Tips for Writing Dialogue (A Twitter Thread from 2022)

It is BETTER to have TOO MANY dialogue tags telling readers who is talking than TOO FEW.

Too many--a reader's eye can skip over them as they're reading and they'll fade into the background.

TOO FEW and a reader is pulled out of the story with "Wait, what? Who said this??"

ALSO be cautious about breaking up your dialogue of a single speaker into multiple paragraphs without dialogue tags to indicate that the new paragraph is NOT someone else responding. Yes, you can have an unclosed quotation mark--but if the previous paragraph ends with internal narration or action, then the reader doesn't have anything to clue them in without a tag. You don't HAVE to start a new paragraph after an interjected internal thought/staging.

I totally overuse tags. I will "said" my way through every dang line of dialogue even when I have an action that will work for the beat/cadence pause I need instead. But the word "said" becomes invisible--excessive dialogue tagging is a risk you SHOULD take for clarity. (And something you can always pare back later in editing if it really is too much.)

One more dialogue tip:
It works best at the beginning and the end of a paragraph. Framing it inside a sandwich of action/thoughts/staging can result in the dialogue getting lost to the reader. Sometimes you need it, like if someone's frazzled or tripping but use sparingly.

These thoughts brought to you both by my current writing in which I am trying to rein myself in and let my action beats do a little more of the lifting, and also revisiting an old friend favorite read that lost me in the weeds of poorly framed dialogue this round.

A good, compulsive story with good characters/chemistry who you are rooting for desperately might overcome the technical issues in the actual writing as someone speeds through a book but--there's no reason to give readers an excuse like that to put it down, you know?

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Top 5 Reads of 2016!

I do a lot of reading and rereading -- this year I'm at 97 books read, and a very solid portion of those are rereads from years past (I'm in the middle of a huge Animorphs reread sooo.) But for THIS post, I'm going to just focus on the books that were new to me this year. If I have time, I'll put together another with my Top Five ReReads but -- that will wait for another day, or maybe even the new year! I'm also going to be assembling a top Hist Fic reads list for that other Amalia, so I'm excluding those from this particular list as well.

Top five NEW reads of 2016


1) Gentlemen Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Cordelia is one of my most favorite literary characters -- and as far as sci fi characters go, she's right up there with Princess Leia, so of course I was beyond stoked when I heard that at long last, Cordelia was going to be center stage again in this Vorkosigan Saga installment. And my friends, I was not disappointed. Cordelia is presented in all her Betan glory and I absolutely adored every page. (I think I'll always love Cordelia more than Miles, though, so if you're in it for Miles and not Cordelia, you might not enjoy this one quite so much. Also if you have strong feelings about the nature of Aral and Cordelia's relationship across all those years... well. Prepare yourself. You might be in for a shock.)


2) Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Look, I'll be honest with you -- I think this duology is better than the Grisha Trilogy. By like, a lot. I mean I enjoyed the Grisha Trilogy but, I LOVED these two books, and that was even going into book one as a skeptic. I also think this book could just as easily have been adult fantasy rather than YA. For sure it's upper YA/Crossover YA/New Adult, at the least. And this second book? It was everything I wanted it to be, with one small storytelling-decision exception. It was a super fitting end to what was a super thrilling adventure and even if, like me, Fantasy Heist Novel isn't something you'd normally be into, you should still give this a shot!


3) Keeping Time by Wendy Sparrow

I am a HUGE fan of Stealing Time, the first in this series, so when the opportunity to advance read and blurb came to me for the sequels, I jumped on it. This third installment with Ruin and Phoebe was my favorite of the two new novellas released this year, and the way Sparrow captures that awkward and uncomfortable (but also TOO comfortable) space of intimacy between best friends who are afraid to take the next step and make it into something more is perfection. Even better -- this series takes place basically for the full length of the winter holiday season, ending on New Year's Eve, so you can still make it your holiday romance of the season!! (I believe there's even a box set, which I would totally recommend -- personally, I picked all three of them up in paperback to have and hold forever.)


