The Beginner's Guide To Dialogue
Good morning, friends! Or good evening--perhaps even good afternoon if you're bored at work browsing the forums from your desk.
If you clicked on this thread, then you likely have an interesting in story writing. And if you're at PSOW, in Fan Works, then chances are, it's fan fiction. But(!) It wouldn't have to be. Writing believable dialogue is a staple of almost any writer's bag o' tricks. The only instance I can think of off the top of my head where sucking at dialogue and character interaction wouldn't be a problem is scripting up a pantomime performance. And thankfully, I don't think we have any mimes running about in Fan Works.
It is not easy to write good dialogue, but when you've practiced enough, you'll be able to catch yourself before you fall. Your characters will laugh in your face if you try to write them something they wouldn't be caught dead saying. You'll know as soon as you've typed the closing quotation mark that that line ain't gonna fly. When you get to that point, you probably won't need this guide any longer. That's the point I hope all writers strive to reach and surpass, because if you're a writer and you don't, then you're settling for less.
There are obviously extenuating circumstances (like character personality or plot factors) that could and will render many of the less concrete guidelines covered below completely false, obsolete, and laughable. That's okay and good--writing should be creative and break the rules. Art is not safe. However, since this is the beginner's guide to writing dialogue, I'll talk as if many of the points I make are concrete and inarguable. This is just to save space and time and to not have to write the word "unless" a billion times. Keep this in mind as you read. If you're an experienced writer, you probably won't find much in here that will benefit you, but if you're new to the game, this just might be a good text file to save.
Basic mechanics
Even though virtually every crappy inner-city high school in the country drills this stuff into every student's head, a surprising number of people simply don't know the basics of writing mechanics. Grammar, capitalization, punctuation, hyphenation, polarization... just kidding. Polarization is not a part of writing mechanics.
Since this is so widely taught by people more proficient in the subject than I, I'll keep this section short.
The period or comma or semicolon or colon or whatever you've got goes inside the quotation marks.
Ex: "Jesus, Roommate X, stop playing Warcraft and go take a shower. You smell like a dead person."
Ex: "A trillion dollar bill? That must be worth a fortune!"
A quotation within a quotation is marked with single quotes, or apostrophes.
Ex: "Then Bob said, 'I wish I was a woman.' It was hilarious."
Ex: "Is there anyone who doesn't like the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody'?"
Be careful, though. A period always goes inside quotations (unless you're parenthetically citing a source... and there's very little chance you'll be doing that in fiction, so ignore this sentence), but a question mark or exclamation point doesn't when you've got a quote within a quote. Unless, of course, that question mark is expressly part of the quote within a quote.
Ex: "I almost vomited in rage when I saw two guys arguing over the meaning of 'Dude, Where's My Car?'"
Ex: "I think there is a band called 'Yes!'"
Thoughts that are not spoken aloud are italicized and not written in quotations.
Ex: Haley thought to herself, Man, this section is getting way too long. Everyone is bored.
Although there are definitely other mechanical rules that people disregard with depressing frequency, these are the ones that people generally seem to have the most trouble with.
Believability
This is a tough one, and a much broader category than most. Many people struggle for years with writing believable spoken dialogue, and probably even more simply give up.
People do not talk like robots. People whose family members have just been killed do not squeal with joy when a kitten happens to walk by a moment later. Dumb people don't offer up the square root of something when one of their friends needs help with math. Quiet, withdrawn people do not typically spout off curses or Ebonics completely out of left field. It's deeply important to keep a character's written dialogue within his or her personality sphere. If you stray too far, your character loses clarity and nobody will care when they end up biting the dust, being put in jail, or are on the business end of any other sort of major plot twist. The audience should be able to intimately understand the inner workings of any given character's head, and writing believable dialogue is one of the best ways there is to accomplish this.
While there are basically no concrete rules I can list to help you with this, I can say to read more. Read good books. Good books have good dialogue. Don't plagiarize, but take notes. Carefully study what good authors do and don't do with their characters and their characters' dialogue, and then incorporate those tricks into your own writing. There's no worthy substitute for learning by example.
Entire books could be written on believability, and if I tried to say everything that could be said on the subject, I'd most definitely hit the character limit. So, common sense, people. Medieval Tolkien rip-off characters don't ask if their orcish companions have extra tickets to My Chemical Romance, and even if they did, they wouldn't say, "Hey u got mcr tix? lol." Try to write your dialogue as professionally and realistically as possible, and you'll be well on your way to rocking the written word.
Dialects
Dialects are interesting, but are often extremely difficult to write effectively. Spell too many words phonetically and all you've got is a mess. Spell too few phonetically, and you've just got words on a screen. No feeling or personality.
Psst. To spell phonetically means to spell a word the way it sounds. "Sonuvabitch," "finger-lickin' good" and "sowwy Mommy" are examples of phonetic spelling.
The main difficulty lies in knowing words need to be spelled phonetically and which don't. Simply listen to how the dialect is spoken; which words really stand out as being pronounced differently? Which words are most important?
Sometimes, breaking grammatical rules can be both acceptable and even downright helpful in writing in a dialect or accent. Writing a ridiculous run-on sentence for a character that's hopped up on speed might work out for the better. Be careful, though--this is a more advanced tactic than some, and it's easy to screw this up with overuse. Write with caution.
Modifying Actions
Tacking a sentence onto the end of a line of dialogue to give it context is risky business. If you do it sloppily, it becomes just that: tacking a random ass sentence onto a line of dialogue, and that's no good for anybody. Although I probably should have covered this in the mechanics section, you should blend the sentences together with a comma.
Ex: "Uurrrg," the booma roared with a toothy booma grin.
Watch out, though. If your line of dialogue ends in a question mark or exclamation point, you don't need anything to blend it besides the obvious lack of a capital letter on your modifier sentence.
Ex: "Crikey!" exclaimed the ghost of Steve Irwin.
You always want to sprinkle modifying sentences through your dialogue. Sprinkle. Not dump. If you modify every single line of dialogue, your story gets... just weird. Bad. Not normal sounding. But, on the other hand, be careful not to use too few of them. A page-long conversation between three different characters without any modifiers will confuse the crap out of even the most accomplished comprehension reader. In some cases, it's acceptable to leave out the modifiers for an extended period--typically when two characters are conversing in an abnormal way. Telepathically, over the phone, typing, etc. As a writer you have a certain amount of artistic license, so use your brain and figure out when it would be a good idea to change things up a bit.
Context
Context is obviously important, but I often see writers almost completely disregarding it. Style factors in (anime, I'm looking at you), but this guide basically assumes that you're trying to write more or less realistically. Characters in the middle of fight scenes don't ever actually stop to argue their morals or plots for world domination. They don't recite aloud the tragic story of their mother's murder when no one else is the room (that's a painfully obvious plot advancement device that should be avoided at all costs). In fact, I can't say I've ever caught someone speaking his or her thoughts aloud in real life. If a character's trying to think, just let them think! Use italics.
The end!
If you've read this far and committed the things I touched on to memory, chances are your dialogue skills will improve at least a little bit. There's always room to climb higher, though, so don't assume this guide contains everything you need to know. I'm a novice writer myself, and I still have a very long way to go in crafting fiction--I and everyone else who considers him or herself a writer should always be trying to get better. It's the only way to ensure that you will.
Your friend,
Coffee
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: CupOfCoffee on 2007-02-12 21:41 ]</font>
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