Weekly Virtual Writing Session for 8/7/07

We're gearing up for this weekend's Pi-Con convention this week, and I'm hoping to get started on some new projects this week and next, beginning at tonight's writing/drawing session at Borders in Hyannis MA.We met an artist at Borders last week who chatted about the comics publishing business for a while, and might show up this week. This will be one of Miranda's last times joinging us. She heads off to college in a couple of weeks.

Today is also, apparently, "Quote Joss Whedon Day". Really. Various people on my Livejournal friends list tell me these things. While I'm not the Whedon devotee that many of my friends are, the following never fails to amuse me:

Emma Frost: "You're late."
Kitty Pryde: "I'm sorry. I took time to fully dress."
(from Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men Issue 1)

And on that note, we move on to the evening's writing goals.

Last Week's Goals: Work on the new TEoP story.

Last Week's Results: Didn't accomplish much writing last week at Borders. I got some brainstorming done on the story I was working on, but not much else. I did end up finishing that story and it got out yesterday, one day late on its deadline, but still in time for it to go online as scheduled.

Goals for This Week: I have more critiquing to do on Gynn's Knifeclaw Company graphic novel script. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and would like to get it mostly if not entirely done tonight. I'd also like to start something new. I have two story ideas floating around, one fantasy and one horror, as well as the next story for TEoP started in my head. I'd like to try to do some work on whichever of these I'm feeling motivated for when I sit down to work.

Question of the Week: Since we're paying tribute to Mr. Whedon, and since (in my opinion), one of his strengths is dialogue, tell me about how you keep dialogue both clever/entertaining and natural/realistic.

I run the conversations in my head a LOT, and I consciously work to edit out stilted phrasings. I also try to interrupt the dialogue as little as possible with adverbs and modifiers. You shouldn't need "angrily" and the like stuck onto dialogue. The dialogue itself should make the emotions obvious in almost all cases. As for clever lines, I think the trick is not to try too hard. Let the dialogue flow like real speech and only slip in the clever one-liners when they genuinely belong to the conversation.

Check in with us if you're writing tonight. Join us at Borders (if you're local) or here on Gather, comment with your goals, answer the question. You know the drill.