What’s the giveaway? How do you know when someone is writing a weak dialogue scene? It’s in their attributions. Synonyms for said is used as a matter of course, to give some flavor to a sentence. But these synonyms typicaly add more noise than anything else. You may encounter words like hissed, whispered, or gasped. […]

In other cases, maybe you read through a scene in your draft and find yourself thinking: This isn’t working, but I don’t understand what’s wrong. Probably it’s a rhythm issue. You’ve got all the elements, the characters and the words, but you haven’t found the right combination of description and voice. Maybe you’re hiding your […]

A speaker attribution counter measure how many tags are used relative to the number of lines of dialogue. Because dialogue moves fast, we humans rely on these anchors when keeping track of who is saying what. It’s a way of counting something your eye can’t always catch so scene doesn’t dissolve into noise. It’s a […]

Good dialogue has a very specific rhythm. This mean turn-taking plays an important role in driving the scene forward. That’s why I recommend thinking about the pace of your dialogue… Specifically when the floor gets passed from one person to another. The calculator highlights quote blocks and speaker labels (i.e., dialogue tags). Then it divide […]