Hey everyone! Well, I'm finally ready to do that write-up on dialogue. I've been lacking coherency in most shapes and forms lately - curse you, Florida heat!
I've always been told that dialogue is one of the stronger points in my writing (as opposed to description and action, but let's not go there.) But even so, it took me a while to properly articulate what makes great, snappy dialogue. So if there's anything in this workshop that seems vague to you, feel free to ask me to clarify.
The most important thing to remember when writing dialogue is that your characters need to sound like people. It sounds simple in theory, but I can't even tell you how many stories I've read in which all the characters sound like robots. Or worse, they all sound like the author.
There are several ways to make your characters sound distinct: word choice, grammar, and cadence, to name a few. Your character does not have to speak with perfect grammar and in full, complete sentences. Actually, it can be rather creepy when that's all they do. Depending on the character's age and level of education, they can make some of those common grammar mistakes, like saying "Me and Joe" instead of "Joe and I."
And depending on the character's physical or emotional state, they may use more fractured sentences. Imagine that your character is on the run from the law with his partner-in-crime. As they run into their safehouse, tired and out of breath, would one character turn to the other and say, "It looks like we lost them, but we should bar the doors and windows just to be safe." No, because that would be incredibly wooden and stilted. Terser sentences would portray the character's current state a lot better.
(A quick note on regional accents, by the way: don't do it unless you can keep it consistent. If the character drops all the Gs off of his ing-verbs at the beginning of the story and suddenly stops for no reason, the reader will notice. And if you're going for a more intense portrayal of the accent, remember to make it readable. Remember how hard it was to get through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Don't inflict that on others.)
Where word choice is concerned, if the character speaks like a walking thesaurus, that needs to be part of their character. Your bookworms and pompous jerks can throw out ten dollar words left and right, but when your Average Joes and stoners start doing it, it's a little off-putting. Make the vocabulary appropriate for the character. And even so, don't go overboard. I'm sure you're all smart people with a huge vocabulary. Do you throw around words like "thusly," "crimson," "glimmering," or "nevermore" in everyday speech? Epic speech can be used to great comic effect, but be careful playing those sorts of words straight. You could be heading towards unintentional parody very quickly.
Which brings me to my next point: let the character's personality shine through! Dialogue is the quickest way to make someone fall in love with your character. Or start hating them, for that matter. Any simple statement can be twisted a different way depending on how the character feels about it.
Take a declarative statement like, "I'm inexperienced." An arrogant character might get defensive and say something like, "Well, it's not my fault I'm inexperienced." An insecure character might say something like, "I'm so sorry for my inexperience." And an easygoing character might just laugh and say, "What can I say, I'm inexperienced." There are so many different ways to go with it.
As far as punctuation goes, almost anything goes. But take a quick look at the sentences below.
"I didn't mean that. I just think we should be careful."
"I didn't mean that, I just think we should be careful."
"I didn't mean that... I just think we should be careful."
"I didn't mean that - I just think we should be careful."
"I didn't mean that; I just think we should be careful."
Which of those do you think doesn't quite work? If you guessed the semicolon, you'd be absolutely right, according to most editors. Some editors will take it, but among most writers (and the Chicago Manual of Style, for that matter,) the use of semicolons is unnecessary. The simple reason for this is because every other type of punctuation that I used above can be expressed by the length of the pause. There is no real way to express a semicolon when speaking.
I checked quite a few sources before putting this in here: some say that semicolons should absolutely not be used, and some say that it's okay in the case of a stuffy, scholarly character. So if you must use semicolons, it's not wrong, per se. But I'm going to side with my lovely Chicago Manual here and recommend that you avoid it. You may disregard that advice if you wish.
And one last thing before I finish up here: the speech tags themselves. This one is important, because I know it's a problem that I have, too.
Try not to use too many descriptors: yelled, muttered, mumbled, screamed, whispered, etc. You can use them, of course, but when you use nothing but those verbs, it's generally frowned upon. Make yourself use 'said' as much as you can.
And don't follow 'said' with an adverb (adjective + ly) every time you use it. Look at these examples:
"I hate you!" Marissa said angrily.
"Did I get the job?" Harry said nervously.
"I'm not sure," George said quietly.
The first two are unnecessary. We know Marissa is angry from her dialogue, so saying that she's angry is just redundant. Likewise, Harry's nervousness is implied in his situation. It would be fair to use the 'quietly' from the last example, because George could say that any number of ways, but let that fill your adverb quota for a few pages.
If you feel really uncomfortable just using 'said' by itself, try adding in descriptions of what the character is doing as he or she is speaking. My fiction teacher was a big fan of that; when you mention the actions, you avoid reducing your characters to talking heads.
And I think this was long enough to make up for the last two weeks. Questions? Comments?
