There are at least three of us in my writing group that just love to write dialogue. We're perhaps a little tooo comfortable writing dialogue. Like, maybe sometimes all a page is - is dialogue. I have to share this great post on the topic, How to Turn a Novel into a Textbook by Maggie Stiefvater. Maggie takes a page from one of her novels and then tells us how it might have looked when she was starting out. It would have been all dialogue. A page of dialogue.
Then she walks us through some great revision ideas. She lists "the questions I would ask myself looking at a page like this." My favorite is "How is the writer showing a pause in dialog? By saying "she paused" or by inserting a non-dialogue paragraph?" (I had a total aha moment reading this one. LOVE IT.) I also like "How is setting worked in?" and "Can I imagine myself there? Why?"
Give it a look-see and let me know what you think!
