Editing is to a book what polish is to jewellery. It takes what is a raw bleeding core and helps turn it into a work of art that’ll delight for generations.

But bestie, here’s the thing. Not all of us can afford editors.

And even those of us who can, well, we won’t give our editors drafts with grammar errors, will we? We want to give them a work that is as close as to the vision in our heads so that they can magic it into being.

Grandiose flowery words aside, what we are trying to say here, is that you need to edit your final draft before showing it an editor. Once you have your plot straightened out and are satisfied with the way your characters wrestled your story into submission, it is time to do some fine tuning.

And today, we are going to share a technique for fine tuning your dialogue. Other than getting beta reader to read your story and tear it apart, of course.

How Can Table Reading Fine Tune Your Dialogue

What is table reading?

Isn’t that a technique for scriptwriting?

Well, yes. It is a technique for scriptwriting. Essentially, it is the act of sitting around a table and reading your dialogue (alongside other parts) to see which drags and what sounds realistic and so on.

And once you have figured out which parts needs improvement, you can go back to the writers’ room and get editing. With each reading, your novel gets crisper, your dialogue sharper, and your setting more vivid.

See how a scriptwriting technique can help your novel?

And if you want to make it fun, you can pretend it is a D&D style table top adventure that your characters are on. You just have scripts instead of die.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

Will you try table reading for your next book? Let us know in the comments!

Author- Anjali Roongta

Editor- Shubhr Aakriti

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