Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30741304-20170513163321/@comment-30741304-20170530084524

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I know it must have been tough trucking through all that mess. Also, I apologize for the late response. Work/family has been keeping me so busy these past few weeks.

Obviously, I have issues with dialogue and punctuation. I don't think that I learned grammar/punctuation correctly and so learning it has been a challenge.

In many areas the dialogue does not seem realistic and I get that. I know that motivations and character development are not crucial to a short story, but I include these things because I am trying to improve. Any general suggestions on how I might begin to develop better dialogue? I will try to keep the situation (life/death) in mind when I go back to re-write this piece.

I think the way I write dialogue is bad because I am so awkward in real life. You have to pardon me. I am bad at faking being human but I am trying!

When you write dialogue how do you convey thoughts that other characters experience without head-hopping? How do you show what is being said between the lines without actually saying it? (You don't have to write a whole page on this links to examples would help.)

I was told by someone that dialogue tags are necessary when it is not clear who is speaking. Would you mind explaining, in short, what you mean by the adverb + verb paired with a following tag? I thought that I followed this rule correctly? I have trouble discerning when, and what, dialogue tags to use.

The thesaurus has only so many words synonymous with ask/say. How often/when should I use tags? How do I get comfortable with what tags to use? Does style affect what choice of tags I might want to use?

You said that I used too many dialogue tags in this piece. When do I not need to use dialogue tags?

Sorry for the tense swapping! I wrote/edited this many times on different occasions, and was never careful enough to comb through this for those small issues before having posted this. I thought I understood tense until I visited one of the writers advice pages, and read that there are fifteen different tenses in the English language (I think that is what I read at least, correct me if I am wrong). I have plenty of work to do!

Thanks again, Christian Wallis! I really appreciate all the help/advice. I hope that my story wasn't complete garbage, and that you enjoyed something in my story!