Last month, I did an online class with John Foxjohn through the Kiss of Death chapter. The course was called Eight Steps to Murdering a Manuscript and it covered all the things a writer should do during the editing stage. One tip I’d like to pass on related to dialogue.
Characters shouldn’t chitchat about the weather or what they did last week at work. Dialogue should advance the plot. A tip to make sure your dialogue does its job is to delete everything from your scene apart from the dialogue (or just highlight all the dialogue) and read it out loud without all the narration. Does it give the reader new information? Does it advance the plot? If so, great job. If the dialogue is just a lot of chitchat then think about reworking.
I’m blogging at Access Romance and giving away a print copy of Tea For Two.
I also have a new interview with author Fran Lee at the Examiner.
And finally, I got together with three other New Zealand writers to do free bookmarks. Readers can download the file and print it out. Here’s the link to download your free bookmarks. Please do let me know what you think of them!
Related posts:
That’s a great tip, Shelley. And wow, checking out your sidebar, you have a lot of releases I need to get caught up on. :)
by Cari Quinn July 15th, 2009 at 3:09 pmI thought it was a good idea and something I hadn’t thought of doing before. Cari, I can’t wait for Tea For Two to come out. Not long to wait now.
by Shelley Munro July 16th, 2009 at 3:30 am