Fun story.
Just as a note – Wise advice advises against substitutes for ‘said’ (moaned Fred, responded jack) as they are distracting and superfluous (eg the speech says something and then it is repeated in the description eg ‘what’s that?’ he questioned. It’s better to use said throughout, but if you have a dialogue between characters, very often you can leave the speech attribution out and just ping pong their words on each line
This sharpens up dialogue.
The more superfluous words a reader has to plough through, the more bored they get.
I think if you wrote it like a stage sketch ( a duologue if you will) you could get by with attributing speech to characters. That would help with the attribution repeats. I enjoyed this, though John is right. I also think you are using the attributions to make your job easy as the writer. Crisper, more meaningful dialogue would preclude the use of adjectival attributes. e.g. irritably; finally.
That said, I did enjoy it and would read more.
Fun story.
Just as a note – Wise advice advises against substitutes for ‘said’ (moaned Fred, responded jack) as they are distracting and superfluous (eg the speech says something and then it is repeated in the description eg ‘what’s that?’ he questioned. It’s better to use said throughout, but if you have a dialogue between characters, very often you can leave the speech attribution out and just ping pong their words on each line
This sharpens up dialogue.
The more superfluous words a reader has to plough through, the more bored they get.
Thanks for that E-Griff. It started off as you suggest. I should have left it alone perhaps.
I think if you wrote it like a stage sketch ( a duologue if you will) you could get by with attributing speech to characters. That would help with the attribution repeats. I enjoyed this, though John is right. I also think you are using the attributions to make your job easy as the writer. Crisper, more meaningful dialogue would preclude the use of adjectival attributes. e.g. irritably; finally.
That said, I did enjoy it and would read more.
Thank you Franciman. I do appreciate all helpful comments and advice. I have re-edited the piece back to its original form as first written.
If you’d like to see some more tips, there’s a selection in the forum, here:
https://ukauthors.com/community/prose-writing-tutorial/prose-writing-tutorial/
Thanks for that E-Griff, I’ll check it out.
Much enjoyed the read, enough has been said on the critique side, I’ll leave it there.
Mike
Thanks Mikeverdi
That was funny Pixie. I loved it. I must read some more of your output.
Thank you Skytrucker. Good of you.