Young Writers Society

BrokenSword wrote:

Icaruss wrote:What's wrong with focusing too much on dialogue? Conversations and interactions are what makes a story.

Well, I've had someone tell me that I needed to cut back in dialogue and focus more on telling the story, but I love making characters speak with each other so much that I think it's just a part of my writing style.

Read Hemingway. You'll love him. Everybody does! And then you can show that to your friend and write whatever you want.

Except that the characters are the ones that tell the story. Whoever offered that advice to cut back on dialogue should be shot - repeatedly.

To be honest, a good bulk of my stories features dialogue. The interactions between whatever concoction I've created, their voices unravel and same goes for traits but only through speech.

Of course you'll need description but there is nothing wrong with speech so long as it's engaging for the reader.

The amount of dialogue a story has really is just personal preference. And yes, read Hemmingway.

What you need to do is to add in the action around the character's dialogue, describing what actions the characters are doing while they are talking. That way, you still get the dialogue, but you also connect the reader to the story.

Yes: visual dialogue! If you watch films or TV shows, you'll notice the conversations are hardly ever static (except in 'arty' films or segues between major incidents). Learn from them! Keep your characters doing something. This can add characterisation too. E.g.:

"He sat, gazing at the rearview mirror. 'When are these bastards gonna turn up?'

'Beats me,' the other man replied. 'I'll be two minutes.' He clambered out of his seat and slammed the door."

chocoholic wrote:I know how you feel. Forget that anybody else writes. For a while, you are the greatest writer in the world. Don't try to write, just write. It doesn't matter if your writing it terrible. Don't force it, just write it.

Or, don't write or read. Sing really loudly and badly, follow your sister around and repeat everything she says with an accent, demend that your mum buys you every single thing you see when you go out. Just do something else (hopefuly something that will make you laugh).

Hope I've been of some help!

Yeah, so choco just said everything I wanted to. Write for yourself and nobody else. It doesn't matter if you have too much dialogue; if you enjoy writing dialogue, then write it! So what if your characters are klutzy or too-cool-for-their-own-good or hideously evil or whatever. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you do what you love simply because you love it. Worry about everyone else's ideas later. For now, just pursue your passion.

But lately I've been seeing how much I phail at writing compared to the other fantastic works I read and it's really been discouraging me.

Read some books on writing. Read Steven King's biography or memoir or whatever genre it was in. You'll see how most writers are pretty normal people who've honed their craft. Right now, you're pretty much repeating to yourself everything that every other person in the business of writing has told everyone else. And if they say it to you, how will you deal?

Toughen up. I'm giving you tough love here, not hating you because I barely know you. Just keep writing. I mean, it's not like by the time you finish a manuscript you're going to die instantly. There's a period of time that was lovingly set aside by God [for teenagers, anyway] called "Editing and Revision". Yess. So use the second gift God has given us, and use it a lot.

With all that said, you can't polish a work and make it the best you can until you have a piece to work with in the first place.

--Ree.