Giles Diggle on Twitter @50oakwoods

Monday 24 October 2011

Jackdaw Dawns - Still Chattering to Myself

Writing before dawn is a good way to start the day, and it's something I can only do in Autumn and Winter. There is little possibility of working this way in the Spring & Summer, because the birds are up long before me, and then they beckon me outside.

Today I started with Jackdaws streaming from their roost against a charcoal sky. And from there the words flew. Easy writing - dialogue. It can delude you into thinking you are writing well, just because it comes in great quantities. Loose words have a price.

That cost can be the stagnation of the story and of course lengthy revision. Writing dialogue, like good conversation brings with it a feeling of well-being. But dialogue an be tricky like a chatter on the phone. It can lay a false trail. It can be broken and incomplete.

Dialogue can strike a wrong note if it is divorced from the body language of the story.

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