Writing Dialogue

[Melrick]

Writing Dialogue

 

Writing dialogue can be a very tricky affair for novice writers, and even more experienced ones. So here’s some hints and tips on writing good dialogue.

 

There are very few stories where dialogue isn’t included. Some are dialogue heavy, while others are very light on dialogue, often because the writer isn’t confident in writing them. Dialogue, though, is an extremely important part of story writing. Dialogue moves your story forward; it provides important information; it brings your characters to life. If the dialogue isn’t believable then the readers pick up on that immediately and damages your story, often to the point where your readers simply stop reading. Dialogue is that important, yet it’s perhaps the one area where writers have the most problems with. If you wish to call yourself a writer – even an amateur writer – then dialogue is something you need to get right. So if you feel you’re bad at it, keep practicing!

The very first thing you need to do is to understand your character. This is vital for every story you ever write. If you don’t know your own character then how do you expect your reader to? You need to know how he or she thinks and feels and behaves. Once you do this, you’ll be in a much better position to know how they would talk.

The dialogue needs to be realistic. This is where many people go wrong. I’ll give an example of bad dialogue and better dialogue.

 

BAD: “Hello Jennifer, how are you? I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

BETTER: “Jennifer, hi! Wow, I haven’t seen you in ages! How are ya?”

 

In the ‘bad’ version, about the only people that would speak like that are unfeeling psychopaths. And no, I’m not kidding. There’s no emotion there at all; it’s like a robot talking. In the ‘better’ version, there’s much more emotion. You can tell the speaker is surprised and very happy to see Jennifer. Now, in my mind, the speaker would pronounce the last ‘you’ word as ‘ya’ in that situation, but perhaps your character would pronounce it properly? This is all about understanding your character.

Would your character use slang in their speech? Then use it! But you need to be careful about this. Some slang is not just local to only your country, but perhaps even local to just your town. If there’s lots of slang then your readers might soon get confused and not have a clue what’s really being said. A confused reader is an unhappy reader. If the other character is from out of town then this can give you a good reason to explain what various slang means. But remember, most people don’t speak in non-stop slang.

What if a character is a foreigner, where English is a second language? How do you portray that without your character coming across as a stereotype? This is… tricky. Very tricky, in fact. The problem is that stereotypes are there because real people can often actually fit that stereotype. For example, I have an Asian girlfriend and I’ve been to Asia, and the simple fact is, in many occasions, their English really does sometimes sound like what we might call stereotypical. For example, my girlfriend initially pronounced ‘broccoli’ as ‘broccori’. I nearly wet myself laughing when she said that the first time. Thankfully, she too saw the funny side of her mispronunciation, and worked hard at getting the pronunciation correct. But if you wrote your Asian character mispronouncing every letter L as the letter R, is that a good thing? To be honest, most people would see that as you simply being racist, even though you’re just trying to portray your character in a way that you see as accurate. So what’s the alternative? Perhaps have them mispronounce the odd word here and there instead of every one. Have someone comment on their very good English, thereby eliminating the need for the stereotypical speech at all.

If you’re not sure if your dialogue sounds natural then there’s a very easy way to find out: read it out loud. If it sounds awkward and unnatural to you, then it will sound that way to your readers. Next time you’re with a group of people, listen to how they communicate with each other. If you do that then you’ll quickly see that people are much more relaxed and casual with their speech when they’re talking with friends and family.  Proper English and well constructed sentences are frequently not adhered to.

On the other hand, though, people are usually a lot less relaxed and casual if speaking with their boss. Is your guy shy and nervous around women? Then that will reflect in how they talk with them, particularly a woman he’s interested in. As a guy who is shy and nervous around women I’m interested in, I’m all too familiar with this. Not knowing what to say is common, and if you do say something, saying the wrong thing happens a lot, and eventually walking away thinking “she thinks I’m a moron” is definitely not uncommon. But what if he’s a braggart overly blessed with self confidence? That will also reflect in how he talks with the opposite sex.

Remember, understanding your character is the very first step. The second step is to write your dialogue in a realistic, natural, believable way. If you’re unsure, read it out loud to yourself or to a friend. The third step is to keep practicing!