For Christians new to writing novels for kids and teens. Creative writing tips, encouragement and inspiration from Janet Wilson, writer, speaker, and publisher of Christian fiction for young people. Get ready to take your writing to the next level! You can do it - all you need is a bit of help. Don't miss out!
Dialogue isn't like real speech - it takes a lot of work! Check you aren't making these three common mistakes with dialogue... And if you find this episode helpful, subscribe to the podcast, and leave a review. Thank you! :-)
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Welcome to the Write for a Reason podcast. My name is Janet Wilson. I'm a publisher of Christian fiction for young people with dernier publishing. If you're a Christian and new to writing stories for kids and teens, stay tuned for encouragement, creative writing tips, and actionable strategies you can implement immediately to become a better writer and get your books out into the world. Today we're going to be looking at three common mistakes writers make with dialogue. I see these quite a lot in manuscripts. Maybe you don't make any of these mistakes, but it's always good to check. And perhaps there's one where you could tighten it up a little bit. So let's go straight on to it. The first common mistake new writers make with dialogue is speeches that are too wordy. If we're writing for young people and especially for younger children, sometimes less really is more. Remove every word, phrase, and sentence you don't need. It's hard to ditch a carefully worded phrase you spent a lot of time on, but if it isn't needed, cut it out. Long speeches can be really off-putting for children. We don't need those long monologues. It's much better to have short, sharp dialogue so you've got a real good conversation between two or three people. Right, issue number two is use of cliches. As with all creative writing, you need to avoid cliches in dialogue, unless, of course, this is part of one particular character's way of talking. Then you can keep the cliches with that one person, and that might be quite fun. But be creative, be as creative as you possibly can with your words and keep each character different in the way that they talk. Issue number three, using speech as narrative. This is kind of an awkward one because, as we all know, dialogue isn't like speech. If we transcribed our conversation that we're having with a friend or a family member, it really would not sound all that great in a book. So the trick of dialogue is to make it sound like speech, and that of course does take a lot of effort, it takes a lot of careful thinking of the words to make it really sound like the people are having a conversation. But using speech as narrative is really not all that great. You don't want to impart information to your readers through what somebody says. Let's see, here's an example. You know we're going to the Houses of Parliament this evening. Yes, we're going to meet the Prime Minister. It's obvious that this speech is a bit forced, and I'm sure that you can find a better and more creative way of introducing this kind of information to your readers. I've got a few other little tips as well about dialogue, so I'll add them into another podcast at some point. If you'd like lots more free creative writing tips, hop on over to writeforareason.com. You'll find loads of resources there and encouragement to help you write excellent, relevant, fun novels and get them into your readers' hands. I do have a writing course, I would love you to join me with that. That's Writefor Reason Academy. And do subscribe to the podcast. Don't put it off. Today is a gift to use wisely. Only you can write your book, and if you've been called to write, someone is waiting for it.
