For every
rule, there's an exception--Congress even has rule suspensions,
as I've learned in my day job--so nothing you'll ever hear
about allegedly proper technique is an absolute. That goes
especially for my opinions about dialogue. A writing "rule"
is really a convention, after all, and for every
one, such as, "Thou shalt not cast thyself in thy novel,"
there is a successful breach, like with that character Stephen
King in The Dark Tower (by Stephen King).
Consider
the reverse, however. For every successful breach of common
practice, there are hundreds of failures. Check out any
editor's sky-high rejection pile if you don't believe me.
Conventions exist for good reasons.
This article is no longer available online.
Read it in Matthew Warner's new collection
Horror Isn't a 4-Letter Word:
Essays on Writing & Appreciating the Genre
Matthew
Warner is the author of the critically acclaimed first novel
The
Organ Donor and a forthcoming story in Cemetery Dance magazine.
He lives in Falls Church, VA, with illustrator and web designer
Deena Warner. Stop by his website and say hi.
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