Dialog

[Valandil]

OK - if I'm going to start in on some other serious writing projects, this is something I probably need to get a handle on. I have only done one 'project' so far - a series of 'letters' in the 'Letters from Middle Earth' thread over in the ME forum. I just realized that one easy thing about that was, I was able to do little or no actual dialog. It was all narrative - with a little bit of dialog relayed 'second hand', sort of.

Any tips on writing dialog? Any pointers on making it seem natural, or right, or... GOOD?

[Nurvingiel]

Hm... good one Valandil. Dialogue is difficult, and even the most natural-sounding conversations in writing have been edited and tweaked a million times. There's different ways to write dialogue.

Between more than two people, you have to go 'he said' 'said Valandil' etc. to keep your speakers distinct. But you don't want to be too repetetive with 'he said' etc. after the speaking lines.


For example:

"I'm High King at Annuminas," said Valandil.
"Well I didn't vote for you," stated the old woman.
"You don't vote for kings," he replied, surprised at her ignorance.
"Well how did you become king then?" the old woman asked aggresively.
"By exploiting the workforce!" asserted Dennis, the constitutional peasant. "By 'anging on to outdated, imperialist dogma that has perpetuated the class differences in our society."
"The Lady of the Lake," Valandil intoned, "Her arm clad in the purest, shimmering samite, held aloft the sword Excalibur. Signifying, by Divine right, that I was to wield Excalibur in battle. That is why I'm your king!"

You can say "said" more than I did there, but you see what I mean.


With only two people, sometimes you can skip saying 'he said' etc:

"Hello Valandil," said Nurvingiel. "Welcome to the Teacup Café!"
"Hi Nurv," he replied, looking around. "Not too busy today?" The Café was deserted apart from them.
"No... I'm not sure why though, we were packed yesterday."
"Well, there's a lot happening in the forums right now."
"Really, what?"
"All kinds of exciting threads," he answered authoritatively. "There's some really hot topics, but Mooters are, as usual, civil in their replies. There's some cool discussion on abortion, theology, marriage, politics, why people hold their beleifs, and this odd thread imagining some weird alien experiment."
"Oh yeah, you're a Super Moderator, of course you know all that! Anyway, what can I get you?"
"Oh... erm... I'll have a latte please," he asked politely, masking his embarassment. Nurvingiel made the latte with extra foam.
"There you are," she said, handing it to him, "It's on the house."

In that scene, sometimes I had "blah blah" by itself. Since there's only two people, it's obvious who's speaking, as long as there's a new paragraph each time a different person speaks (which is a rule anyway).

I'm not an authority, but those are my ideas on dialogue. If you think my two scenes are rubbish, perhaps you should ignore my advice.

[Draken]

One way to ensure natural-sounding dialogue, I have been told, is to write it out as a script - so no 'he said she said' at all - grab a volunteer and do a read through. That will pick up any clumsy or un-natural prose that might otherwise look fine on paper.

Then go back and put in the descriptors as needed. The longer the dialogue, the more the need for the sort of elegant variation described by Nurvigiel.

[Nurvingiel]

Thanks Draken! I think writing out a script first is a great idea.

Another thing to remember is the way people speak. Tolkien is a brilliant example of this. The way characters speak tells you something about them. The Rohirrim and Gondorians have a more formal way, Treebeard "Hooms" etc. Because Tolkien is a genius, none of these local dialect differences are annoying.

I've read some books where the author tries to write accents into the dialogue. This might be fine for some people, but it irritates me to no end, especially if it's done constantly for certain characters. I prefer knowing about the accent - having it described in the 'he said' bits.

ex.
"Bottoms up mates!" he said. Sarah noticed his English accent.
or
"Excusez-moi," she asked with a heavy anglophone accent.

Now we know this about the characters, and you don't need to worry about it. That's just my opinion though.

[Draken]

Agreed, trying too hard to write in a dialect leads to tortured phonetics that only work in very small doses. Better to limit it to one or two phonetic quirks and try to convey the flow of the dialect in standard English. For example (and excuse the cliche here) "There's lovely, isn't it?" get across (I hope!) a Welsh lilt while using standard spellings.

[Nurvingiel]

Even though I didn't get the Welsh bit, I still picked up on the more unique accent that that character would have (and somewhat of its nature), without wanting to stop reading the book.