Midweek links- description

Hello, my name is Erinn and I SUCK AT DESCRIPTION.
I would say besides spelling, grammar and telling a good story, description is my weakest area of writing.

This week's Midweek Links will be about Description.

Here's what I know about it. Describe what's important, the shoe laces of the MC isn't important when he or she is running away from a bear bee hybrid. (I just scared the crap out of myself with this one)

Don't spend lots of time describing clothes... why? Because it's useless and BORING!!!! It's safe to assume the character is wearing clothes. Walk down any high school, every kid is wearing the same basic thing, a shirt and pants... maybe a girl will wear a skirt, but she's only doing that to impress one specific boy.

Books to read about description:
On Writing, by Stephen King, Section On Writing, Chapter 6.

Blogs who write about description.
My go to blog for this little segment is Mary Kole's blog Kidlit.
Every writer's guide says "Show don't tell." Sometimes it's important to tell, and Mary talks about when it's good to tell. But she also talks about "showing and telling" here.


More on showing not telling here by Blood Red Pen. Do you know what fills up a lot of books? People. Here's how to describe them.
Here's one I know I personally struggle with, describing and showing emotion.

Querytracker.net blog
Wanna describe a character, try the dramatic approach.
Top ten mistakes writers make...

Writer's Digest:
Writer's tip of the day- exposition--- too much. How to enrich your descriptions.

ok it took me an hour to find these few links, that's it, I'm googling now. So much easier---
All kinds of writing: Three parts of writing
Six quick Tips to writing description- POEWAR
How to write a character description. Ehow

You would think there would be a lot more information about this, but after an hour and 15 minutes this is all I've found.

Midweek links- dialogue

So Lydia Kang asked on her blog asked: What is your weakness? Most people said dialogue.

I won't lie, I'm pretty awesome at dialogue:

"Shut the front door." I screamed, people are so rude.

"You shut the front door."

"No you.

"You."

"Stop being such a putz and shut the door."

End scene.

Um, or maybe I don't rock at dialogue as much as I think.

So here are some links and resources for writing great dialogue.

Whenever I do one of these postings the first place I go to is Mary Kole. This week I have a TON of stuff from her and other links I found through her.
The Name Game talks about how some writers use the character's names too much in dialogue.

Tag you're it, is all about writing good dialogue tags. <-- this one I think is SUPER helpful.

What to cut, explains what you need to cut from your book. Lots of times it's crappy dialogue.

What show don't tell really means<-- yep it's that straight forward.

Here are a bunch of links Mary posted on her blog and I'm reposting them.
Barry Lyga has a great series on dialogue, one, two, three, four and five.

As always a little Nathan Bradford for you. Cause he's just so gosh darn cute.

Blood Red Pencil has TONS of great stuff. Dialogue is NOT how we talk How to write dialogue that gets interrupted
This one I have a really hard time with, internal dialogue
They also have the three part series about dialogue. Part 1, Part 2, Part3

I found this post from W.I.P It. 7 tips for writing Dialogue.

I think 17 posts are good for now.