing a story, you're creating this emotional experience for the reader. Like you're taking the reader on this emotional journey and each scene is like a step in the emotional journey. So if you want to scene to be fun, I think character voices, like the pacing of dialogue, whether it's like heavy.

with a lot of interjections of prose slash exposition or whether it's just energy building and fun, like a Gilmore Girls kind of rapid back and forth, whatever you're doing with it, you have these tools at your disposal to craft this emotional journey. So if you want a fun scene, one of the tools you can use is crank that character voice up really high and make that character absurd.

Cassie Newell (20:34.221)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (20:49.29)
So, but that also, there's another rule by whoever made up this rule. And I've had editors, you know, I've had a side character that, although I guess it's if you're repeating that character, like if they're in the beginning and end making them big, but what if it is truly just

Cassie Newell (20:49.356)
I that.

Angela Haas (21:11.826)
a side character that for the moment is not, is just used in that scene but is never going to be seen again. Do you kind of make them not memorable so that people don't think, well, where is this character? You know, I had that situation in one of my books where I had a side character who was pressing, you know, the main character's buttons in the scene and

causing the main character to react, which revealed part of her personality, but that side character was never heard from again. So, yeah. How do you do that?

Jeff Elkins (21:53.076)
Yeah, and it stinks because you write a really great side character and then people are like, I like that character better than... No.

Angela Haas (21:57.75)
I know, they take over. My side characters always take over. I'm like, do you love this guy? And they're like, you know, but he's also the hot dog vendor. Why are you putting time there?

Cassie Newell (21:58.766)
than the main character.

Jeff Elkins (22:08.766)
Yeah. I think that's why this is my theory is that that's why a lot of epic fantasy gets epic because like I think George RR Martin writes characters and then he's like, wait, I like that one. And then he's like, I want to chase him for a while. And so you get all these subplots of these weird side characters that were supposed to just be one scene. yeah. So, and there is a like in game of Thrones is a great example of that Robert Baratheon, the king that dies in the first book has a illegitimate son.

Angela Haas (22:14.859)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (22:20.148)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (22:33.205)
Okay.

Jeff Elkins (22:37.096)
And George R. R. Martin goes to great lengths to describe this amazing helmet the kid has that looks like a bull. And I was reading and I was like, my gosh, I love this kid in his bull helmet. And then the kid disappears until book three. And when he finally shows back up, like, where has this kid been? So yeah, there's a, you know, and then when he shows up, he's literally just like walking down the road with a group of orphans and it's like, there he is. And it's like, yeah, I want that story. But yeah, so there is a danger in that. I would say,

Cassie Newell (22:54.776)
You

Angela Haas (23:01.598)
I'm

Jeff Elkins (23:07.722)
So I would gauge it a little bit differently. The way I'd gauge it is the size of the one-off character's voice needs to be equivalent to the reaction you want from your main vehicle character. So in that scene, there's a character that the reader's traveling with, right? Like on that emotional journey, that vehicle character. If that vehicle character needs to have a giant...

gigantic reaction to this side character make their voice gigantic. If it's just a one-off, like, I just need a barista in this scene. The barista is not the giant, you know, catalyst of action in the scene, then keep that barista voice small. Because it's, if your vehicle character is impacted in a huge way by the big voice, they're going to remember the impact of the vehicle character.

Angela Haas (23:46.642)
Right.

Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (24:04.724)
When we get in trouble is when we give a character a big voice who's supposed to just disappear into the into the fabric of the scene. Like like Oliver says, consider yourself part of the furniture. if the character who's supposed to be part of the furniture is the is the like scene stealer, you need to back that character down. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (24:21.934)
They're more like incidental characters. makes me think of like Sasha's side character, Sasha Black's side character books where she describes the different levels of side characters. So it's more incidental. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (24:30.196)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (24:34.462)
Yeah. And it, but if you want that side, even if they're just a one-off and you want them to have a really big impact, make their voice big. Like going back to house on the Cerulean sea, there's a ice cream store owner who has a big emotional impact on the kids when they go to the ice cream store. The voice of that character is pretty big. It's pretty exaggerated, but

Cassie Newell (24:43.096)
bigger.

Cassie Newell (24:48.38)
Mm, right.

Jeff Elkins (24:59.41)
It's okay because the kids reaction matches it. So we almost need the big voice to create the catalyst for the kids to have the emotional reaction they do. then we don't ever see, I think that character might be in the background of a scene, like standing in a crowd at the end of the book, but we don't ever actually speak to that character again. Yeah, but it's a big voice and we need to be big because it's got a trigger reaction from the vehicle characters that were actually spending time.

Cassie Newell (25:08.225)
right.

Angela Haas (25:14.278)
Hmm.

Cassie Newell (25:16.79)
Right, was very short scenes for their involvement.

Jeff Elkins (25:29.136)
but then there's other, like, you know, but again, like if it's incidental, don't let it steal the scene. And if it's stealing this, like part of me, that was like, look, if you write a character voice that's stealing the scene, put that character in more scenes. Figure it'll work that character in the book. If you win with a character voice, do more.

