Fights: Fiction Faces Fact

We’re at the tail end of a presidential campaign year, sometimes referred to as "The Silly Season." So isn't it silly that I, a middle school History teacher (day gig) would get to watch a brother secondary-level History guy run for the second-highest office in the land?

Pretty silly, and for me, kinda cool, too.

I was listening to one of Governor Walz's media appearances the other day (forgive me but I can't recall whether it was during the vice-presidential debate or in one of his many interviews), when he referenced serving his time at his school doing things like "cafeteria duty," and that just really made me laugh.

You see, I too have stood my share of cafeteria duty.

At my current day gig (22 years and counting) teachers don't actually stand duty in the cafeteria during lunches. But we are fair game for rotations supervising the cafeteria during the mornings before classes, when so many of our students come in to get some breakfast before going off to 1st period.

And in a lot of ways, the cafeteria is the beating heart of just about any school. Kids do everything here: talk, learn, teach, flirt, learn to flirt, teach how to flirt, and so on. You get it.

One thing they don't too much of in the cafeteria is fight.

That they reserve for the halls.

So, you know...here.

Which would be the other place in any school where some kids come to life far more than in any classroom. The same things happen there that happen in the cafeteria-the flirting/learning/teaching/socializing-just more intensely, because it is all concentrated into four minute bursts known collectively as "passing periods."

Oh, and then there's the fighting.

Most of which makes me want to laugh. 

Not because violence is a joke. Not because I don't take that sort of thing seriously. It's because of the sheer humanity of the experience.

My much-smarter-than-her-spouse wife, an accomplished director of corporate recruiting with decades of experience in the business, is fond of saying to me: "Honey, what you have to understand is that those kids you're teaching? Many of them don't grow up, they only grow taller."

Wise woman, my wife.

(Oh, and by the way, today is our anniversary. So lucky me, I get to be the one to say, “Happy Anniversary, Robyn!”to the most wonderful woman in the world.)

So it's kind of amusing to break down what sort of things cause fights in school hallways: 

First, there's gender to consider.

If the combatants in question are female, odds are their conflict has its roots in any number of potentially combustible social media exchanges. the fights start at places like Instagram, SnapChat and Discord, and end in the hallway right outside my classroom. And that is 9-times-out-of-10 these days. And it's hard not to come to the conclusion that for some of them, "growing taller" will entail learning to keep their drama where they started it: online. Less real world consequences that way. More on that below.

If the would-be pugilists are male, what's most likely to have started the fisticuffs is something infinitesimally small. The other day we had a fight break out while a bunch of friends were "play-fighting," slapping each other (or, "throwing hands" as some of today's youth are wont to say) instead of slugging each other. Things got a little rough, tempers flared, and the game quickly devolved into "throwing fists."

Oh, and one other stark contrast between fights involving young women and young men: any fight involving one or more ladies will be far nastier than anything involving the fellas. And what’s more, there’s a higher likelihood of actual damage in these instances. (A fact I meant to initially mention in this post, and which Friend of Mine and of the Blog David Schlosser reminded me of with his hilarious anecdote in the comments section below. Thanks, David!).

Now these gender demarcations aren't absolute. And I'm not even taking into account non-binary folks for my crude examples. because it's not really the point of this post. And yes, some girls fight because someone bumped someone else in the hall and words turned to blows, and some guys start their beef over Tik-Tok.

Young Chuck "Sideburns" Norris about to get clocked by Bruce Lee

But the point of this post is to underline the difference between choreographed, almost balletic violence as portrayed in both books and film, to say nothing of TV, and the skinned knuckles, bloodied noses, pulled hair and lost shoes (it never ceases to amaze me how many kids lose their shoes in the middle of a hallway brawl).

Real fights are short.

We're talking two, maybe three shots apiece for each modern-day gladiator.

Why? Because fighting is hard work. It involves most of the body, plus, if one's adrenal glands get involved, look out for the cosmic crash that's on the horizon once you begin to tire.

The likes of Alan Ritchson (Reacher) the late, great Bruce Lee, or Tom Cruise in any of his movies (including, oddly enough, two of them about, wait for it...."Jack Reacher"!) are more choreographed than a diplomat being presented at the Mughal imperial court back in the day. 

