Few storytelling elements in a novel are as powerful as dialogue. Writing good dialogue is a crucial way of letting characters speak for themselves outside of the narrative voice, and it’s one of the best ways of conveying personality and flavor. And, as with any powerful device, it can be abused. Over-use of dialogue has […]
Dialogue
Everything authors need to know about dialogue tags
For something as foundational as characters speaking in a novel, you’d be shocked how many authors don’t really know how to use dialogue tags. If a group of writers were an orchestra, their collective dialogue tags would be a truly bizarre cacophony. I’m here to help. In this post I’ll cover everything you need to […]
You probably don’t need that dramatic pause
In addition to over-using dialogue, one common tic I see are conversations that are constantly interrupted with dramatic pauses, empty gestures, ellipses, and other “beats” that are meant to control how the reader hears the dialogue. You’ll see entire long conversations unfold like this where nothing much is gained by the interruptions: “You see,” Nathan […]
Dialogue only has to be true to the world of your novel
One of the more interesting parts of writing a novel is how much you come to realize how very different dialogue is than actual human speech. I’ve tackled this on the blog before, and it was driven home for me when I was on a panel this past Friday at the Backspace Writers Conference. There […]
This Week in Books 3/4/11
Lots of links this week! Shall we? Some big news in the book world as Random House, the lone holdout among the six major publishers, has agreed to Apple’s terms and will be moving over to the agency model. What is the agency model? Well, this post of yore provides some background, but for readers […]
Do you suffer from one of these writing maladies?
(Commercial voice): There are pernicious writerly germs out there infecting pages all around the world. Left uncured they can be fatal. Talk to your book doctor or literary health provider if you notice any of these symptoms: Yoda Effect Difficult to read, sentences are, when reversing sentences an author is. Cart before horse, I’m putting, […]
