DPW Podcast #184: Solid Tips For Writing Dialogue Better Than Stephen King

Meet
Our Hosts

Caleb James K.

Caleb James K. is the former Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal, Drunken Pen Writing, and the host of the DPW Podcast. He’s also a fiction writer, poet, and aspiring novelist.

Spencer Church

A former aspiring comic book artist, Spencer is the cohost of the DPW Podcast as well as a short story writer and avid reader.


We kick things off with a rant about people who boycott art they were never going to purchase in the first place—especially the jerks who try to cancel books even though they don’t read.

After that, we settle into a fun discussion about writing good dialogue. This begins with David Foster Wallace’s opinion on Stephen King’s method for writing dialogue and why Wallace thought King wrote below his capabilities for the sake of quantity over quality. 

This leads us to the meat of the matter in how we write dialogue in our work. We give a bunch of great tips and examples from great writers and how they go about crafting realistic dialogue. 

#218: Talking About Pulp Novels Again Drunken Pen Writing Podcast

In today's cold open, we discuss the nonsense that is Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. It's about rockets and man boners. That's probably all you need to know.  After that, we settle in and talk about famous literary novels that started off as pulp. Or so we're told! There's a lot of goofiness packed into this one. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @dpwpodcast.  You can check out Caleb's work at http://www.calebjamesk.com. 
  1. #218: Talking About Pulp Novels Again
  2. DBS #136: Nailing Bukowski
  3. #217: Violent Books And Blue Dongs
  4. #216: Famous Books With Terrible Original Titles
  5. #215: Getting Blasphemous With David Scott Hay

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