Wednesday links: Dialogue and description, and balancing priorities

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Since I took advantage of the holiday and didn’t post last Wednesday, here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most this week.

1. Balancing Dialogue and Description in Your Story, from Jane Friedman: Keeping your reader interested is about more than just a good plot and characters. You also have to make sure that you don’t bore them with too much description or confuse them with too little. Excerpt: “To shape your dialogue scene into a compact and intriguing unit, dialogue and non-dialogue have to complement each other. If the equilibrium is off, one of two things will happen.”
2. Back Burner Writing, Essential Apps and How I’m Squeezing In Extra Writing Every Day, from Inkygirl: There are days (and sometimes weeks) when I feel like I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to. It means having to decide on my highest priority, and go from there. It’s always helpful to see how others manage the same type of thing. Excerpt: “It’s okay that my novel writing on the back burner right now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still keep writing! Even if it’s only for a few minutes a day.”