Thursday, January 26, 2006

Analysing a Short

JA Konrath has posted a short story to Fictional Musings. His entry is entitled The Big Guys. Several things about this, without giving it away.

  1. The bulk of the story is told through dialogue. Just eyeballing it, I'd say that 75% is dialogue.
  2. Dialogue tags are generally the characters actions, not "he said." The two characters have distinct voices and following who says what isn't a problem.
  3. I laughed at the end, and I'm pretty sure that it was wrong to do so.

I recently read that JA Konrath got a six-figure advance for his three book contract. In turn about half has been spent on marketing. This guy knows the business and writes beautifully. It will not surprise me when his name is as common as James Patterson's or John Grisham's.

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