Using Dialogue: To be or not to be?

[Mark James]

Looking around here on Lit, I’ve noticed that the writers here don’t make too much use of dialogue. I can understand why, because for me, dialogue is the most challenging part of my writing.

When I write dialogue, I’m always trying to do one of two things: move the story along or reveal something about the person talking. The trouble comes for me when I go back and read my draft and I know it doesn’t sound right to my ear, but I don’t know how to fix it. So I write and re-write and re-write, until finally I hit the right note, and it flows.

One of the techniques that I discovered accidentally for writing good dialogue that has a good feel and sound to it is listening to books on CD or on tape. I have an hour commute each way to work, and I’ve found that listening to a really good book makes the ride more pleasant. And I learn a hell of a lot from that. Hearing an author’s words is incredibly helpful in hearing how he/she sets the pace of their dialogue and how easily (or not) it rolls off the tongue of the reader.

I’ve found that Stephen King has the best dialogue that I enjoy listening to the most and that I’ve learned the most from.

I also find that reading plays shows how to use dialogue to develop character, because there’s no significant use of narration in most plays. I particularly enjoy Shakespeare’s McBeth, because the play is so short, that Shakespeare was forced to make every word count.

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

 

[BlackShanglan]

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

You know, it's interesting that you mention this. I've noticed lately that I seem to have a fascination with speech and silence and their erotic possibilities. In looking at the works I have written or have in progress, I've got one where the narrator physically cannot speak, two more where social relationships prevent or discourage speech for most of the story, and two more that are letters and therefore unlikely to contain much dialogue. I think I have found the restraint and play with containment of voices interesting. Possibly I find that a driving point of view is better established without too much interceding dialogue.

That said, I have also written a screenplay, a format that is nearly entirely dialogue. The difference in the forms are interesting, and the ways in which information is communicated become part of the fun of the composition.

I think that answers question one. To question two, I go by ear because a large part of any character, to me, is voice. I hear regional dialects and rate of diction, typical vocabulary, etc. I often read it aloud with the appropraite voice to hear if it seems to ring true to me, and as with all other things I write, I find it helps to leave it for a week or two and come back to it.

Some of my favorite dialogue that comes swiftly to mind is actually from the screen. I think the exchanges between Valmont and Madame de Meurteil (sp?) in "Dangerous Liaisons" very nicely done. Personally, I have to admit, I tend to give narrative voice more weight; we tend to hear so much more of it. This is especially true of erotic stories, in which, I think, we hear less dialogue because the focus is much more on description.

What an interesting question.

 

[Goldie Munro]

Dialogue is really important but it is essential to not use too much! I am often put off by a story which begins with what seems like a page of dialogue - unless it is arrestingly different I am put off by large chunks of dialogue.

Dialogue in erotica is a difficult beast - too many 'ahs' and 'oohs' can get tiresome during sex scenes but nothing at all leaves ithem flaccid (pun intented!) - I am not an expert on dialogue by any means but I know what I like and I try to stick to that in my stories!

 

[oggbashan]

I use too much dialogue.

Many of my stories have pages of dialogue between two characters. More than two and it gets complicated to signal who is talking to who and can overload the reader with too many 'He said: She said'.

Dialogue ups the pace of a story and if you can do it well is very effective. I know some of my dialogue is far too formal for the situations. I am told that I sometimes sound like Dr. Johnson addressing a guttersnipe and my characters can sound just the same. I know I need to use more contractions and more realistic speech. I'm working on it. I can hear the voices in my head which helps sometimes.

Og

 

[pop_54]

Looking around here on Lit, I’ve noticed that the writers here don’t make too much use of dialogue. I can understand why, because for me, dialogue is the most challenging part of my writing.

When I write dialogue, I’m always trying to do one of two things: move the story along or reveal something about the person talking. The trouble comes for me when I go back and read my draft and I know it doesn’t sound right to my ear, but I don’t know how to fix it. So I write and re-write and re-write, until finally I hit the right note, and it flows.

One of the techniques that I discovered accidentally for writing good dialogue that has a good feel and sound to it is listening to books on CD or on tape. I have an hour commute each way to work, and I’ve found that listening to a really good book makes the ride more pleasant. And I learn a hell of a lot from that. Hearing an author’s words is incredibly helpful in hearing how he/she sets the pace of their dialogue and how easily (or not) it rolls off the tongue of the reader.

