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Or have a volcano explode in the middle of everything--oh no, wait--that's been done! How about a towering inferno? Or maybe a ship gets upended at sea, or dinosaurs take over an island and pick off the characters, one by one?

It seems there are no new ideas. You just have to tell it your way.

Oops--I got off the topic. I have read a lot of books explaining how to write, but in the end, the only way to become a good writer is with practice, practice, practice. That's why we belong to tnbw. The books are a jumping-off point, and not everyone's advice works for all of us. I never got any practical help from Steven King's book, although it was well-written, which sets a good example, I guess.

Find a few books and read them, but don't feel you have to follow anyone's advice to the letter. And don't expect instant success, no matter what they claim.

That's great, Jack. Here you go! You deserve it.   JP

Ernest Hemingway: "Poor Faulkner. He thinks big emotions come from big words."

I did join wattpad a few years ago in order to enter a harlequin romance competition. My book was up for several months during the entry period. My story received little attention. Members are encouraged to read each others' work, ostensibly for feedback, but the caliber was poor, and the only feedback was gushy "I love your story!" type responses. Supposedly, the more people who like you, the better. After the competition, I took my book down and cancelled my -membership. The "feedback" was valueless. It seemed the readers were just looking for free entertainment, which would conflict with the idea of selling your book.

It's been a long time coming,but worth it,right? Congratulations, Bill.  JP

Well, you can if you're sure that foreign-language speaker can provide dialog in the correct register. But then again, how can you be sure if you yourself don't have the knowledge to do the quality control?

All joking aside, I have been giving the matter serious thought. I have the same problem when I write about the Spanish-speaking community. I do have a smattering of the language I learned as a child and from my high school and college studies. I also learned enough professionally to teach fourth grade, but that isn't good enough for a writer.

One problem is we speak in different registers. A university professor speaks in a different register than does a country farmer, or a fourth-grade teacher, for that matter. Haven't you noticed that Janet Taylor-Perry's characters speak differently than mine? I couldn't write dialog like hers if my life depended on it. When we write dialog in our native language, we use sentence structure, vocabulary and colloquialisms to add nuance to a character's spoken words. It's how we subtly tell our readers the character's education level and social background. If the foreign language you want to use is not also as familiar to you as your own language, you can't do it, not even with computer translators.

Mariana is right, to an extent. A native speaker does have a certain fluency, BUT it's likely that an untrained person doesn't understand how meaningful the differences in register can be. Characters may speak the same language, and correctly, but what we might call the tone is different in the way they talk. And if you, the writer, are not familiar with the language your friend has contributed to your story, how can you be sure they gave you what you needed? (The scariest place this happens is in a court of law, when the interpreter gives the wrong translation. I've seen it happen.)

It drives me crazy when I'm reading a perfectly well-written story and the author has thrown in some imbecilic misuse of foreign language. How stupid would you feel if you were that writer?

I suggest you write everything in YOUR native language, and use action and description to convey to the reader that the characters are speaking in THEIR native language.

Have at it.  JP

Welcome to the site. I've learned a lot from from other tnbw writers.
I wish you success.  JP

You're safe.

Those aren't dialog tags. By separating them with a period, you kept them as actions. They would be dialog tags if you'd written:
I smiled, "That should keep you for a while." OR  My eyebrows rose, "You're what?"

See what I mean? I suppose I have seen the former, but I guaran-damn-tee you the latter just won't fly. Never in the history of the world has raising the eyebrows produced sound, much less speech.

You're fine, Bill.  JP

Just spot-checked a few books from the shelf and found this. On a single page, Mark Twain used 'says' twice, 'said,' 'saying' and 'sung out', and it all makes perfect sense when you read it. Shirley Jackson used 'said' over and over many, many times on a page, using adverbs almost every time. Lee Child uses said, not quite as frequently and without adverbs. J K Rowling uses called, moaned, yelled and roared on a single page, without adverbs. Dan Brown uses action instead of tags almost always.

All I can deduce from this is that the rules about the use of tags (and adverbs) may have evolved over time, but they are not hard and fast. So, go your own way.  JP