Customer Reviews

Write Great Fiction - Dialogue (Write Great Fiction Series)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was worried there was no such thing as a decent dialogue book. I wanted to buy "Dialogue" from the "Elements of Fiction Writing" series but the reviews were horrible. I instead bought "Writing Dialogue". The book was horrible, a waste of time and money. I was starting to think there was no such thing as a decent dialogue book. Perhaps no more than one or two dozen pages could be written on the subject.

Gloria Kempton in her excellent "Dialogue" book from the new "Write Great Fiction" series from the excellent "Writer's Digest Books" publisher laid my fears to rest. I was very jaded from my horrible experiance with "Writing Dialogue" and read this book with a very poor attitude to start. As the chapters went by, I found my self liking the book and learning excellent points. By the time I got to chapter five, Narrative, Dialogue, and Action, she had won me over.

I learned much from her. Some highlights:

Make your scenes three dimensional. Narration, action, dialogue.

Don't bother with huge multi-page descriptions of your charactors to get a handle on their emotions and drives. All humans fall into nine catagories. Place your charactors in one of these catagories and 90 percent of your work is done. I am number five, the observer. My wife is number nine, the peacemaker.

To really get to know a charactor write a few page monolog of them speaking to you.

The power of dialogue to do many things, quicken the pace, add excitement and emotion, touch the reader's heartstrings, control the scope of the novel.

Different types of novels and the type of dialogue they require.

A must buy by anyone serious about writing.

PS I have had excellent results from the "Writer's Digest Books" publisher. I have most of their "Elements of Fiction Writing Books" and an working on getting all of their new "Write Great Fiction" books. They seemed to have kicked it up a few notches with this new series. Top notch stuff!

I think I understand why some ratings here are low and I also have feeling some folks were expecting someone to magically plop all the rules of dialogue in their laps. Sad news, darlings, you must WORK at learning dialogue and practice as the author delineates in this book. Before, I was very stiff in my dialogue and overworked it to death, and after this book? I'm no longer afraid of it. I have a better grasp on how character personalities work in combination with how they speak. I'm know now that every dialogue needs three crucial components to have balance. The author uses concise examples and literary excerpts from top notch authors to get her points across, and she does a great job.

Don't worry about the lazy naysayers, they wanted a quick list of how to's and don't understand how patience and practice DO pay off in the end.

(And to Thriller lover in particular, you don't have a clue do you? A character's personality has everything to do with dialogue, it's what makes their voice unique. Why do you think she included an entire chapter on it? Gah! *shakes head* )

I purchased this book because it was a requirement for a Writers On-Line class that focused on dialogue. Prepared for a dry book on the subject, I was pleasantly surprised at the approach and examples. It focuses on all writing and not specific genres.

This book is on my reference shelf and will remain there as a valuable tool and reminder of what I need to incorporate in my romance writing.

This book contains all of the advice on dialogue I've read anywhere and much more. It is much better than the book by Tom Chiarella who has a whole chapter on listening to people talk by including psychological advice on how to crowd people. Kempton advises listening, end of story. While typing people into only nine personality categories doesn't seem to account for all of us, it is useful for the writer to choose such a type for each character. I may expand the list. She includes teen dialogue.

More to the point she talks about how to weave dialogue, action, and narrative so it is much broader than it sounds.

Eloise Hamann

It's hard for me to express how this book disapointed me in concrete, rational terms. The best I can put it is: Gloria Kempton gives you an idea of what great dialogue should be, but doesn't teach you how to get there. What would have improved this book would have been examples of bad dialogue, dialogue that didn't serve its purpose, corrected into good dialogue. There is a snippet of that, but just a snippet.

This book is about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. Those last 100 pages or so draaaged. It's excessively repetative, to the point where I had to really force myself to get through even the last 10 pages. I couldn't imagine having to read even. one. more. word. of the repetative drivel.

I give Dialogue 4 stars because, despite the flaws-- and the typos, because there's a bunch of them-- the book departs valuable advice. You learn how easy dialogue can be if you just get inside your character's head and ask one question: what would this person say. You learn that dialogue is means to an end, not the end itself, and I think that's a mistake I've been making. There are exercises at the end of the chapter to help hone my skills. I liked the blocked out text on how to fix my work and the checklists-- both easy to reference when I need advice in a pinch, but don't have time to go through the many points I post-it-flagged in the book.

Not the earth-shattering manual I expected it to be, but with great qualities of its own. I'm sure it'll keep a place on my bookshelf.

This book attempts to be comprehensive. It breaks down dialogue based on genre type. It offers these categories to sort and understand dialogue: magical, cryptic, descriptive, shadowy, breathless, provocative, and uncensored.

While I think the attempt is admirable, and perhaps the exercises could be useful for some, it falls flat, and I'm going to try and show you why I feel this is so. It's the magical/fantasy dialogue section that is particularly worthless and the biggest reason I gave this book one star.

In her example of "magical" dialogue she uses a brief excerpt from Lord of the Rings, part of which goes like this: ""No, Sam!" said Frodo. "Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me."

Almost everyone has heard of Tolkien, and, wonderful as he was, *no one* cites Tolkien for his snappy, award-winning dialogue. It simply was not his strong point.

She claims the dialogue from that example is "eloquent" because it does not use contractions, and also "direct" which she supports by this further example from the same text, "But do not expect me to wish you health and long life. You will have neither."

