What is "Doom Eager"?

Lorrie Moore, from "Better and Sicker"
"Martha Graham speaks of the Icelandic term "doom eager" to denote that ordeal of isolation, restlessness, caughtness and artistic experiences when he or she is sick with an idea. When a writer is doom eager, the writing won't be sludge on the page; it will give readers -- and the writer, of course, is the very first reader -- an experience they've never had before, or perhaps a little and at last the words for an experience they have."

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

a quick fix - dialogue that packs a punch

Natural sounding dialogue can be a struggle for many writers. To get that "right sound" to your characters' dialogue, try this quick fix:

Write a conversation between characters in whatever way you want; then go back through and strip out words to create shorter, choppier sentences, keeping in the interesting essentials but cutting away the unnecessary "fillers" found in so much "wooden" or "clunky" dialogue. Play around with using contractions and sentence fragments. Ask yourself, how can I say the same thing with less (not more) words? You'll find your dialogue will become faster, sound more natural,and pack a harder punch.

Keep the literary faith, friends. And keep writing.
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