A reader's emotions can be sparked with few words. That's the power of dialogue.

Readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience . . . is increasingly visual.

Dialogue, contrary to popular view, is not a recording of actual speech it is a semblance of speech, an invented language of exchanges that build in tempo or content toward climaxes.

A lawyer's job is to manipulate the skeletons in other people's closets.

A writer writes what other people only think.

Readers take in dialogue one thought at a time. A frequent mistake of beginners is to combine thoughts, which may be suitable for other forms of writing but not for dialogue. Another mistake is speechifying. Three sentences at a time is tops, yet many beginners write speeches that go on and on.

In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories

Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.