Dialogue: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Effective Dialogue (Write Great Fiction Series)

Gloria Kempton delivers a book about techniques and exercise for crafting effective dialogue; she does exactly what she promises in the title. I liked the book as it was well-written and included well-thought-out material on ways to improve dialogue.In terms of criticism, a couple of items come to mind.First, the author reminds us repeatedly that she is a writing coach and dialogue comes easy for her. Once is okay to establish credibility. By the fifth time, it was irritating.Second, the book is clearly written with the textbook market in mind. That's okay, but the textbook feel made it seem less professional to read -- like taking a class at the community center.Third, the "what to do" was emphasized over the "how to do it." That is, this is designed as a textbook to be read under instruction not as a how-to self-paced manual.Overall, I thought Kempton did a nice job with this book. It won't be for everyone, but I personally found several worthwhile bits of advice that I will incorporate into future projects. If I were teaching a creative writing class, I would definitely consider this item as a supplementary textbook.

I haven't finished reading this book, I'm only a couple chapters into it. But I can tell you, the insight into dialogue I've gleaned from just those chapters has been well worth the $10 I payed for this. The fact that I have the rest of the book to go just means that I'm getting many times my $10 worth out of it.The writing is crisp and funny, but concise and appeals to the part of me which craves a mechanical understanding of writing (as opposed to some floofy 'write with your HEART!' style books I've read halfway through and tossed in the trash). It's written by a person who's obviously good at textual analysis, because it dissects passages of dialogue from other books with insight far beyond anything I could ever do (and I like to think I'm good at text analysis!).I think that if you're struggling with dialogue, or even great with dialogue but looking for some polish to your skills, this is the book to get. I seriously doubt that there's any writer on the planet who can't read this book and find some perspective on dialogue they haven't thought of before.

If you or your characters are at a loss for words, this book will help. The book covers the basics as well as reminding the more experienced of things they may have neglected or forgotten. The author is a strong proponent of dialog as the main engine for stories and moving the plot along. I’m not quite as sold on that premise as she is, though I certainly agree powerful dialog is a great advantage to any piece of fiction. Our disagreement may be genre dependent, or maybe I’m just too thick to grasp all her points. ;) She covers how to use dialog in your scenes, giving characters their own voice, how to integrate description into dialog, how to use dialog for pacing, setting the mood, ratcheting up tension, and even such mechanics as tags and how to use them—or not. I certainly walked away from reading this with a few new ideas.

After being waitlisted for the Odyssey Writing Workshop, the coordinator suggested I read this book. I found it very useful. It helped me understand how to balance dialog, action, and thought, a key to creating good fiction. Highly recommend!

I started reading through this book hoping for the helpful stuff, the well-honed deconstructions and explanations that would boost my dialogue to the next level. Then I reached the point where I simply continued reading this book, because I actually paid money for it, so here we are. I read the book.It was not worthless. But neither was it worth the time spent reading it.It is heavily padded with pages of writing exercises and assignments at the end of every chapter- example: "A father has taken his ten-year-old son on a vacation to his childhood home. Using his thoughts, words, and actions, write a two-page scene of descriptive dialogue."If you want to have a book on your shelf filled with suggestions of this caliber, then this is the book for you.Nothing against writing exercises- but I was picking up a book, not a workshop. I know the value of practice. That's not what I buy a book to discover.It's not necessarily a bad book. Honestly, it might be handy for a new writer who doesn't have any inkling of purpose-driven dialogue, someone who thoughtlessly churns out mountains of irrelevant conversation in their manuscripts. But as someone who's read other books on writing, this one did not stack up well.The dialogue tips within were more concisely conveyed in other books- "Self Editing for Fiction Writers" comes to mind. I selected this book to find something beyond what is referenced in more general volumes, but I didn't find it. I did learn more about the author and how she views her own personality than I wanted. There’s a tangent within the book gushing about the ‘Enneagram,’ a technique for supposedly categorizing all humans into nine basic types. An entire chapter is devoted to it, and recommends we read other books to learn about it.If I could condense everything unique to this book that I found interesting or useful, it would be perhaps five pages long.Again, the information within isn’t wrong per se... But it makes me question whether a good, worthwhile book on dialogue can actually be written. Is this really it?There were a few moments in the book where my interest flared up, where I thought I was learning something- but those were instants when she was quoting OTHER how-to-write books.I wouldn't recommend this book even to a new writer. I'd point them at 'Wired for Story,' 'Invisible Ink,' or 'Story Engineering' first. From here out I'm going to be extra careful of books in the (ironically titled?) "Write Great Fiction' series.

Great Book. It goes way, way further than just learning how to show characters talking to each other. The essence of effective dialogue is to "become" the characters. Once you can wrap your head around this concept, everything else will fall into place.She introduces tools such as the Enneagram, on which I have done more research. This book is one that needs to be read and studied over and over, and you will enjoy most if not all of it. This along with Jack Bickham's scene and Structure are at the top of my list of resources.Thank you Ms. Kempton

This book belongs to a very interesting series, but is not at the same level as "Plot & Structure" and "Revision and Self-editing".The author uses plenty of pages to explain few useful - but not new - concepts, making exercises a pure repetition of the content of the chapter; the same can be said for the grey pages with practical tips. The same ideas would fit in one third of the pages.

Accurate description, quick delivery

Really useful

Thanks -- is fine

sound advice