Skip to content

Monthly Archives: July 2010

Eliciting Dialogue

There's a particular kind of dialogue that almost always reads as false, that always sounds as if the writer ran out of steam. It's sometimes called Asked and Answered.  Or Asked to Answer.  Or Prompting Dialogue.  I like to call it Eliciting Dialogue. It's a line of dialogue whose sole purpose is to elicit a [...]

Imagination vs. Composition

Writers are sometimes lumped into one of two categories: the story-teller and the stylist. As if they were separate skills. In fact they are two sides of the same coin. There are no novels completely devoid of style, and none empty of story (even if only the one the reader creates). What is the relation [...]