Brian threw the football at Tom's head. "Catch a few things, Freshman, and maybe we'd win a few games." Brian spat out the dust from the lot. He scowled at Tom as he scrambled to pick up the football.
Tom's fingers slipped several times as he tried to grab the ball. The team stopped its drills and watched as he kicked the ball. It skipped across the lot and landed in the street. "It's not as easy as it looks!" Tom said around his mouth guard.
Brian stepped forward. "Yes it is!"
Tom glared and marched back to get in line for passing drills. "No, it isn't!"
Whew! OK. You guys can likely already spot many problems with this passage, but let me highlight one specifically; I need to separate dialogue from action a bit more.
Readers have the potential of getting lost if you include too much action (or details) with the dialogue.
Revised, the passage above could look like this:
Brian threw the football at Tom's head.
"Catch a few things, Freshman, and maybe we'd win a few games."
Brian spat out the dust from the lot. He scowled at Tom as he ducked and scrambled to pick up the football.
Tom's fingers slipped several times as he tried to grab the ball. The team stopped its drills and watched as he muttered something and kicked the ball. It skipped across the lot and landed in the street.
"It's not as easy as it looks!" Tom said around his mouth guard.
Brian stepped forward. "Yes it is!"
"No, it isn't!"
I'm trying to think of some prank I can pull on my manager. While heart attacks or flying circuits are off limits, I want it to be something spectacular. Any ideas?
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Action in dialogue
Posted by Jamin at 7:49 AM
Labels: This and That
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3 comments:
Neat post ;) I usually don't mix the action and dialogue in my novel into a confusing jumble of words (I think!), but I can see how that could easily happen. I once heard someone say that in your writing, it should always be feeling/emotion, action, and then dialogue, because that's how humans react. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes sense.
And as far as pranks go, I've never done any (well, except for the ones I played on my brothers. But those don't count.), so I wouldn't be any help. LOL.
Y'know, I never really thought about mixing dialogue with action!
You know, you've got a great point, Arianna! As for my manager, I've decided it will probably involve a jalopeno in his drink.
Uh oh. Hope I didn't just create a monster, Araken :)
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