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b'"As you know, we\'ll be discussing stilted dialog" said Howard. "We should do something different for the introduction."
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\\n"Let\'s speak our dialog tags" said Brandon cleverly.
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\\n"We mustn\'t forget to include adverbs" said Dan pensively.
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\\nThat\'s not exactly how it went down, but that\'s a nicely stilted object lesson, right? And let me state for posterity that writing it was painful.
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\\nWhat is "stilted dialog?" Who is wearing stilts, and why? More importantly, how can we avoid writing dialog that staggers about on leg extensions?
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\\nWe offer a few tricks, including heavily re-writing (after first racing to get as much dialog on the page as possible), using turns of phrase that are in-character for the person saying it, and turning exposition into arguments.
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\\nAudiobook Pick-of-the-Week: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, which is currently being read by the Internet reading group One book, One Twitter.
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\\nWriting Prompt: This is a two-parter - Start by writing the very worst infodumping maid & butler dialog you can (using an actual maid and an actual butler.) Now rewrite it with the maid & butler arguing viciously. Include all the same information, but make the dialog believable and entertaining.
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