Hi all- Jack Wylder here.
I know we’re behind on the WriterDojo episodes so this week you’re getting a double feature- Season 1, Episode 12: Dialogue AND Season 1, Episode 13: Horror (the Halloween episode) Enjoy!
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Episode 12 is brought to you by Dan Willis’ In Plain Sight
In Plain Sight is the first book in Dan Willis’s Arcane Casebook series. Readers looking for complex mysteries, well-developed magic, with plenty of action, adventure, and suspense, will find In Plain Sight to be just their slug of whisky.
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/writerdojo/id1581703261
Breaker: https://www.breaker.audio/writerdojo
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Radio Public: https://radiopublic.com/writerdojo-6vP0qX
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2X7bG3PMqln9ZKinIDjs27 )
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVzOkQ046Fav9ZukaK36eiA
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-1159741
Glad to see you’re alive, Jack, and thanks for the goods!
Yay! Glad you’re back and feeling better Jack.
BTW Larry I remember reading your dialogue advice in the post about writing tips. After reading that I will say the dialog portions of my short stories improved tremendously, so thank you.
Side note, any thought about posting on these the writing challenges? I listen while driving and by the time I get home I’ve usually forgotten the challenge even existed until I hear the next one.
You don’t have to cater to my laziness, but I would appreciate it.
On the phonetic accent thing, I’ve long wondered how doable it would be to have the proper English version of the text as normal, but put ruby text/furigana over it that’s written with the “accent”. The big question is how quickly readers would pick up on what it meant since it’s not really used in English anymore, and if ebook readers even support it.
“Prague is [in] a landlocked country”
Unless you’re William Shakespeare.
I remember the book bomb (bullet? whatever?) where you featured In Plain Sight. I got it and have been enjoying the series tremendously ever since. Good stuff!
I’ve also been enjoying the Arcane Casebook series since LC promoted it. Hope it gets a boost via the podcast!
Add another big thumbs up for the Arcane Casebook series. Dan Willis is one of three authors whose new books automatically jump to the head of my reading queue.
Episode 12:
IMO dialogue on the page must seem real to the reader. Written dialogue is to real-life dialogue what movies are to reality.
Dialogue moves forward twice, maybe thrice, as fast as narrative. If you do it right.
To see dialogue done wrong, read Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged — or as much of it as you can stand. The characters do not converse. They lecture each other.
Another look at dialogue done wrong can be found in Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness. The problem with The Left Hand of Darkness is too much narrative, too little dialogue, so the book feels longer than it is. Narrative slows the pace.
The Audiobook dialog error has been bugging me since Larry mentioned it in the podcast. Because I remembered hearing it but couldn’t remember what book it was in. However after a bit of luck I think I found it.
House of Assassins Ch 27 starts around the 2:50 minute mark. The Keeper and Ashok parts are flipped.
I think its just an honest mistake. But I can see the argument that better tagging might have made it less likely to happen.
I will say. The one thing that makes the Ringo books harder to listen to vs than main line Monster Hunter books is the number of times “said” gets used.
Thanks for the podcast and all the great books.
If horror is like bacon, making everything better, is romance like tofu? Way I see it, romance in fiction can be done really well by someone who knows what they are doing, but it utterly ruins the dish when someone who doesn’t, even an otherwise competent writer/cook, tries it.
Though given how badly some works have been ruined by bad romance, maybe it’s more like fugu…
Very interesting episode on horror. Listening to it I realized a section I thought had taken a hard turn into horror, really hadn’t (the plan horrified the main character but there was no threat to it), but also realized a different section was using horror mechanics (they’re having tea, but the other character is not sane and could squish something the main character cares about if they flip from ‘tea party’ into axe crazy mode. )
I’m going to have to pay attention to that and use it more deliberately.