Loopy & Luna's Loony Writing Adventure: Dialogue, Part 1

[loopy777]

lalunatique left the following feedback in one of her chapter reviews for my Maikka 2012 epic Trapped in Ba Sing Se:

Some of the dialogue tags felt unnecessary, something I forgot to add to the previous chapter's review but which applies here as well. I can sympathize because I also get the urge to control the way the readers take in the dialogue, the pauses

Comments

[ljlee]

One of the things I've consistently admired about you (and every writer I consistently keep in touch with) is your willingness to accept criticism. I tend to drift away from writers who get defensive about criticism and just want to hear good things; I end up feeling my advice is unhelpful and that I'm wasting both our time. Plus, it's not a great feeling to have my perceptions as a reader dismissed. The ones I stay with and pester, acting kind of like a rash that won't go away, are the writers who want to grow in their craft. Those are the relationships I feel are the most productive and in that regard, my dear Loopy, I feel our correspondence is most fruitful indeed

[loopy777]

It's really my arrogance and self-love that lets me accept criticism. I know I'm pretty cool, overall, so I'm not threatened by admitting my faults and weaknesses. I do want to improve, and I'm confident that I can do so with effort, so picking apart my weaknesses as part of a plan to address them is just an aspect of the engineering process. That's not to say that I buy into all the criticism I get, necessarily, but I do consider it all and I'm always grateful that people want to help me.

I also value the reviewers who criticize me because it shows that they're almost certainly going to take criticism well in turn. Mutual love-fests are actually difficult to maintain, in my experience.

That all said, I'm still working on loosening my grip on micromanaging the characters' "acting." Sometimes at parties, I sneak away and snort some italics in the bathroom to keep the shakes away.