I can't...

[damppanties]

This scene from the Globe Theatre's production of Much Ado About Nothing shows what can be done when two good actors interpret dialogue.

Oh, that was the best thing ever! *happy sigh*

I tend to be too precise in my dialogue. I do have fragments, interjections, people talking across each other. If I have the Word feature turned on it keeps flagging up incomplete sentences and fragments.

But there are very few hesitations or repetitions in dialogue in my stories. I try to imply the way the character speaks instead of writing as the character would actually speak in real life.

If I can believe the feedback and PCs, most people find my dialogue acceptable.

BUT - if they were to read it aloud, it would sound stilted and pedantic. I write my dialogue to be read, not to be spoken. There is a real difference.

I agree that too much personalization can kick the reader out of a story but wouldn't dialogue that is stilted and pedantic be the other extreme? I believe dialogue has a different quality, a different rhythm to it than the narrative voice. It needs to be written (and read) to that different rhythm. There is something that happens in readers' heads when they see those quotation marks on a page - dialogue is 'heard' in one's head, while being read too. I think writing dialogue that will only be read and not 'heard' is the other extreme from writing dialogue exactly like it is spoken.

 

[oggbashan]

Oh, that was the best thing ever! *happy sigh*

I liked it too. I saw it on a live transmission to a local cinema.

I agree that too much personalization can kick the reader out of a story but wouldn't dialogue that is stilted and pedantic be the other extreme? I believe dialogue has a different quality, a different rhythm to it than the narrative voice. It needs to be written (and read) to that different rhythm. There is something that happens in readers' heads when they see those quotation marks on a page - dialogue is 'heard' in one's head, while being read too. I think writing dialogue that will only be read and not 'heard' is the other extreme from writing dialogue exactly like it is spoken.

It depends on how the reader interprets what is written. My dialogue isn't like my descriptive writing but also isn't a 'warts and all' replica of real conversation. IF it is read aloud it might not sound like real conversations but when we listen to real conversations we ignore a lot of what is actually said. On a screen or page we can't give the expression or intonation of an actual conversation.

That extract from Much Ado About Nothing shows the difference. If you read Shakespeare's words, could you imagine those few words producing exactly the effect that the Globe's actors achieved? Of course, you can now - because you have seen them in action. But if you had never seen a production of Much Ado?

A significant part of that production was the response of the audience in the Globe. The actors timed their speeches and their expression to work with the audience. But we can't do that with anonymous readers.

 

[damppanties]

That extract from Much Ado About Nothing shows the difference. If you read Shakespeare's words, could you imagine those few words producing exactly the effect that the Globe's actors achieved? Of course, you can now - because you have seen them in action. But if you had never seen a production of Much Ado?

A significant part of that production was the response of the audience in the Globe. The actors timed their speeches and their expression to work with the audience. But we can't do that with anonymous readers.

That's kind of my point. The Globe actors are professionals and know how to make dialogue come alive with acting but the average reader does not read Shakespeare like that. The reader needs cues to get the result you want them to from dialogue.

If you looked at that little clip and decided to write exactly what happened there, would you write just the words of dialogue on a page (i.e., "I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come," Beatrice said), or would you do something much more involved, cuing readers to pauses, looks, inflections of voice and the way that a character is supposed to have said it? That one sentence quoted above can be coquettish and shy, or delivered with a roll of the eyes, said with a furious look, or a cheeky grin, all of which make it mean something different.

Even with just the dialogue, if you're not going to add action tags to it, there's a subtle difference between "I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me..." and "I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me..."

 

[Remec]

Does anybody else have this issue? Do you write like you speak? I'm talking first draft, balls to the wall writing before you have a chance to go back and pretty up the story for public consumption.

I find I do tend to write the way I speak, but that is usually reserved for chat rooms and the odd email or PM I actually manage to send to someone. I rarely really write as myself.

