The other day I set aside the novel to try to work up a short story for a competition that closes soon.  I had my idea, a character, a cup of coffee, and was merrily typing away.  But then something terrible happened.
I was writing dialogue.
I picked up my laptop and waved it agitatedly* in front [...]

I’ve been mulling (and cringing) of late over some of the dialogue I’ve been encountering in both my readerly and writerly travels.  There is most certainly some ongoing, insidious renaissance of sorts of old-fashioned dialogical pretension, or perhaps it’s merely a morbid authorial fear of abbreviations, or an unbridled desire to apprise the reader as [...]