Books and JulieQ

I mentioned earlier that we brought the bestselling Julia Quinn to Tulsa to speak to our writers' group on dialogue. Since I'm a huge fan of hers, it was such a pleasure to meet her in person.

Listening to her made me pay closer attention to the dialogue in the books I'm reading, and I've found that a lot of the authors need to hear Julie speak! Last week I read one western historical -- my favorite type of historical -- where everyone spoke in dialect. Julie says dialect is fine, but it's got to be balanced, and this book was definitely lacking balance. I was so tired of "gonna" and "fixin'" and "gittin'" and "varmint" by the middle of the book that I could have cried.

The next one I picked up, the hero and heroine, who both came from vastly different backgrounds (to say nothing of different countries!) both used the same odd little phrases repeatedly. And in the one after that, the Italian-American hero both thought and swore in fluent Italian and spoke in very formal English -- no contractions, no slang.

Hmm . . . I think maybe I need to put my to-be-read pile aside and go back to reading my latest JulieQ. She does dialogue -- and everything else -- so well!

I've been told my dialogue sounds realistic. I admit, some of the credit for that goes to my husband and son. I've been known to write a line, then email it to one of them to put it into language appropriate to the character for me.

Of course, some of the credit goes to all those years I've spent eavesdropping on other people's conversations! Hey, I've been an observer all my life. Isn't it only fair that now it's paying off? Rachel8:26 AM