Krista Marino: Establishing Your YA Voice (workshop)

Special workshops are offered at the SCBWI conference. Krista Marino is presenting Establishing Your YA Voice throughout the four days of the conference to a limited number of attendees.

This is day 2 of her workshop. Today's topic is dialogue. Presenting with her is Matt de la Peña, author of MEXICAN WHITEBOY.

Matt: "I lock into the characters...once you know who they are, it makes the dialogue that much easier."

Matt: "Dialogue is not only what people say, but what they don't say."

Matt revises dialogue a lot.

"I like to think about the musicality language."

Stage direction within the dialogue is also important.

Matt believes consistency is the most important thing, if you break the rules you set up early in the book that when the reader is pulled out.

Krista mentions that some of her writers read their entire book out loud to be able to hear it and feel the rhythm.

Matt adds, "You really discover when you've packed in too much dialogue in one exchange."

POSTED BY JOLIE STEKLY