I’ve found that Stephen King has the best dialogue that I enjoy listening to the most and that I’ve learned the most from.

I also find that reading plays shows how to use dialogue to develop character, because there’s no significant use of narration in most plays. I particularly enjoy Shakespeare’s McBeth, because the play is so short, that Shakespeare was forced to make every word count.

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

I personally don't find dialogue a challenge, to me it's the easy bit, but then I write as I speak, both narrative and dialogue. However I do know some authors here avoid dialogue to the extent that it messes with the story line, the whole thing begins to read like a newspaper account rather than a living story.

I don't think there's any mystery about learning to write dialogue, you know what you want your character to say, so just let them say it... Too many people try to apply the rules of English writing to dialogue lines, don't even try it, no one speaks in true written English in real life, do they, forget grammar, and even spelling, slang is good in dialogue, it brings it to life.

I've written and posted here on Lit 3 stories that contain all dialogue, with not one single word of narrative throughout. Two Were experiments, posted among the normal tales... one the Uniboob challenge entry and nothing more than a light hearted blurb.

Dialogue is easy as long as you don't try thinking about it too hard, in other words just let it flow.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Looking around here on Lit, I’ve noticed that the writers here don’t make too much use of dialogue. I can understand why, because for me, dialogue is the most challenging part of my writing.

When I write dialogue, I’m always trying to do one of two things: move the story along or reveal something about the person talking.

I’ve found that Stephen King has the best dialogue that I enjoy listening to the most and that I’ve learned the most from.

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

Well, first off, yeah, there's a lot of writers here that probably don't know where to find the quotation marks on the keyboard. That's true, but the chances are against finding them here on the AH. I know you didn't mean to imply otherwise (Why would you ask us a question if you thought us incapable of understanding?), but I thought I'd point it out. A lot of the people who post stories here have spent too much time reading Hustler Letters and not enough time distinguishing them from reality.

To get to your questions:

1. Mostly, dialogue comes naturally. i'm not claiming to be good at it, only to not struggle in thought and uncertainty when putting it down. I don't really feel it's challenging. When I use it, it's more than just to reveal something or to move the plot along, although those things do fall in there. I'd say that most of what dialogue is good for is fleshing out the character, giving that person a consistency. If you've read the Dark Tower books by Stephen King, whom you mentioned above as being good with dialogue, I'd say you already know what I mean. In the earlier novels, Eddie Dean is mostly a goof. He's cool, and he fills a good role (my favorite character in those books, actually) but he's goofy and says stupid things. You learn that the first time he speaks that this is the case, but he still spends hundreds of lines per novel spouting off goofy things like "Bumhug" and "long tall and ugly." It isn't really necessry to move things along, and the point was made in the second book, or the third perhaps more clearly, but how many novels does he do this in? It creates a consistancy that defines who he is to the reader, makes him more real because we know what to expect from him.

2. Special techniques? No. Like I said, it tends to come naturally. Mostly, I just write it down, and seldom do I have to really re-write it.

3. King's a good example, like you said, but some of what he writes seems to be more focused on readers in his part of the world (Maine; and I only live a few states away). Not that it loses my interest, but some of what he says does get left behind when I read it. Another good example, I think, is Alex Garland. He wrote The Beach, much better on paper than with Leo spouting off the words, and "28 Days Later," real good dialogue given the setting. A real good example of dialogue, in my viewpoint, is in "Fight Club." The characters scream personality as they speak. Yes narrative comes into play, but in a character's voice, so it more or less still applies.

Was what you were asking?

Q_C

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

The first thing that I do when I outline a story, is to check to see how many scenes – like in a movie script – I can logically break the story into.

When identified, those scenes become those portions where the story may be carried forward by dialogue. In between those scenes of dialogue will go interstitial sections of narrative or action.

I also make an effort to incorporate scenes describing action with scenes involving exchanges of dialogue. To my mind, a scene where the dialogue is commingled with brief snippets of action are golden.

By not outlining stories, one loses the chance to tighten the plot, insure continuity through the story, and construct the best arrangement of dialogue and action scenes to straight narration.


I am still at the level of a novice practitioner. Sometimes I do not see a chance until much too late, or never at all, but since I started outlining by scenes my fiction has improved, especially in the longer stories.

Whether they do it physically, or only in their heads, if you ask the better writers here, I bet they will confess to doing something similar before they begin writing, also.

 

[MLyons]

What VB said.

