Chapter 34

“I have a lot of trouble writing dialogue,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ve written this exact conversation before, with the same wordy, pretentious meta-jokes.”

“Oh, stop griping. Your dialogues are fine.”

“Part of the problem is just punctuating them correctly. And I never know whether I’ve put in enough ‘he said’ ‘she said’ lines. When you’re writing, they all sound terrible. When you’re reading it later, you realize that you didn’t put enough in. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

She turned off the water and wiped her hands on the dishtowel, then said, “The best thing to do is to make sure the reader knows what the characters are doing. Where they’re located. That makes it easier to picture the scene.”

“I know.” He stubbed his toe on the water sprinkler and cursed.

“Such language,” she said frowning.

“And take cursing. My mom might read what I’ve written for Christ’s sake. What’s she going to think if everyone goes around saying *%&@ and ‘shit’ all the time?” He sat down and started putting on his shoes, glancing up at the sky to see if it was going to start raining soon.

“What about sex scenes?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘What about sex scenes?’.”

“Oh, they’re the worst. If you leave them out, you’re an unrealistic prude. If they are too graphic, then you’re just writing pornography. No matter what you write, you’ve still got to worry about your mother reading it.” He slumped back onto the lawn chair dejectedly.

“Come inside, I need to close the window before it rains.” As she reached to close the window, she added, “Besides, we’ve got the house to ourselves tonight. Let’s screw on the kitchen table.”