Angela Haas (25:43.23)
Right.

Cassie Newell (25:48.706)
And is that a pantsing type thing you think that's coming out of that versus a plotting type thing? Cause I think, I think sometimes when I'm just winging it and I find something like that, then I want to include them more. But when I'm heavily plotted, I don't tend to have a lot of wayward people coming in. You know what I mean?

Angela Haas (26:08.578)
.

Jeff Elkins (26:12.904)
Yeah, I don't know. I'm a pretty intense plotter and I make characters all the time that I'm like, crap. I got to do something with that. Now, a lot of times I'll take them out of the book and I'll be like, okay, this one has a plot has a line has a role in the next book and I'm going to save them. I'm not going to keep them in this one. Yeah. But when you find, mean, you know, when you strike gold, mine it like, don't, don't, don't cover it up and pretend like it's not there, but you're right. I think it depends on like for me.

Cassie Newell (26:25.467)
OK. nice.

Angela Haas (26:34.582)
Okay.

Jeff Elkins (26:43.402)
Pantsing or plotting or I heard Brandon Sanderson recently use architecture and gardening which are two terms because I like them better than pansing and plotting but Yeah quilting works, too. Yeah those those Whatever is gonna bring you the most motivation is what you need to do So if you discover a character voice by accident, you're like, my gosh I love the idea of working them into like ten more scenes Do that?

Cassie Newell (26:51.432)
I love that. I say quilting.

Cassie Newell (27:03.469)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (27:09.79)
But if you're like, my gosh, now I have to work them into fricking 10 more scenes, just pull that voice back. don't, like, whatever's gonna keep you writing.

Cassie Newell (27:15.628)
Yeah. My problem is, is I'll find a character. Mine comes more personality first, and how I see the character, and then it becomes a story. Like, it'll end up in a different story. I don't necessarily put them in the current story, but it may be a spin-off of something, you know? Like, I'm like, yeah, that's going in this, you know? And that's how they're gonna be, you know?

Jeff Elkins (27:23.783)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (27:30.73)
Hmm.

Angela Haas (27:34.882)
.

Cassie Newell (27:44.968)
so that leads me to another question. When you're talking dialogue and developing a character, like which comes first for you? Is it the personality or is it how you, how they're speaking to you? Like, I'm just kind of curious because I've heard in just different sessions with other writers, how stories come about so differently between how they do their dialogue. I'm, I'm very communicative.

I know Angela is too, we're high communicators. I tend to even talk out my dialogue and I'll use dictation and go back and forth. I'm sure if anybody walked by my window, I look like a crazy person, but it helps me get it drafted out quickly. But I'm just kind of, and as I'm doing dialogue, I get to know the person better. Because I don't do heavy characterization upfront. So I'm kind of curious when you were talking about gold.

Angela Haas (28:16.078)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (28:20.34)
Hmm.

Jeff Elkins (28:29.93)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (28:42.998)
What does that mean to you? How does that come about?

Jeff Elkins (28:45.77)
Yeah, I don't think there's a right way to do it. Again, I think like whatever motivates you is the way you go. The way that I typically work is I always start with character growth. I start with the question of who's this character at beginning of the story and who they're becoming to the end of the story. And because that's the heart of your emotional journey is that character growth. I would actually argue that that is your story, how that character is changing. So I do character growth first and then I will start to

Cassie Newell (28:57.088)
Okay.

Cassie Newell (29:01.557)
end.

Angela Haas (29:01.865)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (29:17.106)
like journal slash dream about the scenes I need to take the character from X to Y. So like what moves do I have to make? Angela, you and I are both strategic. think number one on. Andrea. So it's that strategic bug working in me. I'm like, what moves do I need to make to get them from here to there? Once I have some vague scenes stretched out, then I'll start thinking about like.

Angela Haas (29:17.654)
Yes. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (29:44.39)
OK, what's their personality? I will usually make a like limited character voice chart where I do like three personality traits broken out into like the five components of a character voice just to give me some more guiding. But. I typically don't find their voice until I'm like six to eight thousand words in, and that's when I start to really hone like, now I've got them.

Angela Haas (30:05.794)
Yeah, same.

Cassie Newell (30:09.697)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (30:09.834)
And then I have to go back and edit everything and make sure my plan is right. Like, because at that point I've laid out scenes, I've got like the growth arc, like, and the question is always like, there's always a give and take for me between like the way the voice is working and the growth arc I want do those work together. Like I'm working on a screenplay right now about an old man who's moving from, um,

Angela Haas (30:11.542)
Okay.

Cassie Newell (30:32.022)
Interesting.

Jeff Elkins (30:39.396)
Isolation to engagement is his growth arc. He doesn't want to be involved. He wants to be left alone and the world is kind of calling him to engage in injustice around him. So he's going to like dive in to sacrificially dive into the, like the world around him. So, you know, originally I had him more carefree and like the voice I had him was like, he's just kind of our happy retired guy.

