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Charles Hackney's avatar

So much of the quality of snappy dialogue depends on the actors' delivery. Does anybody have some good examples of this working in print?

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Eric Brown's avatar

Robert Kroese is pretty good at this; so is Donald E. Westlake & Tim Dorsey.

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D. Jason Fleming's avatar

Many of Archie Goodwin's interactions with his boss, Nero Wolfe, in Rex Stout's wonderful Nero Wolfe mysteries.

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Resonant Media Arts's avatar

I do love using dialogue to deliver large chunks of exposition if you can avoid the dreaded "as you well know" trap. Also using the trick of avoiding talking about the subject everyone expects and letting it be revealed through its absence really helps.

The only time it becomes tedious is when you need to move the story forward but are risking getting bogged down in show-don't-tell "shoeleather" scenes that do nothing to move the stakes or energy of the story, but only to worldbuild or deal with the mechanics of getting the story from A to B.

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