Compelling fiction is driven by scene. We can feel omnipotent when writing a fictional scene, wielding complete control over every detail, every action, every sensory experience. But there are limits to that power; what we include must seem real to the readers. Creating a sense of the “real” is a particular challenge for writers of historical fiction, who must stay […]
May 5, 2013 by 74 Comments DialogueMost Common Writing Mistakes: Poor Use of Dialect in Dialogue
Who doesn’t love a good accent? British, Indian, French, Spanish, Irish, Australian, South African, and Japanese actors, among many others, all bring added spice to their roles on the American big screen. And I suspect the same holds true in reverse (when I visited Australia several years ago, someone told me she loved my accent, which was a […]
April 5, 2013 by 18 Comments Dialogue8 Tips for Awesome Dialogue
Dialogue is one of the most important and also one of the most difficult aspects of a story. That is because dialogue is such a common occurrence in readers’ lives. Just as badly done animation of people is creepy, badly written dialogue comes off as fake and vaguely menacing. There is nothing worse to read than a […]
March 29, 2013 by 20 Comments Dialogue2 Steps to Streamlining Your Dialogue
This post is by Don McNair. Not long ago I was a guest at a writing group’s critiquing session. Five members distributed pages they wanted critiqued and, one by one, read their submissions. When the third reader started, I glanced over her pages. Every piece of dialogue was at least eight to ten lines long, and some reached a […]
August 1, 2012 by 21 Comments DialogueDon’t Forget the Dialogue
For many of us, dialogue is one of the most enjoyable parts to write in any story—which makes it kind of surprising that we can sometimes end up neglecting it to a story’s detriment. Today, I’d like to use as an example one of C.S. Forester’s little-known works, Rifleman Dodd. This is a tiny book […]
July 18, 2012 by 34 Comments CharactersWhy Your Hero Needs a Yappy Sidekick
Some of the most memorable character pairings in literature and film are those that team the protagonist with what I like to call The Yappy Sidekick. Now, if this is giving you images of an obnoxious little runt running around after your purposeful and heroic lead and generally being a nuisance, while said hero is doing […]
April 20, 2012 by 31 Comments CharactersHow to Create Distinctive Character Voices
Did you ever have those Shakespeare quizzes in high school in which your evil teacher gave you a list of random quotations from the play you were studying and asked you to identify the speaker? I remember being terrified of those quizzes in theory but enjoying them in practice. Not because they were easy (the teacher never chose the […]
April 18, 2012 by 22 Comments CharactersIs Your Character Talking Too Much?
In real life, most people have a tendency to talk about what they’re going to do before they do it. We’re lying on the couch of an evening, talking to the cat purring on our stomachs, and we say something like, “I really should take that trash out, shouldn’t I?” We may even have to […]
March 30, 2012 by 10 Comments DialogueWhen Arguments Are a Good Thing: Conflict in Dialogue
Most authors and their readers will agree that nothing beats a good bout of dialogue. Witty, poignant, romantic, angry—it’s all good. We all love it when characters open their big mouths and let fly. But creating good dialogue isn’t as easy as saying the first thing that pops to mind. Good dialogue is all about […]
February 8, 2012 by 24 Comments CharactersHow to Avoid Making Characters Look Stupid
We’ve talked before about how authors can use dialogue to avoid the dreaded info dump. In a nutshell, we do this by allowing an in-the-know character to explain necessary information to an ignorant character. When done well, this technique can be not only an effective way of avoiding the sin of the info dump, it […]
