A Writer....

...fill in the blank. Reads? Writes? Doesn't make much money? Potentially all of them. But here's one not many people might think of: A writer watches movies.

Really, a writer needs to experience life. Reading is good to see what other creative people are doing, and maybe feel alternately good and bad about yourself. Writing is obviously good; all professionals do their profession to get better. A baseball player may read all the self-improvement books in the world, but if he never steps on the field he won't get any better. And you watch movies to learn dialogue.
Because, let's face it: all the critical action in a movie comes from dialogue. All the plot reveals, and the twists, all the motives, background, explanations -- they almost all come through the dialogue. So if you can't do dialogue believably well, you can't write screenplays.

Now, I am not a social butterfly; and upon reading one of my biographical short stories, a friend asked: "You used to speak in bad grammar?" It is, perhaps sadly, true: my speech transcribed would properly include colons, semi-colons, dashes -- the whole nine. An occasional fragment that, except for a slight, hesitant pause, could otherwise be considered a complete sentence.

Yet more than one peer/mentor/teacher has commented on the fluidity of my written dialogue. To this I can only credit watching movies and listening to dialogue, and mimicking its sound on paper. It's often imperfect at first, and my second goal this week (the first is part of the reason I'm posting so late) is to read through my novel yet again, muttering under my breath the lines of speech to make sure they sound natural. I realized recently that some of it didn't. I feel into me-speak. Stilted, stuffy, and generally boring.

You never know what might teach you to be a better writer. All I can recommend is live life, and be teachable. See you Friday.