fiction writing tips

Writer Ursula K. Le Guin on Dialogue

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All I can recommend is to read/speak your dialogue aloud. Not whispering, not muttering, OUT LOUD. (Virginia Woolf used to try out her dialogue in the bathtub, which greatly entertained the cook downstairs.) This will help show you what’s fakey, hokey, bookish — it just won’t read right out loud. Fix it till it does. Speaking it may help you to vary the speech mannerisms to suit the character. And probably will cause you to cut a lot. Good! Many contemporary novels are so dialogue-heavy they seem all quotation marks — disembodied voices yaddering on in a void.  ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: Open Culture

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #28

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Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. Plot is observed after the fact rather than before. ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #27

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There is only one type of story in the world. Your story. … At heart, all good stories are the one kind of story, the story written by an individual man from his individual truth. ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #25

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The writer must let his fingers run out the story of his characters, who, being only human and full of strange dreams and obsessions, are only too glad to run. ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #24

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[The writer’s] greatest art will often be what he does not say, what he leaves out, his ability to state simply with clear emotion, the way he wants to go. ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #21

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The main thing is compression. It really isn’t putting so much is there any metaphor – and this is where my knowledge of poetry has been such a help to me. …If you can find the right metaphor, the right image, and put it in the sink, it can replace four pages of dialogue.” ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #20

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“Instead of the six lines of dialogue, can’t you find a way of saying it with two?” ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #19

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I had to write a 260 page screenplay. That’s six hours. Jack said, “Well now you’ve got to cut out 40 pages.” I said, “God, I can’t.” He said, “Go ahead, I know you can do it. I’ll be behind you.” So I cut 40 pages out. He said, “OK, now you’ve got to get another 40 pages out.” But I got it down to 180 pages. And then Jack said, “Thirty more.” And I said “Impossible, impossible!” OK, I got it down to 150 pages. He said, “OK now thirty more.” Well, he kept telling me I could do it. And, by God, I went through a final time and got it down to 120 pages. It was better. ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #18

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We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.  ~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Writing Wisdom #13

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Do not, for money, turn away from all the stuff you have collected in a lifetime. Do not, for the vanity of intellectual publications, turn away from what you are, the material within you, which makes you individual, and therefore indispensable to others. ~ Ray Bradbury

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