Episode #347: What Is Specialized Dialogue?

Throwback Monday! Taken in the early 2010's, when I had a sense of humor at work. I may or may not still have that Sun doll, and the whale was put back in storage somewhere in this state after making a few appearances at the Big E.

While I was working on a few of my short stories, I noticed that I was trying to write my dialogue to fit the tenor of the story. I noticed that I was doing this on a similar scale in my fantasy series, only I was applying it during a given scene with certain characters.

For example, if I was dealing with a particular scene at the palace, I would tweak the dialogue to more accurately reflect what the courtiers and others would speak and how they would answer.

I found myself doing this with my sort stories, almost automatically. For example, a short story that I was rewriting, the setting was a passenger train in the late 19th century. Now in the Victorian age, there was a certain fluidity to the language, even though certain slang and curse words that would be the norm today.

So I made sure that the dialogue stayed within those Victorian standards. For example, I had my character curse, or rather, use a curse word that was stronger 'damn'. But I simply couldn't drop an F bomb when the man was showing disgust with himself and/or his current situation. Instead, I use the version that preachers would use  during fiery sermons about sin: fornicate.

While it doesn't have the shock or staying power of today's F bombs, it can still pack a punch where a proper young lady would be scandalized by the word.

Another example where I tried to tailor the dialogue to the tone of the story, was another rewritten short story that I had set in today's world, but the people were part of a large wolf pack (you know the type: human carnivore, answers to the man down under, etc.) that was a tiny bit gothic in nature.

So the dialogue had to be more in the view of gothic, with shades of being quite erudite. Like in the style of a few well known period shows back when television used to be really good.

One more example, again dealing with a rewrite (I have a plethora of badly written short stories that were explicitly created for my now closed short story blog that are desperately looking to be rewritten), with the setting being in the backwoods of a nameless southern state, and two of the characters being of the "Deliverance" mentality, and the other two being of the jaded city type with their own brand of justice.

Let me tell you, it were not easy writing dialogue for two characters with the IQ of their shoe sizes combined, but it was disturbingly easy to write dialogue for the proverbial dumb blonde/valley girl who actually wasn't plus her assistant.

So with those examples shown, I guess my question for every oner would be: do you tweak the way you go about writing dialogue based on what the given setting for your story, or do you keep it the same regardless of the type of story that you're writing?

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #346: My Puny Kingdom For A Sensible Story Title

It's Flashback Friday!

Just to give you an idea on how old this pic is, the RV pictured has been gone for almost 20 years, and that tree was removed to allow solar panels to be installed pre-pandemic.

The original inspiration for this blog post was a series of posts that I was writing for my FB author's page about my one and only traditionally published novel, Line 21. Specifically, I was lamenting about my poor title choice and how naive I was to think that the publisher would actually change it prior to publication.

So that got me to thinking about a task that I absolutely loathed over the years, to the point where it made my top five list of things associated with publishing that I hate to do: story titles.

This has always been a major splinter under my fingernail for as long as I can remember. Because I loathe this necessary evil to my writing life, I would often not even put in the bare minimum effort needed to choose a title. The end result would often be something like the aforementioned title to my trad publisher.

For this post, I thought I would revisit one of my least favorite writing related tasks to see what kind of progress, if any, I happen to be making.

My definition of "progress" is quite simple: am I now choosing titles based on the content of the story, or am I still being cutesy about my titles?

On the surface it does seem that I am making solid progress on the former. While I was spending the first half of 2026 editing my fantasy series, I was also coming up with solid titles for each volume. All the titles were based on the actual content for each given volume, of which the forth volume gave me the most trouble, as it took me almost two days to come up with one, and even then, I had to do some last minute tweaking to make it fit.

Now if we move over to the short story world that I had recently decided to refamiliarize myself with after about a year hiatus (give or take), to see what kind of progress I made there. I will note that the retitling has been a tad more difficult, as the content was more eclectic than normal.

If we take a look at the last story I had rewritten, you would see that the title more accurately matches with the story: a man traveling to Butte, Montana by train, so the story, naturally enough, is called 'Butte, Montana.'

As I thumb through the other fourteen short stories, it looks like I made a concentrated effort to link the title of a given story to the actual content of that given story. Although, it does look like one of them, titled 'Side Hustle', could be tenuously linked to the story content. However, the odd thing about this story is that I had, purposely it seems, added a few elements from my fantasy series.

So in my eyes, I consider this to be a win. Why? Because it's easier to explain a story with a title that makes sense, than to explain a story with a title that doesn't make sense (like my first novel).

I would like also to give a very brief update on my latest novella "Evil Has A Conscience": I should be getting the e-book version back by the beginning of October, with the print version back by the second week.

Have a fantastic week!

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #345: Breaking The Fourth Wall Like "Crazy Eddie"

Flashback to the years of yore, when the local farm in the middle of suburbia had milk cows grazing in the fields. I believe they still run a fruit and vegetable stand in the summer.

