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What our customer's say!

"Sound advice on how to write", Dialogue by Gloria Kempton has some sound advice for writing dialogue. While not perfect, those giving it such bad reviews seem more interested in explaining their opinions rather than objectively explain why it's a bad book. Certainly a review must have personal opinion, but an objective criticism that cites clear specific examples and compares that to better books is far more convincing. The people who gave such low scores on this book provide no such information, so even if I was convinced that this book was awful, I wouldn't immediately know where else to look for a better book on dialogue.

Someone who is curious about how to write dialogue would do well to get this book. The chapters focus on clear, distinctive aspects of dialogue and, like the other books in the "Write Great Fiction" series, show how the other elements (such as plot, description, characters, etc.) tie into dialogue. The book does tend to use a tad bit more literary examples than I would like, (I'd prefer a balance of literary and commercial examples) but this is hardly a harsh criticism. Buy a notebook, get this book and take notes on it. The information inside will help you write better dialogue, and that's all the author intended to do.

"Surprisingly GREAT!", I read the few reviews that were available on this book before I purchased it. That said, I wasn't expecting the dead-on, delightfully comedic, phychology behind every chapter written!! I found myself thinking '...who is this author and how does she know my every thought, my every fear and my every excuse to put off until tomorrow what I should have done last year.' I have taken one of her on-line writing classes and found it to be a non-productive experience (for myself). But she deserves 5 STARS--connecting very well with each of her students--via her own written word. I HIGHLY RECCOMMEND HER BOOK.

"Write Great Dialog", Everything you wanted to know about writing dialog and more. This book has it all. From writing for different genres, pacing, intensity, and being able to effectively "weave" dialog throughout your narrative structure. I highly recommend this book for anyone thinking of writing fiction. It provides many insights into writing dialog that I had never even considered before. Well worth the money and time.

"Decent Dialogue Tool", At first I was not very hopeful about this book, because at some points the writing was pretty sketchy and made me wary of being able to learn anything. However, once I got far enough into it, it evened out and had some valuable tips and suggestions for fixing dialogue. If you have had a lot of writer's workshops or classes I wouldn't necessarily reccomend this to you because most of the avice is quite basic, but at least once or twice in most of the chapters you stumble on something you can really use. It is worth at least a skim if you are serious about writing. My only complaint is that it claimed it applied itself to more types of dialogue than it actually does, so a lot of the examples did not apply to me and didn't teach me much. As I stated above, it was still worth it.

"Not a "Lazy Writer" Book", I think I understand why some ratings here are low and I also have feeling some folks were expecting someone to magically plop all the rules of dialogue in their laps. Sad news, darlings, you must WORK at learning dialogue and practice as the author delineates in this book. Before, I was very stiff in my dialogue and overworked it to death, and after this book? I'm no longer afraid of it. I have a better grasp on how character personalities work in combination with how they speak. I'm know now that every dialogue needs three crucial components to have balance. The author uses concise examples and literary excerpts from top notch authors to get her points across, and she does a great job.

Don't worry about the lazy naysayers, they wanted a quick list of how to's and don't understand how patience and practice DO pay off in the end.

(And to Thriller lover in particular, you don't have a clue do you? A character's personality has everything to do with dialogue, it's what makes their voice unique. Why do you think she included an entire chapter on it? Gah! *shakes head* )

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Not so Great", I read a lot of books on writing, and I felt that DIALOGUE: TECHNIQUES AND EXERCISES was definitely one of the weaker ones. This book imparts very little practical advice on how to write dialogue well. We instead get lots of pages devoted to irrelevant subjects (like a lengthy chapter on personality types) and a lot of other filler. If you're looking for a no-nonsense, get-to-the-point book on writing, this book isn't it.

There's some useful information in this book, but most of it could have been summarized in less than 50 pages. My advice is to skip this overpriced book and spend your money on better, more comprehensive guides (such as Stein on Writing, Orson Scott Card's Character & Viewpoint, and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers).

I felt like I wasted my money on this one.


