Profile address, yeah.

Easiest way to calculate -- 250 per page, no matter what your computer count is (this is based on how publishers calculate expected printed length, with white space and margins and blah blah). So a 100,000 word manuscript is 400 pages. You can subtract from there.

But for breaking up dialogue, I go for tagging with action, not direction. So I'd go for

"You want to do what?" Her eyebrows were all the way up. "Are you kidding me?"

This, as TypoBoy also pointed out, is a Very Good Thing. You want to *see* the people in the scene, too.

Erin, backflung.

My own take - and habit, and tastes - run to "tell them to shut the fuck up and do something". If there's going to be a lot of dialogue, please to do something to break up the gab and bring them to life by having them move their arms and legs and bodies. Bit of a soap-box issue for me, but honestly, I've found too many books these days are pure talky-meat. Very few people in the real world do nothing but talk; people live. It's writing them living that makes a book interesting to me.

I don't think Erin's going to have a problem there at all. I found what I'd read so far to be a good mix of action and dialogue, with lots of description. All three chapters were a breeze to read and kept my attention throughout. In fact, I am Oliver Twist: more, please.

I don't think Erin's going to have a problem there at all. I found what I'd read so far to be a good mix of action and dialogue, with lots of description.

I didn't say I thought Erin was going to have a problem with it. I don't think so either. I was answering a specific question about a general issue.

There is a story that Ernest Hemingway was once addressing a group of students. One student pointed out that, in the short story "A Clean Well-lighted Place," there's a long sequence of alternating dialogue between the Old Waiter and the Young Waiter, without any attribution. There's a point where it's really hard to tell who is talking, and it makes a difference in the story. Hemingway read through the exchange and replied, "It's perfectly clear to me."

The moral of the story: Don't be Hemingway.

Snerk.

The moral of the story: Don't be Hemingway.

hits the floor laughing

I'll be more specific, Deb. Erin was worried, I should have directed that straight to her. I never thought you thought she would have a problem.

Erin, don't worry! You're dialogue is great! I loved the banter with Mr. Inscrutable and her adding emphasis to it with the pointy shoes of retribution.

and, insent, Sail. Excellent feedback, sugar.

Good info on the dialogue. Having read 8 gazillion books in my life, I too detest he said/gasped/declaimed villianously BWAHAHAHA, but sometime you need someonee else to kick your ass and say SHOW ME, moron!

But, yo, sometimes I just like to be slapped around.

And I am double-spaced and page numbered and editing out italica and vague word choices as we speak.

Heh. I am evil, in that I submit with italics. So far, no problem, but then, I've been with my publisher for years and they're used to it.

I hate underlining with a stone raging passion. Visually for me, it turns the manuscript into a homework assignment from the 1960s.