Uh-HUH. And let me know when ELVIS gets here...

Which, if I'm being honest, sort of leaves me cold these days. It all just begins to look like WWE without the tights or the interesting scripted interviews (soap operas for dudes, no more, no less. Not judging, just observing.). The sort of cartoony violence that takes place in most thrillers these days leaves me cold.

Testosterone? Check. Tights? Check. Mineral Oil? Check. Folding Chair? Check. Hit him, Stone Cold!

And that's likely because I have just seen far too much of the real thing. And the kids wailing on each other in the halls outside my classroom aren't all that demonstrably different than the folks I used to see tearing each other up in bars, club parking lots, and the like.

It's just that, in the latter case, the two bruisers going at it are likely to be taller.

And that's it for me this go-round. Tune in next time when I discuss the strangest fights I have ever broken up. It's a subject not to be missed!

See you in two weeks!

Artifice

 

We watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel, the other night, and it’s got its share of entertaining moments.  (We watched the original the night after, and it’s better, but of course it has the virtue of originality.)  One of the coolest things about the sequel, BB, is the title sequence, a long overhead tracking shot of the picturesque little town, swooping down below the trees and among the houses, which you immediately realize is a model – and if you know the first movie, you know it’s the model of the town hidden in the attic of the haunted house.  Meta, in other words.

Seeing as it’s a Tim Burton movie, you know it’s going to be self-referential, and mischievous.  (In all honesty, you’d think the same thing if it were a Tarantino, or a Wes Anderson.)  That title sequence, unhappily, promises more mischief than the picture delivers.  Tim Burton is clearly having fun, right at the beginning, but the movie gets a little labored, later on.  The light-heartedness of the opening sequence is an homage to Hitchcock’s title sequence for The Lady Vanishes.  This, also, a model, the camera panning from a matte drawing of the mountains, and over the train tracks buried by avalanche, with a dolly shot across the snow, closing on the hotel window, and a lap dissolve into the lobby, crowded and chattering.  (In the dolly shot, a car goes by in the background, between the buildings, and you know it’s a toy: you can almost see the string pulling it.)  I think you’re meant to know the snowbound exterior is a trompe l’oeil, it’s an inside joke.  Hitchcock enjoyed that stuff a lot, and liked to share. 

For example, he tells a story about how he did the plane crash in Foreign Correspondent.  Near the end, they crash in the ocean, and he shows it from the cockpit POV.  The plane goes into a dive, and you see the water coming up at them, and when they hit, seawater smashes through the windscreen and soaks the pilots.  Real water, mind, they didn’t have CGI.  Here’s the trick.  The inside of the cockpit is a mock-up, instrument panel and windshield, with a rear-screen projection set-up to show the ocean rushing up at them.  Behind the rear-screen, he has a huge tank of water, up on scaffolding, and two big pipes, aimed at the cockpit.  When the film loop being projected shows the plane about to hit the surface of the water, they pull the plug, like flushing a toilet, and this enormous volume of water bursts through the screen and into the cockpit and soaks the stunt guys.  Cut.  You just know was Hitch like a kid in a candy store. 

A little of this goes a long way.  You can show your audience, or the reader, what’s behind the curtain, but you have to be careful not to break the spell.  They’re going to trust you, that you’re playing by the conventions.  A country house, some brittle conversation over cocktails, a little below-stairs intrigue, these are simple pleasures.  You don’t spoil it.  The same is true of camera artifice or FX.  The fourth wall is there for a reason. 

Here’s the opening model shot of The Lady Vanishes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+lady+vanishes+title+sequence&sca_esv=5bf84f1c9db1b0c0&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS851US851&biw=2133&bih=1192&tbm=vid&ei=_dMFZ8DnLfaMm9cPwrnm4QY&ved=0ahUKEwiA2urvioCJAxV2xuYEHcKcOWwQ4dUDCA0&oq=the+lady+vanishes+title+sequence&gs_lp=Eg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvIiB0aGUgbGFkeSB2YW5pc2hlcyB0aXRsZSBzZXF1ZW5jZTIFECEYqwJI7TFQqglYjx5wAHgAkAEAmAHJAaAB2Q6qAQU5LjYuMbgBDMgBAPgBAZgCD6AC6g3CAg0QABiABBixAxhDGIoFwgIKEAAYgAQYQxiKBcICBRAAGIAEwgILEAAYgAQYkQIYigXCAgYQABgWGB7CAgsQABiABBiGAxiKBcICCBAAGKIEGIkFwgIIEAAYgAQYogTCAgUQIRifBZgDAIgGAZIHBTkuNS4xoAekPQ&sclient=gws-wiz-video

If You Think Your Life is Going to Pot, Call Annabelle ...