Angela Haas (30:39.798)
You

Cassie Newell (30:48.92)
gauge.

Jeff Elkins (31:08.188)
And then as I was working on the scenes, I was in like the third scene, I was like this, if he's happy and retired, it doesn't work. I need him to be a little more, because then we feel we don't actually want him to engage. We want him to be like, no, I'm going to go live my life. Good luck. Good luck with all that. So I needed him a little dissatisfied and like angsty. And so I had to go back and like rebuild his voice because the voice was out of sync with his growth.

Angela Haas (31:17.216)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (31:27.03)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (31:37.674)
Does that make sense? Yeah.

Cassie Newell (31:38.016)
I see. Yeah, yeah, it does. Angela, how do you go about dialogue? Because I talked about me. How do you go about it?

Angela Haas (31:46.316)
I just start, I just do start going back and forth with no names. You know, I like, one of Jeff's technique is just put like the initial of a person, you know, a B, a B, a B. And then we talked about this in a different episode, but I put all, like, I do personality test, analyzation and in the, gram and make sure I understand like.

Cassie Newell (31:50.722)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (31:57.933)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (32:12.86)
what because knowing if someone's introverted or extroverted or really lean into the Myers-Briggs because I've done trainings and coaching in corporations, communication training with the Myers-Briggs personality test. So I kind of know if you're a thinking personality or a feeler, you talk differently and you approach situations differently. So that helps me know what they're going to say.

But it's interesting with romance and how much pressure there is to have banter. Like you have to have banter, like sassiness banter. And so I need to keep, you can still have like the back and forth with banter, but keeping that consistent still with their personality. You know, each reply looks different. the, I'm doing grumpy sunshine right now in my romance, but it's,

the woman that's the grump and the man that's the sunshine. So kind of leaning in those personality traits too and what they might say and just how their, you know, syntax is different. So I just start really basic and then start layering in the different favorite words they like to use, favorite phrases. Do they have a little bit of a, you know, I don't think Colorado, I'm writing a

Cassie Newell (33:30.126)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (33:34.872)
Right.

Angela Haas (33:41.814)
book set in Colorado. I was like, do Coloradans have an accent? I mean, I guess I kind of do. It's kind of like Midwest with a little, you know, West and kind of cowboy but mountain. And I don't know how we sound. like, you know, I was like, I think that the phrase boiling mad might work in this. Yeah, we say that kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't know.

Cassie Newell (33:56.948)
You

Jeff Elkins (34:08.519)
Now, as you're writing, are you like writing this stuff down or are you just keeping it in your head?

Angela Haas (34:14.934)
I carry a notebook everywhere and so I just kind of jot things down and then write as it comes. yeah, I weigh heavily on having notebooks everywhere. At a stoplight, I'm like, God, this is gold. And I'm writing it down. But then the problem is like, okay, where's the green notebook with the flower on it? Where did I put that? So it's just keeping track of all the notebooks. But yeah, that's how I do it.

Jeff Elkins (34:27.37)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (34:44.878)
We love that.

Angela Haas (34:45.578)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (34:47.562)
Cassie, do you write stuff down or are you just keeping it? Do you have it on a computer or are you keeping it in your head?

Cassie Newell (34:50.578)
I am a techie person, so I use my iPhone. I love the notes app, and I will I have folders for books and stuff. I even use it for social media links when I need a quick link. You know, it's like right in my notes app. So I tend to like voice message myself when I see something really good. Because I know if I say it before I record it, I'm at that age, I forget what I just said.

Jeff Elkins (34:54.27)
Nice.

Angela Haas (35:03.489)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (35:18.882)
Like, and I'll be like, my God, and it was brilliant. So I disagree wholeheartedly with Stephen King, who said in a couple of the writing books that I read of his where he was like, if you forget it, it wasn't as gold as you thought it was. I was like, No, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just like, No, I'm sorry. I disagree with that. I think

Jeff Elkins (35:19.754)
It was funny. Yeah.

Angela Haas (35:26.966)
You

Jeff Elkins (35:37.349)
He talks a lot of crap in on writing.

You're kind of going to be like, all right, Steve. Yeah.

Angela Haas (35:43.414)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (35:46.796)
I think, you know, sometimes I'm like, but it was brilliant. Wait, how was it said? And I tried to repeat it. And then I'm like, no, that's backwards. It's wrong. it's lost. And it was, you know, brilliant. So I tend to try to record it as quickly as I can. If I can type it out, then I tend to remember it a little better. But yeah, my voice message.

Angela Haas (36:01.938)
Yeah. See, I used to tell my students this. Studies show that when you handwrite something, I don't know which studies, but there are studies out there. Yeah. Yeah. You're using some part of your brain that's like, yippee, I get to work. So, yeah.

Cassie Newell (36:13.89)
Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Elkins (36:16.958)
They're there and they show it.

Cassie Newell (36:18.122)
Well, it's because you're using multiple senses, right? Yeah.

