Book cover of The Fiction Writer's Guide to Dialogue: A Fresh Look at an Essential Ingredient of the Craft

Book description

Dialogue is often overlooked as a necessary and potent instrument in the novelist's repertoire. A novel can rise or fall on the strength of its dialogue. Superb dialogue can make a superb novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "Action is character." George V. Higgins said, "Dialogue is character." They were both…

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1 author picked The Fiction Writer's Guide to Dialogue as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Here is a “look-see” at writing fiction dialogue while mindful of and applying some of Elmore Leonard's classic Ten Rules of Writing: when to use dialogue tags... why using “said” is best... why not to use adverbs to modify “said”...? There's history here, too, as Hough traces the refining of fiction dialogue as an art form from the nineteenth and early twentieth century to the present while providing stunning examples along the way.

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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