A Peek in on Day 3 of Krista Marino's Premium Workshop

Krista Marino is a Senior Editor at Delacorte Press (Random House Children's Books).

I'm peeking in on Day 3 (of 4) of her premium workshop Finding and Revising Your Protagonist's Voice in a Young Adult Novel.

The class was given pre-reading and movie watching assignments prior to the conference as well as homework during. Last night's homework: eavesdropping. (Now that's what I call homework!)

How about this one, coming from a teen overhead at a bookstore: "I think this is the supposed-to-be-a-good-book section."

The class is dishing on dialogue today.

Marino: A lot of people think voice means dialogue, but it doesn't.

Dialogue is more than just words. It has to feel real. But dialogue is not only what a character says, but it's also the character's internal monologue, which might be even more important.

Exercise: Krista reads an excerpt from Jennifer Donnelly's REVOLUTION (pre-reading homework). She then reads it again but removes the inner monologue to look at how it changes it. Without, the character becomes kind of one note.