Melrick

13642 Damn, I should have bought some chocolate for the end of the world.

13638 lol Aww shucks.

13634 btw, whichever one of you has the odd number problem, if you find yourself falling on an odd number, you could always cheat a little by adding the next number as well, thereby putting yourself back on even numbers. As long as it's only one more, I'm sure no one will notice.

As far as formating for dialogue is concerned, each line requires its own paragraph. Exactly how you break up your paragraphs is I guess up to you, but the most common way is to leave a blank one line space between them. In most novels, you'll find the start of paragraphs are indented, mainly for space reasons, and you can go with that if you like, but for formating ease - and, most importantly, for ease of reading - simply leaving a space between them is probably easier. I'll write out a passage of dialogue from the brilliant J.R.R. Tolkien novel, "The Hobbit". I'll convert the indented paragraphs to the blank line paragraphs: This rapid fire kind of dialogue doesn't require long explanations, other than the "said Bert" variety. Anything else would have ruined the feel he was going for, which was a bit of comedy. But the less rapid fire variety might require a bit more description or explanation, such as, "Whence did the Trolls get them, I wonder," said Thorin, looking at his sword with new interest. It's not important to always finish every line of dialogue with the, "said Bert" type. You can leave out that description for a couple of lines of dialogue, but the important thing is to never write too much without that, otherwise the reader will almost certainly get lost as to who said what. If there are more than two people in the dialogue, then it's even more important to ensure people don't get lost. There's other rules to dialogue writing, but that should hopefully cover your question.

The problem with really long chapters is that readers can find them daunting at times. For example, if the chapter is shorter then the reader is more likely to make decisions such as: "I'll just read this chapter and then go to bed". If the chapter is really long then a person is more likely to say: "Oh I can't be bothered reading all that." Your dedicated readers likely will be fine, but new readers are just as likely to skip it as read it. Maybe after the story has grown by a number of chapters, then you could slip in the odd long chapter, but certainly not at the start. As far as writing for children, that's always a very difficult thing indeed, and one that a great many professional writers don't get right. I think as long as the child doesn't come away sounding too adult - and as long as the child is understandable - then you're fine. Observing how a real child of that age speaks is a good indicator.

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13573 Welcome back at last.

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13569 Woo! I finally got 69!

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