Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 167

Is That Me in the Mirror?

Q: Do family and friends and their lives become fodder for your stories and, if so, do they ever recognize themselves and complain?
- from Susan (Sorry to be late posting.)
Yes and no. Yes, everyone I know has the potential to be fodder in some ways for my stories, usually so manipulated so that they would never realize it. Heck, I become fodder for my stories too. How do you write well about people without observing people?
Has anyone ever complained? Quite the reverse. My friend who moved...

Let’s Talk … Dialogue tags, hints, tips and gripesBy...

Let’s Talk … Dialogue tags, hints, tips and gripesBy Abir
So this is my first proper post. Things just got real, and I’m quickly realising that posting on a Friday means that all of the clever, most useful tips have already been raised by my colleagues. The pressure’s on!
Before starting, I’d point out that the usual caveat applies: there are no hard and fast rules, and for every piece of generally accepted advice, there are authors out there, busily breaking the convention and doing so to...

Drive, he said.

Dialogue tags. Hints. Tips. Gripes

From Jim

A month ago, I posted a piece here on writing advice that floats around the Internet and writers conferences. One of the topics I took issue with was the accepted dictum that writers should only use “said” as a language tag. A spirited debate ensued, and I enjoyed it. Now, just four weeks later, we’re discussing that very topic. So here is what I wrote about it then:

Take, for example, the admonition against using any dialogue tag except “said.” This i...

He said, she said.

This week we’re talking about dialogue tags, hints, tips and gripes.
by Dietrich
Dialogue Tags
There’s been a lot written about whether dialogue tags should ever be more than ‘he said’ or ‘she said’. 
“While to write adverbs is human, to write ‘he said, she said’ is divine.” — Stephen King
“The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarth...

Bringing your characters alive through dialogue

Dialogue tags. Hints. Tips. Gripes.
When I started out on this writing adventure I was scared to write dialogue.  The first draft of Death’s Golden Whisper contained almost no dialogue, something I knew had to change the  minute I finished the draft.  During subsequent revisions, I gradually added more and more dialogue until I became fully at ease with it. Now I almost prefer writing dialogue, because I hate to say it, I find it easier than description or internal monologue.&nb...

The Art of Dialogue by Brenda Chapman

This week’s question: Dialogue tags. Hints. Tips. Gripes.
Well maybe not exactly a question.
To be honest, my dialogue use continues to be a work in progress. Looking back, I believe that I didn't use enough dialogue in my earliest books. Best sellers usually have quite a bit of dialogue, and I enjoy reading books with a lot of conversation among characters, so this is a part of novel-writing that I've worked to get more comfortable using.
So dialogue tags are prompts that tell us which characte...

Take a Negative and Turn it into a Positive

What book did you not enjoy, but motivated you in your own writing?

by Paul D. Marks


I can’t think of a book that I didn’t enjoy that motivated me in my own writing. There’s been plenty of books that I haven’t enjoyed over the years and until recently I would plow my way through them to the bitter end. But I’m getting better about not doing that. I recently started a book by a Big-Name Author. Got a few chapters in and put it down. Slow. Way too much backstory. Etc. But did it motivate me? No....

Metaphors in the Attic

READING: What book did you not enjoy, but motivated you in your own writing?

by Catriona 

This is timely. In the last month I've given up on a recent hit crime novel  - lauded as "original", "a triumph", "blisteringly real", "utterly compelling", "beautiful"  and "astonishingly good" . . . I made it to page fifty before breaking my "give it a hundred pages" rule over my knee and throwing both bits behind me.

Then I read Flowers in The Attic.  Oy, oy, oy.


Flowers in The Attic w...

Glass half full here...by Cathy Ace

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Books that motivate "backwards"

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