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"I'm so insanely happy, and I kept wishing you could've been there, but, you know, here we are in Vegas and Zane was on this crazy nonstop winning roll, and there was the chapel, and it was like, I looked at Zane, and said, 'So, what are we waiting for?' and then, there we were at the altar, and--" 

Read that out-loud a couple times. It sounds like real life cellphone chatter, but it's one of DeLauné Michel’s fictional characters describing her ill-fated wedding night.

Michel's new novel, The Safety of Secrets, is packed with juicy conversations like that, bringing trials and tribulations of two California women into vivid life. Today, Michel explains how she wrote that dialogue, in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 
The first thing I noticed about your book was the vivid, life-like dialogue. How did you go about creating these pitch-perfect conversations between your characters--especially the best friends? Any advice for aspiring writers looking to create better dialogue?

DeLauné Michel:
I basically just listen to my characters talk. As I write, I see the scenes playing out in my mind, and can hear the characters speaking. Sometimes they say things that completely surprise me. Continue reading...

That happened early on in this book in a scene where Fiona goes to her best friend Patricia’s house to tell her that she is pregnant even before she tells her husband (any women relate??), and Patricia makes a reference to Fiona washing her hair on a stranger’s porch when they were children.

When I heard that line I thought, “What is that?” But it was so clear that it was something, I just didn’t know what, so I used it, and it turned out to be part of the event that is the catalyst for the basis of the entire book. So I think if I am open to really listening to my characters, they give me gifts like that.

In terms of characters sounding like real people, I have always been fascinated with the different ways that people say the same things. Or don’t say the same things. It’s not so much that I take mental notes when people talk, but I think it goes into some sort of writing memory bank, and then it all comes out when I work. Not exact quotes - though, okay, sometimes exact quotes - but more a person’s individual speaking style.

But before any of that can happen, I have to really know who the character is. Then I can hear him. Though sometimes, I hear a character saying just one line, and then the whole character springs up whole form before me.

But I have to be able to hear them in my head. If I’m not hearing them, then they aren’t real to me, and I don’t think they can ever be real to the reader. If I had any suggestion, it would be listen, listen, listen – to the characters and to people in real life.