How long does it take to read Writing Dialogue?
Tom Chiarella
Writing Dialogue by Tom Chiarella takes about 3 hours 7 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 7 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1998. 170 pages, about 46,750 words.
7 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 12 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 7 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 57 minutes |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Characters need to speak to each other. Tom Chiarella shows you how. Whether it's an argument, a love scene, a powwow among sixth graders or scientists in a lab, this book demonstrates how to write dialogue that sounds authentic and original. You'll learn ways to find ideas for literary discussions by tuning in to what you hear every day. You'll learn to use gestures instead of speech, to insert silences that are as effective as outbursts, to add shifts in tone, and other strategies for making conversations more compelling. Nuts and bolts are covered, too - formatting, punctuation, dialogue tags - everything you need to get your characters talking.
Subjects: Authorship, Dialogue, Technique, Fiction, Authorship., Fiction -- Technique.
