So today I've got an excerpt from best-selling YA paranormal author Kate Evangelista and her newest book, SAVOR. She's on tour right now with Paranormal Cravings Tours, and I posted my review of this book yesterday here on this blog. But here's the excerpt... Kate is especially smooth with writing dialogue.
In my work as an editor, I've noticed that a lot of people have trouble writing dialogue, or getting it to flow. It's something that takes a lot of practice. Yes, you need to have dialogue tags, but not for every sentence. My column last January in CapeWomenOnline magazine was about writing effective dialogue, as it's a subject that fascinates me - what makes some writing smooth while others sound stilted and totally forced.
Some dialogue tags really bug me, especially when they aren't true tags but an action turned into a tag. My very first editor pointed that out to me and now I can't help but cringe when I read it in other works - you can't smile a sentence, but you can say it with a smile.
I love the way Kate has no wasted words; each sentence helps develop our understanding of the characters as well as furthering plot. She doesn't waste dialogue tags where it's obvious who's talking, or tell us someone asked a question when we can see that from the question mark...this scene shows her prowess, in my opinion. Tell me what you think in the comments, and what you like/dislike when you read dialogue.
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Excerpt from SAVOR, by Kate Evangelista:
I lowered my camera. The use of my
full name never came with good consequences. I blinked my vision back at her
even if I wanted to spend the rest of the night taking his picture. Sweat rose over my upper lip. I may just have found my
subject for the Spring Showcase.
The only problem?
I had to find a way to convince him
to be in my project. Something told me this wouldn’t be easy. By the way my
heart beat in my ears, drowning out the music and Silvia having a fit in front
of me, I wanted it too much. I wanted him
too much.
“This the guy you were saying?” I
showed Silvia the picture I’d taken. This seemed to pacify her because she
sidled closer, mesmerized like a moth to a flame.
“Luka Visraya,”
she said with a moan like she’d just tasted the most luscious chocolate before taking
a long gulp of her cocktail. The name didn’t register. Silvia must have
noticed my blank expression because she continued. “He’s the bassist for
Vicious.”
Still no pings of recognition in my
head.
She slapped her thigh. “Where have
you been? It’s weird that you haven’t heard of them. Their songs are on the
radio like every second.”
Of course I hadn’t heard of them. I
liked listening to country and I hardly kept up with current events.
“Name one?” Okay, I had a name.
Luka. Exotic. A bassist. Part of a band I should know about. So he’s famous. I
slowly felt my chances of asking him to be my subject slip from my grasp. If he
was someone famous, fat chance he’d say yes to a graduating photography student
like me. I just about deflated when Silvia mentioned one of their songs. “Oh, I
know that one!” By accident. It played in the radio of the cab I rode in to
Sacrifice. I stared at the picture of him then lifted my gaze to where he sat.
“He’s gone.”
“What?” Silvia whipped around in
time to come face to face with a wall of man. “Whoa!” She pushed at him. “Watch
it, buddy!”
“Give me the camera,” he said in a
threatening tone.
Big. Beefy. Bald. The three Bs that
made up the quintessential bodyguard.
I clutched my DSLR closer to my
chest and looked up at him with my good eye. “And why would I do that?” The
patch didn’t seem to intimidate him because he just reached out. So much for my
Bond villain aspirations. I moved away from his grubby hand. No one touched my
camera but me.
Despite her size, Silvia came
between me and the mountain. “We’re here to cover Sacrifice for our college
paper. You don’t have the right to take away my colleague’s camera.”
Yeah!
You give it to him, Silvy.
Not that I couldn’t take care of
myself. But if Silvia wanted to play hero, I wouldn’t stand in her way.
“What seems to be the problem here?”
a soft, authoritative voice chimed in.
The bodyguard moved aside to reveal
the Gothic Lolita. She stood at just about the same height as Silvia, but she
possessed an older aura even if she seemed to be our age.
“She’s been taking pictures,” Baldy
said.
Lolita’s kohl eyes landed on me then
shifted to my camera.
“As I was saying to the big guy,”
Silvia explained. “My colleague and I are covering the opening of Sacrifice.”
“For what paper?” Lolita asked
without taking her eyes off me. I clutched my camera like an extra appendage.
