Archive for the ‘DIALOG’ Category
A Remarkable Observation…
Today’s device…. the POV character commenting on another character’s unusual remark. Probably the most common way of using this is for the POV character to “explain away” the secondary character’s odd remark by making a philosophical claim. In Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Mandela the POV character’s fellow soldier is wounded. A medic’s reaction is in quotes; […]
Filed under: DIALOG, EXPOSITION, STRUCTURE | Closed
Tags: enrique vila-matas, joe haldeman
Parallel Structures
Today I’m just going to present 4 quick examples of a device you can use to delight your reader. I’m sure there’s some kind of classical rhetorical term for this, but I don’t know it. I just call it a sentence with parallel structures: a sentence where a statement is made, then repeated with the […]
Filed under: DIALOG, WRITING STYLE | 2 Comments
Tags: akutagawa ryunosuke, borges, Gu Long, wuxia
The Agreement Turnaround
Today at SpecTechnique I’ve got a short article about a neat little dialogue trick I like to call the agreement turnaround. One sure sign of limp dialogue in a story is when it follows a boring question-answer, question-answer, yes-that’s-very-interesting pattern. So to generate conflict and delight, I think it’s helpful to break up that flow whenever […]
Filed under: DIALOG | 1 Comment
Tags: dostoevsky, kathryn cramer, M John Harrison, Mary Gentle, new weird, sidney morgenbesser
SpecTechnique 