We made it up. We were writing interior dialogue so often we just started use ID instead. You’ll likely not see it written like that ANY WHERE ELSE. It’s a Kate Palmer blog thing.

Isn’t it nice to be an original?

That’s precisely my predicament right now!

Naw. Who has time to re-read a post? Or even go back and correct known misspellings.

Life is to short.

Sorry for the deciphering moment. But, you do understand don’t you? Words are such a hassle when you’re trying to communicate ideas. Ha!

I wish he would have been just a little more explicit. I will be. While trying to capture and KNOW your characters so that you can create an authentic voice you may, in your creative little mind, begin devling in their past. Their childdood, their adolecence, their education, a host of experiences, some of their form jobs, their relationship to their parents, their relationship with sibblings, with aunts and uncles and cousins and dogs and cats.

All of the devling may be important FOR you because it may finally help you decide WHO your character is and give you some ideas about how to present your character. You may give them a scare below their left eye, gotten in a bar room brawl. You may give them a lisp from a childhood scare or a stuttering problem. You may have them be overly verbal and talk too much because they were always a domineering child. BUT NONE OF THAT IS YOUR STORY. And that’s where authors get into trouble

They find the voice of their character, finally, through exploring possibilities that they THINK come from their character’s past. It doesn’t. It came from your brain. From your inventive self. A bad author believes that in order to authentice and present a believable character WITH THE VOICE INCLUDED, they must now present all the backstory. Sometimes its just a paragraph. Other times its pages or chapters of backstory.

DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ERRANT VOICE IN YOUR HEAD THAT FOOLS YOU INTO presenting all that backstory under the illusion that it is necessary in order to achieve the voice of the character. It is not. All you need to do is present a compelling story in the present and your readers will fill in the BACKSTORY with their own imaginations.

Like my author-friend said: you may need to know all the backstory, but you DO NOT NEED TO WRITE IT.

Too bad he didn’t explain himself. He could have made millions. Just like me.

I hate it when I read these phrases in books and there I went and used one.

You’re right about the point of the paragraph. I was pretty pleased when I arrived at this phrase: created the apperance of a cozy…. A little too pleased since I didn’t catch the weak writing.

Yes, yes, I need to work on Eva’s voice. I’ve got to find it first. Any suggestions on how to do that?

You called me a good writer so now I will float on my little cloud for a bit before coming back to reality. That’s high praise coming from you. Thank you.

I’d say that yes, the new dialogue flows well, but the first does indeed portray your character as the somewhat stilted grandstander he is.