Cassie Newell (36:27.63)
Yeah, I would say I'm more tactile in reading and writing it out than hearing it. Because as a mother, I have learned how to control what I'm hearing sometimes, selective hearing. so sometimes I just might, I have to really be attuned to what I'm listening to. Yeah, for sure.

Angela Haas (36:42.516)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (36:50.42)
Yeah. So I want to back up a little bit. Let's just back thing up. Okay. So tell us how, I mean, I can't believe you launched Dialogue Doctor in 2021. Like, I feel like it's been going on much longer, but how did you, how did you build your brand and know you wanted to just zero in on dialogue? Like why just dialogue? You know, why not dialogue in this and this and this?

Jeff Elkins (37:17.492)
the only thing I'm good at? No, that's partially true. I am, you know, it's funny. was just talking to our mutual friend, Tom Holbrook about this. Sorry, my phone just dinged because I forgot to turn it off because I'm a bad guest and I just turned it off. Yeah, I was talking to our mutual friend, the editor, Tom Holbrook last night, and we were talking about this. You know, it's

Angela Haas (37:19.869)
that's... that's... that's... cod's wallop.

Angela Haas (37:30.976)
Yes.

Angela Haas (37:34.998)
It's okay.

Jeff Elkins (37:46.598)
I only started writing really nine years ago, nine to 10 years ago. And so I don't I don't really think of myself as an expert writer or like somebody who knows a ton about writing. I'm really good at solving problems. And so. Yeah, so problems, problem solvers problem like that's why dialogue, because it was a problem that somebody is like that.

Angela Haas (37:51.524)
Wow. Strategic.

Jeff Elkins (38:16.028)
Our other mutual friend, J. Thorne identified was like, Hey, you need to, do you have a background in mimicking how people talk for my day job? And he was like, you need to take that into fiction and start like taking what you've learned into. So as I started entering into like coaching people specifically around like, I mimic dialogue for a living. Like, let's talk about how you can do that in fiction. Problems would arise. Like what is a character voice?

Cassie Newell (38:42.018)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (38:45.65)
And like, so, you know, it was one of those like, okay, well, how do you describe a character voice? That's where like the dialogue Daisy came from, the idea of a character wheel, the idea of like the five components of dialogue. And it was like, well, where do I put inner thoughts and exposition? was like, all right, well, so let's, you know, for me, it's like, I'm going to go back to classic authors. I'm going to read a ton. I'm going to examine what other people have done. I'm going to break it down and I'm going to find like, okay, here's this, here's common systems I see being used by people.

Cassie Newell (38:55.437)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (39:16.124)
And then people who we would call masters. it's like then applying those into systems that allow the people to do it. So that's how like what I actually do is helping. have a community of people and that community of people are constantly bringing issues forward because we're all riding together. And as they bring issues forward, it's like, well, can we develop

Angela Haas (39:30.722)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Cassie Newell (39:30.968)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (39:45.446)
a system that helps us all think about this differently and empowers us to do it in a in a more creative way. So like we were having a big problem, you know, the first year. And I do feel like it's interesting because you all have been around the community since we started. I can tell when people have entered the community by like what tools they know, because the bad thing about being a problem solver is that once a problem solved, I kind of forget to talk about it.

Angela Haas (39:45.942)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Jeff Elkins (40:13.994)
So like I had like because we solve it, I'm like, it's time. And then we just move on to the next one. So like last year, we really obsessed as a community over the roles characters play in a story and like how you can arrange characters to be part of an emotional journey because the problem people I kept coaching people and they kept saying, like, I can't tell if this is a hero or a villain. And so we we kept ask like we.

Cassie Newell (40:14.766)
It's done and over.

Angela Haas (40:26.582)
Mm-hmm

Cassie Newell (40:27.598)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (40:37.465)
interesting.

Jeff Elkins (40:40.764)
It was like, well, let's get rid of those words and let's bring new words in that are actually helpful. And that's when we started talking about like vehicles, engines, anchors and hazards. Like, let's pull this. Well, that was probably two years ago. And then last year it was a lot of like, how do I use inner thought? And how do I like those were the big questions that were kind of hitting and like, how do I make this dialogue feel more cinematic? So we started looking at like, well, what's the actual structure of pros and dialogue and how does it work? And where do we, how do we leverage different tools we have to make

the pros feel different, but then like last week, somebody texted me. I have this thing on my website where you can literally just like text me, direct to my phone. Somebody texted me to do it, direct to my phone. was like, Hey, I heard you on an interview, which I must have given four years ago, talking about a character wheel, but I can't find a character wheel anywhere on your website. And I was like, yeah, let me just go find it.

Angela Haas (41:15.574)
my.

Jeff Elkins (41:35.722)
And I was like, man, I haven't talked about it. I had the closest. The last time I talked about a character real was episode 46 of the podcast. We're on episode 280 something. And I was like, how have I not talked about this? This was a good tool that we used to talk about all the time, but the people in the community who are around, like we've kind of solved that. We don't look for it anymore. So it's one those things of like, I've got to go. I've got to remember to go back. That's way more than you wanted to know, but that's, that's what the dial.

