he said, she said
October 20, 2010What the age old adage of “he said, she said” refers to is debatable: an argument, gossip gone askew or the "that's what he said" sexual innuendo thrown into a conversation. For this blog post I’m creating my own interpretation by using it as a swap-a-roo. Bear with me here. Have you ever had said boy and said girl say the same thing? Recently in my WIP I had a scene where the girl said something romanticy (for a lack of a better word) but when I finished, it just didn’t have the emotional impact of what I wanted to accomplish for the scene. I tried to layer her words a little thicker thinking that would help, but it just made it worse.
(Redirect.) I love music. It makes me feel what I otherwise can’t conjure on my own in at any given moment. Recently I downloaded a new song, “Hazy” by Rosi Golan, featuring William Fitzsimmons. In the song she sings first, here are the lines:
I watched you sleeping, quietly in my bed.
You don’t know this now,
But there are some things that need to be said.
It’s all that I can hear.
It’s more than I can bear
What if I fall and hurt myself,
Would you know how to fix me?
What if I went and lost myself,
Would you know where to find me?
If I forget who I am,
Would you please remind me?
Oh, ‘cause without you things go hazy.
Sure it sounds, sweet, romantic…all those gooey things you’d expect a girl to think and feel. Now, just like the song does, take the exact same words, read (or sing) them again but this time from the guy.
Go ahead, re-read it if you need too. I’ll wait.
Yeah, way more powerful from the guys point of view because it makes him vulnerable. (Not to mention how sexy it is to have a guy watch you sleep. Only one ex-boyfriend did that and it bought him a little more time before he found the curb.) ANYway, that is what was wrong with my scene. The wrong person was speaking the emotion. I switched “he said” for “she said” and BAM, the scene worked.
Have you ever swapped the dialogue in your WIP? How did it work for you?
For your listening pleasure, here is "Hazy" by Rosi Golan, featuring William Fitzsimmons (my favorite song for now).
***Technical difficulties, can't seem to get the player up***
***Technical difficulties, can't seem to get the player up***
3 comments
I've never outright switched dialogue around, that I can remember, but I do want to try something similar to that in my edits of my old WIP. I want to get two of the characters who think they're so different from each other to say the exact same sentence, preferably to the same person. Like the song, it would underscore an emotional similarity between them, which I'd like. Thanks for the song rec.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea, Dana! That happened to me with a couple of girl characters, not yet with my main guy/girl, but I know what you're saying! Nice post :)
ReplyDeleteWow! I have never thought of this before-- I mean, I've switched an entire book from female PoV to male PoV, and it totally amped things up, but I didn't think about this element in particular... Now I am going to go ponder. Thanks for posting this!
ReplyDeleteLove hearing from my friends.♥