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Fictional
Narrative
Basics
Getting &
Giving Help
Managing
Fictional
Narrative
Flow
Dialogue
Scene
Epiphany
Style
Fiction
& the Real
World


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Managing Fictional Narrative Flow - Dialogue/Indirect Discourse
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 9
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Like most writers, I tend to over-write dialogue in my scenes, and I find myself going back to cut out dialogue fairly often. Bernays and Painter's observation that often only the closing lines of a discussion are important to hear verbatim provides an excellent guide to turning dialogue over into indirect discourse.

Simply start at the beginning of the scene and ask of each dialogue line whether the reader needs it verbatim. Often a few lines of dialogue are useful at the beginning of a scene to start off, but you'll be surprised at how many lines of dialogue you find yourself willing to move to indirect discourse, and how much more impact the remaining lines will have.

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This concludes the Dialogue/Indirect Discourse section of this discussion unit.

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