Writing Tip Tuesday

A large part of revision involves CUTTING.

DELETING.

TRASHING.

But I know it's hard to know what to cut, delete, and trash.

One thing to look for is fake dialogue.

Here's what I mean by fake dialogue: Dialogue that is inserted for the sole purpose of informing the reader of something that the characters already know.

I hate that.

Here's a made-up example:

"I'm kind of nervous, aren't you?" Katherine said. "I mean, this is our first time on the middle school bus and since we're in the fifth grade, we'll be the youngest ones."

"Yeah, I'm pretty nervous, too," Mona said. "And we have soccer practice today. We've never been on a real team before. And all the others will be better than us because they went to soccer camp while we had to stay home and babysit."

I hate that.

It's fake dialogue.

The characters already know this information.

If you've got to convey the information to the reader - figure out some other way to do it.

CUT.....DELETE.....TRASH.....FAKE DIALOGUE.