struggling with dialogue?

I only read one too and it had a lot of good points. I can see myself losing quite a bit of time going through the archive.

I like this. I'm going to spend some time there. Thank you.

"Lessons From the Bad Writing of The Mortal Instruments" intrigues me since I was not impressed by either the books or the movie. The TV series started with simply rerunning sections of the movie. That did it, no more City of [fill in the blank] stories for me. No offense to the fans mind you.

This reminds me a whole lot of this blog: Reasoning With Vampires

Different series, same tone mocking the writer's inability to actually, y'know, write. The blog isn't active anymore but it was hilarious back in its heyday and still has its backlog posted.

Also, fun fact, supposedly Mortal Instruments started as a Harry Potter fanfiction. Check it out.

Very timely and much appreciated. I've got some dialog blocks in a short story I need to work on.

Whilst there are definitely some pearls of wisdom in the article you linked to, I prefer to read blogs with writing advice which doesn't require the LBL butchering of somebody else's book to do it (no matter how many people may believe the book deserves to be held up as a fine example of terrible writing*). The critical focus on a single piece of work gives me the impression this article is designed to put the book's author down whilst lifting the blogger up, as much as it is to inform future generations of writers about the foibles of dodgy writing. That said, I do appreciate the humour and tone of the article.



*I haven't read the book and don't intend to.

Apart from reading books of the type you wish to write and that also contain good dialogue, the best way to learn how to write dialogue is to keep at it and to know your characters and how they would express themselves.

The difficulty in writing dialogue can sometimes be the result of the characters having nothing to say.