I’m here with a quick tip for writing dialogue. It’s nothing new, but it really grabbed me this time around. It’s something I noticed while reading Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give. It’s a stirring book, and yeah, it’s Thomas’s first novel. Twenty-five hundred reviews on Amazon; five solid stars. Praise is pouring in from…
Tag: Books
Nobody Here But Us Chickens
There’s a lot of noise around a chicken coop. Chickens aren’t quiet birds, especially in groups. Sometimes they squabble among themselves. That’s where we get the phrase “pecking order,” because people – like chickens – like to know who’s better than whom. Ideally the “me” wants to be positioned above the “you.” Some might argue…
One Judge’s Tale
Last year, I judged the Edgar Awards for the Mystery Writers of America. I was on the committee that selected Best Novel. My committee was nine judges to start with, including me. One judge dropped out somewhere around August, perhaps overwhelmed by the number of books or underwhelmed by the stories he was reading. I’ll…
A Writer’s Guide to Infinite Ideas
Where do I find them? Ideas, that is. Each time I hear an author asked “Where do you get your ideas?” I cringe. As Stephen King says on his website: “I get my ideas from everywhere. But what all of my ideas boil down to is seeing maybe one thing, but in a lot of…
Thrillers, Part 3 of 4: Villains
The villain in a thriller is generally not your run-of-the-mill murderer. He is someone with a goal in mind, and he is driving toward that goal, regardless of the damage he causes along the way. While he may enjoy that destruction, whether human (serial killer, assassin, strong-man dictator) or property (arsonist, bomber, unscrupulous land baron)…