In some ways it was. After losing half my sight, I relied on my camera like an
extra eye, seeing the world through its lens. I would rather die than lose it.
“The Daily Gossip,” I said before
Silvia could answer just to relieve some of the awkward tension building in me
under her gaze. “We study at Wexler U.”
She tilted her head, crossing her
arms.
“Okay,” I quickly stammered out. “I
get that the name of our paper sounds like a tabloid, but the Daily Gossip is a
cool campus paper.” The last part maybe only I believed since Silvia raised her
eyebrow at me, but Lolita and the mountain didn’t have to know that.
No one spoke after that. Even in a
noisy club, the silence in our group rang in my ears. Not waiting for the
situation to get any more awkward, I plowed forward with my own selfish
intentions.
“You know Luka.” I said it more as a
statement, but it came out like a question.
Lolita nodded.
“I’m Dakota Collins and I’m
graduating this spring. I was wondering if Luka would be interested in—”
“What would I be interested in?” a
smooth voice joined our group.
The walls of my throat closed,
chocking the rest of what I had to say. All eyes turned to Luka. Silvia dropped
her empty glass. It bounced off the bodyguard’s shoe and landed in a clatter
but didn’t break. Even with my height, I still had to look up at him.
“What are you doing here?” Lolita
admonished. “You should be backstage.”
One side of his lips came up. God.
Without the scowl, his face lit up. I had to stop the urge to lift my camera
and start snapping away. And his eyes were piercing blue. The kind that
stretched over my mother’s farm in the summer. Damn.
Seeing him up close, I knew I’d give any one of my
kidneys for a chance to take his picture in a formal shoot.
“We have five minutes. Chill, Yana.”
He tugged at one of her pigtails.
“Luka,” Silvia managed. “I’m a big
fan. Will you sign my chest?”
Bypassing my petite colleague,
Luka’s intensely blue gaze studied me. He reached out and I flinched back. His
fingers almost grazed my patch. What the hell was the matter with him? Trying
to touch my eye patch was tantamount to poking a bandage over a wound and
asking the person if it hurts.
Gothic Lolita—Yana—yanked Luka’s arm
down. “I’m so sorry!” Her whole aura changed. She went from all business to
panicky. “My brother sometimes forgets his manners. He didn’t mean anything
about touching your…” She bit her lower lip, maybe trying to keep herself from
saying the wrong thing.
That little faux pas cleared my head
of the Luka haze and spurred me into action. “Luka, will you let me take your
picture for my final project?” I didn’t know where my courage came from, but I
knew if I didn’t take this chance, I’d regret it. I had to have him as my
subject.
Still not removing his gaze from my
face, like my patch transfixed him, he tilted his head to one side very much
like his sister did earlier.
“Luka, don’t!” Yana said, but from
the consideration on Luka’s face, she was too late.
“You’re a photographer?”
“Yes.” I nodded, in case the word
wasn’t enough.
“And you’d like me to be the subject
of your project?”
God yes! This time, I could only
nod. I didn’t want him to see how eager I was. And I couldn’t live with myself
if I embarrassed myself further.
I waited with baited breath.
It seemed everyone in our group
waited with baited breath for what the golden god had to say about my brazen
request. I soon realized when Luka spoke, everyone listened. The way he
pronounced every word precisely yet still spoke so smoothly, like butter on
warm toast, captured everyone’s attention. To say he captivated us was an
understatement. Something in me certainly wanted to hear him keep speaking. He
could read from an accounting textbook in that voice and no one would get
bored.
“I need to know that you’re good,”
he finally said.
Something about his words seemed to
hold a different meaning. I must have missed the alcohol in the soda Silvia had
given me. Maybe I was drunk and this was all a blackout dream.
“What are you saying?” Yana faced
Luka all the way now, her petite form all rigid.
He unleashed a full on megawatt
smile my way. I almost had to cover my eye from it. At my side, Silvia gasped.
Her long nails dug into my arm. Like staring at the sun, I couldn’t take my
gaze away from him no matter how bad it was for me.
“We’re about to perform. I want you
to take several pictures then send them to Yana. If she approves, we’ll see
about your request.”
Then, like smoke, he disappeared
into the crowd.
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