Investigative Creative Writing - Teaching and Practice - Mark Spitzer

Investigative Creative Writing - Teaching and Practice - Mark Spitzer

3. The Ten Commandments of Incorporating Dialogue: For Those Seeking to Inform the Unprepared, the Disengaged, and the Thoroughly Confused

Investigative Creative Writing - Teaching and Practice - Mark Spitzer

Mark Spitzer [+-]
University of Central Arkansas
Mark Spitzer is Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of Film, Theatre, and Creative Writing at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of 18 books, ranging from memoirs to novels to literary translations and collections of poetry. He is the editor of the award-winning Toad Suck Review (toadsuckreview.org), a professor of creative writing, an authority on the notorious gar fish (See River Monsters, alligator gar episode), and the world expert on the poetry of Jean Genet. Other recent titles include the poetry collection, Inflammatosis: Polemic Poetry, Incendiary Prose, and Other Extremes of Love and War (Six Gallery Press, 2018); the young adult and children’s literature title, The Crabby Old Gar (Subversive Muse Press, 2018); the novel, Viva Arletty! Our Lady of the Egrets (Six Gallery Press, 2017); the nonfiction work, Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2017); the literary translation The Genet Translations: Poetry and Posthumous Plays (Polemic Press, 2015), and the memoir, After the Octopus (Black Mountain Press, 2014).

Description

When it comes to writing prose, college students, especially at the introductory level, have a lot of trouble incorporating dialogue, dialogue tags, and proper punctuation. This chapter was written in response to these concerns in order to educate educators on ways to present technical information that often comes off as boring so therefore not worth paying attention to. Hence, I suggest some simple ways to view the handling of commas and periods in conjunction with dialogue tags, and how to avoid quotation clutter within paragraphs. The idea of using “piehole verbs” to make dialogue tags effective is discussed alongside the benefits of employing “dumb dialogue” and the use of contractions. The real reason for articulating dialogue, however, is articulated in the chapter’s conclusion.

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Citation

Spitzer, Mark. 3. The Ten Commandments of Incorporating Dialogue: For Those Seeking to Inform the Unprepared, the Disengaged, and the Thoroughly Confused. Investigative Creative Writing - Teaching and Practice. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 33-48 Jan 2020. ISBN 9781781797181. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=34892. Date accessed: 24 Apr 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.34892. Jan 2020

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