I'm a semi-retired educator and journalist venturing into fiction writing for the first time. I've started a novel, and I think I'm doing OK with it, but there are some structural issues I could use help on and I really need some support and comment on dialog writing. I'm hoping to find those things here.
Greetings, back at ya. I bet it's quite liberating to unshackle oneself from the column inches and break into, unrestricted, the world of make-believe? I enjoy story writing too as a way to wind down from the stricter syntaxes of software, so I guess there's a commonality there in escaping one's profession. There are some bigger hitters than me on the forum @DrJohnson regarding dialogue and structure and I'm sure they'd be happy to help. There's a mandate in place mind, a kind of give take thing, where to put one's work up for review, one should first hang about the workshop and post some critiques to help out fellow members. With your background I figure your talent will be beneficial and there's also aspect of self-improvement—critiquing serves the 'critiquer' as much as the recipient.