When writing fiction, you want to ensure that readers clearly know who is speaking dialogue. If a reader loses track, then the wrong impression about a character’s intentions and motivations may be formed, which makes understanding the rest of the story difficult. Perhaps worse, a reader will realize her confusion about who is speaking and be forced to re-read the passage, which breaks the fictional dream. If this problem reoccurs, the reader simply may give up on the story or decide not to read other titles by that author.

To ensure there’s no confusion about who is speaking, apply attribution in the appropriate places. Attribution is telling who speaks. For example, “Thales said” is the attribution in “Go on now, I mean it!” Thales said.

You can employ a number of techniques to ensure proper attribution occurs.

First, directly state who is speaking. In the same sentence as the dialogue, add the speaker’s name and the word “said,” as in the “Thales said” example given above.

Secondly, show the speaker in action. In the same paragraph, have the speaking character do or observe something: Thales glanced at the toys and harrumphed. “I’ll never make good on my promise with those pithikos around.” There’s no need to add “Thales said” here because the speaker is implied. Don’t have a character do something and then start a new paragraph in which that character speaks, however, as this implies someone else is speaking.

A final note: In long exchanges of dialogue, even if two characters speak every other line, add attribution every few lines. Readers easily can lose track of which character is speaking after just a few sentences.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional book editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of 80 books including the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“When a man publishes a book, there are so many stupid things said that he declares he’ll never do it again. The praise is almost always worse than the criticism.” – Sherwood Anderson

“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.” – Franklin Jones

“Confronted by an absolutely infuriating review it is sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic. Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event, is he able to construct a simple English sentence? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism does he write ‘I had a fun time’? Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don’t know that you will prove anything this way, but it is perfectly harmless and quite soothing.” – Jean Kerr

“Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review.” – James Russell Lowell

“A critic knows more than the author he criticizes, or just as much, or at least somewhat less.” – Cardinal Manning

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.” – Dorothy Parker

“To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over…” – John Hersey

“Half my life is an act of revision.” – John Irving

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” – Colette

“Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.” – Vladimir Nabokov

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

When writing online text, short is better than long. Short articles are easy to glean information from, and if it’s useful material, the visitor will continue by clicking onto another of your pages. The longer the piece, however, the more the visitor must annoyingly scroll to read additional content – especially on mobile phones, which is how more and more of your website visitors are accessing you – and can have difficulty locating info when scrolling back up.

A short piece runs up to 700 words in length. At the same time of ensuring you don’t go too long, make sure you don’t offer too little. After all, if you go fewer than 300 words, why access the page? There likely won’t be enough information on the page to make it worth visiting.

There are a number of guidelines to ensure your text ends up being short rather than long:
• Figure out what’s important – Writing short doesn’t mean you skimp on research. You need to understood your topic fully and identify what you will zero in on.
• Stay focused – Avoid meandering starts and don’t go off on tangents. Think “this is the one key takeaway I want readers to get from the piece” and distill your explanations down to their essence with two or three supporting points.
• Be concise – Minimize unnecessary words. Use active voice and write tightly. Don’t repeat ideas; for example, a conclusion paragraph that summarize the page’s text is superfluous.
• Give specific, meaningful details/examples – Your writing is more evocative when you are exact. Don’t write “The river was beautiful” but “Sunlight sparkled off the river.” The latter’s few extra letters actually provide far more information than the briefer former example.
• Limit quotation length – Favor the pithy over the rambling. If you can say it better in your own words, then do so.
• Maintain an appetizer mentality – Your blog and website text is all about getting visitors interested in your book, which is the main course. Don’t fill them up with the website but give them enough to get them to at least take a look at if not buy your book.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional book editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of 80 books including the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my book marketing guidebooks:

Ever read a paperback novel and find the paper tearing as you turned the page a little too roughly? Or maybe while reading you wrote a note in the margins only to find you’ve left indentations on the next page? Fortunately, as going through the self-publishing process you can save readers of your book from such annoyances because you get the select the quality of the paper.

