Bufty said:
To Sesselja,
What exactly is it you would be looking for from reading all the dialogue from these folk?
I got the idea from Uncle Jim, the post where he talks about how artists copy paintings of the old masters to learn the techniques and where he suggest copying a chapter of a book you enjoy. I know dialogue-writing is my greates problem in writing, so I would like to do something similar.
I want to see how the masters handle dialogue. How they construct sentences; how they use beats and tags; what techniques they use to make a character's voice distinct and individual.
Bufty said:
If your own characters are fully formed and are reacting to a given situation, surely the dialogue would flow naturally enough.
That's the word of someone who has no problems writing dialogue...
In theory, that would be true. But although I know my characters and can hear their voices in my head, I cannot get it out on paper so it read well. It's the same with singing. I can hear a melody in my head, but something happens to it on the way out and it sounds all off-key and weird. I lack a musically tuned ear, and dialogue has a lot to do with music. So I need to work harder than others on this part of my writing.
Bsolah: My husband loved the way Steinbeck handled dialogue in that book, but I cannot read it. With English as second language, I have to work so hard to read British/American/Aussi slang/accents/dialects, that by the time I finish a sentence I have forgot how it started.
PS: Thanks for all the suggestions!
