A Half Remembered Dream - Points about Creative Writing

Some points for me, personally, to remember about creative writing:

1)?Show, don't tell.?Basically, don't say that a character says something nervously. Instead, describe how the character says their statement or describe the character's physical behaviors: "Anne sought comfort in the ground as she spoke in an uneasy tone: "I kissed him, yesterday." Placement of the description is important here as well. If I want my audience to read a character's statement a certain way, I have to be certain that I prep them for such a reading. There are, however, some instances where description would just distract the reader. In such case, I should use intuition and better judgment.?

2)?When dealing with two or more characters, make sure I establish who's speaking as soon as possible.?I should not have a character spew out a page worth of information only to reveal at the end of his/her speech that this?or?that character said it; don't do this (quote from a novel titled "Presumed Innocent"):

"I'm a prosecutor. I'm part of the business of accusing, judging and punishing. I explore the evidence of a crime and determine who is charged, who is brought to this room to be tried before his peers. I present my evidence to the jury and they deliberate upon it. They must determine what really happened. If they cannot, we will not know whether the accused deserves to be freed or should be punished. If they cannot find the truth, what is our hope of justice?" Rusty Sabich said.?

Instead:

"I'm a prosecutor," Rusty Sabich began. "I'm part of the business of accusing, judging and punishing. I explore the evidence of a crime and determine who is charged, who is brought to this room to be tried before his peers. I present my evidence to the jury and they deliberate upon it. They must determine what really happened. If they cannot, we will not know whether the accused deserves to be freed or should be punished. If they cannot find the truth, what is our hope of justice?"

3)?All characters should not sound the same.?It is one thing for all characters to grow up around the same accent and speech patterns, but they all should have a bit of their own personality in their speech. If one character is a lawyer, he/she may use some of the jargon he/she has learned. If a character is uneducated, he/she might not use complex words or correct sentence phrasing. It is important to know everything about the character before creating dialogue.

4) Resist the urge to form proper sentences in dialogues. Realistically, we don't speak as intelligently as we write. We break tons of language rules. Unless the character deliberately says something correctly and intently, I doubt every phrase out of their mouth is complete and proper. Also, speech doesn't necessarily adhere to proper punctuation, so I should avoid trying to apply strict rules of punctuation (specifically commas, semicolons, and dashes).

5) Be specific with speech descriptions. Don't repeat the ever popular "says" or "said" a million times. I think it's permissible to use it when the focus is on the words themselves. But even then, I should use greater classifiers such as?asked, responded, retorted, rebutted, urged, began, offered, blurted, demanded, etc.?

What tips/points would you offer? Or what guidelines do you personally follow?

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