There's nothing she said there that I disagree with, or that doesn't describe my own story writing process.

Obviously some stories require more dialogue, some less. Everything is relative, but to actively avoid writing dialogue altogether is unfortunate in my opinion.

There's nothing that is easier to read... or that moves a story along at an easy, fast pace than well written dialogue. On other hand, badly written dialogue can slow a story down to a distracting crawl. As VB said, I like action and narrative to be incorporated with dialogue, and that is how I write for better or worse.

I also agree with VB on the need to in one way or another, really map out the story in terms of scenes and plot before you start writing the FINAL prose in earnest.

As for Mark's third question... David Mamet writes masterful dialogue. It's downright mesmerizing.

 

[cantdog]

My stories occur to my mind as dialogue and I have to put the rest in afterward. It's just the way it is, I stopped having a working television for a few years, and my chief amusement is to have people come to the house to just talk.

The art of conversation is a fading one in our culture. How many times have you come to visit someone, only to find the television going?

Dialogue is the easiest and most natural way in the world to write. Keep the characters' voices firmly in mind, and write what they fuckin say. (Sorry, whisky on board.) Even soliloquy, interior monologue, is grist to the mill, and very revealing, to boot.

People never really mean what they say, so indicate the left out bits as if they were left out, the reservations and rationalization as such, so that the reader sees the devious machinations too.

Then, go back. Take out the repetitiveness and the floundering everyone does in speech, and keep the feel. Put in just barely enough description to convey the action, and then-- do the sex.

cantdog (who is not King)

 

[cloudy]

I seem to have the opposite problem - I often lose my story in the conversation that the characters are having. They start talking, and their little chat turns into a long conversation, going off on tangents that I never could have imagined. I often have to stop and backtrack to the place where I should have stopped to begin with.

Dialogue comes easily to me...the rest of the story, the narrative, is what I have to work at. I suppose that's why most of my characters end up with southern accents.

 

[Quiet_Cool]

Whether they do it physically, or only in their heads, if you ask the better writers here, I bet they will confess to doing something similar before they begin writing, also.

I do the mental outline, but not the way I interpretted you saying above. I think I can swing an axe with the Lit. Big boys/ girls, but I don't think all of us outline much. I need to fly some, to do so without the seat belt on. I think a lot of us here (and I know a lot of the NaNoers) don't confine themselves with previously set ideas of what will or will not happen in thier stories. When I start, I say, okay, here's my projected finishline, and here's what I'll need in between. mostly, what I see are specific scenes that I'm already prepared to write. The in between is by the seat of my pants writing, not unimportant (mostly more important) but it's unplanned.

I know that's not what this thread was about, but I think it applies to the topic. No single sentence that I can think of was preplanned, before the story began, or mostly before the scene itself began. Every now and again, I get that "cool line" in my head, which is usually only cool inmy head, btw) that tends to drag the story down because of my insistance of adding it in. Other than that, the dialogue seems to drop on its own.

Hope this made more sense than it porbably does. A little off-hinge from the partial hang-over.

Q_C

 

[Goldie Munro]

A few stories I have started recently have characters who would speak in dialect - I find this the most difficult in that:

a) how do you physically write it!
and
b) will readers understand it!

Hmmm?

 

[Quiet_Cool]

A few stories I have started recently have characters who would speak in dialect - I find this the most difficult in that:

a) how do you physically write it!
and
b) will readers understand it!

Hmmm?

I was always taught not to attempt to write the dialect into dialogue. i know Mr. King does it (and let's face it, he is the King nowadays), but it makes more sense not to, given that it makes it easier for the reader to understand. Trying to write things out with the dialect incorporated is harder to do, and to understand, than to say, they spoke with a thick dialect that so and so had to think for a moment to gain the meaning of.

Just my .02

Q_C

 

[oggbashan]

A few stories I have started recently have characters who would speak in dialect - I find this the most difficult in that:

a) how do you physically write it!
and
b) will readers understand it!

Hmmm?

I think the best advice is to be as sparse with the dialect as you can. Give it a touch of flavour but not the real thing.

Kipling's Indian Army stories are an example of 'How Not To Do It'. Apparently his version of Army slang sounded false at the time and now those stories are virtually unreadable.

A few pointed words or phrases: Welsh for example - add a 'boyo' from time to time, Welsh first names and everyone's surname is Jones and the readers will get the idea. Fake Irish sounds just like that - Fake.

