As authors, we usually consider ourselves the masters of the crimes committed in our stories—not the victims. But as Sherlock, Poirot, and Castle will tell you, the sneakiest crimes are always those in which the victim doesn’t even realize he’s been ripped off. Such is the Case of the Vanishing Setting. This is one of […]
November 9, 2011 by 23 Comments DialogueAre Your Dialogue Beats Repetitious?
Even the most scintillating dialogue scenes require more than just dialogue to stay afloat. They need dialogue beats—and good ones at that. You must pad the characters’ speech with dialogue tags (he said, she whispered, etc.), internal narrative, and body language and action—otherwise known as action beats. Often dialogue beats will flow naturally from the […]
August 3, 2011 by 8 Comments NarrativeThe Simplest Trick for Avoiding Info Dumps
Sometimes authors are faced with the necessity of avoiding info dumps while feeding the reader large chunks of information via internal narrative. The problem, of course, is that, faced with pages of straight narrative in solid blocks of text, readers often grow restless. Vital as the information may be, readers want to get back to […]
April 17, 2011 by 51 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Misused Speaker Tags and Action Beats
Don’t jeopardize your characters’ witty dialogue with punctuation and stylistic mistakes. Let’s a take a look at two means for indicating speakers and varying the rhythm of speech and narrative: the speaker tag and the action beat. How Not to Use Speaker Tags The speaker tag, which in its most basic form consists of the […]
June 9, 2010 by 37 Comments DialogueWho Said What? – Identifying Dialogue Speakers
Dialogue is one of the most interesting and useful parts of any story. As readers, we all love a witty conversation, but what we don’t love is when we have no idea which character is saying what. Why Failing in Identifying Dialogue Speakers Is Sure to Give Readers a Headache Having just finished a memoir in […]