Where do you get your story ideas? I don't usually have a good answer to this question. They often seem to come from nowhere. I'm sure something must have sparked them, but what exactly, I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint. Still, sometimes I can tell you exactly where a story idea came from. My newest story is a prime example. 

A few years ago, a friend was posting somewhat regularly on Facebook about the people who rented the home to one side of her own. They were selfish people, not caring about how their actions affected the people who lived near them. One day, my friend wrote about how these neighbors often smoked pot outside, so close to her own home that even with the windows closed, the smell crept inside, and her house reeked. She felt without recourse. I decided to give her some fictional justice.

Yesterday, several years after I penned the first draft of that story, it was published. The story is called "Gone to Pot." Here is what it's about:

Annabelle loves her next-door neighbor Micki like family. Not so much the couple who live on the other side of Micki’s house, who regularly smoke pot on their back deck and don’t care who gets a contact high, even when the victim is poor Micki’s cat, Chairman Meow. But Annabelle cares. She cares a whole lot. 

I told my friend yesterday about this story, and she was as happy with the surprise as I had hoped she would be. You may not be able to tell from the description, but this is one of my funny stories. You can read it in the anthology Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy. The anthology is the brainchild of fellow SleuthSayer Robert Lopresti. It is published by Down & Out Books.

Here is the book’s description:

The way we treat the world is a crime—fifteen of them, in fact. Some of the best and most honored mystery writers today have written new stories for this book dealing with environmental issues including pollution, wildfire, invasive species, climate change, recycling, and many more.

Authors include Michael Bracken, Susan Breen, Sarah M. Chen, Barb Goffman, Karen Harrington, Janice Law, R.T. Lawton, Robert Lopresti, Jon McGoran, Josh Pachter, Gary Phillips, S.J. Rozan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mark Stevens, and David Heska Wanbli Weiden.

The stories cover a wide variety of styles including noir, comic, caper, psychological, police procedural, and even a tale inspired by comic books.

Putting their money where their mouths are, the authors have chosen ecologically themed non-profits that will receive half the royalties. 

Barb again. So my environmental issue is secondhand smoke, a type of air pollution. I set the story in my beloved Ann Arbor, where I attended college. And my charity of choice is American Forests, an organization dedicated to fighting climate change through the planting of trees. I am not a scientist, so I won’t try to explain how that works. But you can read about it and this great organization at https://www.americanforests.org/. 

If you read my story, you'll see a mention of a court case involving a woman who sued over secondhand marijuana smoke and won. That isn't fiction. You can google it if you want to learn more. But for now, I hope I've enticed you to buy this anthology. You'll be able to find it elsewhere, but here are Amazon links. You can get the ebook by clicking here and the trade paperback by clicking here. Or skip the middleman and buy it straight from the publisher by clicking here, thus ensuring the authors, as well as the ecological charities referred to above, get more money. Buying books and helping the planet at the same time. Winner!

Every story paints a picture, don’t it

Mary and I went to this year’s Bouchercon in Nashville.  Aside from the venue, which was undoubtedly the weirdest place I’ve ever been (Harlan Coben said it felt like being trapped in the world’s biggest terrarium), it was a pretty good program.  A writer friend asked me what I took away from the experience, so when thinking about it, in that moment, I realized it was all about the story.

There’s so much advice, good and bad, so much bullshit and blather about writing mysteries, that one tends to forget the core mission:  To tell a good story. 

I grew up walking our big collie at night with my older brother.  He kept it interesting by

telling stories, novel-length narratives he conjured in real time and strung together like a radio series.   During the day, he fed me books, mostly from the stacks collected by our father and grandfather, early 20^th century adventure books and tales of Victorian derring-do.  Most of my family were also big readers, and story tellers, even fabulists, often concocting imaginary tales rendered as indisputable fact.  So I was awash in a storytelling environment.

