Hello, writers. Let’s talk a little more about dialogue.
When readers read a page of dialogue, they often ask themselves “Do people really talk like that?”
The answer should be “Yes, only with more ‘ums’.”
So, how do you get your characters to talk like people really talk? One of the first steps, as ferg mentioned last week, is to listen. Listen to your family, friends, and annoying neighbor. Listen to the people behind you in the supermarket line. Go, Rowling-like, to a coffee shop, buy a tall mocha, and listen.
After that, listen to your characters. Let them rattle on in your head. Let them talk to each other. Give them a situation—what would they say? Let them argue. I go for long walks when I want to get my characters talking—the rhythm of footsteps seems to set them off. Find out what works for you. Don’t try to direct their discussion—just let them talk. If you get something that will go into a scene, great. If not, at least you find out more about them.
Learn to recognize their voices. That way when you get to writing, you’ll know right away if they say the wrong thing, and you can fix it.
Give them speech habits, but don’t overdo it. Don’t engage in creative spelling or in making fun of your characters. An example from George Selden’s children’s classic, A Cricket in Times Square:
“Oh velly good!" said Sai Fong, and a remarkable change came over him. He suddenly became very lively, almost dancing a jig on the sidewalk. “You got clicket! Eee hee hee! Velly good! You got clicket! Hee hee!'"
You don’t want to be doing that.
Keep your characters’ utterances brief. One sentence at a time for the most part. (Or one bunch of words, not necessarily a sentence.) When you’ve written a page of dialogue, you should be able to look at it and see a lot of white space.
Don’t have your characters tell each other everything they need to know. People very rarely do this, unless they are reference librarians. Everyone’s got a point of view, things they want to emphasize, things they won’t tell anyone, things they prefer not to admit, things they want other people to believe. A character is not just a character but a whole way of looking at the world.
I recently read a mystery by a well-known British author in which the protagonist wants to know the circumstances under which a young man was adopted. So he finds the guy’s sister in the phone book, calls her up, claims to a reporter writing an article about adoption, and starts asking the woman questions about her brother. And she answers them! Fully and without reserve.
Nobody would do that.
Don’t let your characters engage in conversation for the sole purpose of giving each other information that you want the reader to have. If you do need to perform a tiny info-dump, mask it in conflict. Have one character very reluctant to part with the info, or something.
Which brings us to tonight’s challenge.
Edit the following dialogue. Give each character a stronger voice, and fewer lines than they have now. Assume most of the info they communicate to each other below is extraneous. Introduce conflict into the chat.
There was a knock on the door. “Police! Open up!”
Eliza promptly opened the door. “Good evening, officer. I’m Eliza Bunnysworth, second wife of Harold Bunnyworth. Come in and sit down. How can I help you?”
Officer Waddleswait went in. He sat down on the couch. “I’m Wendell Waite Waddleswait of the Woodville Police, in my sixth year on the force and hoping to be promoted to detective. We’re investigating a murder that occurred last Saturday on the dock down by the harbor. It was a shock to the community, because crime is rare in Woodville.”
”Oh, that terrible murder,” said Eliza. “You mean that homeless man, don’t you? He was kicked to death by teenage thugs, according to what I read in the paper. It happened at about 11 p.m. Saturday night, and the body was found by a couple returning from a late showing of The Adventures of Tintin.”
“If he really was homeless, and they really were teenage thugs,” said Waddleswait. “We have reason to believe that this was planned carefully, and that the so-called homeless man was actually a millionaire from Connecticut, the heir to the Fremont Foundries fortune. Tell me, was your husband ever in Connecticut?”
“Yes,” said Eliza. “Harold went to college there, UConn class of 1991, where he majored in metallurgy. He pledged a fraternity and was very involved in ballroom dancing. That’s how we met, actually—at a ballroom dance competition where I was taking tickets. Would you like to see pictures?”
“No, thank you,” said Waddleswait. “Tell me, was he ever acquainted with Forsyth Fremont IV, who was also a student in the same department, although with a major in materials engineering, and two years behind him in school?”
“Yes. They were frat brothers. Oh, you don’t suppose that Harold killed that homeless man? Oh, that would be a terrible shame.”
You’ll notice that the first sentence, There was a knock on the door, places the dialogue in Eliza’s point of view. But feel free to change it to the cop’s. (If he really is a cop.) Just don’t do both.
Think mainly in terms of 1. developing the characters more strongly by giving them voices and 2. writing dialogue that will move the story forward instead of backward..
By the way, the rules for capitalization and punctuation of dialogue tags are abstruse. Here are some examples. (Note positions of commas, periods, capital letters.)
“That’s that,” she said.
“What’s this?” he demanded.
“That’s that,” she said, “and I’m glad it’s over with.”
“That’s that,” she said. “At least it’s over with.”
“That’s that.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “He had it coming.”
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