Adventures of a Writer

Writing good dialogue is a skill that needs to be mastered by writers. Through dialogue one can reveal character and story elements, dramatic conflict and much more. However, there are some common dialogue mistakes that need to be avoided. Author Pamela Todd-Hunter shares some of these... Read on... Dialogue is essential to any story. It’s used to move the plot along, reveal something important about the characters, and keep the pace, but I’ve found that it’s not as easy to write as it seems. Here are several mistakes that can make or break a story.   Cover too much territory Dialogue between characters is the easiest way to move the story forward and give information to the reader but be careful of how much you reveal. We’ve all been warned against info dumps. Usually these occur when the writer is describing the backstory and gives too much information at once, but dialogue can also cause this. Conversations between characters are one of the easiest ways to disseminate informati...

It's the first month of a spanking new year and what better way to welcome it than have the very lovely author Reet Singh talk about her reading and writing preferences. Better still, she decodes the difference between short stories, novellas and novels. Over to Reet... I love reading fiction, all genres (except horror) and all lengths, but of them I’m happiest reading shorter stories or novellas rather than novels. The real reason for my choice is not complicated to understand - it's because I am keen to move on to the next author and the next book so that I can sample a wider variety of fiction than if I were to read one long novel. As they say, there're so many authors and so little time. When it comes to writing fiction, however, I find that even if I plan out a short story, it tends to grow and grow, threatening to expand until it becomes at least a novella, if not a novel. Is the difference only in the word count?   Actually, no. Sure, a short story is usually less th...