How to Writer Dazzling Dialogue by James Scott Bell

Seriously, if someone (me) can make you physically laugh while you are reading our (my) writings that is amazing! If the story you are telling is tense and dark, a splash of lightness can allow your readers to take a breath. Let’s revisit Teen Wolf and the character Stiles. No matter how tense a scene is, if Stiles is thrown in you can guarantee you will chuckle. His role is to relieve the stress and give the viewer a chance to take it all in. Sounds like me on any given day when we have a group get together. I am the comic relief.

Image result for shes come undone — **I love this book.**

I believe it is a true skill on the part of the writer to make a reader laugh. I remember many a moon ago, I was sitting in a laundromat reading the novel She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb. Not kidding- I burst out laughing, like, full snort-laugh, and everyone turned to look at me. I simply held the book up and waved it at the crowd and then went back to reading.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is asset-3-covers.png — **COMING SOON!**

Um…Hi! How are you today? Me? I am anxiously waiting for an email from my formatter that will contain Sin Full. I will then scan through checking for errors and once they are fixed, we will move forward in the cover wrapping and uploading of said awesome-sauce book. Thanks for asking. I am gonna run to the kitchen and make myself a fresh cuppa tea and grab a nibble or six. You should do the same. Maybe not tea but something yummy. Don’t forget the nibbles. Never forget the nibbles. While you are at it, grab your copy of How to Write Dazzling Dialogue by James Scott Bell, and meet me back here.

Period Dialogue

Image result for 1800s woman using cellphone — **“I’m hanging with the ladies. I’ll churn the butter when I get home. Geesh.”**

Here’s a clue, when writing a period, as in, a certain time in history, ensure your speech fits the timeframe. I read a period piece and spent more time highlighting the errors than anything else. If your timeline is in the 1800s…cellphones did not exist. Neither did hot showers. “Dude,” was not used…no, NEVER used when referring to a man. I love a GOOD period book. Keyword here is GOOD. It is essential the dialogue matches the time.

Image result for obey the rules sometimes — **Words are fun.**

Do you have to be hard core period wordage? Not necessarily. What can be done is similar to writing and accent. Simply remind us from time to time of the time period by tossing in a word or phrase that was widely used during that timeframe. Ensure the word or phrase is easily read and understood by your readers. Make sure it fits the context of the activities going on.

Another tip: When writing educated or upper-class characters, do not use contractions. For some reason contractions make your characters appear simple. “Well ain’t that swell.”

I joke but if you go back and read the classics like Hamlet, you can see how the peasants or lower classmen used contractions whereas the uppity ups did not.

SURPRISE! We are now at the end of this wonderful book. I didn’t realize how quickly we would get through this one. So sorry.

The 2 books I was thinking of are:

Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland

Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon

…Thoughts?

I will give you all a few days to think and let me know which one you would like to work through. Let me know in the comments below. I can’t wait to hear from you!

Please remember that I am not trying to write this book for you word for word. I am skipping a lot of detail. I highly suggest you purchase the book and read between the lines.