Direct, according to thefreedictionary, "Straightforward and candid; frank"

Let me show you direct: "Die." Or, "I hate you." Or, possibly, "Death comes quickly." And so on. If there is one thing such 'magical' dialogue is not, it would be direct. (Or advisable. It's usually just plain bad writing.)

Despite her claim that she does not read much Romance because romance authors often write dialogue which does not 'transcend' our modern culture which leaves their 'magical' dialogue sounding "hokey" (her word), she claims that if you want to be a successful fantasy or science fiction author, you must master the art of 'magical' dialogue which is all about this attempt at transcendence. So, romance and fantasy should have similar cheesy dialogue. The more cheese, the closer it is to real romance, or fantasy, or science fiction.

That is utter dreck. If you want to go back in time and become a writer then by all means follow her advice. If you'd like to become a successful author today you'd have an easier time of it if you never got this book - unless you buy it only to know What Not To Do. Instead, read widely both in and outside your usual preferences/genre to get a better understanding of what's being published today.

Dialogue is about the character's voice - Gloria Kempton gets this confused with style assumptions based on genre. And it's not just fantasy. Her opinions and examples in general were lacking. I'm not saying that an inventive person would find nothing of use - especially if writing is completely new - but I believe the damage to a new writer could be astonishing if they took everything she said to heart.

The magical dialogue is just a nice name for hokey dialogue, if that's something you aim for then follow her advice advice. If it isn't, you would be far happier, and receive far better advice, if you stick with the other books in the series and ignore this one. Nancy Kress's "Beginnings, Middles & Ends" is a great pick, so is Orson Scott Card's "Characters & Viewpoints". Stephen King's "On Writing" is another good pick.

All in all, I highly recommend you do not buy this book. It is a flat out waste of time and money and could even make your writing journey more difficult.

I feel really sorry for the would-be-writers who are taught by this author. If they write anything like this book--wordy, pointless, boring--well, good luck to them. I've read at least 10 books on the craft of fiction writing; I think this is the worst book. In Chapter 2, she talks about her student's fear of writing dialogue, and I thought she might be teaching middle school English classes, not college-level creative writing courses. Somewhere she talks about one of her student's question, why a story has to have a plot, and she goes on to say in many words why a plot is needed, etc., as if the readers of this book are all like the insincere student. I lost interest and went to the next chapter.

In Chapter 3, she talks about Genre, Mainstream, Literary. She says, "Literary stories are avant-garde and experimental stories that incorporate unconventional and nontraditional writing style and techniques. Maybe she got it right and other authors got it wrong.

In Chapter 4 (Dialogue that propels the story forward), she has subsections of "Dialogue that moves," "Provides new information," "Reveals new obstacles," "Increases suspense," "Furthers the theme," "Shows character transformation," "Reveals/reminds of goals," and "Keeping your characters in social settings." What's the point of all these? Even mentioning these in a paragraph would be unnecessary (I don't believe a person who hasn't read any book on creative writing would jump right into a book titled "Dialogue"), but this book has each of these points in subsections. Nothing what she says sticks in your head, and you feel like throwing up. I stopped reading somewhere in Chapter 4; that was last month and I don't feel like continue reading.

Oh, she has lots of exercises (each seemed like writing a novel; I might be wrong, because I've paid attention to just a few of them). If you like that (I don't), go for it. I've learned a hundred times more in a short chapter (Chapter 11, The secrets of Good Dialogue) from Sol Stein's "Stein on Writing."

A relatively comprehensive guide to dialogue writing which highlights important aspects such as finding rhythm, identifying writing fears, and common mistakes. On the minus side, I found some of the advice to be rather obvious, while the chapter on mood is a litle thin and the one about dialogue quirks, over the top. Advice is ultimately aimed at mainstream writing, so if you fall outside of that you'll get less out of it.

I read a lot of books on writing, and I felt that DIALOGUE: TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES was definitely one of the weaker ones. This book imparts very little practical advice on how to write dialogue well. We instead get lots of pages devoted to irrelevant subjects (like a lengthy chapter on personality types) and a lot of other filler. If you're looking for a no-nonsense, get-to-the-point book on writing, this book isn't it.

There's some useful information in this book, but most of it could have been summarized in less than 50 pages. My advice is to skip this overpriced book and spend your money on better, more comprehensive guides (such as Stein on Writing, Orson Scott Card's Character & Viewpoint, and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers).

I felt like I wasted my money on this one.

This book contains lots of useful information, not just about how to write snappy dialogue but also to get the most out of dialogue and to get it do the most that it can do, such as expanding characterization and setting details, and reinforcing the role of the main character. As with the Nancy Kress book in the same series on Character and Emotion, this book also contains a wealth of information about first-person perspective.
Unlike that book however, Ms. Kempton uses a more easygoing style which, while it sometimes facilitates the readability, it sometimes also distracts the reader by containing "attitude" which does not belong (to any detectable extent) in an instructional/informational book. There is a perfectly unsatisfying example of this tendency in the section where Ms. Kempton discusses telephone conversation dialogue. All she says about it is that in this era of cellphones, "there is no longer any excuse for static telephone conversations." This is really all she has to say about it, and I really could've used a more expansive discussion on this subject.
So, overall, despite the bothersome level of casualness (maybe a touch too much character in her instructional writing style, a character which would be a strength in fiction but is distracting here), a useful book with more than enough useful content to justify buying it. There will be plenty of dog-ears, believe me.