I got a second draft of my short story The Gladstone Barrier done this week. I think it is much better, but I still think I’ll need two or more drafts before I think it is ready to post. I wish I could do it faster.
I have trouble with some of the dialogue. While I took a break from this story I read a book on dialogue and they suggested that the dialogue should be in short sentences. When I rewrote the story I tried to do that.
The book suggested that longer passages could be split up with short descriptions of action between parts of the dialogue. In the story I gave a lot of my characters long bits of dialogue and I wanted to break them up with bits of action. I wasn’t happy with the result. Partly it was because I used the same bits of action description over and over.
When I rewrite it next time I want to fix that, but I am not sure just how to do that. I don’t have the dialogue book anymore, so I can’t easily check it again. I feel that in some cases a long “speech” works OK. At least better than if I put artificial breaks in.
Another change I would like to make is to put more emphasis on how the protagonist feels. From my experience with Line of Taxis, this is the way to connect with the audience. I haven’t put enough of that into the story. I think the story does have a strong emotional core, but I’m not sure that it will be clear to readers.
I want to plan out what to look for in my next rewrite before I start.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
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