Pride Yourself on Your Great Dialogue!
Definition: the conversational element of literary or dramatic composition
I’ve often wondered if authors whom I’ve read, like Edna Ferber, wrote pages and pages of narrative/description because they never mastered the art of dialogue. Hmmm.
I got lucky because I began my writing career by writing stage plays. And they are nothing but dialogue. So early on I learned from, not only writing plays but, reading plays…thousands of them over the years.
To be good at it, I think one of the tricks is to write more and more dialogue and then write some more. You have to be able to get in that character’s head. What do they ‘sound’ like? Is their grammar messy? The character who hails from the Bronx, for example, is going to cut off words such as: walkin’, talkin’, eatin’, and so forth. There will be more idioms (such as ‘grill’, ‘to front’, ‘rachet’, ‘na’mean, and ‘spaz’) than a person who was raised in a household where grammar and diction were more valued. You have to be able to switch characters and write ‘flavor’ into their speech. How would an eastern Indian, whose
first language is not English, ‘sound’? Now write it that way. How would a southern ‘sound’? Be careful, people from Charleston, S.C. sound totally different from people in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Now, go back over your story and focus on how each character sounds. Is one character’s grammatical habits spilling over into another? Once in awhile I will read over my dialogue and suddenly one of my characters ‘sounds’ like me but they’re not anything like me. I let my own idioms slide right into my character’s mouth. 
It’s disconcerting because it’s so easy to do. When you’re out and about listen to other people’s speech patterns, idioms and speech habits.
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E.L.Doctorow
“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Logan Pearsall Smith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To receive my weekly posts, sign up 
On the home page. Enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim, August: Donna Everhart
first page. Del and Rae Lynn couldn’t be two more different personalities, but the reader quickly empathizes or feels some affection (in the case of Dell) early on. While Donna has her own unique voice she did remind me, at times, of a blended flavor reminiscent of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker, and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Lofty company, in my opinion. 
All works in a series, sequel or trilogy must stand alone. Therefore the writer must duplicate information (set-up) about the characters, place, time, etc., in each book.
“words like wine, words like blood, words out of the mouths of past loves dead. words like bullets, words like bees, words for the way the good die and the bad live on…” Charles Bukowski
Q. What first inspired you to write? (con’t.)
She’s 18 months
olold and we LOVE her. She enjoys laying on our legs, playing fetch and running in big wide circle on grass.
One of the main problems you may face as a writer is standing up to your inner critic. Being overly self-critical can be very dangerous; stopping you dead in your tracks. It is all too easy to tell yourself to give up, that there is no point, that you will never get anywhere.
Victoria was the kind of kid who would sit high on a tree branch for hours at a time, lost in thought. Unsurprisingly, she became a writer, beginning with reams of poems never seen by a living soul. She “also thought it would be cool to be read.” In high school, she started an underground newspaper which caused a sensation and got her suspended.
