Writing good dialogue is trickier than it seems. If you've ever said the words...

"What My Characters Say On The Page Never Sounds As Good As What They Say In My Head!"

...then help is here.

I hear that same complaint all the time from absolute beginners, unpublished "trunk novelists" with a couple of finished novels---or more---tucked away, and even sometimes from frustrated pros. When I was getting started (about 25 years and 32 published novels ago) I had the same complaint.

Writing dialogue seems like it ought to be
the easiest thing in the world.

All you have to do is listen to people talk, and then write down things like what they say. Right? I know I tried this. Maybe you've already tried it, too.

When you put your theory into practice, though, you discover the hard truths about writing dialogue:

• Most things most people talk about are painfully boring (and if you copy those subjects and those people, your story will be boring).
  
  
• The subjects people talk about in daily life have nothing to do with the stories you're writing (and coming up with things for them to talk about in your story can end up seeming artificial and forced).
  
  
• If you build your dialogue by listening to other people talk, your characters can all sound the same---or like bad parodies of people.

In THE WRITING CRAFT: Dialogue, my new fiction-writing course designed for novel and short story writers, I'll be presenting eight one-hour (or more) video lessons with worksheets and transcripts that will show you exactly where you've been going wrong with your dialogue, and exactly what you can do to fix it.

In Episode One: Dialogue and Subtext, you'll discover:

How To Make Two Characters
Talking About The Weather
As Exciting As A Life Or Death Meeting
Between Enemy Spies.

The trick is in your subtext---in knowing what subtext is, in knowing WHERE it is, and in knowing how to present it.

In one hour, I'll completely demystify the whole aura of inaccessability that writers have built around subtext over the years.

• An absolute beginner who has never even heard of subtext can understand this in an hour.
• Can take the process apart and put it back together right then.
• Can use it the same day---the same hour---to start making the things your characters talk about funny, or poignant, or heart-stoppingly scary...
• In one hour, you can take the first step to making the words on your page as good as the words in your head.

You Can Do This

In THE WRITING CRAFT: Dialogue and Subtext, you will learn:

• What subtext is, and what it isn't---and how this simple definition opens the doors for you to create rich, multilayered characters in stories that interweave suspense, hidden action, deception, triumph, hopes and dreams with depth you've never achieved before.
• How to break apart subtext into its three elements---thoughts, words, and actions---and how, once you have the whole thing in pieces, you can easily adapt each piece to do different things for you. Talking about the weather will no longer just be talking about the weather.
• How to put the pieces back together again in four ways that will allow you to use subtexts in any situation where you need it: from a character sitting alone in a room to a group of characters enmeshed in a heated argument. Get EXACTLY the effect you want from every dialogue---internal or external, solo or group---your characters have.
• Finally, you'll put everything you've learned into practice. Using the provided worksheet, you will begin writing dialogue with subtext today.

Start building the writing skills you need
to become the writer you want to be. Today.