Melody of Love

 by Rose Ross Zediker from the June 6, 2022 issue

Tagline: When Katherine and her old flame, Logan, meet in a piano bar, will their love build--or go flat?

Observations: I've not seen a story set in a piano bar before, so yay! I love seeing new settings for these stories.  

This week I wanted to focus on this excellent first paragraph:

"Thank you for driving me to the opening of the new piano bar. I didn't want to miss it," Aunt Molly said. "I like to support my former students' musical endeavors."

It's excellent because Zediker gave us a lot of information via natural dialogue. It can be challenging to do this without having the characters sound stilted. I see this once in a while when I edit stories and I always think of it as the "As you know, Bob" syndrome, as in...

"As you know, Bob, Uncle Barney didn't like you as much as he did me, so when he died, I was the prime beneficiary."

All of this information would already be known to Bob and the only (painfully obvious) purpose of this line of dialogue is to inform the reader. It's not usually this blatant, but it can be something you want to be wary of.