"A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF DIALOGUE", DIALOGUE, by Gloria Kempton, is a comprehensive study of the dialogue mode of fiction-writing. It's filled with insightful looks at the potential uses of dialogue and practical tips on how to incorporate better dialogue into fiction. If there's a better book devoted to the subject of dialogue, I'm not aware of it.

This is one of four in the Write Great Fiction series by Writer's Digest Books: Plot & Structure; Character, Emotion & Viewpoint; Description & Setting; and Dialogue. Each volume provides an in-depth, thought-provoking look at its subject matter. All four belong in a novelist's reference library.


"Very good", This book was very helpful. I didn't find this book "Amaturish" as another person noted. An amateur couldn't have taught the amount of substance that I gained from this book. I liked the breeziness of the author. She made what could be a difficult subject seem fun and easy. The same subject matter could have been taught in a more stuffy manner, and personally, I would have put the book down after a few chapters if that had been the case. I cannot wait to apply the numerous lessons that I learned about dialogue to my own writing. And I had considered myself good at writing dialogue. I now hope that Ms. Kempton's lessons will make my dialogue GREAT.

"Amaturish and pointless", I feel really sorry for the would-be-writers who are taught by this author. If they write anything like this book--wordy, pointless, boring--well, good luck to them. I've read at least 10 books on the craft of fiction writing; I think this is the worst book. In Chapter 2, she talks about her student's fear of writing dialogue, and I thought she might be teaching middle school English classes, not college-level creative writing courses. Somewhere she talks about one of her student's question, why a story has to have a plot, and she goes on to say in many words why a plot is needed, etc., as if the readers of this book are all like the insincere student. I lost interest and went to the next chapter.

In Chapter 3, she talks about Genre, Mainstream, Literary. She says, "Literary stories are avant-garde and experimental stories that incorporate unconventional and nontraditional writing style and techniques. Maybe she got it right and other authors got it wrong.

In Chapter 4 (Dialogue that propels the story forward), she has subsections of "Dialogue that moves," "Provides new information," "Reveals new obstacles," "Increases suspense," "Furthers the theme," "Shows character transformation," "Reveals/reminds of goals," and "Keeping your characters in social settings." What's the point of all these? Even mentioning these in a paragraph would be unnecessary (I don't believe a person who hasn't read any book on creative writing would jump right into a book titled "Dialogue"), but this book has each of these points in subsections. Nothing what she says sticks in your head, and you feel like throwing up. I stopped reading somewhere in Chapter 4; that was last month and I don't feel like continue reading.

Oh, she has lots of exercises (each seemed like writing a novel; I might be wrong, because I've paid attention to just a few of them). If you like that (I don't), go for it. I've learned a hundred times more in a short chapter (Chapter 11, The secrets of Good Dialogue) from Sol Stein's "Stein on Writing."


"Okay", It's hard for me to express how this book disapointed me in concrete, rational terms. The best I can put it is: Gloria Kempton gives you an idea of what great dialogue should be, but doesn't teach you how to get there. What would have improved this book would have been examples of bad dialogue, dialogue that didn't serve its purpose, corrected into good dialogue. There is a snippet of that, but just a snippet.

This book is about 100 pages longer than it needed to be. Those last 100 pages or so draaaged. It's excessively repetative, to the point where I had to really force myself to get through even the last 10 pages. I couldn't imagine having to read even. one. more. word. of the repetative drivel.

I give Dialogue 4 stars because, despite the flaws-- and the typos, because there's a bunch of them-- the book departs valuable advice. You learn how easy dialogue can be if you just get inside your character's head and ask one question: what would this person say. You learn that dialogue is means to an end, not the end itself, and I think that's a mistake I've been making. There are exercises at the end of the chapter to help hone my skills. I liked the blocked out text on how to fix my work and the checklists-- both easy to reference when I need advice in a pinch, but don't have time to go through the many points I post-it-flagged in the book.

Not the earth-shattering manual I expected it to be, but with great qualities of its own. I'm sure it'll keep a place on my bookshelf.