Angela Haas (41:43.286)
Wow. No, it's everything I wanted to know. It's everything. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (41:49.943)
time.

Jeff Elkins (42:03.518)
That's what the brand is. It's just me solving problems and dialogue was where I started. And so that's kind of where we live. Like, yeah.

Cassie Newell (42:04.014)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (42:12.79)
Okay, well then I want to bring up a problem I posed like two years ago about inner thoughts. Well, if you know, are they supposed to be in italic for one and two? I, I, okay. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (42:19.411)
Okay.

Cassie Newell (42:29.038)
This should be fun.

Jeff Elkins (42:31.306)
I've backed down, I'm not as mean as I used to be about italics. I do have a mug here though that says, often used, never needed, italics. It's a mug somebody made me. Yeah.

Angela Haas (42:41.698)
whoops. All right. Yes. Yeah, so inner thoughts. I like to, think it's like, what is it called? It's a point of view that's like deep third person or deep point of view or something where you, I mean, some genres don't, but aren't there still inner thoughts when you're...

Cassie Newell (42:42.622)
I love it. That is such a Jeff mug.

Jeff Elkins (43:01.576)
Yes, it's third person.

Angela Haas (43:08.478)
writing first person or is just that inner like monologue kind of exposition their inner thoughts? Like I thought, yeah, I don't know. Like how do do it with first person? great, world.

Jeff Elkins (43:16.52)
Yeah. So there aren't, there are no rules, right? Like there's no rules. There's just an experience you're creating for your reader. So the traditional way to use like traditional, the most used in, would say in contemporary fiction use of inner thoughts is in third person close where you are writing in third person. And when you're writing in third person,

Angela Haas (43:28.138)
Okay.

Jeff Elkins (43:45.246)
There is one character whose perspective you are living in at a time. Like so sometimes you'll jump, you'll have a multi POV story, a multi point of view story. Like the later Percy Jackson books, the like the second round where Jason and his crew comes in by Rick Riordan. Those start every chapter is a different point of view.

Angela Haas (43:49.046)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (44:11.112)
Right. Like, but it's still written in third person close because when we're in that point of view, we are only in like when we're reading Piper, we are only reading Piper's perspective. We don't know what Leo's thinking. We don't know what Jason's feeling. We just know what Piper's feeling and we know how Piper is interpreting their feelings, but we don't actually know what they're feeling. So that's an example of like third person close POV third person close your narrator. Your narrator does not.

have, sorry, scratch that. I'll come back to that. Third person close. Usually that's when you're seeing italics used to set the thought apart from everything else. And italics is just a tool like to break everything down to its smallest component. The task is just a tool that says, Hey, look at this differently than the rest of the page. That's all it is. So

Where it comes into problems is somebody's writing third person close and they're using italics for inner thoughts. And then somebody starts speaking in a different language and they start using italics for the different language too. And now the reader's like, wait, is that language happening in their inner thought? Or is this inner thought in a different language? What's happening here? So once you spend a tool, like once you label a tool for the reader, this is what this tool does. It's really hard to use that tool again for a different purpose.

Angela Haas (45:15.778)
Mm.

Jeff Elkins (45:35.37)
Does that make sense? So that's where italics and third person close get confusing. Now, traditional first person POV where you're using an I, again, you can have multiple POVs, I stories, if you're like, but you have to like kind of hold one person. I say that, and the reason I like hesitate to say that is because like, you know, the wedding date by Jasmine Gilroy kind of classic romance book.

Angela Haas (45:36.371)
Yes.

Jeff Elkins (46:01.298)
She'll change the she's third person close, but she'll change right in middle of the scene. Like she'll go from the man's POV to the woman's POV like right away. And I'm like, you're driving me crazy, but it works great. you we'll do what you best. There's no rules. If it works, it works. What she does though, she stays in their POV for a long period of time. So she might jump mid chapter, but then she stays there until it's logical to change into the other character. So you never feel jerked in and out. You're always like, okay, I understand why I'm in this POV right

Angela Haas (46:07.419)
Yeah. Well.

Jeff Elkins (46:31.22)
But so first person, you're going to use that I the narrator is your inner thought. So you don't necessarily need to separate other inner thoughts out because the narrator is your inner thought. When the narrator says something that is the character thinking. So I have seen a combination of first person inner thought with a

Cassie Newell (46:41.133)
I love that.

Angela Haas (46:46.422)
I accidentally did that. I think it did.

Jeff Elkins (46:59.759)
separate inner thought and italics.

Yeah. And it's not, again, it's not bad as long as it makes sense to the reader. The more complicated our tools become, the bigger the burden is on the reader to track your story. And so, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean don't do it. It just means like, know that you're sacrificing ease of understanding for this tool and ask yourself, like, is it worth it? Like,

Cassie Newell (47:07.362)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (47:16.778)
and

Cassie Newell (47:18.126)
Mm.

