Interesting Links

I nabbed a link for this Washington Post article about Morgellons Disease from the Smart Bitches blog. Though the Smart Bitches weren’t talking about the disease specifically, both sources are interesting reads.  

“N’uh!” – Dialogue Tips: The KISS Method

KISS, for those of you unfamiliar with the phrase, does not refer to the band or the smooch. KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. And aside from being one of my father’s favorite sayings, I use it to remind myself to trim dialogue. Good dialogue is clean dialogue. You want your characters to be verbally competent and much more orally organized than the ordinary person, even when they’re rambling. Is this a true depiction of real-life conversations? Hell no. Does it make for better storytelling? Definitely.

But let’s say I’m writing a character who tends to go off on long tangents about nothing in particular. We’ll call her Jody. She’s self-absorbed and chatty, so she doesn’t notice when other people are rolling their eyes and edging out of the room. How would I find a happy medium between showing her ramble while keeping her dialogue clean and not boring readers?

Well, I’d first limit the amount of Jody’s actual dialogue. Most people spot a rambler fairly quickly, so I’m going to try and avoid shoving that bit of my character’s personality at the reader. Maybe I’ll have the main character tune out the conversation and begin thinking or doing something else, or maybe I’ll bring in another character or create some event to interrupt her, but I’ll limit the space Jody takes up with her verbal avalanche. All I have to do as a writer is reveal Jody’s personality and habits to the reader and then stay true to that character with occasional reminders.