Ready to take your writing to the next level? e-mail me
Last post we talked about writing effective dialogue in general. Today let’s take it a bit further. Writing Tip for Today: Here are some more tips for writing effective dialogue: Too Much or Not Enough New writers often lean heavily to one side or the other—either they allow too much narrative to dampen scenes or […]
No dialogue for Cranky Cat! For novel writers, dialogue is one of the most important tools in the writer’s box. Get it right and the reader will follow you anywhere. Get it wrong and the same reader may go missing.Writing Tip for Today: Here are some ideas for writing dialogue: Leave Out What We Rarely […]
Mama Mia! Sez A lot of my readers know I encourage scene writing as the best tool for completing a novel draft. So you dash off a scene, that’s great. But what can you do on revisions to smooth the action and capture the essence of conflict, emotions and dialogue?Writing Tip for Today: When you […]
Writing students tell me that their crit partners insist that the new way of writing dialogue is to always place “beats” around the spoken words that identify the speaker. Is it ever OK to use a simple attribution, such as, “he said?” Writing Tip for Today: New writers often learn that creative and varied attributions […]
You’re drafting a scene, and it dawns on you: this scene, like about a dozen others, has your characters sitting around drinking coffee, tea or fermented yak milk. How can you move your story without making every scene resemble a TV sitcom?Writing Tip for Today: In real life we do sit around and talk a […]
What do cars, tables and beds have in common? Let’s talk about some basic scene writing principles. New fiction writers tend to create static scenes. By that I mean that there is little action or movement aside from dialogue. Many times these scenes are centered around cars, tables or beds. Are your characters standing or […]
As I say farewell to another terrific novel writing class, I’ll skip the usual admonitions to “Keep writing” “Junk it through” and “Get it down before you fix it up.” Instead, here’s a little trick fiction writers employ: adding beats to your scene. A “beat” is a sentence of either stage business (action), emotion, or […]
Working on an editing job today (great stuff, Marilyn!), I found some spots where three characters were in the same scene having a conversation. This type of scene will be much more clear in your reader’s mind if you remember to include beats of action. Writing Tip for Today: Use beats, or sentences that convey […]
A student confesses that she’s miffed at her writing critique group. Just when she thinks she’s mastered dialogue’s only-use-said-as-attribution-rule, here comes a new wave. Someone in the group came home from a writers conference and announced that even a simple attribution in dialogue is now taboo. Instead, a “beat” of action or narrative is preferred […]