by Bonnie Calhoun

Today we are continuing editing lessons from the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

These lessons will be shortened overviews of the chapters and by no means should be a substitute for buying the book. I'm rereading but not posting a lot of good stuff!

Let's continue. Today we'll start Dialogue Mechanics. I just recently learned that one of the first things an acquisitions editor looks for when they begin reading a fiction submission, is the dialogue!

If you're like most writers, you probably find that writing dialogue takes more thought than writing narration or action. And because it's such hard work, generations of writers have developed mechanical tricks to save them the trouble of writing dialogue that effectively conveys character and emotion...Techniques to prop up shaky dialogue, or to paper over holes and make second-rate dialogue serviceable without a lot of effort.

Once you learn to spot these creaky mechanics, all you have to do is stop using them. And once you stop, you may find that your dialogue...standing on its own...is a lot stronger than you thought it was when you wrote it.

Imagine that your at a play. It's the middle of the first act: you're getting really involved in the drama they're acting out. Suddenly the playwright runs out on the stage and yells, "Do you see what's happening here? So you see how her coldness is behind his infidelity? Have you noticed the way his womanizing has undermined her confidence? Do you get it?"

You get it, of course, and you feel patronized. You're an intelligent theater-goer, and what's happening on the stage is clear enough. You don't need the writer to explain it to you.

This is exactly what happens when you explain your dialogue to your readers.

To be continued...

I have joined in recent discussions about writing aids, and my favorite...besides Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Pro software, is Microsoft's OneNote.

If you already own OneNote but have never explored it, try these videos:

This is for version 2010...


And here is a Microsoft Tutorial for 2010.

This is for version 2007...


And here is the Microsoft Tutorial for 2007.

Go learn...and more on this later.

I was turned on to this great post today over at Seth Godin's The Domino Project. If you haven't been reading him...you are missing out on a marketing genius!

Anyway, he did this post on Jenny Blake. She's an author and Googler, and another of the marketing extraordinaires. She created a system to track the hundreds of action items involved in a book launch. I'm serious! This spread sheet rocks. I probably have thought of a lot of these things but I didn't have them in one handy spot.

She has created to forms of it. One form is that she has uploaded it to Google Docs where you can fill it out and keep it with your other doc. Or you can download it as an Excel spreadsheet.

There is an explanation page that tells you how she uses it, and then a page to give you ideas for all the different devices that she offers. There are a myriad of pages of info and you may not use them all...but I only found two of the pages that I didn't need...at this time :-)

Enjoy!

Check out this great post on Active and Passive voice from the Grammar Girl!

Active vs Passive Voice.

There is actually a place to use passive voice in fiction writing, but the thing I learned is that passive voice is actually recommended for Scientific writing. They say it adds objectivity...do tell :-)

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce .

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
present the present

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ...

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?