Exposition vs. Dialog

I start with my progress. Not a lot of new words (but many words replaced). Organizing scenes into chapters and discovering places where I can optimize. Draft 2 is now maybe 10% complete (instead of the 90% I had hoped for) so I moan a little about how everything in this process takes much longer than initially expected. Michael talks about how it took him five years to get his current work to the editing phase. I talk about blowing past my target word count (80K) and guess I'll wind up in the mid 90's. Michael started a new story, is at 12,119 words. He did a 500 word story for a competition and found that the diversion threw him off his main story, and that he's finding getting back into it more of a challenge than he expected. My goal is simple: keep at it. We digress into editing, wrapping up my story, confusion in dialog. Before getting back to Michael's goals: 5-10K new words in his story. The topic for this episode is dialog vs. exposition and we talk about the role of each in our different genres. Next Episode: Mentors and Learning. Books we mentioned: Plot Twist by Harlan Coben and Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott