Customer Reviews

Dialogue (Elements of Fiction Writing)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

"This book was awful," I said to Lily.
"I know!" she replied empathetically. "It's horrible! It is, without question, the worst 'how to write' book I have ever read."

This book is an unmitigated disaster, start to finish. I don't even know where to begin!

The biggest annoyance was the author's unskilled use of the Socratic Method; the entire book is one giant dialogue between a fictionalized author and his foi, with bits of a fictionalized editor thrown into a few places. At one point, Turco's fictional editor says, "your strategy in this book is certainly unusual and imaginative ... however, I don't believe it has precisely the effect you intended." Unless, of course, his intent was to bore the bejeezus out of his audience...

Throughout the dialogue, the Author (always capitalized in the book) comes across as egotistical, condescending and impatient. Speaking of "impatient," I found myself incredibly bored throughout the book, and often sighed with exasperation. I wished it would either have moved more quickly or covered the points more thoroughly - one or the other. Instead, it lives in some frustrating middle land, neither informative and interesting nor quick and light. It's vexing and leaves soooo much to be desired. At many points, my brain shrieked "why can't this just END?!" and yet I kept reading, hoping to glean something useful, hoping the author would have something good to offer. I searched in vain.

The Socratic dialogue would have been useful in places, to show examples and illustrate do's and don'ts; however, as a style for the entire book, it just drove me like oxen. The story is not interesting enough to read as a storoy, and it's not informative enough to read to learn anything. Turco could have either used a different style, or he could have made Fred Foyle (ha, ha - get it? "Foyle," "foil?" Oh, wackiness!) a more interesting and sympathetic character. As it stands, he was a whiny, frustrated, completely uninteresting nuisance.

Worse, Turco frequently makes comments which lead me to believe he understood that this book doesn't work - and yet he forged ahead, seemingly oblivious to his editor's and his own misgivings. Argh! Passages such as this are sprinkled throughout:

"I thought he'd never leave," Fred writes. "Sure I can type. Whatever he can do, I can do as well or better. This business of being Fred Foyle is a drag. Why could it have been I whom am the author instead? I could have invented him instead ... no, I'd have invented someone else, just to get even ... only, if I were the author and he weren't invented, how could I get even with him? Man, this is getting too philosophical for a book on how to write dialogue in fiction. Let's keep it simple."

Ah, if only Turco had taken his own advice!

He also uses the same example of a dialogue involving a secretary and a teacher over and over and over again, despite his own admission that it's *boring* and painful. ARGH! He uses stereotypes and many places, and one of his example stories, "Savants," was so incredibly offensive that I was tempted to put the book down right then.

I truly cannot convey how awful this book was - the *entire* time I was reading it, I had this huge, impatient tightness in my chest, pleading with me to stop. But, as I said, I kept going in hopes of learning something.

To be fair, there are a few handy tidbits in here (don't use too many adjectives and adverbs in tag lines, don't go on and on, and don't use overly-complex tag lines as an excuse to avoid writing the dialogue itself,) but there's nothing that can't be learned elsewhere with less torment.

My advice? DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! If you happen across any copies of it, back away slowly without making any sudden movements. It is EVIL!

I've read all the books in the Elements of Fiction Writing series and this is how I'd rank them.

"Scene & Structure" "Characters & Viewpoint" "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

The above three books are invaluable -- must reads. They are the best of the series, in my opinion, and are packed with good information on every page. Well-done.

"Conflict, Action & Suspense" "Description" "Plot" "Manuscript Submission" "Setting"

The above five books are good, solid reads. Again, they contain good information and cover the subject decently.

"Voice & Style" "Dialogue"

To me, the last two books need to be rewritten. They are by far the weakest of the series. Both suffer from an annoying style, particularly Dialogue, and both are very skimpy on real information. Neither one is very helpful.

This is the order in which I'd recommend reading them.

I'm sure there must be good books on dialogue out there, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. This is good for the absolute novice, but not for someone looking for more meat. The device of creating a "person to talk to" in the Socratic method falls flat on its face -- very boring dialog between the two "main characters" (of the author and his created counterpart) kills the lessons of the book: how to keep dialogue interesting.

Instead of this tripe, look up the book "Stein on Writing" by Sol Stein. Chapter 11, The Secrets of Good Dialog, lasts 12 pages and is worth infinitely more than this book, and bonus! there are 34 other chapters to learn additional writing techniques as well. Get that instead of this... you'll spend your money wisely.

"So, why does everybody think this book sucks?"

"Because, for the most part, it does," the Reviewer answers.

The Reader fixes the Reviewer with a quizzical look, "Why, what is wrong with it?"

"The biggest problem is that it is completely written in dialogue. As the Author of the book pointed out, dialogue is supposed to contribute and further a plot and make it interesting. The problem with this book was that there was no plot to further and no story to make interesting. This book isn't fiction nor should it be, this is a book on a non-fiction matter that the Author decided to turn into a story," the Reviewer says.

"So, it doesn't work?" asked the Reader.

"Not at all! In fact, the editor of the book is turned into a fictional character as well and even he or she is opposed to explaining dialogue in his chosen way. If I want a story, I'll pick one up. I wanted something that will teach me and this book wasn't it."

