“In dialogue, I’m dealing with the sounds I’ve heard. One of the reasons I often write from first person or multiple points of view is to hear the voices of different characters. Omniscient narration becomes a problem because, for me, the omniscient is my own voice narrating the story and then bringing in characters for dialogue.”

On how he handled dialogue in his works in “An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-ernest-j-gaines/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Dec 1)

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Ernest J. Gaines 11
Novelist, short story writer, teacher 1933–2019

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