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This Instructional Begins Here On Page #1 - Click To Begin

 

See Black Road 2012, a book about Doomsday, 2012

 

Free Tips For Writers, Page 6

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Do you need this scene? We know you're desperately in love with it—you're brilliant in it.

Book About 2012

 

But do you really need it? Does it move the work forward? Everything goes in the same direction?

Does it round out a character? Further the journey or plot? What, exactly, is its purpose?

Free tips and advice about writing: If it's none of these things, just kill it. Save it for another time. There's plenty more where that one came from, right? I mean, you Are brilliant, right?

Is the dialogue an organic part of the journey? It may be artistic, but is it believable? Does it flow naturally out of the character's relationships, needs, and desires, what they want, and how they are?

Or are you just using it for an information dump. to convey data.

 

John said, "Mary, you remember back in high school when your father was a doctor but wouldn't let you prepare for medical school because of the dwarf in the closet and the drugs that time, and your mom ran off with the felatio instructress, back then, well, we were in love and I had that Corvette, but not now again, are we."

Or:

           

Rocco says, “You love him.” 

She turns to look at him.

“Love?” She stares into Rocco’s eyes. “I love nothing. I have no love in me. I don’t love. Not a man, or a woman, or a child. Not a dog, or cat. Nothing that blooms or lives. I love nothing.” 

She looks out the window.

Her eyes are dark foam breakers on a night shore.

“Why is that?" he says, "Why are you like that? Why don’t you love?” 

“I don’t know.”

Her face is a dark mask in the night.

 

One weird chick, right? Told you all about her there just with dialogue, the spoken and the unspoken.

Listen up, amigo. Never-- never use dialogue to tell a backstory. Find other ways of leaking it in gradually. Sometimes you don't have to say much at all.

 

    He looked at his hand. Four fingers, got him out on pension.

    "Never should have tried to take that gun away," he thinks to himself,

    "still, it was worth it, make the goddamn collar."

 

Tells you a lot, right? You must give the reader credit. S/he is smart enough to figure what's been left out here. You don't need to say what his job was or what he was like when he was in it.

When doing dialogue the characters must interact. You can't have each one just dumping information. The flow of data, spoken and unspoken, can come from the interplay. It can tell the reader what they are like, what the think of each other, what they want, what this is all about, and a lot more.

You must give the reader credit for being as smart as you are.
 

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