"I'm not sure how to create a new post here, and so I'm commenting. I've finally caved in my baseless avoidance of blogging, and so I'll blog.
I'm working on a little fiction piece here for a class and I'm concentrating on using a lot of dialogue (about 70-80% of the words) mostly as an exercise to get better at the art since I hear it is a very difficult writing device to be good at. And so, the question comes to mind: who are some authors that excel at writing dialogue? So far my example has mostly been Hemingway because my characters would resemble his and my setting actually literally crosses the geographical path of his "Big Two-Hearted River". So, that's the question I pose to our esteemed group of NMU creative writers.
Cheers.
Doug"
Very good question, sorry I didn't notice the comment till today (apparenntly when Jess noticed it too). No one really comes to mind, though... I guess I don't read a lot of "literature" in the traditional sense.
ReplyDeleteA quick internet search gave me this "how to" website, and I liked the examples- maybe it'll be helpful?
http://www.sfwriter.com/ow08.htm
Well I know a good dialogue example in movies at least is any Quentin Tarintino movie watch some of those scenes some of the best written dialogue there is.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never blogged either. But to follow up on Ryan’s suggestion, I would check out the movie and TV scripts in addition to watching the shows. This is especially helpful if you’re like me and get sucked into movies and TV shows quite easily.
ReplyDeleteFor short story authors that use dialog effectively, I might suggest Carver and Chekhov. If you’re looking for a serious "laugh," George Saunders book, In Persuasion Nation, is an interesting read with plenty of dialog. I have books of each such author’s short stories that I could lend you. Also, I have a book from EN 300 that has proved helpful, if only because much of the dialog in each of the short stories is particular to the characters—in a blatantly obvious way, something I appreciate.
For unique and economical ways of using dialog, I continue to be pleasantly surprised when reading flash fiction, or short-short fiction, or whatever other terms they have for stories shorter than “short.” Check: SmokeLong.com, wigleaf.com, MadUtopia.com, wordriot.org, corpse.org, and Mizna.org—to name a VERY few with the most memorable web addresses. You may have to sift through a lot to find pieces particularly helpful, or you could go to a site like Newpages.com to get the low down on the different content literary magazines focus on.
If you’re looking for novels, I’d suggest: White Noise or Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit or Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson, and Passing by Nella Larsen. If I were to judge what type of literature you like from your poetry, I’d say that each of these authors sufficiently “delves deep,” if I may put it rather simply. Though, these authors are not what I would consider “dialog heavy.”