Dialog, Editing Skills, Polishing
Dialogue tags serve a purpose. They help the reader recognize when you’ve changed speakers. Often, when you only have two speakers, if you punctuate correctly dialogue tags can be eliminated, yet this is impossible when you have three or more characters in a...
Dialog, General Writing Skills
Unless you give your readers insights into the body language which your characters display as they speak, your dialog will fall flat. Let’s explore the body language component of writing great dialog. Dialog Always Includes Body Cues You evaluate the meaning of...
Dialog, General Writing Skills
You want to show your characters are polite, right? Of course. Yet you don’t want to bog your pacing down with polite-isms. You want to write great dialog that keeps readers hooked. How do you strike that delicate balance? Here are some strategies which work...
Dialog, General Writing Skills
I once read that writing great dialog comes from listening. This is only part of the story. No matter how proficient I might be at translating the conversations I’ve heard into dialog between characters, if I don’t punctuate that dialog with action, the...