The beta reader who told me my dialogue was too perfect changed everything

A friend in my writing group said my characters sounded like they were reading from a script, not talking. She pointed out a scene where two friends were arguing and the grammar was too clean. I went back and added filler words like "um" and sentence fragments. Now my dialogue sounds way more real and my last 3 short stories got better feedback. Has anyone else gotten a critique that totally flipped your approach?

3 comments

3 Comments

skyler_smith8519d ago

Did you have to totally rewrite a scene to get it right?

christopher_sullivan19d ago

Does that ever actually work out or does it usually end up making you realize the first version was fine? I've totally trashed scenes before and just ended up putting back a slightly cleaned up version of the original.

patb1219d ago

Wait, you mean someone actually rewrites the entire thing instead of just tweaking it?