Fiction Writing: My Take on Critiques

I spent about half an hour looking for my Stephen King book on writing. I suppose he said something about critiquing, but I have no idea what it was. Anyway, my views are that for a beginner it is good, but as you get on, you become more selective as to who is to critique your novel. Unfortunately the ones whom you want is usually too busy.

You see, I was told you need to have a critique group to look at your work, but except for a nice author who gave me good suggestions about distances,, times and places and how to write a good first chapter, most of my critiques were crap. They made me disappointed, but I felt I had to have them, and for a time, I sent my work in and then I got On Writing by Stephen King and surprise! He did not like critiquing either. He did talk about creative writing classes, and if one could not take any, to get books on writing and study hard.

So now I go over a chapter at a time, and think does this move the story and it is much better than worrying about someone else's idea, because if I am not satisfied, neither is anyone else.

Fiction Writing: The Dialogue Thing

When I first started writing, the characters were engaged in some rather interesting conversations, interspersed with dialogs that moved the plot. However, most of it consisted of "hi, haven't seen you since last November," and "I think I feel a cold coming on," along with long monologues about their mission, whatever it was. I see the same thing on fan fiction stories where Jarod and Miss Parker have a long conversation, insulting each other. I was told that this was wrong, and wondered why. Surely character one does greet character two, and they do talk about the weather and stuff like that.

Instead I found that when you are writing a story, you are allowed so many pages and when this happens, you only put in the conversation that makes the plot go forward, also known as the dialog. So what you have is character one say, "Are all things in readiness for the invasion?" and character two replying, "Yes sir. The humans will not be expecting us. Hail Zerhx, our leader!"

So what does happen to the conversation they really would have? Well I suppose it goes into the description like this; Xery greeted Xerwe, his twin pod, speaking much about the weather on the planet Zerrx, the war with the Insect people of Wry, and the mating rituals that occurred in the month Qwer, the only time their race was fertile.

So in short, this is the difference between real life and fiction. In the latter, much of the conversation goes unsaid unless it is of earthshaking importance.