Body language and dialogue play equal roles in communication. Sign language interpreters are engaging and expressive. While their hands sculpt meaning for the hearing impaired, their facial expressions drive home the emotional tenor. As a public official reads from a prepared disaster statement in calm tones, the interpreter punctuates the message with sharp movements and facial expressions that convey the true seriousness of the situation. Body Language When writing dialogue, channel the sign language interpreter. Have your characters jab with intensity and sway as if buffeted by hurricane force winds. Display emotion not only in facial expression, but with shoulders, posture, gaze. Imagine you are observing your character from across…
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Narration and Dialog Keep Your Story Moving
Fiction writing comes in two stripes: narration and dialog. They both move the story along. Narration does it in large strokes. Dialog gets into detail at the character level. Narration Narration allows the writer to relay information that is important to the story in a paragraph or two. It sets the scene, describes a particular place or a specific time period. Or perhaps it condenses the important events leading to the character’s current situation. In a novel, writers use narration to summarize earlier scenes to remind the reader how they got to that point. In each case, narration is a kind of shortcut to give the reader information or description…
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Quotation Marks
Whether you’re writing fiction, a letter to the editor, or a heavily researched report, it is important to know how and when to use quotation marks. Dialog In fiction, quotation marks are used exclusively for dialog. That is to say, they surround a character’s spoken words. For example: I shove the photo in Evan’s face. “Who is she?” I demand. “Alex,” he says, his face a giant question mark. And you slipped this into my locker because. . . ?” he actually squirms under my glare “You said you wanted pictures.” In this example the character’s spoken words begin and end with quotation marks. Anything outside of the quotation marks…