Less is more with dialect.

Og (Jones the milk)

 

[Goldie Munro]

I was always taught not to attempt to write the dialect into dialogue. i know Mr. King does it (and let's face it, he is the King nowadays), but it makes more sense not to, given that it makes it easier for the reader to understand. Trying to write things out with the dialect incorporated is harder to do, and to understand, than to say, they spoke with a thick dialect that so and so had to think for a moment to gain the meaning of.

Just my .02

Q_C

I know but if you are setting something in a particular place and time it sounds weird if the dialogue doesn't fit the character!

 

[pop_54]

I know but if you are setting something in a particular place and time it sounds weird if the dialogue doesn't fit the character!

Quite so, Cockney's don't speak perfect Queens English do they... but unfortunately, although most of we Brit's would be able to work it out in broad local dialect, most overseas readers would be Gob Smacked... Same goes for a broad American dialect in the written form, we'd struggle over here.

I know where you're coming from, a Geordie speaking with plumb in the mouth monotone would be all wrong in your eyes as you try to visualise the character while writing him into a tale... I think as Oggie does, just a bit of slang, or a hint of local dialect is best in this case, boyo, isn't it look you... wore kid.

(Slack Alice is how 'not to do' slang and dialect).

 

[Guest]

You do remember who gave me my forever fresh av, don't you?

 

[Goldie Munro]

You do remember who gave me my forever fresh av, don't you?

No!

Pops - yeah exactly - ehhh ooop lad - the engines cannae take it and all that!!

 

[nushu2]

I'm glad this question came up because I'm trying to develop my use of dialogue in my writing.

Mostly, I've used a bantering type of style. Short and broken phrases with no monologues. It is the easy way to be conversational but very limiting, relying on the narrative and descriptive tags. Normal conversation is usually tempered with politeness, hidden motives or is just too mundane to be worth writing. Realistic dialogue has many "ums" and pauses that would be annoying to read.

I'll break up long narratives with dialogue every few paragraphs or so and try for the character to reveal himself/herself as much as possible. Unfortunately, I haven't thought in terms of advancing the story through dialogue much.

One of my own favourites was a misfit who felt he had to swear.

”Fuckin bitch! What the fuck was I supposed to do! My fuckin pants around my fuckin ankles! Fuckin bitch bites me and I smash my fuckin head against the fuckin table!"

That was fun. Did I overdo it? Another got me working on how the rhythm of the words can convey meaning. This Aphrodite character only spoke in rhyme.

“My world is taken. My heart is broken. Nothing can ever be the same. My chest, it aches, my arms are weak and my legs gone lame. I wish I could die. I can only cry.”

Most of the problem is just myself. I'm not a talkative kind of guy and that reflects in my writing. The fewer words I use to say something, the better. My project is to write a screenplay type of story to reduce my dependance on the narrative. The next step in my growth as a writer.

 

[purple_angel]

Its all context innit?

 

[Weird Harold]

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

I use dialogue to give an immediate feel to the story -- Since properly written dialogue (internal or external) is almost always present tense, it shows what the character is feeling and thinking at the moment.

Any time the story requires one charcter to pass information to another, I try to do it with dialogue and avoid "Jm came in and told everyone that there was a fight out in the front yard," style 'telling' what the characters said.

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

I listen to the characters talk and transcribe it. Then I read it "aloud" to make sure it "sounds" right. (actually I read it silently and "listen" to how it sounds in my head.)

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

Me.

Here at Lit, WhisperSecret is one of the best at Dialogue and she's shared her skill in a couple of very good how-to essays.

I can't really name a mainstream author that I like that doe dialogue well, because all of the authors I enjoy reading do dialogue well -- it's the one of the main reason I enjoy reading them/

 

[yui]

My questions for anyone who wants to offer an opinion are:

1. How do you use dialogue in your writing?

2. Do you have any special techniques you use for “hearing” your own dialogue?

3. Which writer(s) do you think make especially good use of dialogue in revealing character, moving the plot along, or, generally, make their characters sound really good?

Hello everyone,

This is an interesting thread. I am again reminded that there are an almost infinite variety of styles in the writing process!

1.) I don't do dialogue very well so I tend to keep it pretty bare, simple. Incomplete sentences, fits and starts… Also, I think, unless you do it well, that less is more with dialogue. It has been my experience that bad dialogue can drag a decent story into stupidity with amazing speed.