The Reader contemplates the opinion of the Reviewer and asked, "How should it have been different?"

The Reviewer scratches his goatee while thinking quietly to himself and replies, "Well, first of all, this should not have been done in Dialogue. Like I said, it didn't work. It turned out to be a conversation that jumped all over the place and was very distracting from the subject matter at hand. It should have been done in textbook style with subjects neatly covered before moving on instead of jumping back and forth between topics.

"Also, I would include story samples that were not written by the Author, as they all were. That made me loose credibility with the Author.

"Finally, the Author thinks he is funny and hits us with a lot of `witty' dialogue during the banter between the Author, Fred Foyle, and Nan Dedditor (Nan the Editor). Sadly, he isn't funny and it distracted from the subject and just plain irritated me. If the book was not done in dialogue the `humor' would have not been in the book and it would have been better," the Reviewer explains.

"But, was there anything good with the book?" the Reader asked.

"Don't get me wrong, I did find some useful information. But you've got to dig for it and if you wish to refer to it later on, good luck! The topics are scattered and revisited so much that finding anything again is complicated."

The Reader then asks, "So, who should read this book?"

Again, the Reviewer thinks about it for a little bit, "I would recommend other writing and dialogue books long before recommending this one. If you've got nothing else to read and still want to learn about Dialogue then pick up this book. You might learn something. But I don't think this will do much for most people who want to learn how to write better."

The Reader looks the Reviewer in the eyes and says, "This review annoys me."

The Reviewer looks back at him and says, "I am attempting to show you how this book is written. I've never written a review this way before and hopefully never will again. Please forgive me."

I read two other books in this series (Plot by Ansen Dibell and Beginnings, Middles, & Ends by Nancy Kress) and they were excellent, so I decided to try this one.

Unfortunately, Mr. Turco suffers from twin delusions: one, that he is humorous, and two, that his device (teaching dialogue through the use of Socratic dialogue) is useful, amusing, or instructive. I barely limped into chapter three, and restrained myself from throwing the book at the wall only because I was in the employee kitchen, and not my own home.

I purchased this as the accompanying text to an Internet course. In conjunction with the lessons, it was mildly helpful, but as a stand-alone I would have gotten nothing from it.

Unfortunately, the author chose to write this book about dialogue in the form of a dialogue--a clever premise, but not easy to follow. With the exeption of some actual stories, most of which he wrote himself, the examples are incorporated into a dialogue between the author, and his creation Fred Foyle, with a visit now and then from Nan Dedditor(get it?). Nan doesn't care for the format, or for the author using this as a vehicle for his short stories. Frankly, I think Turco would have done better to listen to what Nan had to say.I found the format very confusing. I had to read over some passages several times before I could post my lesson. Besides that, only one of the stories was any good. The others had apparently been written by the author in earlier times--or perhaps that was just his way of excusing a rather amateur style.

All in all, I'm glad I got this used, and didn't pay full price. It's not something that can easily be used for future reference.

I was very disappointed in the book. The book was very hard to read because the dialogue was very boring. (He wrote the book as if he was having a conversation with himself.) This style made it useless as a reference manual.

I would recommend the following books instead: Writing Dialogue by Tom Chiarella and Film Scriptwriting: A Practical Manual by Swain & Swain.

Slim volume. Too much info about obvious techniques: how to use quotations, quotations within quotations, how to properly format a script, etc. NOT enough explanation about the ways in which dialogue can establish desire, opposition, conflict, setting, and character. Overall, the book is well written (grammatically correct), well thought out (clearly defined concepts) but LACKING in any USEFUL substance (ie, ways the writer can USE the dialogue to MOVE the narrative forward). This book is OK for a high-school level introduction to the elements of dialogue.

I tried reading this cover to cover and, as another reviewer noted, this "Socratic" style of the author in a conversation with a beginning writer is irritating and self-consciously unfunny. However it DOES unintentionally provide an example of what NOT to do in dialogue: draw it out endlessly, in a circle going nowhere. If brevity is the soul of wit, this book has neither brevity nor wit. Just about any other book on dialogue--or even a book with just a solid chapter on dialogue--would be a better investment.

What a collossal disappointment this book was - if Amazon had a zero star option, I'd choose that.

Dialog is, of course, a key aspect of writing a good novel, and the added challenge is that written dialog in a novel is not the same as simply transcribing what people say in real life. There are a complexity of conventions and simplifications and devices and "tricks" and "skills" that are needed in order to craft the dialog that is so essential in a readable - and sellable - novel.

This writer's oblique attempt at illustrating what he talks about, for me at least, completely failed. I don't just mean partially or largely. I do mean completely failed. :( Consequently, as a text on how to write dialog, the book was a complete disappointment, and although I grimly read every page of it (although I'll confess I did skip some of the overly long samples of other writing), at the end of the experience, I felt I'd learned nothing.

Fortunately, reviewers before me have been kind enough to suggest some better texts on this topic. I just wish I'd followed their advice in the first place, and hope that you, dear reader, will be smarter than I! :)