Ways to Ruin Your Dialogue
Part 5
by Erin Evans
Dialogue is an important part of your story. It shows us how your characters react to situations and people, helps move the action, and gives information to the reader. Dialogue is also very difficult to write. The best dialogue feels natural, even effortless, and gives rise to the misconception that “It’s only people talking.”
Just as your characters are better, worse, more interesting and more repugnant than real people, their dialogue must also go the extra length. It isn’t always easy, not ruining your dialogue, but it is always worth doing.
Last time we went over the basics of developing voice: deciding how the characters’ social statuses and origins might affect their speech. However, that’s only the beginning. Your character’s voice, much like your own, is a singular combination of culture, background, and personal choice. No one else’s voice will be exactly like it. Deciding what to make him or her say may seem overwhelming at first, but there are a few exercises to help you along.
1. “Do” your character. Can you do an impression of your character? Can you mimic his stance and the slang he might choose? Can you copy her accent and her syntax? Part of getting to know who your character is and what they would do in a given situation demands this level of intimacy.
Walk around channeling your hero. Shop as your heroine. You might get some weird stares, but you’ll sort everything out and have fun doing it.
2. Interview your character. This is an old exercise. Sit down at your favorite writing device and conduct an interview with your character of choice. Ask the questions and make them answer honestly and in their own words. Pry. Psychoanalyze. Make them cry.
Better yet, get a friend to help you. Their questions will be harder than the ones you come up with yourself, though you may want to give them a few starters or a direction to head in. If you aren’t comfortable pretending to be an elf or alien warlord to their face, leap into the 21st century and conduct the interview over an instant messenger. Again, make sure you are thinking about your character’s response and not your response.
3. Have a reading party. Once you’ve done the above and hammered out some dialogue for your characters, invite all your drama friends over, buy them a pizza and hand out parts. See if everyone can keep their roles and voices straight. See if the voice you intended is the one coming out of that actor’s mouth.
If you’re feeling a little more dangerous, take out all of the dialogue tags and see if they can handle it. If your voices are truly amazing, they will have no problems. If they are great, there may still be a few times that mix-ups occur.
4. No matter what, read everything out loud. In the end, it matters most if your writing sounds right to you. After reading the same lines a few times, the music may be gone and they may have little meaning in your mind. So read your scenes out loud. Read for yourself. Read for a small audience. Read on open mic night. Read whenever, wherever, but listen to yourself and the words you’ve chosen. What seemed clever and bright may rear up twisted and artless. What seemed like a throw away line, may rewrite your whole scene. Be aware of what you’ve written. It’s the best way to improve it.
Just like every other aspect of dialogue, you should consider your character carefully when developing a voice. The more you write, the more quickly you will develop your characters’ voices and the better they will become. Like everything else in writing, dialogue is simply a matter of practice. Knowing some of the pitfalls will, we hope, speed your progress and keep you from ruining your dialogue.
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