We're back from our unplanned hiatus with most of our brains intact! This week we're diving into dialogue: how to make your characters sound like real live humans talking to each other as opposed to two robots exchanging plot information in a robot factory (beep boop). It’s not an easy nut to crack, and we’re not promising to hand out any nutcrackers, but we have a few clues. It is also, when you get it right, one of the most fun things you will ever do as a writer. Way more fun than writing your name in a form at the DMV, for just one example!

PLUS Hot Goss: an AI platform promising to write your query letter for you (absolutely do not do this), a book title that gave us a small (tiny) pause, Meagan gets the name of an awesome Bay Area bookshop wrong (that cat is SLEEPY, not lazy!), and a Threads discourse about a single word that somehow, inevitably, became about ableism. The internet remains ungovernable, as do we. 

Welcome to Bad Lit Friends. We're glad you're here, even if none of us know what we're doing. 

Bad Lit Friends was created and is hosted by Meagan Thompson-Mann and Kirk Rafferty.

Show email: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Bluesky: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends.bsky.social⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Threads: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BadLitFriends⁠⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠badlitfriends.com⁠⁠⁠

Show notes:

BBC Radio 4 Dramas playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJmAFKECAKUgRkbhCEgO95Rl2F7LQQjA1 

Sleepy Cat Bookshop, Berkeley (yes I know I said Lazy Cat!): https://www.sleepycatbooks.com/

Oxford University Online creative writing courses (where Meagan honed her dialogue chops): https://lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/course-subject/creative-writing/