: Re: How do we objectively assess if a dialogue sounds unnatural or cringy? By unnatural, I don't mean ungrammatical, but something people wouldn't really say. For example, in many fictions, you find

Sadly I don't think there is an ISO standard test or something this can be run against, but like most parts of writing we can apply various tools to help us evaluate things.

Examples of some of the evaluation steps I run stuff through:
1. Does it fit with the character's other dialog, and does the pacing and tone match the scene? "I cannot..." while in a hurry might not flow as well as "I can't", unless someone is super formal by nature.

Does it sound good?

Read it to yourself, have someone else read it to you, record and play it back, and ask yourself "Does this work?"
I personally find piping my work through text-to-speech software surprisingly handy for this.

Does it get good feedback?

Beta readers are your friends [but sometimes you shouldn't use your friends for beta readers - Joining a writing circle or similar may be useful.] - Do other readers find it stands out in odd ways?

Can better words be found?

If you're unsure about if you like a group of words, there is always the option to set the current ones aside and just rewrite the section for the sake of deciding if you like one better than the other.

Also keep in mind the point that at times much more can be said with silence than with a thousand words.

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: Re: How do we objectively assess if a dialogue sounds unnatural or cringy? By unnatural, I don't mean ungrammatical, but something people wouldn't really say. For example, in many fictions, you find

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: Short sentence(s) to be creative to ask Uber passenger to tip? As a Uber driver, I did not earn much. Uber cut down the pay to drivers recently, it hurt a lot. I want to write a sign to

: Should a non-native writer try to use complex English words? I am a non-native English user and whenever I write something is it better that I use simple words or some rare and seldomly used

: I recently saw a Wikipedia article on sememes talking about five different ways a word can be used: Denotational 1: Primary denotation, for example "head" (body); Denotational 2:

: Critique strategies to help improve someone's writing How can I smooth the transitions in this text? I feel like the POVs are changed quite a lot which makes it fairly confusing for readers

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