#55: Using Cue Words to Structure Better Dialogue

Hello friends! A few bits of news before I get to this month’s craft essay:

First, the ASU Worldbuilding Initiative returns this Wednesday with "Cones and Caution: The Precarity of Signaling the Future"! Among other topics, we’ll discuss: How might the meaning of language or symbols change over time? Is it even possible to exactly express ourselves across great spans of time? Our speakers for this workshop will be Ron Broglio, author of Animal Revolution, speaking about his "Feral Cones" project, and Erika Hanson, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work is rooted in textile practices, whose talk draws on observations at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. The event is free and open to the public, including by livestream. Register here to join!

Second, my “Revision, Rewriting, and Re-Visioning Writing Retreat” on the Greek island of Zakynthos is starting to fill but lslots are still available! If you’ve got a novel or memoir you’re working on and will be ready to revise or rewrite next summer, this might be a great fit for you. More info can be found at Uptrek’s website!

Finally, Brad Listi (host of the fantastic podcast Otherppl) has launched a new venture called DeepDive whose initial offering is a 50+ hour audio course on How to Write a Novel, with contributions from writers like Emily St. John Mandel, Stephen Graham Jones, Melissa Broder, Steve Almond, Porochista Khakpour, Hannah Pittard, V.V. Ganeshananthan, among many others (including me). If you’ve listened to Otherppl, you know Brad’s an excellent interviewer, a skill that he puts to good use here to unearth plenty of clear, actionable advice. If you’re interested, you can use the code BELL20 to get a 20% discount on the course, which is available on the web or as an app. If you walk around listening to podcasts as much as I do, this might be a great way to up the usefulness of what’s playing in your ear! I’ve been listening too, and I’m really enjoying it so far.

Using Cue Words to Structure Better Dialogue

I’ve written several times in this newsletter (and in Refuse to Be Done, and probably a dozen other places) about how dialogue is the part of fiction writing that’s always been the most challenging for me. In recent years, it’s also been one of the tools I’ve been trying my hardest to sharpen, which means it’s perhaps