Did you come up with your tense, perspective, and first or third person? I did find it a little funny that all of this is written and recorded in second person since I'm addressing you.
Or y'all, which I feel qualified to say based on where I was born and raised.
With some of the basics out of the way, it's time to put yourselves into the shoes of your protagonist. It takes a little while to get comfortable, and it may feel like wearing a costume that is too big or too small at first, but the more time you spend putting down words, the more natural it will be and the sooner you'll find the voice of that character.
So where do we begin?
Hopefully you have your trusty outline at the ready, telling you where your character is, what they want, and why they can't have it.
I come from a background of movies and screenwriting, so if you're more used to watching movies or shows, it can be a slight transition to shift over being able to be inside of a character's mind to experience their thoughts.
But since we as the readers, and you as the writer are also getting to know this character, it's okay to do a little practice run of a scene that will never make it into the book and you can just see how your character would react to something... like facing their biggest fear, or maybe they can experience something you went through yesterday and you can imagine what they would say or do if they were in your shoes.
If writing prose is new to you, I like to think of how the story moves along like juggling three types of writing:
Action
Dialogue
Thought
Action
This is what I consider to be what your character sees and hears and feels, all described through the lens of the character to the reader.
Samantha walked along the gravel path in the park, rocks crunching beneath her shoes. She squinted from the sunlight on the horizon and listened for her lost dog's barking.
We'll go into how to put little descriptions of sensations for the reader to feel as well so they can know what it's like to be in that moment, but hopefully that paragraph helped you imagine someone named Samantha walking through a park and looking for her lost dog.
There was no emotion behind it yet, and no dialogue. Unless she's calling for her dog or asking a stranger if they've seen her lost pet, she doesn't have anyone to talk to.
All we're doing here is setting the scene, giving it some motion, and also a little bit of direction as to what goal she is after (finding her dog). It also gave a little bit of conflict and tension. She wants something and can't have it yet.
Thought
Now, going into a character's mind is a great way to give them a much more distinct voice. Sometimes people add in thoughts directly and italicize them, like:
I can't believe Peter left the back door open again, Samantha thought. He should be the one out here looking.
Samantha is already frustrated that she's doing something unplanned and the conflict wasn't her fault. If done properly, it won't feel like the reader is being spoon-fed all of the information and can understand what is going on as each sentence unfolds.
Dialogue
Lastly, we have Dialogue, which is when people speak out loud to each other. For example.
"Eddie!" Samantha shouted. "Here boy!"
"Excuse me," an elderly woman said from the park bench just behind Samantha. "Would Eddie be a golden retriever by any chance?"
Samantha whirled around. "Yes!" she said. "Did you see him?"
The woman pointed toward the pond. "I did, and so did the ducks. I don't think they cared for him chasing them into the water though."
"Thank you so much."
We have back and forth between two characters. They're exchanging information with each other relevant to the scene and its conflict. And by the end of it, we have a new direction as Samantha has a lead on where to go next and we don't have to have her wandering aimlessly in the moment and boring the reader because nothing new seems to be happening.
For the three types of writing, I think it's good to find a balance. You don't want to spend pages and pages describing what is happening with no thought or dialogue.
Sometimes there isn't someone else to talk to in a scene so you can only bounce between action and thought...and maybe the occasional musing out loud to themselves if they are the sort of character who would do that.
Said vs. Other Dialogue Tags
One more little detail when writing dialogue. If you have just two characters speaking, you don't always need to add "Samantha said" to the end of the line of dialogue if it's easy to track the back and forth between the characters.
Your audiobook narrators will thank you, if you ever decide to go that route.
There are different thoughts about how to describe people talking. Sometimes they'll say things like "Samantha barked" or "Samantha growled" ...both of those make it sound like Samantha is the dog instead of Eddie.
I highly recommend using "Said" in most cases. It is common enough that it becomes invisible to the eye of the reader and they're more looking quickly for who is speaking. If you want to let the reader know that someone is shouting or whispering, that's all right to do as well, but sometimes adding an exclamation point will convey a shout, and a character could lean in and add an adverb like "Samantha said quietly."
Although many writers tend to avoid adverbs as much as possible.
Lastly, sometimes it can take a while to get into your character's head. When I shifted over from screenwriting, I actually found I would have to take an editing pass on my book to make sure I included some of my main character's thoughts. So, while I don't recommend it fully, you can add that in later if it's not working for you on your first draft.
Activity: Finding Balance
Grab your favorite book, and if you can either photocopy or take a picture of a page and print it off, use three different colored markers or crayons to highlight which type of writing it is so you can get a better idea of how a published work goes.
If you're writing your story this month, you should still be in the first act, so a friendly reminder that by this point you should be introducing characters and places. Maybe even getting as far as someone stating the theme for the book.
I'm proud of you, so keep on writing!
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