by Jess Gately
On Tuesday 24 August, EdWA hosted the first Read like an editor book club. This new venture, rather than asking members to read a specific book to discuss, chooses a topic and encourages attendees to discuss the writing and structural techniques used in books they love, hate or are reading at the moment.
For the first session, the topic was ‘dialogue’ and members brought a vast array of books from many different genres to discuss how the authors used dialogue to create various effects. Some fabulous conversations resulted about how the lack of punctuation shaped the voice of the manuscript and how the dialogue created rhythm in the reading.
Some groups discussed how language changes in dialogue reflected a character’s growth throughout a book, while others looked at the differences in the styles of dialogue between adults and children, men and women, and people of different cultures, classes and histories. There were discussions about how sparse dialogue can still convey so much, and about how language choice can help shape setting, particularly in historical fiction.
The book club was started as a way to help editors develop their critical reading skills and to examine the techniques authors can use.
The topic of dialogue was a fitting start to the series; one member recounted how, with travel restrictions in place, she kept in touch with her son by choosing books to read and discuss together. While this off-hand comment wasn’t necessarily about the dialogue in the book, it was a great reminder of how books continue to bring us together, to facilitate conversation and create dialogue in real life.
Our next Read like an editor book club will be on Tuesday 2 November at 6pm AWST on the topic of Beginnings. We hope to see you there.