Customer Reviews

Writing Dialogue

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

 

 

This book is great to have if you feel you need to improve the dialogue in your fiction. It is written with a conversational style throughout. Chiarella points out that real-time dialogue is not the same as fictional dialogue. By listening to other people talk (as well as myself), I find that he is quite correct. He teaches you how to push your story forward with dialogue, when to make your character talk (or shut up), and gives good examples of 'tennis court talking' or dialogue that goes nowhere. This book is a very good resource for my shelf.

Dialogue is the hardest thing to write. A story shines when it is done well. When the dialogue is bad, no one can wait to put the book down. Many of us never realize that dialogue happens all around us every day. The number one lesson that Tom Chiarella teaches in this book is learn to listen to this dialogue. Listen to how people talk. Write down what people say. Write down what you say. Listen.

This book was the best that I have read on dialogue yet. Chiarella writes with a simple style that feels like you're actually talking to him about dialogue while sitting over a cup of coffee. At the end of each chapter he provides a few exercises to practice the ideas that he talked about.

Pay particular attention to his first chapter on learning how to listen, and his "Nuts and Bolts" chapter. His chapter on "Writing for Radio, TV and Movies," provides some good ideas even if you are not writing for that medium. This is one of the better texts on writing, and I will hold on to this one for some time.

Although I didn't agree with everything presented, neither did the Author, and that was refreshing. I love how Tom's instructions are presented in workbook fashion, leaving much of the interpretation and real grasp of the concepts up to the reader. Unlike other texts on this subject, the book gives good treatment to all aspects of dialogue. I first read this at my public library, and have decided to buy it because I consider this a very valuable resource, with so much stuff in it, that I'll need to return to it again and again... Whether you are experienced or just starting out, this book provides useful hints on how to sharpen your dialogue.

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered

Writing Dialogue has convinced me that even experienced writers should massage their technique by frequently reading a good book by an expert-preferably someone who teaches at a credible university like author Tom Chiarella. Like a good rubdown refreshes cranky old bones, such a habit will rejuvenate perspective and technique. For beginners it will work like essential balm, teach what even careful reading sometimes fails to disclose.

The reason that I am so sure of this is that I had occasion to spruce up an excerpt from my first novel This is the Place. Connie Gotsch, host of a literary program on KSJE, a radio station that caters to classical music lovers in the four corners area, asked me to read from both my books. It reminded me of the days when the whole world tuned into drama a la The Haunting Hour and Fibber McGee and Molly.I decided the chapter should be trimmed so it would entertain in the same way that these programs had in the Golden Age of Radio.

I had just read Writing Dialogue and was surprised at how many changes I made in my already published dialogue as I was trimming the except. Before reading it, I was convinced that it wouldn't teach me much. I've studied long and hard, done my homework. That turned out to be hubris. The changes I made were subtle to be sure, a kind of tweaking that would not have been possible without Chiarella's insight.

Chiarella covers everything from grammar and the punctuation of dialogue to listening. He is most valuable, however, when he dissects dialogue and paints pictures of whole new ways to hear it, then to write it. He even includes tips like having characters interrupt themselves, back up and repeat and suggests ways this can be used to better characterization.

Writers should not borrow this book from the library. It will be better read, dog tagged, underlined and sitting on their desks where they can reach for a kind of writing-massage on a moment's notice.

(Carolyn Howard-Johnson will teach at UCLA's Writers' Program in the fall of 2004. She is the author of two award winning books, THIS IS THE PLACE, and HARKENING. Her work in progress is THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T.)

I got this book in a set... These two books, Writing Dialogue and Creating Character Emotions can be sold as a set, or singly. It is well worth having both, so please, buy the set!

The first book: Writing Dialogue, by Tom Chiarella, discusses listening and the importance of jotting. There are excellent examples, and challenging exercises that really drive the point. During the first chapter, I had already begun to dog-ear my pages!

Writing Dialogue is nearly a writing course with a cover. It describes just how important the meaning is of each word in a dialogue situation, how important silence is, and what holds it all together. After reading this book and trying some of the exercises suggested, I realized exactly what Tom Chiarella was trying to teach. The first exercise alone was quite difficult, but very exciting to go back and review the out come of it. A+ book!

The second book in this set: Creating Character Emotions, by Ann Hood, is an amazing tutorial on how to make your readers FEEL what the character is feeling. This book is arranged so that nearly each chapter is a different emotion. Examples are displayed in a bad vs. good approach. I really like to see the bad example first because when you read the good example you can really tell the difference.

Some of the emotions covered in Creating Character Emotions are: anger, anxiety, confusion, gratitude, curiosity, fear, sadness, desire, grief, and there are so many more. If you have ever felt it...it is covered in this book. Another A+ book!

Having spent more than a third of a century writing non-fiction--55 business books--coming out of retirement to write my first novel, I thought, would be easy. Wrong! What a shock. Going from under 10% dialogue to more than 50% was no small barrier to hurdle. ##### Some would say, if the shoe doesn't fit don't wear it. O.K. Good logic. But the problem, I found, was not insurmountable. And, Chiarella is quite right: fictional dialogue and conversational dialogue are worlds apart, and his book zeros in admirably on the differences. ##### In the final analysis, though, I feel close study of early 20th century classics is the best way to learn the proper use of dialogue: The Great Gatsby, 1925, Fitzgerald's lyrical use of prose, incorporating free-flow dialogue so seamlessly, is a good example. And, for crisp, hammerlike-impact speech the earthy utterances as presented in James M. Cane's The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1934, and the gritty, survalist tone of the words spoken in his Double Indemnity, 1935, I think, illustrate my point. Then there is Nabakov's Lolita, 1947, to study for the eloquent, multi-layered emotonal landscape it lays out and the dialogue that echos this. ##### In sum, I found Chiarella's "take" on dialogue to be most interesting--as a "spur" to reach further for answers, in all, a good "kick-off" platform.

I have purchased and read perhaps two dozen of the books on writing linked through the Amazon and bookfinder searches. Mr. Chiarella's book on dialogue gave me more help in its niche that any of the others. It is clear, to the point, and worth buying and reading. There are other more comprehensive treatments such as Janet Burroway's or E.M. Forster's. I enjoyed David Lodge's , The Art of Fiction. Some may even read Greek and like to start with Aristotle's Poetics. But for good understanding of dialogue, Mr. Chiarella has given us a sound, brief treatment easily worth the price.

There were some good tips in this book, but overall there weren't as many as I would have expected from a book focusing solely on dialogue. A number of the tips I'd already read in more general books on writing, so that tempered the amount of useful information I was able to get out of the book. The commentary and anecdotal stories in this book make it more interesting to read, but also leave less room for the actual mechanics of writing dialogue.

Writing Dialgue by Tom Chiarella is simply the most readable book on Dialogue I've come across. As I've applied his techniques in my own writing, I've noticed an instant increase in scene tension and realism. His artful demonstration of the difference between conversation and dialogue will always stay with me. Contrary to some authors who simply advise you to listen to genuine conversation, Chiarella explains how and why every writer must do so.

Hi, I'm a computer programmer. I've used this book to make the scripts better for my companies NPC characters in our up-comming game. Before I read this book, I didn't know a whole lot about this subject. This book really helped a non-writer like me improve the games dialogue.