Now...writing as characters, that is much more prevalent and I find that, quite often, you have to let them have the reins and speak with the freedom to be slangy or jargon-filled or simply without the proper grammar that would come from them paying attention to how the words were coming out of their mouths. In fact, if I manage the necessary time and energy to research a given character's background, I find it fairly common for them to speak in what would be truly horrendous fashions--when it comes to grammar, that is.

 

[sr71plt]

That's kind of my point. The Globe actors are professionals and know how to make dialogue come alive with acting but the average reader does not read Shakespeare like that. The reader needs cues to get the result you want them to from dialogue.

I laughed in relationship to that at our local TV news tonight. They had a novice reporter on who had obviously written her own copy, because it was a feature she'd gone out and filmed, but she kept stressing the wrong words in the spoken delivery of what she herself had written.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I thought the prison dialogue was good writing, I enjoyed it. (I think it was you who once posted that you struggle with your parenting because you realise that shouting: "Shut the fuck up!" or something similar you had picked up in the prison to your child is not really appropriate and I laughed and laughed at that.)

D_Lynn has a good suggestion about reading other writers, their style can influence yours. If you want to do a 'proper' character then try Jane Austen. I often suggest this to my students, I say read Jane Austen or Oliver Sacks, in order to get them in the habit of reading, thinking and then writing more clipped measured sentences instead of rhetorical questions with lots of exclamation marks. (Which are not really how social science is usually written, LOL.)

Your account of the professionals and inmates needing translators reminded me of having to interpret between a Frenchman and a Japanese man - both speaking English. The Frenchman would shout: "You just cannot do it like that!!! You are a total idiot and your mother smelt of elderberries!!!!" Then I would say, "He thinks it will be really difficult." The Japanese man would say, "I believe it will be possible." I would say, "For Christ's sake! Can you not see that we could actually do this thing?!!!"

I am only exaggerating a little bit, LOL. We seriously were all speaking English but I had to 'translate' between them because their cultural ways of speaking were so different.

I am going to write a blurt about your story in the FAWC thread! I just wanted to go back over it again, and write something about yours and John's together. And I have a child and a staff development day and the laundry and a post to write ... But I am on it soon as, LOL.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

A few suggestions:

* Listen to other people talking. Better in real life, but some actors in some movies do a good job at nailing "real speech," too. Listen hard. Listen and then repeat the phrase that attracts your attention. I find saying a phrase out loud helps me understand it's cadence and feel.

* Embody the character and say it out loud.

* Writing dialog is not the same as writing a transcript, like a court reporter. Give the reader a "feel" for how the character sounds and their imagination will take care of the rest.

Too often my characters get stuck talking too much. I enjoy how dialog reveals things. I try to ground my characters somewhere easy (like a sitting in a booth at a diner) so I can add little actions as direction and avoid the endless stream of "she said" "he said" "she said" "he said."

Hope that helps!

 

[RedMonkeyButt]

I thought the prison dialogue was good writing, I enjoyed it. (I think it was you who once posted that you struggle with your parenting because you realise that shouting: "Shut the fuck up!" or something similar you had picked up in the prison to your child is not really appropriate and I laughed and laughed at that.)

D_Lynn has a good suggestion about reading other writers, their style can influence yours. If you want to do a 'proper' character then try Jane Austen. I often suggest this to my students, I say read Jane Austen or Oliver Sacks, in order to get them in the habit of reading, thinking and then writing more clipped measured sentences instead of rhetorical questions with lots of exclamation marks. (Which are not really how social science is usually written, LOL.)

Your account of the professionals and inmates needing translators reminded me of having to interpret between a Frenchman and a Japanese man - both speaking English. The Frenchman would shout: "You just cannot do it like that!!! You are a total idiot and your mother smelt of elderberries!!!!" Then I would say, "He thinks it will be really difficult." The Japanese man would say, "I believe it will be possible." I would say, "For Christ's sake! Can you not see that we could actually do this thing?!!!"

