You see, most writers fall into one of two groups: either they hate writing dialogue and try to avoid it as much as humanly possible or they love writing dialogue and fill their entire novel with mostly useless exchanges. But there’s a third group that few writers join. It’s the group...
When I was young, writing good dialogue was my weakest skill. Not until I’d been out in the world for a while could I capture the essence of a character by placing a few words in his mouth. After years of people-watching and eavesdropping, I now think dialogue is one of my strength...
Formatting Dialogue A reader has a question about formatting dialogue in a novel: I have some confusion regarding speakers when writing dialog, and when you should start new lines. The logic I remember being taught is that every time the speaker changes in a story we should start a new parag...
In practice, writing a realistic fight scene for your novel is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. That’s because fight scenes can be boring to read. A movie allows the audience to take a passive stance and have the action wash over them. In contrast, reading a fight scene re...
1. Get Ready for Years of Revisions You’ve no doubt encounteredthe myth that great writing comes from artistic geniuseswith inborn talent. According to this myth, you don’t have to take any classes on fiction writing; just put pen to paper and pour your heart out. Then you only have ...
In particular, if dialogue sounds wrong, or stilted, then rewrite it. You may need to come back to it when you know your characters a bit better, and you have found their voices more confidently. 9. Be prepared to bin it This is important enough to be a separate point. ...
Although your worlds will be uniquely designed from your own imagination, there are things to consider that make for a positive reader experience. If you are actually thinking about writing a science fiction or fantasy novel, here are a few articles that dive into world-building: World Building...
For instance, practicing dialogue writing can aid in mastering punctuation rules, like knowing whether to place the period before or after the quotation mark. It also fosters an understanding of English, such as discerning between “I’ve to” and “I gotta” in spoken language. SevenMentor’s...
Writing without stopping – experiment with the next novel with a little light editing to begin each writing session Different technologies for writing – Word, using Scrivener for plotting, writing by hand with a fountain pen Touch typing
When writing a book, a scene is a useful structuring and guiding unit to focus on. We already discussed how you canuse the Scene Builder on Now Novel to organize scenes. In our webinar 'Hooking the Reader: Crafting a page-turning opening chapter', Romy shared the following tips for starti...