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You ought to know by know that when you write, you need to have your work as tight and crisp as possible. You need to weave the story so that the reader is sucked in. Have them forget about the living world. The words need to flow. Use full sentences. You know the drill.

When it comes to dialogue, throw out the entire rule book out the window. Listen to how people speak. Sit in a corner of a coffee shop and really listen. People are choppy. They finish each other’s sentences, or try too. They often have their own codes, or languages.

If you’re CEO of a multi-million dollar company, you’re going to be extremely professional in your conversations while your at work. After work, you’ll decide that you want some pizza at the grocery store. You talk mild chit-chat with the cashier, and you’re polite and friendly. You drive home and you’re with your family, and you’re loose and relaxed. Every day you have different ways of talking depending on where you go.

In order to make dialogue seem real, you need to imitate real conversations. It can be hard and tricky, but after practice, the characters will seem more alive to the reader. If Billy-Joe is a southerner in the States, how is he going to talk? And what about Bethany, if she’s a foreigner from Norway?

You can also insert some quirky words into one character’s dialogue. I’m Canadian, and you bet your patootie that I say ‘eh’ a lot. I also am really keen on Brit speak, so I say ‘loo’, ‘git’, ‘mate’, etc. It’s just something I’ve picked up. I like being original.

There’s another example, Kite often uses pauses when he’s speaking, in order to think how to best phrase something. This in turn, makes him seem thoughtful.

See what sort of other things you can come up with to make your characters seem unique. Good luck!

So a good friend of mine is organizing a Mad Scientist Anthology.

I’ve worked on it off and on over the last two months. I’m finding it really difficult. It’s definitely outside my comfort zone, but it’s good. It’s a good exercise.

Forcing myself to work on it before the due date passes, I’ve been trying to focus my attention on it. I don’t want to give up. Awhile back, I would have. I didn’t like hard work. I didn’t like having to put too much effort into it. However, since then, I’ve learned that it can be very rewarding.

And so I continue to struggle. As of last night, I noticed that I had about 1000 words. I need to double that before it’s at the proper length, and then tweak and fine tune it.

It will be perfect!

I will come out the victor!

Now a lot of people don’t think about this, let alone talk about, but names are important. We’re not talking about character names, not today. Today, we’ll be talking about the name that you will be taking on.

‘But, I already have a name,’ you say. Good for you. However, if you are like most people you will want an alias. A lot of authors use pen names. George Orwell was actually Eric Arthur Blair. Mark Twain was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. A lot of women would take on male pen names due to the fact that they were seen as inferior writers.

Not only are pen names helpful to keep anonymity, but you’re already an established author and are wanting to branch from horror into romance, like Stephen King did, chances are you will need a new name. Also, if your name is John Smith, you’ll want a more original name. Keep in mind, you don’t want to make it too complicated, but if your last name is Mahershalalhashbaz you’ll probably want to find a different one.

Pick a name that is easy to remember and easy to spell. Make sure it goes with the genre you’re right for. There is a reason why Theodor Seuss Geisel went with Dr. Suess. It works. And it’s fun. It’s perfect for his targeted audience.

If you are having trouble with finding a name, Google names and try them on for size. There are a ton of articles that relate to this topic, I know. It’s a tough decision but in the long run, very worth while.

Good luck!

While puttering away at the weekly five words to post over at www.poiseandpen.com, I came up with today’s post.

Descriptive wording.

Now, when you write a story, your goal is to draw the reader in, to immerse them into the world that you have created. Good storytelling does this easily. In order to do this, you can rely on using descriptive words.

There will be some words that the reader doesn’t know, but if you craft the sentence properly, they shouldn’t be needing to reach for the dictionary. The words around it will easily tell what it means. Good writing, good crafting does that.

Bad writing must be avoided. But how does one avoid bad writing? Well, by not using overly long and descriptive sentences, over used cliche’s, and too many adjectives. When you come across these, it’s called purple prose.

For example, a purple prose paragraph can look like this:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” –Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

There are tons of examples of bad writing if you poke around.

Go on! What’s the worst submission that you can find?

I was just in the shower trying to come up with a topic to write about. I very nearly dropped the soap when it hit me.

‘What makes a character in a novel so likeable?’ The answer came so easily as I’ve known this for quite awhile.

Characters always tend to have flaws. Doesn’t matter what it is, but those flaws make that character more human. Readers are always relating to the characters that they are reading. A shy, quiet and intelligent that doesn’t really have the social skills to relate to their peers around them. Or a character that’s gruff and caustic can be instantly off putting but dig in a little further, and you find out that they’re a sort of person that parents people, takes care of them.

There’s all sorts of flaws that you can give your characters. Go on, be creative. Let’s see what you can come up with!