This is the point of the whole enterprise. 

The plot is naturally at the center of this, though plot is nothing without believable characters, voice, setting, brisk dialogue, etc., all the scaffolding that holds the thing together.  The vegetables in the beef stew.  Pick your metaphor.  It’s not one thing, it’s everything.  

One thing you don’t need is a Ph.D. in English literature, though Robert B. Parker had one.  As does David Morrell, who gave us Rambo.  Though Mick Herron, who invented Slow Horses, told us at Bouchercon that he knew exactly nothing about the British Secret Service, which he feels served him well.  All he had to do was tell a good story. 

To wit:  Right after graduating from college, a friend and I thought it would be an excellent idea to drive from Pennsylvania to the West Coast in my ’65 MGB.  We travelled light, with only the essentials:  two sleeping bags, a guitar, beer cooler and about $80 in hard cash.  Somewhere in Arizona we were driving through 100 degree air down RT. 66 at about eighty miles an hour, since any slower would reduce airflow to the MG’s engine, causing it to overheat.  We kept seeing signs for “Arroyo Ahead.”  I figured that meant a taco stand, or Native American trading post, so pressed on at the same velocity. 

Arroyo actually means a big ditch in the middle of the road to allow for very occasional flash floods to pass through unabated.  So when we got there, the MG basically became airborne, hit the bottom of the ditch, then shot up in the air on the other side.  My friend, asleep at the time, spent most of the zero-gravity pinned under the top of the car, when he wasn’t bouncing off the seat.  The entire exhaust system, never more than a few inches above the road, was scraped clean and scattered into the desert. 

Civilization was only about a hundred miles in either direction, but down the road we could see a maintenance crew at work on the white-hot pavement. 

So after piling up all the exhaust components we could find, we hiked down there, hoping they had some thoughts on next steps.  Though before we got there, I found a spool of mechanic’s wire lying off to the side of the road.  Exactly what we needed.  So using the aluminum beer cans and C-clamps I always kept on hand (if you’ve ever owned an MG, you know why), and the mechanic’s wire to suspend the whole jerry-rigged apparatus under the car, I had a serviceable exhaust system.  Actually sounded pretty cool, since the resonator and several feet of tailpipe were lost to the scheme, resulting in a pleasing, guttural purr. 

We made it to the Pacific Ocean, up to Oregon, across the big sky states, then down to New Orleans by way of North Dakota, then back up to home.  About another 10,000 miles. The exhaust worked fine.   

And that’s the story. 

 

 

Autumn's Poet, part 1

When the Frost is on the Punkin

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,

And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,

And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,

And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;

O, it’s then’s the times a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,

With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,

As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

As the Americas developed as nations, they adopted and adapted arts from the ‘old countries’ until the US, Canada, and the Caribbean found their footings. Massachusetts operated as an intellectual axis while the City of New York grew into a cultural centre. To the surprise of many, movements arose from America’s heartland, in particular Indiana, which for half a century beginning in the latter 1800s, enjoyed a reputed Golden Age.

Landscape painting and a nexus of folk music, blues, and jazz rose through the tumult. With plain talk and an absence of affectations, a nation’s voice echoed quips, slang, and dialect of the fields, forests, farms, and soon enough, city streets. One could argue this laid the groundwork for pop culture.

They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;

But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

Prominent names in turn-of-the-century Hoosier literature include George Ade, Theodore Dreiser, Edward Eggleston, Frank McKinney Hubbard, George Barr McCutcheon, Meredith Nicholson, Gene Stratton Porter, the recently mentioned Booth Tarkington, Maurice Thompson, Lew Wallace, and for today’s article, James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier Poet, sometimes called the Children’s Poet.

If you’ve wondered where the phrase, “The goblins will get you if you don’t watch out,” that’s Riley. ‘The Old Swimming Hole’  (which as a kid I waded in and deeply cut a muscle in the arch of my foot) and ‘The Frost is on the Punkin’… That’s Riley again. He also composed the popular plantation parody folk song, ‘Short’n Bread’.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,

And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn;

The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still

A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;

The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;

The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover over-head!—

O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Greenfield, Indiana is known for two American icons, Eli Lilly and … Riley. His home serves as a local museum. Although Riley became wealthy through his writing and touring, he lived a typically modest Midwestern life, although he battled alcoholism in mid-life. Surprisingly, extant recordings of him reading his poetry can be found, but unsurprisingly, sound quality is murky. At least the author’s cadence survives. Generation Z might appreciate the quirky spelling… or not.

