Writer's Tips: Dialogue

Writer's Tips: Dialogue

 

            All right, so after a long pause, let’s get back to business on how to develop those unforgettable characters that play out that story plot in you have planned.  In this post, we’re going to focus primarily on dialogue.

            First off, what is dialogue?  Dialogue is conversation.  It’s what your characters say.  When you talk on the phone to your friend, what the two of you say to each other is dialogue.  We use dialogue every day when we talk, so writing it… well, how hard can it be, right?

            Wrong.  Well, actually, that depends.  Writing dialogue is no hard task, but writing realistic dialogue is where things get tricky.  And because dialogue and speech patterns are so important in developing characters, we’re going to spend this entire post talking about them.

            So here are a few tips I personally use in my own writing.  The first thing I would tell anyone trying to write realistic dialogue is to use contractions.  Let’s take a look at an example.

           

            With contractions:

 

            “I’m really sorry we won’t be able to meet up for lunch this week.  We have family coming this weekend to stay with us, and I’ll have to clean the house and do some shopping for their visit.”

 

            Without contractions:

 

            “I am really sorry we will not be able to meet up for lunch this week.  We have family coming this weekend to stay with us, and I will have to clean the house and do some shopping for their visit.”

 

            All right, now which one sounds more like a housewife talking on the phone to her friend?  The first paragraph or the second?  Right.  The first.  People talk in contractions.  If you don’t know what a contraction is, look it up in a grammar book, a dictionary, or type it into Google.  But people talk this way.  They use these combinations of two words.  You talk this way, whether you realize it or not.  Your characters not only need to act and feel like real people, but they have to talk like real people talk too.  And one of the easiest ways to do this is to make sure that you use contractions in your dialogue.  In fact, I even consider this mandatory to writing realistic conversation.  Yes, it’s that important.

            The second main point of this post is about speech patterns.  Now what are speech patterns?  Speech patterns are the way a person talks.  Not what they say, because that’s dialogue, but how they say it.  One of the most obvious speech patterns is accents from different countries or different regions of a country.  For instance, the way a person from Boston says “aunt” is different from the way a person from Georgia would say it.  The Bostonian would say “ahnt” while the Georgian would say “ant.”  A country or southern accent is another great example of a speech pattern; so is a New York accent or a British or Australian accent.  These are classic examples of speech patterns that you can hear but you don’t write them.  You can hear an accent when someone talks, but if you had a character in your book that was from Boston, in the dialogue you write for him, you would not spell “aunt” “ahnt” even though that’s the way it would sound when your character said it.  If you told your reader that your character was from Boston and spoke with a Boston accent, that would be enough for your reader to imagine how your character sounds when he talks and your reader will create a voice for your character on his own.

            So accents are an example of what speech patterns are, but if you can’t use them in writing, what kind of speech patterns can you use to help develop your character?  Well, remember, speech patterns are the way a person talks.  Different kinds of people talk differently because we’re all unique.  We have different backgrounds, different levels of education, different dialects.  All of these factors contribute to the way a person talks- his speech pattern.  Let’s see how this looks actually written out in dialogue.

 

            Farmer: “Y’all reckon on sittin’ out here all evenin’?”

 

            Mountain Man: “Them are no good varmints that come prowlin’ ’round my place, stealin’ my furs.”

 

            Cowboy: “Well, I’m sorry, but I ain’t ’bout to clear off my land now.”

 

            Attorney: “Your Honor, my client objects to the claim that the distribution of this propaganda is indeed constitutional.”

 

            Teenager: “Man, I just know I’m gonna flunk this test.  I mean, having to study like fifty pages about why plastic bags are more “go green” than paper bags…  It’s like really?  Who cares anyways?  It’s way out there.”

 

            Teacher: “It isn’t a matter of who gets the main role in the play.  It’s a matter of all of the students- the entire class- working together to put on the best performance and make this the best production it can be.”

 

            Okay, so if you’re like me, you’re thinking “blah, blah, blah.”  Not the most interesting examples, I admit, but it was the best I could come up with, and I hope you can gather the point I was trying to make at least.

            In case you didn’t though, let’s talk a little about them.  All right, first notice that the way these characters talked could be categorized into three main divisions: hick, professional, and average-joe.  The farmer, the mountain man, and the cowboy all fell into the category of hick.  The attorney’s speech pattern was professional, the teenager talked like an average-joe, and the teacher was riding the fence between professional and average-joe.  Now, before we go any further, it’s important that you realize these are only three categories I made up.  There are many, many other ways to classify speech patterns and many other categories.  Also, a lot of people don’t fall into just one category; their speech pattern is a combination of categories like the teacher’s was.  My speech pattern, for example, encompasses all three of the categories I listed for you.

            Let’s focus on the first three pieces of dialogue above.  The farmer, the mountain man, and the cowboy.  They all sound a lot alike, don’t they?  They all have a laid-back, easy feeling to their dialogue, and none of them talk with perfect grammar.  But the main difference is the extent of their improper grammar.  The worst is the mountain man, then it progressively gets a little better with the farmer, and finally, the grammar’s pretty acceptable the way the cowboy talks.

