Once I’d finished the new novel a few weeks ago, I set about re-reading a couple of my books on editing fiction. In the past ten years, I’ve only edited screenplays or government reports and copy. I wanted to be certain there wasn’t anything I’d forgotten before I went full left-brain on it. And to my horror, there was.
Dialogue attributions.
There are no dialogue attributions in anything I’ve written since 2015. I’d forgotten it all; gone right back to year R. I looked through my novel and my heart sank through the floor.
“Blah blah blah” said character 1.
“Blah blah blah” said character 2.
“Blah blah blah” said character 1.
“Blah blah blah” said character 2.
I’d even misremembered whether to put ‘said’ before or after the name. Apparently, it’s after, as we don’t say ‘said she’ very often these days.
So the rewriting process has been a lot slower than I thought it would be. But I am having a lot of fun getting creative with the dialogue attributions.
Still, I expected to be halfway through the sequel by now, while the characters and the world were still fresh in my head. That ain’t happening any time soon. Ah, well.
If you would like to alpha read my book, I’d very much appreciate any feedback. I’m using Story Origin as I quite like the functionality they have on there for controlling access and getting comments.
You can find the book at:
https://storyoriginapp.com/betacopies/eeb1240b-dd16-4ed7-ab03-02780f56f85a
You need to create a free account, but it’s not too arduous.
Until next time…
If you have Kindle Unlimited, my fantasy novel, The Elementalist, and all my Noku Puzzle books are on there for you to read. Although, looking through the Fantasy section of Story Origin, I’d imagine most people might be bored with elemental magic by now. Time for something new, eh?