2.) I read every word of a story that I write (dialogue or not) out loud and I don't post it/stop re-writing until it verbally "flows" to my ear.

3.) Elmore Leonard is a master at dialogue (slang, dialect and using it to "show" the character). He might not be my favorite, but he does have a gift for characterizing with dialogue.

4.) I don't outline. Not even a little bit. I'm of the story=plot school of thinking. A single word, an idea, a line of poetry, whatever, that could my jumping off point – I might know where I'm going (or not) but the journey isn't a planned one. I don't think my method is any more right or wrong than outlining to the nth degree - it's just what works for me.

Luck to all,

Yui ^_^

 

[purple_angel]

'Fucking Hell!' she yelled,' How the fuck can you have a story without fucking dialogue?'

Well as far as he could tell very easily if that was what it would entail!

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Great thread, outstanding responses. This may be a "saver thread".

While I admire Stephen King, the best popular writer when it comes to dialogue is Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Mr. Majestyk, The Big Bounce, etc.)

Here are his ten "rules" for writing. Most relate to dialogue.

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Here's a short excerpt from the opening of, "Get Shorty" that includes dialogue by three characters.

This time at Vesuvio's, they finished eating, Tommy said he'd see him at the barbershop -- where they had a phone in back -- turned up the collar of his Palm Beach sport coat for whatever good it would do him and took off. Chili went in the checkroom to get his jacket and all that was in there were a couple of raincoats and a leather flight jacket must've been from World War Two. When Chili got the manager, an older Italian guy in a black suit, the manager looked around the practically empty checkroom and asked Chili, "You don't find it? Is not one of these?"

Chili said, "You see a black leather jacket, fingertip length, has lapels like a suitcoat? You don't, you owe me three seventy-nine." The manager told him to look at the sign there on the wall. WE CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST ARTICLES. Chili said to him, "I bet you can if you try. I didn't come down to sunny Florida to freeze MY ass. You follow me? You get the coat back or you give me the three seventy-nine my wife paid for it at Alexander's."

So then the manager got a waiter over and they talked to each other in Italian for a while, the waiter nervous or he was anxious to get back to folding napkins. Chili caught some of what they were saying and a name that came up a few times, Ray Barboni. He knew the name, a guy they called Bones he'd seen hanging out at the Cardozo Hotel on the beach. Ray Bones worked for a guy named Jimmy Capotorto who'd recently taken over a local operation from a deceased guy named Ed Grossi -- but that was another story. The manager said to the waiter, "Explain to him Mr. Barboni borrow the coat."

The waiter, trying to act like an innocent bystander, said, "Somebody take his coat, you know, leave this old one. So Mr. Barboni put on this other coat that fit him pretty good. He say he gonna borrow it."

Chili said, "Wait a minute," and had the waiter, who didn't seem to think it was unusual for some asshole to take a jacket that didn't belong to him, explain it again.

"He didn't take it," the waiter said, "he borrow it. See, we get his coat for him and he return the one he borrow. Or I think maybe if it's your coat," the waiter said, "he give it to you. He was wearing it, you know, to go home. He wasn't gonna keep it."

"My car keys are in the pocket," Chili said.

They both looked at him now, the manager and the waiter, like they didn't understand English.

"What I'm saying," Chili said, "how'm I suppose to go get my coat if I don't have the keys to my car?"

The manager said they'd call him a taxi.

"Lemme get it straight," Chili said. "You aren't responsible for any lost articles like an expensive coat of mine, but you're gonna find Ray Bones'coat or get him a new one. Is that what you're telling me?"

Basically, he saw they weren't telling him shit, other than Ray Bones was a good customer who came in two three times a week and worked for Jimmy Cap. They didn't know where he lived and his phone number wasn't in the book. So Chili called Tommy Carlo at the barbershop, told him the situation, asked him a few times if he believed it and if he'd come by, pick him up.

 

[Guest]

clarification

I particularly enjoy Shakespeare’s McBeth, because the play is so short, that Shakespeare was forced to make every word count.

Macbeth was written in 1605 but not published until 1623; Shakespeare died in 1616. I believe half of his works were not published until after his death. A good portion of Macbeth is considered lost. The plays published after 1616 were put together from the players' individual parts and their and others' memories. There is much disagreement on what might have been the 'final' version of some works.

My point: Shakespeare did make every word count, no force was involved.

Perdita