Paper quality generally improves with its thickness. So does its price. Paper quality, though, is vital to ensuring your book doesn’t look amateurish. Select too low of a quality, and the ink will bleed through to the other side or form an image on the opposite page because it didn’t have enough time to dry. These problems often occur in newspapers, which use about the lowest quality paper around due to its low price.

When deciding on the quality of paper, two factors come into play. First is if you will be printing solely in black and white or if there will be color. If there is color, you’ll want a higher quality paper than would be necessary for black and white. The second factor is the color of the paper; generally for books you can choose between white or cream. Black and white and some darker inks look fine on cream, but other colors will look odd. For the most professional look, stick with white, especially if printing color photos.

The “good” news is that most self-publishing copies don’t give you too many options where paper quality is concerned. As they want their product to look good when it lands in your hands, they tend to simply have you tell them if you will print anything in color or not and then preselect a paper for you.

If you do have some selection options, be careful – once you decide your paper quality, typically you cannot go back and change it after you print the book. Instead, you’ll need to purchase a new ISBN for it.

Still, the terms are somewhat useful in differentiating your newly released material from your older books. For example, your marketing and promotional efforts will focus on your new releases, or your frontlist.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

During my edits of novels, nonfiction books, academic papers and business documents, I frequently see the same pairs of words confused. Among them is all right and alright.

While alright increasingly appears in writing, most grammarians would agree that alright is all wrong. Alright generally is considered nonstandard, and its use probably arises from the notion that all right/alright follows similar rules to “all ready/already” or “all together/altogether.”

The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (7) does list alright as okay to use when it means “satisfactory,” indicating that all right means “accurate.” Hmm … Sure, satisfactory and accurate have different definitions, but what’s the difference between if you write, “The cost estimates are satisfactory” or the “The cost estimates are accurate”? To be alright (satisfactory), the cost estimates would have to be all right (accurate). Or why not just write “The cost estimates are satisfactory” rather than “The cost estimates are alright” if you want to indicate they are not excellent … “satisfactory” certainly would be more specific (or accurate!).

Or would saying they’re satisfactory be alright?

Final verdict: Always use all right, never use alright.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

To be a truly successful fiction writer that people return to over and over again, you’ll want to pen a story that “engages” the reader. When a reader is engaged, she closely follows your tale, focusing on every word as if a wine connoisseur appreciating every sip of the best vintage.

What makes a novel or a short story really grab hold of a reader, makes them not want to put the book down? That’s a matter of personal taste, of course. If you like adventure stories, a romance probably is trash. If you appreciate great literature, you’ll probably find a lot of genre writing a bit low brow.

Still, where fiction is considered there seems to be some commonalities in good storytelling. First and foremost, if a reader is engaged, the “fictional dream” is stronger. That is, the reader feels as if the story really is unfolding around her. If you’ve written a fantasy piece this means the reader truly is lost in the escapist adventure. For the lover of more literary works, the story likely has the reader feeling that the story accurately reveals and perfectly captures some new truth about people or the world.

Regardless of the genre, creating a fictional dream – or successfully engaging a reader – likely means the writer has:
• Created scenes that are alive and vital to the dramatic action – When a scene primarily is about getting characters from “here to there,” the story slows. When a scene has a lot of banter in which characters don’t reveal anything about themselves, the story goes nowhere. Cut such scenes from your writing.
• Developed an intriguing and well-described setting – Regardless of the genre, the setting ought to give the characters the opportunity to do interesting activities that advance the plot. A setting should help establish the story’s atmosphere and mood against which the plot can take place.
• Devised a focus character who the reader can bond with – The story’s main character need not be exactly like the reader; indeed, readers often like idealized characters who they can pretend to be, such as Captain Kirk of “Star Trek” fame. Characters who possess inner conflicts – such as Mr. Spock’s sense of being an outsider and trying to maintain who he is in the face of it – are easier to relate to, however, and often more popular than idealized characters.
• Offered something new and provocative – For a literary work, this might be a twist on a theme (For example, what if procrastination would have been better for a Hamlet-like character?). For science fiction, it might be a new novum (i.e. gadget). For a mystery story, this might be a new way to commit a murder. Simply put, readers rarely want to reread a story that essentially is a copy of a story they’ve all ready enjoyed.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my guidebooks for plotting your story: