Hill Country Book Festival for Children & Youth 2009

Unleash the Magic!

Attention Children, Teens, Parents, and Grandparents of Central Texas!

November 14, 2009 more than 40 children and YA authors will be

Hill Country Book Festival

showcasing their work and interacting with their readers at the Hill Country Book Festival for Children and Youth 2009 to be held in the Georgetown, Texas Public Library from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm.

An excellent way to kick off the Christmas season!

Nine authors will be presenting for the children and teens throughout the day along with writing activities and practice in developing and illustrating their own books.

A panel discussion on “College Preparation Tips” will be held from 1:00-2:45, and a Scrabble Tournament will be on going throughout the day.

At 3:00, the awards to the winners of the Hill Country Book Festival writing competition will be presented to the top three in each age category. The grand prize is a Dell Netbook Computer.

Activities throughout the day include a magician; face painting, and elementary oral readers. Check out the festival Web site for more details.

Come and enjoy the fun!

Creative Effective Dialog

Creating Effective Dialog

Dialog is conversation on the printed page. We engage in conversation many times throughout a day; yet when we develop a story, the dialog is one of the most difficult elements to master. An important requirement in writing dialog is to intimately know and understand your characters – the antagonist, the protagonist, and all minor characters, no matter how unlikable they are. How do they think? What is their goals and motivation in each scene? What is their overall outlook on life?

All dialog needs to move the plot forward in some way or it is useless and detracts from the intent of the story. Dialog should provide new information to the characters, reveal new obstacles that the viewpoint character must overcome to achieve her goal, or remind the characters and readers of their goals plus accelerate the emotion, increase the suspense, and make the situation more urgent for the characters.

While good dialog is essential for a great story, it is only one leg of a three-legged stool. Dialog, narrative, and action must be balanced to create a three-dimensional feel for the reader. Certainly, there are scenes in all of our stories that work best with only narrative or only action or only dialog, but emphasis on the other elements of fiction in the following scenes will return balance to the story and engage the reader more effectively.

The most effective way to integrate setting into a story is to use all three of the fiction elements: dialog, action, and narrative. Weaving these elements together helps the setting form a background for the story and not over power the plot line. One important aspect to remember is that care needs to be taken not to use narrative to describe the setting when you can have a viewpoint character interacting with the setting in a lively discussion with another character.

The goal in writing dialog is to engage the readers to feel what our characters feel and see what our characters see.