Dialogue Adds Character to Your Characters
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Dialogue Adds Character to Your Characters

Who Is Talking? How your characters speak reveals their personality. Especially in mysteries, characters reveal their character, even when they try to hide it.  The challenge for writers is to make the language each character uses, appropriate to that character and distinct from other characters in the story.  That way, readers understand who is talking.Dialogue is a verbal action. When a character speaks, they are actively moving the story forward. When the language, rhythm, a […]

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Characters Don’t Speak in Semicolons

Dialogue and Narrative Grammar is essential to good storytelling; it keeps the reader from getting lost.  When writing narrative good grammar is essential. But when your characters speak, they talk like human beings. People don’t speak in semicolons and neither should your characters. Robert Harris wrote a trilogy about the great legal orator Cicero: Imperium, Lustrum,…