Heroes Insider Weekly

Moondragon's Edit Yerself

Edit Yerself

By @AngelaStevens562

Moondragon wanders into an empty room. It’s like the Marie Celeste, half eaten pizza, glass of something sticky, no sign of Hawkeye or is there?

M: Hawkeye? Hey where are you, thought we were going to work on your editing.

(Silence- Moondragon puts her head under the computer desk and looks at Hawkeye under there.) You hiding from me?

H: Um, no I um… dropped something was trying to find it.

M: Ah good. For one minute, I thought you were avoiding our first editing lesson.

(Hawkeye sighs and reluctantly climbs out from under the desk)

H: Now why would you think that Moondragon?

(He reluctantly sits down and resigns himself) So what are we going to do today, I already told you I sorted out the spelling mistakes.

M: And I already told you there is more to editing than running the spell checker. So today we are gonna learn about dialogue and how to use it in our stories, how to lay it out correctly and how to attribute it.

H: WTF is attribute?

M: All in good time Hawkeye now, lets start with the basics eh.

H: I suppose so.

M: Okay so first, why do you need dialogue in your story?

H: Because people talk and it’d be boring with out it.

M: True, but dialogue has to have a purpose in a story.

H: It does?

M: Yes, it does more than one job actually; first it helps a writer show rather than tell.

H: Oh that’s good, I have heard of that, first rule of writing or something, yeah?

M: Something like that. It also builds tension and drama in your storyand helps you further the plot.

H: Hmmm, that makes sense.

M: It also helps you to both develop and reveal the character of your characters, if you do it properly.

H: Sounds good.

M: Are you gonna interject all the time or do you think you could just listen?

Hawkeye Scowls makes a zipping action across his mouth.

M: Good, now where was I, oh yes and dialogue creates white space on the page

(Hawkeye frowns)

Readers like that, it helps increase the pace of the story makes the page more attractive to read, makes them feel like they are moving through the chapters quickly.

H: It does?

M: It does. So with that planted firmly in your head you need to make sure that the dialogue you include is good dialogue and not just padding or sawdust in your novel.

H: So how will I be able to tell the difference?

M: Well that is what I’m gonna teach you. First when you are editing your dialogue you need to take a look at your dialogue attribution.