This final guest blog as  as Camp Nanowrimo Counselor discusses dialogue. Growing up in Manila, my siblings and I were forbidden from  talking back to our elders or for that matter, talking much at all.   Consequently I spent much of my childhood writing in my diary and conjuring conversations in my head What if I had said this, when so-and-so told me that?  

Decades later, all that imagined repartee spilled out onto the pages of The Mango Bride. Of course I can’t claim credit for some of the most memorable lines.  Thanks to my late, beloved Tita Tess who loved to gossip, some of  Señora Concha and Doña Lupita’s pithier remarks were direct quotes from my mother and her sisters.

Composing dialogue for The Mango bride was among the most enjoyable parts of  writing the novel. Click on the link below to see how I made it work:

http://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/82696221566/ask-an-author-how-do-you-write-dialogue-that-drives