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...

Tips For Aspiring Writers - Dialogue The intricacies of writing (Pt II) If you wish to attribute dialogue, there are three ways to do so. "Said," a tag or voice. "Said" is the easiest way of attributing dialogue. It's inobtrusive, invisible even, to the reader. A "tag" indicates a dialogue cue (HOW it is said: "Never." Tom's tone tolerated no further comment.) or body language ("Never." Tom raised his hand.). In both examples, we know that Tom spoke the word without even mentioning "said"). The last way is to use the person's voice. Once the two actors have been set up using "said" and/or tags, let their voices carry the conversation. Tom is a man of few words and short sentences, and Maria is rather shy. "Not gonna happen" would then be something more easily attributed to Tom, and "I don't know. What could I possibly do?" is more likely to have been spoken by Maria. The best dialogue is a mix of two or three of those. "Fancy a beer?" Tom opened the fridge door and glanced at Maria. "I don't usually drink, but, okay." He took two bottles from the fridge and closed the door with his butt. "Here." Maria took a beer and wiped the condensation from the glass. Tom gestured for her to take a seat. "So. Wanna tell me why you're here?" Maria pulled out a chair. "Okay. Sure. I..." "You... what?" "Maybe I should... I mean, I don't know where to..." "Spit it out." "I would like to hire you to find my dog." As you can see, tags tell us about character, make the situation come alive, move the plot forward. "Said" would have worked, too, but with less visual content. As we move through the text, we can ping-pong dialogue, with no more to guide us than the characters' individual voices. After a while, we throw in another tag to re-orient the reader. And voila, great dialogue.

Tips For Aspiring Writers - Dialogue The intricacies of writing dialogue (Pt I) Many of you already know this, but for those who do not, let me ask a favor of you. Nix dialogue attributions like "replied" (we know from the context it's a reply), "hiss" (unless a word contains ss-sounds it cannot be hissed), "growled" (unless your character is also a lion) etc. Stick with "said" and "asked", mixed with the occasional "whispered" or "shouted." "He said" is so inobtrusive, it's like an invisible hint. Our brain knows who's speaking. What more can you ask? Aspiring writers often show an extraordinary variety of dialogue attributions. My advice: don't. It really bugs the reader.