Published July 1, 2008
No longer working on this!
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139,429 Literary Works • 672,561 Reviews
Thank you for your critique. Some of this was rushed...God bless random inspiration....
I forgot that I had damn in there.
This is actually my first long dialogue piece written late at night.
This went really, really fast, which made it quite boring. Nothing much seemed to be going on, and I kept reading while saying to myself, 'Just finish it'. There's nothing interesting, nothing that made me want to keep going.
Most of it was dialogue, and not very good dialogue. It wasn't natrul. You need to write how people would actually speak.
First of all I can't picture anybody saying this, and then, after reading more of his dialogue, it doesn't seem to fit him. Maybe just a 'Finally!' would do it.
You need to slow down. Go out and [s]become a stalker[/s] listen to how people talk, and then revise your dialogue so that it's normal people speaking to each other. Then put in sme more action. I think this story would be better in past tense, the present tense really threw me off.
Once you've done a big edit on this, let me now and I'll critique it again.
Well, this is dialogue. So obviously it will only be dialogue-related things I discuss today. I'm not an expert at conversation, but I'll do my best to critique you. Disregard anything you wish.
The one nitpick I have...shouldn't "no" by "any"? "No" doesn't make sense.
Let's make a listy-poo!
1) Realism. This is basically what makes dialogue. Not realistic--not dialogue. This is not completely realistic. Some ways to fix this is to listen to people talking or think about people the characters' ages and what would be something they would say (slang, etc.--but never overdo slang...especially if you want to make the piece timeless). You were rushed. Immediately after he found her, would he really be all like "Where is he?" and more importantly, would she say right away that she "Gave him away."?Have her pause, inject a few "Uhh"s...make this the way people speak. Also, some of the wording wasn't up to modern snuff. Some examples:
Those are just a few lines.
2) Dialogue tags. Well, usually I tell people to cut back on the dialogue tags because they are overwhelming. Yours=not so much. Near the beginning I would even add a few more "Trent said"s and "Jamie said"s. But just a few...we should be able to follow without having to scrutinize the context of the speaking.
3) Damns. You put the word "damn" aaaall the time in the begining and it trickles off in the end. If you use the word at all, concentrate them in the ending as the environment becomes more intense. But I would barely use "damn." It reads like you were trying really hard to make the dialogue realistic, and since a lot of people curse--bingo! You have your answer. Not a good solution. It sounds forced and even more so when it isn't consistent. Only extremist cursers put a curse word after every word. Every awkward word, that is.
Good luck!
This was on the whole very good!
GML