/lit/ - Literature

>>21650844
>Read some good books and you'll notice that they have some really clever lines on every page.
Great advice, dude. I'll remember to include 'clever lines' in my next story.

Just kidding, I agree with everything you say. Trying to be economical in that way is the aspect of revising that feels most like hard work to me, but it's also the aspect that most improves the text.

>>21650910
>what writers do good dialog
Hemingway is obviously the classic reference point (I recommend Hills Like White Elephants if you haven't read it -- very short read). Raymond Chandler is a good resource for fast-paced and entertaining, pulpy dialogue.

I also read James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime recently (I'm mentioning it in loads of threads because it was very well written), and Salter's the master of that kind of minimal but evocative interweaving of dialogue and description that the other anon was talking about. Sometimes he'll be describing a scene quite loosely -- a whole afternoon in a couple of sentences -- and then he'll switch into a very brief bit of dialogue, maybe just someone saying 'Please don't' or 'Tonight' or whatever, and the sudden switch to dialogue is really effective, like you've suddenly overheard some intimate moment.