Rob, Just realized that I forgot to swing back by this thread. Sorry to be so slow. Hopefully others will also chip in once we bring it back to the top of the line!
I like these two young people and their conversation on names. They have a nice by-play going, and it brings up several great questions in the reader's mind. Who is she? How did they met? How did they come to be together in the quiet of evening to discuss this.
once the dialog gets going I appreciate that you are using actions to set the scene. I've been told now by two authors, that I really respect, this little rule. "Only use said, asked, whispered--nothing else." They do not like qualifiers. In your case, this happens frequently. I think you need to
trust your dialog and your character's voices more and it will keep the scene moving faster.
Uhm, how do I show that.... try reading this section aloud your way and the way that I've edited as these authors would have indicated... Maybe it won't show anything! But I'll try, please forgive me for taking a heavy hand to it.
You really, really can trust your dialog Rob--it's good! Also you can trust the reader to keep who is speaking without footnotes--so to speak. LOL[Charles Barkley] "Hey guys, can I play, too?" [/Charles Barkley]
I'd ask ya'll to be gentle... but will settle for only half-rotten tomatos being thrown my way 
Ahh, gentle takes too long!!! And I know you are a strong enough writer to be firm in your own preferences. LOL
“'Beth' is a normal name.
,” he said. “Don’t you like it? Would you rather be called ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lizzie’?
I don’t know about ‘Lizzie’
… it --sounds
like something green and scaly.”
Beth sighed, then flopped over on her back. “I would love to be an ‘Elizabeth’ or ‘Lisa’… I’d even settle for a green, scaly ‘Lizzie’ but thats not *what* I was named for.”
Jack
thought for several moments, but couldn’t come up with any other amalgamations of names he’d ever heard that would yield up a shorter ‘Beth.’
“You won’t think of any others,
Jack.
,” she said. “I told you, it isn’t normal.”
“Then why did you tell me to guess?”
She sat up, and her green eyes held Jack
's for a very long moment. “If you’d gotten it on the first or second guess, then I’d know that you weren’t normal
,” she finally said.
“Great
.,” he muttered. “So I’m normal. What of it?”
She smiled. “Normal is good. I don’t get nearly enough of it.”
“You look normal to me
,” Jack said. “Even if you do dress kind of funny.” (Might decide to describe her dress, but that would slow down the dialog flow)
“
This is all we have unpacked right now.** The rest of my stuff is all boxed up and buried.”
They sat in silence, the girl staring at the sky, which was going from blue to deeper blue of late evening. The boy stared at the girl, the fine lines of her face starting to stand out in the deeper light of evening, the lashes drinking in the shadows, making her eyes seem wider, larger than they had in the afternoon.
“So if I’m never going to guess it, are you going to tell me?”
Jack said, still turning names over in his head. Lizbeth, maybe. That was strange.
“They say that knowing something’s name gives you power over it.
,” she murmured.“What kind of power?”
“I don’t know. Power. Like…” her voice trailed off.
as she thought. “Like.. When you’re in trouble and your mom calls you by your full name.”
Jack shuddered. “Yeah,
like when I broke Mom's favorite crystal vase.,” he said. “That's power, all right.”
RobJN's manuscript original copy has 343 words vs 296. Does it seem sharper, crisper? Less distraction from your great voices? Also in this format you can easily see Jack's interested in her style of voice vs Beth's style of hesitation and slight sadness, which was hidden and harder to pick out of the flow.
*what*----best and neatest choice of words in this section that's going to drive me crazy until I get the answer---just what not who was she named for? LOL**This line has nothing to do with slowing down the dialog, but it raised all these questions, that are important, yet it makes me think about who 'we' and that pulls me out of being part of their relationship dialog. So I wondered if you could include it elsewhere, once this tentative relationship is explained to the reader? So it's sort of moving me out of where you want my mind to be at this point, I THINK...
