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Characters and Dialogue
Paperback
Series: Craft & Critique, Book 4
General ReferenceWriting Instruction
Publisher: Ross Lampert, A.K.A. the Critique Doctor
Published: Feb 1 2026
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.38 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Without characters, there is no story. But are the characters in a story rounded and human, even if they're aliens or animals, or are they little more than stick figures? Do they grow and change as the story progresses? When they talk, do they sound like real people speaking? If not, why not? These are the kinds of questions Characters and Dialogue tackles.
In this book, long-time critique group leader Ross Lampert (a.k.a. The Critique Doctor) provides detailed, practical articles on how to help you and your critique partners improve your:
- Presentation and development of their characters
- Selection and consistency of the point of view character(s)
- Use of conversation between characters, including using direct versus indirect quotes, using dialogue to present information, dialogue tags and action beats, swearing, and more
Each article ends with questions you can ask yourself about the piece you're reviewing to identify the exact problem you're seeing and offer the author usable critique.
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