Jeff Elkins (47:31.056)
Martha Wells in her Murderbot series uses parentheses and brackets and then fancy brackets and then like backslashes all the different types of comms that the characters are talking on. And sometimes she'll start a character will the Murderbot will start on large comms, which are brackets. And then in the middle, literally the middle of a vocalization switch to parentheses, which are just like

Angela Haas (47:33.894)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (47:46.136)
That's wild.

Jeff Elkins (47:59.342)
one-on-one comms and then go back to large comms. And it works great because she's like totally and after about a chapter, you're like, OK, I get it. And it but she's incredibly consistent, you so just to encourage you like you can do first person. then when people are using inner thoughts, some in italics, sometimes those are like exclamatory inner thoughts or what we might call like invasive thoughts of like, can't die. This is just bursting out of me type thought.

Angela Haas (48:22.281)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (48:27.633)
Right. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (48:27.976)
using spaces. So I like using the space of a page. So if there's an inner thought happening, that's going to happen outside of that current paragraph. And sometimes I like you, I like separating out words to to use the space of the page. I find this really interesting because right now I'm working in my books being put into audio books. So

Jeff Elkins (48:32.286)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (48:37.929)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (48:55.116)
Those spaces, of course, are now like, you know, kind of just directed pauses. But I had to go through and highlight between male and female for purposes of these audiobooks. And I was kind of mourning my spaces of things and how I organize, you know, that internal formatting because I am a visual person. So I don't necessarily have to have italics.

Angela Haas (49:14.742)
you

Cassie Newell (49:24.904)
use it more, I used to use it more early on in writing as more as emphasis. And then I got out of that because I was like, No, no. I kind of like letting the reader have their own experience and their own assumptions. And then I like to twist it a little bit and see if we end up in the same space. That's my, my fun little game. But at the same time, I really like the use of space. What do you think of that?

Jeff Elkins (49:43.678)
Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.

Angela Haas (49:43.862)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (49:55.434)
I think we're all being infected by visual media, infected in a good way. I think our readers watch more than they read for the most part. And so I think the way screenplays are written where lines equal time is really starting to, the reason I said is I see what you're talking about. I do it too. I see what you're talking about more in modern novels than I do in older novels. So like.

Cassie Newell (50:01.326)
Mmm.

Cassie Newell (50:24.375)
Right.

Jeff Elkins (50:25.298)
If I read like a Grisham novel, he's not doing that. He's not like he's doing more kind of traditional paragraphs facing where when a new character talks, you paragraph down or when you have a new theme sentence, you paragraph down where. But like when I read like Clune, he does it a lot. And I think it's a like and like Bachman does it a lot like modern writers tend to do it more. And I think it is just the influence of us wanting to

Angela Haas (50:28.425)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (50:55.124)
paint visual time. And so we're using the tools we have, one of those being paragraph spacing to do that. Yeah. And I will say there's a, there's another type of writing I really enjoy that I'm seeing people use more and more, which is third person omniscient with a third party vehicle. So that's like a narrator who has an opinion and who is also all knowing.

Angela Haas (51:22.393)
right. gosh.

Cassie Newell (51:23.468)
my gosh, Meg and Quinn did this fabulously in her recent, this past December. That's exactly what it was. The narrator, the narrator argued with the main male character. It was hilarious. I was laughing. The narrator had an opinion, but it was its own character. I'd never seen that before. I loved it.

Jeff Elkins (51:32.264)
Is that the name of the book? This past the cinder? I haven't read that one.

Jeff Elkins (51:38.719)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (51:45.182)
Yeah. It's great. It's in, in the book thief does it really well. The narrator is death and he has very clear opinions on the world and what's happening. Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy does it. Yeah. The narrator is never named, but they love the book within the book, the hitchhiker, the actual hitchhikers guide in the book. They love the book and they talk about it all the time. Right? Like it's just, they're like,

Cassie Newell (51:55.787)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (51:58.112)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (51:58.848)
Yeah, hitchhikers does too.

Cassie Newell (52:05.847)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (52:12.168)
all these asides about, and on this page you can find I read another one recently that did it too. It's slipping my mind. Game and does it some of the short stories like there's a very opinionated. Yeah, but I do find it adds a nice comedic element because that third party vehicle, that opinionated narrator is having a conversation with the reader.

Cassie Newell (52:26.584)
Right.

Cassie Newell (52:33.506)
Yeah, it does.

Jeff Elkins (52:39.946)
directly, which I think is a nice technique too. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (52:42.926)
I love it. I love it. So just to wrap up, what is one tip you would give authors about dialogue to level up their skill set around writing dialogue?

Angela Haas (52:42.998)
Yeah.

Jeff Elkins (52:56.81)
to level up their skill set around writing dialogue that we haven't talked about. I would say have fun. I think I think we get twisted into the rules we hear and we get like wrapped around like it has to be like this and it has to be formatted this way and this is the right way to do it and this is the wrong way to do it and everybody has their opinions. And I think a lot of times we forget that this is art and that it's supposed to be a good time.

Cassie Newell (53:04.406)
I love that.

Cassie Newell (53:24.417)
I love that.

