Writing

Clarice, there used to be a book called "Who's Talking" that I used in creative writing classes. It was wonderful and I do remember that it included passages from many great writers. Eudora Welty I especially remember. And Raymond Carver. At any rate, it seems to be out of print. A fair substitute, is Writing Dialogue by Tom Chiarella. You might check it out. It seems to me, though, that most dialogue problems come from the writer simply being too "stiff." Sometimes too coherent, too fluid. We just don't talk like we write. We stop and start, truncate sentences, wander, make grammatical mistakes, etc. Of course this depends on your character. One thing I do know that helps immensely is to get someone else to read your dialogue aloud to you. If they don't even know the context, even better. Or try recording it yourself and then listening. Your problems are likely that you're doing too good a job. Writing for the eye and not the ear. Hope this helps a little.