Ashley Jean Granillo

Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers

As described by Selnick’s article:

not writing

writing

people reading their stories

Consume media that inspires you. Play video games, listen to music, watch movies/tv, read books that make you want to write.

Stop feeling guilty for not writing, it’s not helpful.

But, don’t let fear of failure stop you.

Don’t start over, keep going.

1- must serve a purpose.

Before writing a conversation, take the time to ask yourself what key purpose(s) the conversation will serve.

With an established purpose in mind, you can begin writing dialogue with the confidence that you’re adding value to your story rather than setting readers up for boredom.

2- leads to events.

Most often, conversations work to resolve or create tension, establish context, or reveal new information that moves the story forward.

3- details aren’t always important.

Readers don’t need to see the mundane details of every conversation play out on the page.

Greetings, exchanges of basic information, and other boring but occasionally necessarily details can just as easily be stated in the text as they can be spoken — and oftentimes to better reception. So rather than slow the pace of your scene by writing mundanities into the conversation, state that she gave him her phone number and move along.

4- forget the tags, unless the dialogue is followed by an action.

Dialogue tags are used to attribute lines of dialogue to characters, the most common tag being “said”.

Used occasionally, dialogue tags can help clarify who is speaking without slowing the story’s pace. Many authors, however, make the mistake of overusing tags in an effort to maintain clarity and expound upon how the dialogue is being said (e.g. she shouted, he whispered, it hissed…).

If you’ve crafted strong voices for your characters, however, and if you make good use of action tags —which we’ll discuss in a moment — you’ll find there is little need to include much more than an occasional “he said, she said” in your story. Speaking of which…

If you do find that you need to employ a dialogue tag for the sake of clarity, “said” is most often your best choice. Why? Because “said” is so ubiquitous that it’s often, in a sense, silent. Readers will graze right over the word while still catching the identity of the speaker, ensuring your tag doesn’t disrupt the flow of the story.

Action tags are the small attributive actions that precede or follow a line of dialogue, such as the following:

Amanda fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

“Are you sure that’s what you really want?” Brad raised a questioning brow.

Making use of action tags is a great way to indicate speakers during dialogue while also keeping readers engaged and adding motion to the scene.

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Article: http://www.well-storied.com/blog/write-better-dialogue .

Camp NaNoWriMo is nothing without you, our incredible participants. Today, Camp NaNoWriMo participant Ashley Jean Granillo offers you some advice for this week of Camp:

Dear Writer,

Your story is worth telling, even if the writing hasn’t caught up to the ingenious idea that you’ve been working out on in your mind as you shower away the filth of your day job.

If you’ve forgotten: writing is a process. Currently, you’re probably in the drafting stage. And drafts, especially first drafts, aren’t perfect. They are messy––riddled with grammatical errors and sentences that appear to be in the language of your choosing but sound foreign. This is exactly where your writing is supposed to be. Yes, you are supposed to be writing cliches and flat lines of dialogue because you are only in the beginning stages of unveiling your story’s true potential. Think of yourself as an artist, sketching out the shapes of a landscape. The detail and color will come with patience.

self-doubt

procrastination

sleep deprivation

jealousy

wailing (despair)

notebook lust

your writing is a skill, not an inborn talent (unless, yeah, maybe it is). not everyone can do what you do and love

everyone says they want to write a book. everyone has what it takes to write a book. not everyone does it anyway. you be the small percentage of success you read about

your writing will always seem brickshit horrible because you wrote and read it a million times

you love this writing thingy. quitting it will be like cutting off your fingers one by one.

someone out there will want to read what you wrote.

someone out there wants to know what is on your mind. 

someone out there appreciates your art. they will share it with their friends. they will share it with their loved ones. they will share it with their future self because maybe what you wrote saved them.