Jeff Elkins (53:26.76)
And so like, you know, have fun with it. Yeah.

Angela Haas (53:27.338)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (53:29.932)
Yeah, have fun with it. Absolutely. So before we go into our table topic, Jeff, where can people find you and find more information about you?

Jeff Elkins (53:39.946)
Yeah, you can find me at dialoguedoctor.com. That's where, um, where all the dialogue stuff is. There's a link there that says the pod and you can find like every podcast we've ever done there, which is a lot of me rambling about this stuff. Um, if you want my writing, you can go to JeffAlkinswriter.com. That's where my writing is, but I'm not, I'm better at teaching dialogue than I am at writing. So I would encourage you to go to dialoguedoctor.com and leave my fictional on.

Angela Haas (53:57.27)
I... Okay, I'm not sure. We're gonna like, debunk that, but okay.

Cassie Newell (54:02.382)
That is so not true.

Jeff Elkins (54:07.036)
It's 100 % true. People always read my work and they're like, you don't practice what you preach. Like, I know I'm having a really good time. So yeah, anyway. Yeah, this is me having fun. This is me having fun. When I'm coaching, I'm serious. When I'm writing fiction, I'm just having a good time. Yeah.

Angela Haas (54:13.579)
my gosh.

Cassie Newell (54:15.626)
You're like, this is not shush. That's what you need to do.

Angela Haas (54:19.766)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (54:25.325)
I love.

Angela Haas (54:25.488)
what about like, give us a little bit of information about the dialogue dash that you do. know it's going on now. It's too late to join. Are you going to do that in the fall that people.

Jeff Elkins (54:35.486)
Yeah, we'll probably do it in the fall. We started it as kind of our version of NaNoWriMo, which sadly just ended. read yesterday. It's a bummer. Yeah. So what it is is we do a month of planning and then a month of sprinting together as a community and then a month of editing. Now, that's kind of how it's structured.

Angela Haas (54:42.219)
Yeah.

I know.

Cassie Newell (54:45.836)
Yeah, I saw that today.

Jeff Elkins (55:02.602)
The first month you get like four webinars, you get a webinar a week, three office hours. So there's an hour, three times a week where a coach is just on a zoom call. You can show up and just ask any questions you want. And you're part of the community and we have like weekly challenges. And we like, you know, just to keep everybody moving and you get two workbooks that you work through. So we set it out like that, but we found this is our fourth one. And we found that people really just like the intensified community.

Angela Haas (55:17.758)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (55:26.838)
Yes.

Jeff Elkins (55:31.56)
So a lot of people come and they just keep working on what they're doing. And they're like, I'm going to come to the webinars just as like a refresher to learn this thing, but I'm actually editing my novel. I'm not planning it right now. So, yeah. So people just use it as like a, Hey, this is 80 days where I'm to dig into my writing and have a support group around me. And part of it is I'm a really big believer that writing is a team sport. I tried to do it by myself for the first like six years of writing. And that was a big mistake. And I.

Cassie Newell (55:32.782)
Thanks

Angela Haas (55:42.095)
Right. Yeah.

Angela Haas (55:53.142)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Elkins (56:00.518)
I really am a firm believer that you need a community of people that you're working on things around, like in juxtaposition with you. You don't have to work together, but you need to work next to each other, if that makes sense.

Cassie Newell (56:04.44)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (56:14.08)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And all that information can be found on your website too. So for all I did the dash and it was so helpful. So listeners do it. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Cassie Newell (56:15.008)
I like that.

Jeff Elkins (56:25.172)
Thanks. Thanks. It's my favorite time of the We do it twice a year. It's my favorite time of the year. We'll do it again in October. Yeah.

Angela Haas (56:30.708)
Yeah. All right. Ready for this? man. This is a good one. All right. Would you be more afraid to be trapped on a rope bridge over a canyon or in a dark cramped cave? I know immediately, but go.

Jeff Elkins (56:35.154)
No, I'm terrified. Okay.

Cassie Newell (56:50.796)
If you know immediately, then you have to answer.

Jeff Elkins (56:52.796)
Yeah, why do I have to answer first?

I think a dark, cramped cave.

Cassie Newell (57:00.216)
that you would be more afraid of.

Jeff Elkins (57:02.312)
Yeah, I'm a pretty big guy and I'm-

Angela Haas (57:03.222)
Yeah, are afraid of heights or are you claustrophobic?

Jeff Elkins (57:07.39)
I am afraid of everything. I'm afraid of both. I, yeah, I'm a six on the Enneagram. We live in fear. I, yeah, I am a, yeah, this is whether you want to know what's the, I'm a six on the Enneagram, but I'm the counter type, which means I'm scared of everything and I desperately need to touch it. So everything scares me and I have to do it. So I'm a, yeah, I am a big guy and I get,

Angela Haas (57:10.001)
Angela Haas (57:15.336)
Angela Haas (57:29.068)
boy.

Cassie Newell (57:31.278)
haha

Jeff Elkins (57:37.015)
stuck in places sometimes, like literally my shoulders can be too big to go through spaces. so getting stuck somewhere is always a terror.