Note: I can’t be certain I can respond to comments. Thanks to Hurricane Helene, our area has internet outages with no promise of repair dates, very minor compared to the deadly losses in other states. (To post this article, I purchased cellular data from Google Fi, slow, expensive, with spotty reliability.)

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps

Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps;

And your cider-makin’ ’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through

With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage, too!

I don’t know how to tell it—but ef sich a thing could be

As the Angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—

I’d want to ’commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock!

Next time, little horror stories.

The Rules of Dialog (Good and Bad)

  

I love writing--and reading--short stories. Almost everything about writing them is fun for me, though the things I most enjoy are the plotting and the dialog. For that reason, I'm often surprised to hear others (novelists, too) say they find those two things to be the hardest.

Easy or hard, plotting's a subject for another time. Today I'd like to rant awhile about what the characters say to each other, and how we convey it to the reader.

As for the title of this post, I think most advice about writing dialog is accurate and helpful--but not all of it.

Consider the following twelve points:

1. Some writing instructors urge their students to avoid the use of dialog attributes ("tags" like Joe said, Jane asked, etc.) unless absolutely necessary to identify a speaker. I agree to some extent, because ideally we should write dialog such that the dialog itself makes it clear who's speaking. But you can't take that to extremes. I've read a lot of student manuscripts, and several published stories, in which the writers were obviously going out of their way to treat dialog tags as if they were Kryptonite, to the detriment of the story. That total avoidance of tags, to me, was as distracting as using too many.

Even though I agree that dialog tags are mainly to identify the speaker, they can also be used for other purposes. 

- A he said/she said can serve as a way to change the subject in mid-speech. Example: "I'll sure be glad when this week is over," she said. "How's your dad doing?" 

- It can be used to isolate and put extra emphasis on a final sentence. Example: "I'll just tell you one thing," she said. "Don't trust him too much."

- It can create a needed break or pause, just to help the common-sense rhythm of a sentence or paragraph. "I coulda had class," he said. "I coulda been a contender."

2. I've heard writers say they dislike using the word said, to the degree that they usually substitute a synonym. I think that's wrong. I used to tell my writing students to remember that dialog tags such as he said and he asked (and maybe she replied) are so common that they've almost become transparent; the reader's eye goes right over them, while expressions like he exclaimed, she inquired, he interjected, etc., can interrupt the flow and distract the reader for a moment from the story, which is something no writer wants to do. (This is why Elmore Leonard famously advised writers to "never use a synonym for said," although I don't quite agree on "never.") Adding to the problem, tags like she explained, he insisted, she inquired, and he retorted are repetitive--the dialog itself should tell the reader whether someone is explaining or insisting or inquiring or retorting. 

Read, or re-read, Lonesome Dove sometime. Larry McMurtry used said constantly, regardless of whether an identifier was needed. If I weren't a writer, I would never even have noticed it. Not only was it not distracting, the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

3. In a nutshell, (1) don't feel you have to use a dialog tag if it's clear who's speaking, (2) don't overuse possibly-distracting synonyms for said, (3) don't worry about repeating said or asked too many times, and (4) do use a dialog attribute or an embedded name if there is any question at all about who is speaking. Readers hate to have to count lines backward to identify who's saying what. (And yes, I know I shouldn't complain about repetition--there was plenty of it in this little summary.)

4. Here's something that's rarely mentioned but can be helpful: It's usually better, especially in informal writing, to place the name or pronoun first (Mary said instead of said Mary). The only times I find myself putting the name last is when I need to add some kind of phrase afterward, in the same sentence. Example: "I'm leaving," said Mary, putting on her hat and coat. 

