Thank, Robert

[Megawatts]

I want to thank Robert Moriyama for his excellent assessments of my stories, but more importantly, I would like to thank him for his exceptional revisions to my stories that have really enhanced them.<br><br>My last stories, “One Night at Eddie’s” came alive after Robert demonstrated better word usage with my dialogues and phrases. <br><br>His advice “listen to how people talk” is gold when writing dialogue, and I’ve been listening to conversations between other people and noting their interactions since.<br><br>Until you can understand how conversation works, you can’t write it! <br><br> <br>

[Robert_Moriyama]

Actually, Watts was referring to comments I made regarding the speech patterns -- diction, vocabulary level, and tone -- used by his characters. It's risky to try writing dialogue for (say) a drug-addicted serial killer of a particular ethnicity and nationality if you're an Ivy League college student, or a speech for a rocket scientist if you're a trucker ... or a speech for ANYBODY if you never pay attention to the way that people actually talk.<br><br>To do convincing dialogue, you really need to both capture the speech patterns and, as you say, know why the character is saying anything at all. What are his/her motives? "If I were that person, would I say that? If so, is that HOW I would say it?" This is not to say that I always get it right (or ever get it right) myself, of course.<br><br>Robert M.