White Space is Good/A Few Writing Tips

Believe me, I don't know it all and my typos etc. slip by me and my editors in my published books. And yes, when someone points them out, I cringe.

I read a lot of books, books by friends and books by bestselling authors (a few of my friends are best selling authors--more are not) and I find typos and errors in all of them. 

One tip that helps readers, I'm going to share.

When a paragraph is long and fills up the whole page without any indents, it can be off-putting.

One way to remedy this is to always start a new paragraph when someone new does or says something. 

Another tip is to keep a person's dialogue short. Unless someone is giving a speech, others will interrupt. 

Remember dialogue should always do one of two things: move the story along or reveal a phase of the person's character. 

Rather than use any dialogue tag (and if you do, said or asked is preferred) have the character who is speaking do something, or describe something about them, the action or description can then serve as the dialogue tag.

Here's to better writing for all of us and better entertainment for our readers.



My latest.

Marilyn




Comments

jrlindermuth said…
Good tips, Marilyn. We all need to be reminded of these things occasionally--even if we think we already know everything.

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