Dialogue gives readers a break from the straight narrative and can bring colour and energy to the characters and story.

Fictional dialogue is a careful bled of natural sounding speech and more eloquent and scripted ‘lines’ pre-written for the characters.  It is always designed to make the most of dramatic effect, and never dull like much day-to-day conversation is.  The way people talk defines who they are.  Their history is in how they speak and what words they use.

There are many styles of dialogue, none of which are ‘wrong’ but some of which will be wrong within the piece.  Dialogue must compliment the style and intentions within the story.  After all, a significant chunk of redrafting is better-marrying the various elements within a story.

Points to consider when writing dialogue

1)      Variation

Avoid having all your characters sound the same.  Spend some time trying to hear what your main character’s speech sounds like. 

2)      Fillers

People naturally use fillers such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ in speech to bridge silences whilst they think.  However, we as listeners tune fillers out, so you should avoid writing them unless it’s significantly useful in the story – say, to show a character losing his words at a certain point.  Though here, do find other ways to indicate pauses in speech, such as allusions to body language.

3)      Economy

As in all writing, cut words and phrases in dialogue which aren’t serving a purpose within the story.  Remember: ‘purpose’ can be characterisation as well as exposition of plot and information.  On this point, don’t try to give away too much information at once through dialogue, either, as it will appear ugly and obvious.  Trust the reader’s intelligence, their ability to infer and that they will remember details from earlier in the story.  Better to drip-feed than to drown.

It is smoother to use action and description around dialogue to indicate tone rather than to just say ‘she shouted’.  This also serves to break up monotony in expansive spiels of loaded dialogue.  Once placed, characters can also simply speak and the content can imply all the information that tags would provide.  This presents a very clean and uncluttered speech, which authors such as Hemmingway favour.

4)      Tag lines

Veering away too dramatically from the ‘he said/she said’ staple can just draw attention to the tags that you were trying to underplay in the first place.  If the writing is good, you won’t need words such as ‘interjected’, ‘conceded’ or ‘agreed’ as it will be obvious within the action of the story.  Dialogue can be ‘annotated’, particularly in the first person, to indicate tone, atmosphere, tension, etc.

Dialogue needn’t be simply written, either – it can also be reported. 

Look at:  Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk - Dialogue is playfully reported as well as written ’straight’ throughout the book.  Palahniuk is good to look at for variety in dialogue style.  And he’ll make you cool.

5)      Phonetics

This enforces a sense of place and authenticity, even a time, within the story.  However do be mindful to avoid stereotypes when it comes to dialect.  If you know the lingo inside and out and can pull it off, have a go, but be very aware of the pitfalls when writing phonetically. 

 Look at: Filth, Irvine Welsh - There are sections of this book that you have to read aloud and sound out to understand, but so much of the character is in the dialect that Welsh couldn’t have written this any other way.  Trainspotting is also a good yarn, but it would have been a near-cliche to use as an example.

6)      Structure

Characters will not necessarily get to the point straight away, and natural conversation doesn’t often flow nearly from A to B to C.  Non-sequiturs are common and in a story can be used to subtly reveal a detail about the character, such as an aversion towards the topic being discussed.

      Character

If your character is a chatterbox, let them ramble.  If they are the strong silent type, let them be silent.  Don’t force words into their mouths and don’t try to make them conform to your own views of good communication.

9)      Speech doesn’t happen in a vacuum

Dialogue happens every day as a reaction to what has been and is happening.  There doesn’t have to be a direct relation between the two, but we should be able to imagine where the characters are and what they’re doing when they’re talking.

10)  Listen

The best way to learn how to write conversation is to listen to it.  Eavesdrop and notice good dialogue in film and television.

Remember: Have fun with dialogue!  If your characters are simply ‘not speaking’, put them in a situation quite side from the story and explore their speech off the record.  Reading dialogue aloud will help in redrafting it.  One author finds that assigning characters actual chairs and moving about whilst reading their speech very helpful in writing.

Look at: The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris - The first meeting between Starling and Lecter is particularly good.  Pay heed to: 3^rd person uncluttered dialogue; pace; tension; characterisation; exposition.   

Writing Exercise

Think of a character and give them a gender, age, education level and home location.  Put them in a room by themselves.  Have someone come into that room and make them angry.  Free-write the dialogue without tags.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 6:55 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.