Dialogue #6

Chris Roerden’s book, Don’t Murder Your Mystery, has a fabulous chapter on dialogue, and I’ve been picking it apart and sharing it with you, my three loyal blog readers, for the past several posts. This is the last post regarding information from … Continue reading →

Dialogue Part 4

In the last post, I wrote about question-and-answer sessions within mysteries. I’d like to continue that discussion. All the wisdom contained in this post is from Chris Roerden’s book, Don’t Murder Your Mystery. Roerden identifies symmetrical dial… Continue reading →

Dialogue III

Mysteries always involve question-and-answer sessions, usually between the person trying to solve the mystery and any suspects or witnesses that come along. In my on-going study of writing excellent dialogue, I discovered that even these question-… Continue reading →

Purposeful Dialogue

Continuing my study of the art of dialogue, I turn again to Chris Roerden and her book, Don’t Murder Your Mystery. She’s got a single chapter on dialogue, and it’s loaded with good stuff. Here’s a tasty morsel from the first page:”Effective dialog… Continue reading →

She said what?

I’ve been working on improving my dialogue and came across a chapter in the book Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden. I thought I’d share a few things I learned in the next several posts.The first thing that struck me was the sentence “Dial… Continue reading →

“Holy dialogue tags, Batman!” Robin exclaimed

For the past two weeks, I’ve been struggling with dialogue tags. Silly me, I thought I’d mastered them… then a friend pointed out how many unnecessary tags I managed to work into my text. So, I went on a learning binge, and am now ready to impar… Continue reading →

Dialects

I’ve read that writers, especially beginners, should never use dialects in their writing. And I wholeheartedly agree. Dialects slow the reader down, trying to figure out what’s being said. The minute the reader slows down, you run the risk of losi… Continue reading →