Morning Monday crowd! This is one for the writers, with my EmDashED editing/tutoring hat on because I feel it’s been A LOT about my new book lately (did I mention I have a new book coming out this year on July 6th? I did? OK.)
So as well as Twittering about I’ve been meeting some lovely writers at #TheWritingSphere from IAmInPrint. I’ve delivered two workshops so far – sign up here, they’ll be available for a while, but not forever, folks! And I wanted to tell you a little about the latest because it’s about one of my favourite pastimes
Talking
Yep, we explored dialogue. And here comes a rare thing so don’t miss it … I’m about to give myself credit for doing something well.
I’m quite good at dialogue
(note the ‘quite’. I really can’t big myself up that much … let’s talk about that in a future post?)
I know my strengths and my weaknesses when it comes to writing. For example, I’m hopeless at description. I’m not bad AT it, I just don’t do it enough. I also always need an editorial guiding hand when it comes to keeping up the pace (although I think that’s probably true for us all) but dialogue – I hardly ever get edit notes on my dialogue.
So yeah, it’s something I feel I have a lot to offer in terms of content.
Here are some tips to consider when writing dialogue in your novel, and a just-for-fun task that proved very helpful to the writers at IAmInPrint …
Top Tips incoming:
1. Dialogue needs a purpose. Aim for your discourse to either move the plot forward or inform the reader about the character (who, in turn, is going to move the plot forward, so you see where this is all heading)
2. Avoid what my kids’ schools call ‘interesting’ dialogue tags: I uttered, they remarked etc. Same for adverbs. Don’t tell us your character says ‘that’s nice’ sarcastically. Build up this character and the words they say so it’s obvious it’s dripping with subtext. HOWEVER … keep in mind the old rules vs guidelines thingy in a Pirates of the Caribbean kind of way. Subvert your reader’s expectation, for example:
‘I hate it here,’ she said, calmly.
‘I have an opinion on that,’ he mumbled.’
3. Keep dialogue to a minimum during tense or dynamic action scenes. Think: is my main character in the mood for a chat whilst fending off a zombie hoard?
I’ll be expanding on this in a future blog, so be sure to look out for that, but for now a little, fun task:
try turning a short conversation in your WIP into a comic strip. When we did this last week it was eye-opening where elements of both dialogue and stage direction could be cut, streamlining the dialogue and freeing it for greater impact. Here’s one I did earlier to show you that you don’t have to be an illustrator to make this work!
(Illustrators need not worry about me branching out into the visual arts)
Obviously, you don’t want to be doing this for the whole manuscript (or, maybe you do??), rather use it as a way to get your eye in, on editing your conversations for succinctness.
Happy writing and if you’d like to pledge or subscribe, please do so! Or, you can support me by pre-ordering The Housetrap here or buying any of my other books:
Thanks for reading!