4) A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

I thought I knew what this book was going to be. I was anticipating a certain amount of annoyance with that direction. And then I started reading, and the deeper I got, the more wrong I was about everything I'd thought. This was one of those could-not-put-it-down reads, and I think it's even better than the first book in the series. But I'm not sure it could be as good as it is WITHOUT the foundation of that first book, either, even though for some people I can see how the first book might be unsatisfying. If you read book one and gave it the side-eye -- I think book two will be a different experience for you, for sure. First couple of chapters excluded. Trust me -- just keep reading.


5) New Pompeii by Daniel Godfrey

First: choosing my 5th book for this list was tough, but after scrolling up and down and up and down my list of books read, I think this one has to be it. I picked this up on a whim at the bookstore and I don't know what I had really high hopes for it at the time -- I always worry about books that present ancient peoples alongside modern characters. But. Godfrey definitely did not shy away from giving the Ancient Romans their due. They scheme and plot and manipulate as skillfully as one could hope, and although I would've liked a little more grounding of the world we begin in to make the alternate timeline glimpses more meaningful, that's not going to stop me from getting my hands on book two, and it didn't stop me from enjoying the read!


Honorable Mentions:

Hunter and Elite by Mercedes Lackey
Age of Heroes by James Lovegrove (Almost entirely because Theseus!)
Hercules: Still Going Strong by Dan Abnett (graphic novel -- but it is SO GOOD.)
and Sabriel by Garth Nix

If you want to see the complete list of all the books I've read this year -- klikk klikk!

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The Glory of Books on Shelves

To fully appreciate my elation, and why this deserves its own post, you have to understand that my books have been in boxes since last April/May, when the flooring of doom project began. They are still not all unpacked, but I'm making some significant headway -- and plan on getting this unboxing project completed before the end of the summer.

My efforts have been hampered by a number of complications -- one of which was the loss of a bookshelf when we tried to relocate it to clear the room for the flooring install. It just literally fell apart in our* hands. So when I finally did start unpacking... well, the shelving we did have filled up FAST. As you can see.

I had to make some cuthroat decision about what books were going to be shelved and what weren't, in the shorter term, until we accepted delivery of a bookshelf... um, let's call it a donation, from a family member. This of course meant that once the new bookcase was delivered and set in its assigned location, I had to reorganize the books that were already shelved -- because there's a method to all this madness. Series and Genre and Author all have to be taken into account! And then also the sizing of the books (because Thor forbid there be a standardized trade paperback size.) You have to arrange them in such a way that more books can be positioned horizontally on top, because ALL THE BOOKS, and spaces is always at a premium. As you can see. Um. Again. (That towering stack reaching into the sky is because that whole top shelf is the TBR pile and I obviously didn't take into account the reality of the number of unread books I accumulated this past year between cons and, you know, trips to the bookstore. Whoops.)

But there is hope! Light at the end of the tunnel! Or at least temporary light, because I know for SURE this is not all my historical fiction titles:

a shelf from the unpictured still in progress donated bookcase

And this is definitely not even all my YA fantasy/sci fi, though I am excited to report that I have been able to consolidate most of my unboxed YA titles on the shelves above and below. For the moment.

Sooooo there's still not a small amount of reorganization in my future, but I'm getting there. Slowly but surely, but surely all the same. And I can tell you already I'm going to need at least one more 6ft bookcase, if not two, in order to shelve all the books I have left.

But there is NOTHING in this world more satisfying than looking at my well-ordered books on their shelves, so I can promise you I won't be giving up on the dream of every beautiful book in its place.

In the meantime, I hope you're keeping up with me at blog.amaliacarosella.com! Carosella Author!me has been... very busy.

*These hands probably belonged to my cousins and/or brother and/or bffs.

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How I Read: Ebooks vs Paperbacks

Disclaimer: This is not a post written to say "ZOMG PAPERBACKS 4 LYFE!" this is just a post talking about the difference in how I personally read in switching back and forth between paperback and ebook. And for the record, I would like to say, I definitely think ebooks rock and have their place, and nothing beats the kindle/ebooks for reading on the go.

I love books. I love to read them and I love to write them and there is nothing more enjoyable to me than a well-written book with a rockin' story. Anything that allows people to read more is a good thing, and I am pretty sure that at this point, I couldn't live without my kindle. But when I'm shopping for and reading an ebook? I'm definitely doing it differently. MUCH differently.