            Now for the attorney.  His grammar is perfect.  He uses big words and sounds really official and professional.  He talks the way the President would talk or the way a principal or a college professor would.

            The teenager talks… well, like a teenager, right?  Like a high school or college kid complaining about the boring material they have to learn and study.  He talks like a typical twenty-first century kid with slang, expressions, and questions to help prove his point.

            And then there’s our fence-riding teacher.  Like the attorney, her grammar’s impeccable, but like the teenager, her speech pattern has a little more of a laid-back, informal feel to it rather than sounding stuffy and choked with a necktie.

            So are you starting to get the point a little about speech patterns?  Good.  Only three more points I wanna hit so hang in there with me.  Slang, dialect, and stereotype.

            Slang.  This is a big one… and unfortunately, a controversial one.  Should you or should you not use slang in your writing?  When you’re writing dialogue for a young or immature character, it almost seems a necessity, doesn’t it?  Well, some people say it’s okay to use slang, and some people say you should avoid it in your writing altogether.  But if you’re asking my opinion, I say everything in moderation.  I think slang’s fine- I make good use of it in my books- but it’s fine to an extent.  It’s true that expressions change quickly and slang words and terms that you use might soon become outdated and give your work an “old” feel, so in my writing, I avoid using slang expressions and phrases, even some words, in fact.  The slang words I do use are words whose meanings can be deciphered whether you know the word or not; basically words that sound like contractions but aren’t technically contractions.  For instance, a real contraction is “can’t”; a fake contraction is “gonna.”  “Gonna” means “going to,” but it isn’t a real contraction you can find in the Webster’s Dictionary- it’s a slang word.  So are words like “wanna,” “kinda,” and “dunno.”  Other common slang words I use are “yeah” and “ya” (for “you”).  Use discretion and do some research on it.  Read other authors’ opinions on using slang and glean from everyone’s wisdom.  It’s a question you just have to develop your own opinion on because there’s no right or wrong answer to it.

            Dialect.  All right, this one’s easy.  Dialect is words, terms, and vocabulary distinct to a specific area.  Like the word “y’all.”  You hear people from the southern United States use that word.  Dialect is a great way to add color, vitality, and interest to your dialogue!  Make good use of it to show the variety of different places and to add unique personality to your characters.  Be careful though when employing dialect.  Sometimes a word can have two different meanings depending on where you’re from so it’s important to make sure there aren’t any offensive definitions for the dialectic word you’re using.  For instance, the word “boot” can mean “a car trunk” to Australians and Englanders, but to Americans, a “boot” is a type of shoe you wear or if you say “she gave him the boot,” it can even mean “she jilted him.”  There’s nothing offensive in any of these definitions, but it goes to show how very different the meanings of a word can be in different countries.  Make sure you aren’t offending anyone when using dialect and make sure you clarify by the context of how you use the word what definition you mean.

And lastly, the trap of stereotyping.  Sigh.  Such an easy trap for all of us authors to get tangled in without realizing it.  Let’s face it: stereotypical characters are pretty boring.  The hoodlum that falls in love with the virtuous girl, the nerdy kid who gets picked on but is really a genius, the elderly man who pretends to be a grouch but really loves children…  The list goes on, but you know the kind of stereotypical characters I mean.  They’re predictable and overused.  So are stereotypical speech patterns.  The lawyer who uses a lot of fancy words, the farmer who uses incorrect grammar, the scientist who uses scientific terms and names that go in one ear and out the other.  Most of the examples of dialogue I gave you above were stereotypical.  Just because a character is a farmer doesn’t mean that he can’t use good grammar.  After all, not all real farmers talk like that.  In fact, there are even a few attorneys that probably talk like that and have to intentionally leave behind their slang and backwoods expressions when they talk with a client and enter a courtroom.  It’s okay to break out of the set norm of stereotypical characters and stereotypical speech patterns.

            And last but not least, one of the best ways to help you write realistic dialogue is to talk out the conversations of your characters.  Read them aloud.  Actually hearing yourself helps you catch parts in your dialogue that don’t read smoothly like someone actually talking.  Have someone read your dialogue to you.  Listen to people talk and take mental notes on their dialogue.  Notice their grammar, the choice of words they use, and their slang, and try to classify their speech pattern into a category. 

            Many times, I create my dialogue by holding a conversation with myself in which I assume the role of first one character and then the next when I reply.  Sometimes, I even get caught talking aloud to myself and end up pretty embarrassed.  But it’s all part of being a good author, I’ve learned.  Take out all the “he said” and “she said” in your characters’ conversation and see if you can still determine who’s talking.  You should be able to.  Ask someone else to tell you who’s talking in each part of the conversation and see if they can decipher the different speakers by their different speech patterns.  Try out different methods and determine what works best for you to help you write realistic dialogue.  And honestly, once you get the hang of it, it’s not as hard as it sounds.