Writing
Related: About this forumWriter's Digest: 4 Tips on Writing Dialogue
https://www.writersdigest.com/.amp/write-better-fiction/4-tips-on-writing-dialogue4 Tips on Writing Dialogue
Write like a game of tug-of-war.
Snip
Make your dialogue into a game of table tennis. Or non-table tennis.
Snip
Ditch the tagsand then rewrite.
Snip
Shift the tone and the motivation.
This is a great article. Much more at link.
nuxvomica
(12,855 posts)But I'll check out the article later. Thanks for posting! I've been playing with an interesting writing tip lately: Never start a sentence with the word "the". Especially the first one in a paragraph. It's not that such sentences are bad but the tip forces you to be more imaginative in sentence structure; basically an anti-laziness remedy.
SheltieLover
(59,504 posts)Ty!
Makes for more interesting, more action-packed reading, no doubt!
Orrex
(64,059 posts)Dont start the story or a chapter with a characters name, a]or at least be very sparing in doing so. Arthur C Clarke was absolutely terrible about this, and I believe Asimov was likewise. Regardless of their vast knowledge and enormous bodies of work, this remains a lazy trick that simply sucked the life from the page.
nuxvomica
(12,855 posts)Especially "ditch the tags." I think a lot of people feel they must describe how someone's saying something, that that is more imaginative writing. It's often called for but when it's not, a simple "he/she said" is fine. I find dialogue fairly easy to write but I have to restrain myself from writing pure dialogue by breaking in with description, often about what a character is thinking. My general rule about dialogue is to keep in mind that every conversation between two people is actually two different conversions, with different issues, different rhythms, and even different outcomes.
Orrex
(64,059 posts)Cool story and engaging characters, but I dont believe that a single one of them ever said anything. It was always Bob exclaimed or Maria expressed or Paula queried or Larry remarked. It became an exhausting distraction pretty quickly.