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Dialogue, in literature, is a verbal exchange between two or more characters (but can also involve strategic use of silence). [1] If there is only one character talking aloud, it is a monologue.
"This breakfast is making me sick," George said.
George said is the identifier.
The identifier has also been called an attributive, [2] a speaker attribution, [3] a speech attribution, [4] a dialogue tag, [5] and a tag line. [6]
Said is the verb most writers use because reader familiarity with said prevents it from drawing attention to itself. Although other verbs such as ask, shout, or reply are acceptable, some identifiers get in the reader's way. For example:
"Hello," he croaked nervously, "my name's Horace."
"What's yours?" he asked with as much aplomb as he could muster. [7]
Stephen King, in his book On Writing , expresses his belief that said is the best identifier to use. King recommends reading a novel by Larry McMurtry, who he claims has mastered the art of well-written dialogue. [8]
Substitutes are known as said-bookisms. For example, in the sentence "What do you mean?" he smiled, the word smiled is a said-bookism.[ citation needed ]
The Elements of Style is a style guide for formal grammar used in American English writing. The first publishing was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," "a few matters of form," a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused," and a list of 57 "words often misspelled." Writer and editor E. B. White greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the book, which Time recognized in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential non-fiction books written in English since 1923.
Sensation is the fiction-writing mode for portraying a character's perception of the senses. According to Ron Rozelle, "...the success of your story or novel will depend on many things, but the most crucial is your ability to bring your reader into it. And that reader will be most completely in when you deliver the actual sensations of the many things that comprise your story". As stated by Jessica Page Morrell, "You breathe life into fiction by translating the senses onto the page, producing stories rooted in the physical world ... that creates a tapestry, a galaxy of interwoven sensory ingredients."
Standard manuscript format is a formatting style for manuscripts of short stories, novels, poems and other literary works submitted by authors to publishers. Even with the advent of desktop publishing, making it possible for anyone to prepare text that appears professionally typeset, many publishers still require authors to submit manuscripts within their respective guidelines. Although there is no single set of guidelines, the "standard" format describes formatting that is considered to be generally acceptable.
Narrative exposition, now often simply exposition, is the insertion of background information within a story or narrative. This information can be about the setting, characters' backstories, prior plot events, historical context, etc. In literature, exposition appears in the form of expository writing embedded within the narrative.
Lewis Putnam Turco is an American poet, teacher, and writer of fiction and non-fiction. Turco is an advocate for Formalist poetry in the United States.
Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual prose texts. Fictional writing often is produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles. Different types of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story writers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.
Show, don't tell is a narrative technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, subtext, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis and instead describes the scene in such a way that readers can draw their own conclusions. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction, literature including haiku and Imagist poetry in particular, speech, movie making, and playwriting.
A setting is the time and geographic location within a narrative, either non-fiction or fiction. It is a literary element. The setting initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. The setting can be referred to as story world or milieu to include a context beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.
The rhetorical modes are a broad traditional classification of the major kinds of formal and academic writing by their rhetorical (persuasive) purpose: narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. First attempted by Samuel P. Newman in A Practical System of Rhetoric in 1827, the modes of discourse have long influenced US writing instruction and particularly the design of mass-market writing assessments, despite critiques of the explanatory power of these classifications for non-school writing.
Ansen Dibell was the pen name used by Nancy Ann Dibble, an American science fiction author and poet, who also published books about fiction writing.
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. As Bryan Ray notes, however, style is a broader concern, one that can describe "readers' relationships with, texts, the grammatical choices writers make, the importance of adhering to norms in certain contexts and deviating from them in others, the expression of social identity, and the emotional effects of particular devices on audiences." Thus, style is a term that may refer, at one and the same time, to singular aspects of an individual's writing habits or a particular document and to aspects that go well-beyond the individual writer. Beyond the essential elements of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, writing style is the choice of words, sentence structure, and paragraph structure, used to convey the meaning effectively. The former are referred to as rules, elements, essentials, mechanics, or handbook; the latter are referred to as style, or rhetoric. The rules are about what a writer does; style is about how the writer does it. While following the rules drawn from established English usage, a writer has great flexibility in how to express a concept. Some have suggested that the point of writing style is to:
In literature and other artistic media, a mode is an unspecific critical term usually designating a broad but identifiable kind of literary method, mood, or manner that is not tied exclusively to a particular form or genre. Examples are the satiric mode, the ironic, the comic, the pastoral, and the didactic.
A fiction-writing mode is a manner of writing imaginary stories with its own set of conventions regarding how, when, and where it should be used.
Description is any type of communication that aims to make vivid a place, object, person, group, or other physical entity. Description is one of four rhetorical modes, along with exposition, argumentation, and narration.
Characterization or characterisation is the representation of characters in narrative and dramatic works. The term character development is sometimes used as a synonym. This representation may include direct methods like the attribution of qualities in description or commentary, and indirect methods inviting readers to infer qualities from characters' actions, dialogue, or appearance. Such a personage is called a character. Character is a literary element.
Transitions in fiction are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or punctuation that may be used to signal various changes in a story, including changes in time, location, point-of-view character, mood, tone, emotion, and pace. Transitions are sometimes listed as one of various fiction-writing modes.
Terminal punctuation refers to the punctuation marks used to identify the end of a portion of text. Terminal punctuation marks are also referred to as end marks and stops.
A manuscript is the work that an author submits to a publisher, editor, or producer for publication. Especially in academic publishing, manuscript can also refer to an accepted document, reviewed but not yet in a final format, distributed in advance as a preprint.
In literature, pace or pacing is the speed at which a story is told—not necessarily the speed at which the story takes place. It is an essential element of storytelling that plays a significant role in maintaining reader interest, building tension, and conveying the desired emotional impact. The number of words needed to write about a certain event does not depend upon how much time the event takes to happen; it depends upon how important that moment is to the story. The pace is determined by the length of the scenes, how fast the action moves, and how quickly the reader is provided with information. A well-paced story effectively balances moments of high intensity and slower-paced sections to create a dynamic reading experience. It is also sometimes dictated by the genre of the story: comedies move faster than dramas; action adventures move faster than suspense. A dragging pace is characteristic of many novels turned down by publishers, and of some that find their way into print but not into the hearts and recommendations of readers. Manuscripts that move too slowly usually discourage readers from reading on. Through various editing techniques, such as cutting unnecessary details, rearranging scenes, or suggesting additions, editors assist in maintaining an engaging pace that keeps readers captivated. Yanna Popova and Elena Cuffari elaborate that as editors they, "explore the participatory structure of a narrative through its temporal unfolding and the specific, non-linear nature of the temporal dynamics of interacting with a storytelling agency". Popova and Cuffari make clear that the way an author unfolds a story through structuring that narrative's tale is essential to the way the audience will interpret it.
In literature, action is the physical movement of the characters.
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