Tips For Aspiring Writers The intricacies of writing pt. III I've discussed some aspects of dialogue in my previous posts. Only a few points remain. Natural sounding dialogue is NOT the same as natural dialogue. We like our heroes to be proactive, brave and clever. Why then would we give them rambling sentences interspersed with uhms and how-are-you-I'm-fines? When using tags to attribute dialogue, write it fresh. Nix your smiles, shrugs, nods, the pulling of lips/mouth into smirks or half-grins, the head tilts, the arched eyebrows... If your character is a cheerful soul and insists on smiling, make it interesting. Does he smile like a man who's won the heart of the cute chick next door? Or is his a yeah-whatever sort of smile? Maybe his smile is as crooked as ......(fill in the blank). There are thousands of ways to write it fresh - you only need to think of a few. One final word about dialogue. What's wrong with the following? "It's so nice to see you," she smiled. Aside from the aack-word 'smiled,' I mean. Simple. Your hero can speak and then smile, or smile and then speak, but smiling words is quite impossible. "It's so nice to see you." She smiled. See? She speaks. Full stop/period. Then she smiles. Until next time...