Angela Haas (57:46.783)
Now I want to know when you did get stuck somewhere. god. boy. Wow.

Jeff Elkins (57:49.944)
I got stuck in a child slide one time. was following my kid down a slide. My shoulders did not fit. I was just like, as an adult, as an adult. Yeah. I was like playing with that kid on the playground or like play tag and they jumped down the tube slide and I'm like, I'm right behind you. no. I'm just like, my wife was like, are you okay? I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. I did wiggle my way out, but yeah. So I've, I've been stuck in places like that before.

Cassie Newell (57:56.492)
Wait a minute, was this as an adult or as a child?

Jeff Elkins (58:19.368)
or in crowds because I don't like to push people. like, but I'm a, I'm a wide person. So like, I'll be in like a crowd of people and I'm like, I'm just going to stay over here because I can't get over there. I'd have to like shove through all these people. So I'll just be over here for the rest of the day. This is where I live now. This is my new home.

Angela Haas (58:19.479)
That's amazing.

Angela Haas (58:38.752)
That's amazing. Cassie? Cassie?

Jeff Elkins (58:42.164)
What about y'all?

Cassie Newell (58:45.102)
So which would I be more afraid of?

I like I would be more afraid of the cave because I feel like I've watched so many things about rope bridges. Like I could still hold on if it broke in half. Like Indiana Jones, I could climb up in my mind, you know, as long as it had knots, you know, those kind of things. And I feel like in a cave, I don't know what's behind me. So my imagination...

Angela Haas (59:03.99)
Indiana Jones clearly taught you. Yeah. Right.

Jeff Elkins (59:04.052)
Yeah, does it all the time. Yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (59:19.094)
would get me. It wouldn't be claustrophobic. If there was a wall that I was against in the cave, be fine. But if it was open, no, absolutely not. Yourself?

Angela Haas (59:34.976)
I am deathly claustrophobic. can't on Southwest flights, I can't sit far back because then I feel like you're just in these seats and I'm like, I can't breathe, I'm gonna die. But I gotta tell you really quick about the story of my freak out on the mission space ride at Disney World. Because, and this is how I knew the differences between my stepson's personalities because they were younger.

Cassie Newell (59:44.494)
Mmm.

Angela Haas (01:00:02.578)
And so I'm trying to be the cool stepmom because I'm ignoring all the warnings like may cause dizziness. They don't tell you it may cause you to scream and beat on the door. I wish there was a sign that said that. Where was that sign? So I'm like, I'll be fine. Okay, it's this teeny little simulation pod and you get in and I was like, okay, this isn't so good. I'm cool. I'm a cool stepmom.

And then they shut the door and then somehow need to like belt you in with this harness. And I'm like, okay. And then the screen comes at you and it's right like an inch from your face. So I'm like, I can't breathe, help. I'm like, I changed my mind and I'm beating on the door. Let me out. Let me out on this ride. And so my younger, kinder, gentler stepson is like, are you okay? And he's like rubbing my arm. And then the older one was like, shut her

Cassie Newell (01:00:36.632)
Right.

Angela Haas (01:00:57.942)
And like, it was like, tell her to shut up! And I was like, my god, now they're kids. Like kids say the darnedest things, right? You know, but I was just like, okay, message received, done. Who's the sensitive one? But I flipped out because there's just this whole, you know, I am so claustrophobic. Heights are fine. Spiders, no problem. Snakes, no problem. I cannot handle enclosed spaces. Not at all.

Cassie Newell (01:01:06.104)
Be right.

Cassie Newell (01:01:15.34)
my gosh.

Cassie Newell (01:01:26.614)
Yeah. my gosh. I'm sorry. Here she comes, by the way.

Angela Haas (01:01:28.202)
Yeah. Yeah. the cat. Yeah, the cat. The cat is always like rude. Why? I leave it in. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Yeah. Okay. Maybe maybe that is how we sign off when the cat butt comes on the cat. The cat has spoken. Okay.

Jeff Elkins (01:01:33.896)
Day! Day!

Cassie Newell (01:01:35.566)
There's me.

There goes the tabby.

Jeff Elkins (01:01:40.824)
Cassie, time's up! Time's up!

Cassie Newell (01:01:49.038)
She's like, it's been an hour.

Cassie Newell (01:01:57.376)
Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you being here. I learn so much every time we talk. I love it. I love it every time. Yeah. Everyone, don't forget to give us a review and a rating wherever you listen to the podcast. It really helps us with visibility. Comment and let us know what future topics you'd like us to cover. We'd love to hear from you. Next week, we're talking about point of view, which we talked a little bit about today. And which one is right for you.

Angela Haas (01:02:04.052)
Yes, every time, doesn't matter. Yeah. thank you.

Jeff Elkins (01:02:05.492)
Thanks y'all. love the podcast. Thanks for having me.

Cassie Newell (01:02:27.468)
So until then, keep writing, keep doing. Bye.

Angela Haas (01:02:31.926)
Bye.