5. I've seen beginning writers, in their efforts to avoid dialog tags, overuse characters' names in back-and-forth dialog between two people. "Hi, Tom, what's up?" "Not much, Jimmy. Taking a trip tomorrow." "Where to, Tom?" "Well, Jimmy, we're headed for the mountains this time." That's an exaggeration, but not by much--and people obviously don't talk this way. Same thing goes for the use of contractions. Nobody speaks like this: "I think I will go see Bill. I am sure he is fine, but since his wife is away, I will go check." Instead they use contractions like I'll and I'm and he's and wife's. If you read your dialog aloud afterward, you'll be able to spot problems like this right away.

6. To again paraphrase Mr. Leonard, try to avoid the use of "ly" adverbs. If the dialog's written well, it probably won't need adverbs after the tags (he said softly, she asked sadly, he replied angrily) to prop it up. And silly repetition can come into play here as well, if you write something like he whispered softly, she moaned sadly, he growled angrily.

7. Since I've already mentioned formal vs. informal, the use of semicolons in dialog can make the writing appear stiff and formal even if that's not your intention. I use far fewer semicolons than I once did, in all kinds of writing, and I never use them in dialog. Dashes, by the way, can be good substitutes for semicolons.

8. Something I do a lot in dialog is indicate interrupted speech. If it's an abrupt interruption and not a "trailing off," the best way to do this is to end the sentence with a dash (not a set of ellipses). Example: 

"What do you think you're--"

"You know very well what I'm doing."

It's especially effective because interruption happens so often when we speak to each other in real life.

9. Feel free to fragment sentences whenever necessary, in dialog. One trick I think I've mentioned before at this blog is to delete certain words, especially at the beginning of some sentences, to make the dialog sound more like the way we actually speak. Here's an example:

Original sentence: "Do you want to go see a movie?"

Better: "You want to go see a movie?"

Even better: "Want to go see a movie?"

10. Be careful about using dialect. The key, I think, is to ask yourself if it's really necessary. And if you do try to write dialect, remember that many editors hate intentionally misspelled words (sho nuff, etc.)--I've found those sometimes work if you don't do it too often. A better idea is to occasionally use slang or regional or ethnic expressions or change real sentences around a bit: (Where you think you headed? or You got mush in your ears? or Daisy says Jimbo has done shot Charlie or You best get over here, and quick.)

11. An ironclad dialog rule that often gets overlooked: Do not include closing quotation marks at the end of a paragraph in a speech that resumes in the next paragraph if the same person is speaking. A correct example: 

John said, into the microphone, "Thank you so much, Councilman Smith, for that fine presentation. We all appreciate your taking the time to visit us today.

"Our final guest is Dr. Susan Jones from the Carter Foundation. Please join me in welcoming her."

I still see this misused, probably by accident, in many published works, and I always find myself wondering if it was a typo or if the author and/or editor just didn't know better.

12. Try, when you can, to use what Sol Stein called "oblique" dialog. In other words, introduce something unexpected--have people reply in a way that doesn't answer a question or brings up new questions or changes direction in some way. Examples:

"Hey. How you doin'?"

"Wow--I sure didn't expect to see you here."

"What have you been up to?"

"Oh. You haven't heard?"

"Where you going today?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Looks like it's beginning to rain."

"What do you suggest?"

12. Last but not least, try not to construct paragraphs of dialog that look too much alike. Example:

"We're ready to go," John said. "You coming?'

"Hang on," Judy called. "I'm in the bathroom."

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said. "Good grief."

That kind of writing looks and sounds amateurish. You need some tags here to ID the speakers, yes, but maybe some of those tags could be deleted or moved to the end of the paragraph instead of being in the middle--or maybe some beats of action could be plugged in. Example:

John picked up his car keys. "We're ready to go. You coming?"

"Hang on, I'm in the bathroom," Judy called.

"Well, hurry up," Bob said. "We're already late."

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Good grief."

So, what are your thoughts on all this? Do you like writing dialog, or do you find it difficult? Do you ever write plays or screenplays, which are almost nothing but dialog? What are your own personal "do's and don'ts"? Do you ever use dialog tags just to help regulate the sound or rhythm of a sentence? Do you ever read your dialog aloud to see if it "sounds" right? What are some of your own hints and tips?

There is of course much more that could be said about dialog and its rules, but I know (or I hope I know) when I've rambled long enough. So pick up your car keys, unless you're in the bathroom, and come on--we're already late. Go do some writing.

"What kind of writing?" she asked.

"Dialog," he said.