Dialogue: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Effective Dialogue (Write Great Fiction)

This book belongs to a very interesting series, but is not at the same level as "Plot & Structure" and "Revision and Self-editing".
The author uses plenty of pages to explain few useful - but not new - concepts, making exercises a pure repetition of the content of the chapter; the same can be said for the grey pages with practical tips. The same ideas would fit in one third of the pages.

I found a few points raised by this book helpful.

Generally I found the style and authorial voice OK but it seemed to be far longer than was necessary. Really everything she said could have been condensed into a chapter or two of a more comprehensive book, like Bell's excellent Plot and Structure in the same series, which should probably have been extended to encompass the other books.

Can't help thinking the rest of this series is just a cheap way of quadrupling the publisher's profits after Plot and Structure's success.

However, if you have particular problems with dialogue, this crash course may well prove useful. The exercises were certainly comprehensive, though of coruse there's no-one to tell you how well you did at them!

This is a superb set of books for the aspiring author, written not just in an informative way, but also fun to read and the content easy to remember. The book teaches all you need to know to start or improve your writing, with plenty of examples to illustrate each concept. You won't find any pompous tuition or comments in these books, the text is intended for your benefit, and not for the author to show off. In that respect it doesn't matter if this is the first time you are trying to write anything, or you just want to improve on your past experience. And apart from teaching prose, I find these books packed with many fascinating insights into humanity and the way people interact with each other, and also the world around them. Another good point is that the chapters are long enough to make a point, but not long enough to bore the pants off you. As I said, the text is written for 'you,' and to encourage you. It certainly encourages me!

Although this book has some gems on how to write dialogue, I found it too long for the job that it had to do. There is too much repetition and really this should not be a whole book, but merely one chapter of a book on creative writing.
I found Gloria Kempton's style a little irritating, where she used too much first person narrative: 'I like this...'. 'I do this...', 'I see new writers make a lot of mistakes when it comes to writing emotional dialogue...' etc.