Note about the title: Crazy Eddie's was a short-lived,  loud and brash electronics store from the 1980's in the tri-state area (NY, NJ & CT), who's gimmick was that the spokesman would go on epic 20-30 second rant about electronics and shout "Shop at Crazy Eddie's, his prices are insane!" 

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I was reorganizing/condensing a couple of half inch binders into what I thought was a suitable one inch binder for a short story collection to publish in the future, when I came across one of my rewritten short stories from a few years ago.

Glancing through the pages, I noticed that I had managed to write something quite odd in the story. This wasn't the first time that I had noticed this oddity, since I had previously come across a sticky note that said I should write a blog post about it

What this sticky note was alluding to, was the oddity that I had written into the story, which was having the narrator step out of the story, thus breaking the proverbial fourth wall, and talk directly to the reader. I've seen this particular trope done in movies and t.v. shows, but never seen it done in a story before.

Anyways, it was about three sentences in length where the narrator steps out of the story to address the reader directly about a pivotal event in the story, before stepping back into the story to continue his narration.

Now this was not something that was planned ahead of time. If I recall correctly, this just happened, rather sloppily, organically the first time around, so just cleaned it up on the rewrite.

But as a favorite former blogger would often say whenever he went on a slightly irrelevant tangent, I blogress. So, back to the topic at hand.

The story in question was written mostly in the 1st person/present tense p.o.v. I say mostly, because the narration would shift to 3rd person for events that the narrator wasn't there for. Once that particular arc was completed, it slipped back into the 1st person p.o.v.

I basically did this throughout the story, with the narrator doing his thing, then he would shift over to being a peripheral part of a particular scene (if it all), then shift back to narrating. I don't think you call it 'head hopping' in the traditional sense of the phrase, as he was the only persona presenting the entire story through his point of view. So I didn't have multiple 1st person p.o.v. throughout, just his.

For my short story collections, I wrote fourteen short stories, with may two original (that is, non-rewritten) and one essay, and that was the only story that was written in this weird 1st/3rd p.o.v. hybrid. All the others were written in the normal 3rd p.o.v. that we all know and have a love/hate relationship with.

I have a couple of other previously blog published short stories that I want to rewrite. And because you just know that I love to challenge myself, I decided to rewrite these stories from the inside out. In other words, I have a beginning and I have an ending. What I need is a new larger middle that will get me from the beginning to that ending as bumpy and as raucous as humanly possible.

I'm not quite sure if I had a purpose with this blog post, as it was more of general observations on how I did something radically different with my story completely by accident, and how it workout when the dust had settled.

I guess my question to everyone would be this: did you do something with a story that went completely against the rules for storytelling, yet somehow it worked out in the end?

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #344: And Your Archetype Is....?

I was taking a moderately long break during my morning walk, as my legs can no longer keep up with the stamina that I actually have these days, when I decided to take this pic. Even though it's early September, it's still summer in New England.

Many years ago I used to participate in a monthly blog hop sponsored by a writing group called The Insecure Writer's Support Group, and in their monthly newsletter, they would often have a question that you could use during the blog hop.

The suggested question for the month of September I found intriguing enough to actually use it for one of my blog posts. The question that everyone was given is this:

"Do you have a favorite character archetype that you tend to gravitate towards in your writing?"

Now this is something I actually had to look up, because I did not have a clue on what a 'character archetype' was. After a modicum of research, I now have a basic understanding of what one is.

I would have to say that the one I gravitate the most to, is one that Hollywood has been brutally  mutilating for the better part of two decades: the girl boss.

You've undoubtedly seen the Hollywood version: the woman who can do everything, solve everything, control everything, treat people, like men, as insignificant dolts who can't do anything without a woman to hold their hand and guide them along, etc.

Because virtually all of my stories are female-centric, I can say with complete confidence that my female main characters and even the secondary characters, are written in the true 'girl boss' archetype.

While they do ooze that 'girl boss' persona, they are quite confident in their ability to lead, to delegate, and to even ask for help. They are quite compassionate to friends and family, and can be merciless to their enemies. Most importantly, they know their limitations.

My actual 'girl boss' characters will never be mistaken for the Hollywood version of the Mary Sue 'girl bosses'. because we all know that imperfection makes a character resonate more deeply than the shallow that is seemingly forced upon us on a monthly basis.

I believe the 'girl boss' archetype will always be part and parcel of whatever type of story I choose to writer (this was epically showcased in my currently unpublished fantasy series). My stories have been female-centric from the very beginning of my career, and using this particular archetype correctly is something that I will always enjoy writing about.

Thank you for stopping by today and spending a couple of minutes out of your busy day to read my blog. And remember, "no," is the world's shortest sentence, no matter what language you speak. And quite often, the most difficult to understand.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved