Conference | Cathy C. Hall Writes

So I am not gonna lie. I have been dashing to the mailbox for the last couple weeks, looking for that envelope from the Rutgers One-on-One Plus Conference. My desk overlooks the front of the house and when I would see the mail truck go by–zoom! I was down the stairs and out the door. I knocked down the Beneficent Mr. Hall more than once. (Not to worry. He just rolled to the end of the driveway where I graciously helped him up.)

Finally, I got my letter. Of acceptance. Wheee!

Yeah, you have to apply to attend the conference. Now, honestly, I have no idea how many people apply. They accept around 8o writers because around 80 professionals (editors and agents, mostly) attend to provide one-on-one mentoring. Maybe only 80 writers send in the packet. I don’t care. I felt special. For about 2 minutes. Than I read the letter and felt a little panicky.

You don’t know who your mentor will be. You also have an opportunity for what they call 5-on-5–and you don’t know who those five mentors will be, either. But you do know who the 80 mentors will be.

Now, I am a writer who believes in being prepared before I hit a conference. You can read all about it over at The Muffin today. And if you do, you’ll see that I like to research speakers. Not in a creepy, stalker way. Just the normal, crazed writer way.

THAT’S A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS TO RESEARCH.

I’m just sayin’. So you might not see much of me for a month or so. And P.S. I’m even going to let the Beneficent Mr. Hall fetch the mail.

Leap days are extra, so I thought it’d be swell to give you an extra bit of wisdom from Kristin Daly Rens (senior editor from Balzer & Bray/Harper Collins) who spoke at the conference. Plus, I had a pic of her with Cathy-on-a-Stick and that’s always a bonus, right?

So Kristin (who is funny, delightful, smart, and charming and I’m not just saying that because she happened to do my formal critique) spoke about dialogue and plotting. But (and I’m sure this will come as no surprise to you) I cannot find my plot notes. So we’ll be sharing dialogue notes today.

She had a ton of great tips about dialogue, and examples of sparkling banter in books. Um, apparently, I did not write down the book titles. But Debra Mayhew, who sat next to me, wrote down every single book mentioned and then she shared them on her blog. (Why thank you, Deb!).

So now, let’s dash to Kristin’s tips, starting with what to avoid in dialogue.

AVOID SAYING SOMETHING YOU’VE JUST SHOWN. (Yes, I know that seems like common sense. But it’s a terribly common problem and one you should check for when editing your manuscript. Because…

TOO MUCH DIALOGUE SLOWS DOWN THE STORY (Who knew? I LOVE dialogue. In fact, I tend to read the dialogue in books and skip all that descriptive stuff. But it occurred to me that I can do that because I read good books where the dialogue is used correctly. How so, you wonder? So glad you asked.

DIALOGUE SHOULD BE SIGNIFICANT (Every word of dialogue should matter to the story. Every. Single. Word. Yes, you want to be authentic, but not so authentic that you bore your readers. So don’t put in all those umm’s and uh’s. Put in the words that matter and most importantly…

PUT IN THE WORDS THAT MOVE THE STORY FORWARD (That tip speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Get it? Speaks for itself? Um, yeah…we’ll just move on. Like your story should do with great dialogue.)

Because now I think you have enough dialogue information to make your own banter extra sparkly. And you’ve got an extra day to do it!