When I buy a new paperback, it goes into the pile of books on the broken record-player in the dining room, next to my CDs and convenient to pretty much every room in the house. I walk by this pile an UNCOUNTABLE number of times each day and each week. The books stare at me, and I am reminded of what books I have left to read, and what each book is, by the cover. I move through this pile at a very steady and reliable clip. And even if the book is bad -- if I think it's less satisfying or more frustrating than I'd like -- 95% of the time, I finish it. IF it's a paperback. Maybe it takes me a week. Maybe it takes me two. Maybe I read other books while I'm working through that "bad" book. But I finish it.

When I buy a new ebook, I hit one-click on Amazon, and I don't even bother to turn on my kindle to download it immediately. In fact, the next time I turn on my kindle, I might not remember to turn the wireless on to download it then, either. When I finally do, because my kindle is old school, I get a title and an author and a little superscript that says "new" on my first page. By this point, unless the author is a friend, I have no idea what book I bought or anything about it beyond that title. Maybe if it is an author I am a big fan of, the title will make me go "oh yeah! awesome!" but most often, the title makes me go "um?" and I page past it to the book I turned my kindle on for the purpose of looking at. (Mostly this is the current ARC of my own book that I'm proofing, to be honest with you.) The exception to all of this is when I'm going on vacation -- at which point I carefully peruse my kindle to be sure there are enough books I desperately want to read to see me through my travels. Most often this means I buy a few more to displace the titles that no longer hold any meaning for me -- the ones I've forgotten why I bought.

I can count on one hand the number of PAPERBACK books that have been so bad that I've put them down and walked away and given up on ever finishing them. I *remember* every paperback book which provoked this response in me. One I went back and finished because I'm a stubborn jerk and it was set in classical Greece and I didn't quit on it until the last 40 pages. One I tried to finish reading but still could not bring myself to do it. A third is still half finished and is awaiting its second attempt -- and I absolutely will finish it one day, I can almost guarantee it. The fourth is never getting a second chance because I didn't even get past chapter 1 before the writing turned me off completely.

4 books total in paperback, since I started paying attention to this kind of thing in 2009 or so.

Ebooks, I can't tell you how many I've started and stopped. WAY more than four. If the book doesn't grab me in chapter one, I close it out and go looking for another. I don't often return to these books to give them a second chance. I forget that they exist. They get pushed back by the new books purchased and disappear from my consciousness. I don't often page beyond the second page of my books, looking for something to read, when I page through looking for something to read at all. Some of them, I never even open to read the first page. I don't remember what they're about and I don't have wifi or battery to click through to the book description on their amazon page. This *never* happens with a paperback book. If I forget what its about, I can just flip it over and read the back of the book summary. Bam. Done.

Now, maybe this read-to-completion ratio is in part caused by the fact that I put more consideration into the book I'm buying when I buy a paperback. Because I do. If the pricepoint on an ebook is 1.99 or 99 cents, I will throw away the money (always gift card money. I don't buy ebooks with anything but money I received in giftcard form from someone else) without really thinking too hard about it. "Oh, it's only 99 cents, I'll give it a chance." Except I don't give it a chance, it just gets lost on my kindle. When we get to books that are 2.99-5.99, I give them a little bit more thought. 2.99 is more likely to warrant an impulse buy "give it a shot" but above that, I get serious. I read the reviews. I weigh what friends have told me about the author/series. Any ebook priced above 5.99, if it's available as a mass market paperback, I don't buy as an ebook. If I want it that much, I buy it in paperback. If it's only available as a trade paperback,  I have to *really* want the book. And 9 out of 10 times, if I buy it, I buy it as a paperback. Because if I'm spending 6 bucks, I'm committing to reading it. And I can't commit to reading anything I buy in ebook. UNLESS, I'm buying it to read on vacation. At which point I choose very carefully what I'm buying, and insta-paperback-purchase price point might be more negotiable.

But it's worth noting that I still travel with paperbacks in ADDITION to my kindle while on vacation. Every time.

I guess we'll see how and if any of this changes going forward. But in the meantime, do you read and shop differently for ebooks vs paperbacks? Tell me if I'm not alone or if I'm the weirdo, in the comments!