I am only exaggerating a little bit, LOL. We seriously were all speaking English but I had to 'translate' between them because their cultural ways of speaking were so different.

I am going to write a blurt about your story in the FAWC thread! I just wanted to go back over it again, and write something about yours and John's together. And I have a child and a staff development day and the laundry and a post to write ... But I am on it soon as, LOL.

Yes, that probably was me. Now that she's old enough to know that her actions/words have consequences, I can speak however much profanity I want and she knows that to repeat mommy is to get in trouble. She's not yet old enough to understand that mommy saying she will "get in trouble" is not the same as actually being in trouble.

 

[RedMonkeyButt]

A few suggestions:

* Listen to other people talking. Better in real life, but some actors in some movies do a good job at nailing "real speech," too. Listen hard. Listen and then repeat the phrase that attracts your attention. I find saying a phrase out loud helps me understand it's cadence and feel.

* Embody the character and say it out loud.

* Writing dialog is not the same as writing a transcript, like a court reporter. Give the reader a "feel" for how the character sounds and their imagination will take care of the rest.

Too often my characters get stuck talking too much. I enjoy how dialog reveals things. I try to ground my characters somewhere easy (like a sitting in a booth at a diner) so I can add little actions as direction and avoid the endless stream of "she said" "he said" "she said" "he said."

Hope that helps!

All good advice. Thank you.

And too often my stories get stuck in the description. I've struggled with dialogue since I began writing stories in the fourth grade. I won two first place medals in a science fair in high school for science fiction short stories, and even though I no longer have the stories I can guarantee the characters didn't talk much in the first drafts. My mom helped me in the editing of those stories, and in both of them she suggested dialogue additions. That was more than ten years ago, and I'm still not great with dialogue.

And this sitting in a booth in a diner thing sounds familiar.

 

[sr71plt]

You don't get the full effect of spoken dialogue unless you record it and play it back, though. If you just listen to it from the next booth in a diner, your brain will filter out a whole lot of flak that is actually there--just as it will if you're actually a part of the discussion. A recording will faithfully play it back to you.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

You don't get the full effect of spoken dialogue unless you record it and play it back, though. If you just listen to it from the next booth in a diner, your brain will filter out a whole lot of flak that is actually there--just as it will if you're actually a part of the discussion. A recording will faithfully play it back to you.

Agreed, though recording conversations can be tricky.

Additionally, and probably confusingly, written dialog is seldom a transcript.

As hokey as it sounds, saying the words aloud can really help.

 

[sr71plt]

Agreed, though recording conversations can be tricky.

Well, yes, but that's an entirely different issue. It doesn't change that your brain will filter a lot of dialogue you hear out before it enters your consciousness, thus it won't be a faithful rendering of the dialogue.

 

[desertslave]

This scene from the Globe Theatre's production of Much Ado About Nothing shows what can be done when two good actors interpret dialogue.

That was delicious, thank you!

I talk much more casually than I write. It's very hard for me to kick all those years of academic editing. (Help me, Thesaurus, you're my only hope!) I'm also very 'switchy" with accents, but my native tongue is Penn Dutch. I'm not even sure how to type that!

 

[MrPezman]

Because while my other stories followed a particular dialogue where the characters seemed to know what they were gonna say, I tried with Because I Care to do just the opposite. The two main characters of this story stumble along with their dialogue, with frequent pauses to speak what they mean, or to abandon one approach for another. When I have to speak to people, I frequently stutter words, or fumble for the words that I really wish to express. Some readers, I've found, don't like that. Maybe it slows them down in their reading, or it's something else. Some guy commented that I was some kid, writing first grade crap because of my frequent use of "..." Maybe I could've approached that story differently, but I don't much care for catering to the opinions of those who have no respect for my writing. Just write how you write, take into consideration the comments of those who are only trying to help you, and the assholes who prove their own ignorance in their comments can just go fuck themselves.