by Joni M Fisher | Nov 27, 2013 | Musings
Bless you, Mrs. Margaret Cline, wherever you are for being an encouraging, brilliant English teacher from Dunedin High School in Dunedin, Florida. A grammar stickler, Mrs. Cline took me in after I was tossed from another English class for arguing with the teacher who...
by Joni M Fisher | Aug 9, 2013 | Craft of Writing
Remember the last time you read dialogue and it didn’t sound genuine? Something was off, odd or not quite believable? Perhaps the wording did not suit the character. For example, unless a man is a decorator, painter or artist, he won’t point to a color and call it...
by Joni M Fisher | Aug 8, 2013 | Craft of Writing
People recognize terrible dialogue when they hear it in movies, or on television or read it in books. It comes off wooden, robotic, confusing, lecturing, boring or in some way artificial sounding. Examples abound in B-grade movies, comic books, soap operas, and...
by Joni M Fisher | Aug 7, 2013 | Craft of Writing
Dialogue without conflict is talking heads. There, I’ve got it out in the open. In commercial, or genre fiction, dialogue makes up half of the novel with narration as the other half. This is why learning to craft great dialogue matters. Inexperienced writers tend to...
by Joni M Fisher | Aug 1, 2013 | Musings
My love of story began about the time I learned to walk. I listened to mother read bedtime stories and my brothers and I would tell each other about our adventures. The time with my mother was precious because she held two jobs. On nights when she was too tired to...