I think the best comment in class this week came from Margot, regarding the metaphor Hosseini makes out of Amir putting a lot of sugar in his tea and Amir Khan drinking his black. When she said it, I wondered why I didn't even remember reading about that at all. I have to admit that a lot of times when I'm reading, I more or less skim over long descriptive paragraphs or the short sentences in between dialogue, thinking they're boring. Unimportant. The dialogue, to me, really shaped a story and the plot more than those descriptive paragraphs. Obviously, I was wrong. Though what a character says is significant, in a good piece of writing we can always glean more about their inner thoughts from what they do. Many times, a character won't say what they're feeling outright. Instead, the author choses to give us clues using their actions or behaviors.
Not only will I make sure to pay attention to non-dialogue parts of a story when reading, but I will try to say more by having the characters say less in my own writing. Not only will I be able to make it more interesting, but I will be able to give the reader more information that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
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