Out of sheer curiosity, I took a peek inside five random novels on my bookshelf. Of those five, four books used character attributions only at the beginning of conversations. The fifth book, one of my guilty pleasure series, used them a lot, even when the conversation was well-established. (FYI: a “guilty pleasure” for me is a story that might not be written very well, but the characters and/or world are so interesting that I overlook the poor writing.)

I’d rather take the time to (learn) and write stronger dialogue than be considered a lazy writer. I’m definitely taking that fix to heart.

As for speech tags. I hate them!! With a passion. This is just my personal opinion obviously and when I’m reading I guess I can overlook them if I enjoy everything else about a book, but basically I really don’t like them. I want to get a sense of how someone is talking (or what they mean or don’t mean) from body language and context. You can create subtle subtext and conflict. As Holly mentioned in her Dialogue lession. Bob is stitching a saddle quite violently which is at odds when he’s trying to remain reasonable. (If I remember right)

For example: someone’s trying to appear relaxed while they are waiting for something. ‘He leaned back on the sofa, spreading his arms out wide. “I’ll wait, no problem”. He crossed his legs. The foot resting on his knee jiggled, making his shoelaces jump.’

You know, I now find myself wanting to write stuff even in posts like this. Which is definitely your fault, Holly After along time of feeling too emotionally exhausted to write, I’m getting back to it. I’m in the middle of the first lesson and already I’ve learnt a lot and finding these Crash Tests is great. Thanks

1. Anything that can be used to do something really nifty (like power a ship to FTL velocity) can probably also be used as a weapon…
2. Is there anyone dumb enouogh to go back in time and actually try to kill their grandpa? Seriously? And do we need to be told this theory every time someone writes a time travel novel?
3. If you invent a really cool technology for a sci-fi adventure, like quantum communicators that work anywhere, any time, then be prepared to write about what would make them fail to work. Things that never fail cannot be used to create tension…
4. Artificial life is different than artificial intelligence. Know the difference before writing about it. Please.
5. If it takes 1 or more pages to explain how something works, forget it, unless you’re writing a cooking novel. Average readers will be bored and scientific readers are going to tear you to shreds, so you can’t win. “There was a shimmer and Bob materialized on the planet’s surface” is good enough for most people.

Lastly… I can’t imagine any species capable of FTL travel that would give a rat’s rear end about how many whales we have on Earth. Whoever wrote that was on LSD, or just a major panderer to people I wouldn’t go to dinner with.. imho.