The Dialogue Rant

By Windsong

So here I sit, on my bedroom floor, listening to my music and watching rain fall outside. Onto my face. Wait…Dangit! *slams window closed* Anyway, this is more like story-writing weather than article writing inspiration. When the power goes out and my sister’s screaming downstairs because my dad scared her around the corner, there’s nothing like settling down to write a story before I get block. Yeah. What is article-writing inspiration, you ask? And that would be a very good question. I’ll get back to you when I find out the answer.

So here I sit. I’m supposed to be talking about something. Right. Dialogue is a key element in any story, and too often I see mistakes that ruin what would be an otherwise incredible piece. It takes practice to be able to write believable dialogue that seems as though it really did roll off the tongue of its speakers, but there are a few things you can do that makes the process a bit easier. Hopefully I can offer some tips to hone your writing skills and bring up the quality of your pieces.

Slicing and Dicing

One of the most common mistakes of writing dialogue is made in the length of characters’ sentences. There should be very few long stretches of dialogue in your writing. Think about it: do people normally talk for two pages without being interrupted? Unless it is absolutely necessary for your character to speak for so long—and if it fits well with the flow of the piece—do not let yourself get carried away with a monologue. Though you may find it interesting to write and supposedly vital to the plot, readers will be instantly put off by the lack of exchange with other characters. If you find yourself trapped with a hideously long piece of speech for one character, insert some other dialogue in between. This makes it more realistic, interesting, and is also an excellent opportunity for character development. Try to keep characters’ sentences short, to the point. As people would normally speak. Unless, of course, you have a character that is known for being long-winded with drawn-out sections of dialogue.

It’s better to show than tell when it comes to dialogue, which also cuts down the length of dialogue. Often beginning writers make the mistake of stating the obvious to develop their characters or to move the plot. Big no-no. This only lights up the sign above every writer’s head that we hope will never be plugged in. You know, the one that blinks with cheesy music in the background, announcing that “This writer has no idea what they’re doing!” To avoid the light-up neon annoyance, make sure that the dialogue you give to your characters is needed and not extra laundry lint.

Keep it Real

My personal favorite aspect of writing dialogue is the fact that every single person speaks differently. Though two characters could be from the same area, may even live right next to each other, they will still have different ways of talking. The differences in dialogue are most commonly seen in accents or dialect, habits, and their sentence structure.

Accents

A very effective way to differentiate between characters, especially if the specific section of dialogue is without tags. The accents can be real, or made up, though the real ones take a bit more work and study; everyone already knows what people from foreign countries sound like. If you throw an accent together based on what little you’ve heard of those who speak in that manner, it’s not going to fly. No matter how hard you flap your arms. Not only may it look and read unprofessional, you may get some unwanted laughs out of the deal

Habits

Everyone has speech habits, things that we don’t even think of that pop out of our mouths at random and litter their sentences. For some it’s “uh,” for others it’s “dude!” And for still others it’s “Holy Monkeys!” But we won’t read too much into that. Yeah. *coughs* Characters that pause between every sentence, stutter on certain words, or cough incessantly every five words are interesting and will add a great deal of… good stuff (yeah, that’s the sophisticated word I was looking for) to your story. Feel free to insert interesting speech habits into your dialogue. This adds extra spice and that something that can make a piece incredible for a reason that readers can’t quite place their fingers on. And as with accents, this helps to identify different speakers in a long exchange without speech tags (he said, she said). But make sure you remember which character speaks which way. Or the results could be disastrous.

Ex.

As he remembered their task, the young Forest Rider grimaced. “Aeh. A royal pain is the greatest of our troubles.”

[Aeh isn’t a word, if you hadn’t noticed. This guy uses it as an interjection or an expression of annoyance.]

Sentences structure

Let’s face it: no one speaks with perfect grammar. Thus, your characters should not sound like an Oxford professor (unless, of course, they are an Oxford professor, in which case you should disregard the above statement and go read some Tolkien). Perfect sentences squish a potentially dimensional character into a 2-D cardboard character that stands in the corners of rooms and freaks the heck out of people (those things creep me out, especially in stores). It takes the life out of your character. People normally trip over their words, forget what they were going to say, interrupt or misunderstand each other, mispronounce large words, and much of the time speak in fragments. Don’t be afraid to break the rules of grammar when it comes to your characters’ sentences. This is especially useful when a character doesn’t know much English, has a habit of leaving words out, or is a rebel English student with a mean streak.

Ex.

“Shoulda stopped at that first part. Funnier that way.”

“Wouldn’t-won’t happen anyway.”

He nodded a little too quickly. “Right.” His gaze traveled to the sky and rested on a canyon that blocked the sun. It was already high in the sky, and the air that swirled around the two was warm with its rays. The young man heaved in a quivering breath and flashed her a pasted-on smile.

“I have to go. ‘S getting late. Gotta say goodbye to...to everyone.”

[The two speakers change their minds on choice of words and sometimes repeat themselves. They also leave words out and run words together.]

**All three of these differences should be used sparingly. Just imagine a story with two Bulgarian immigrants, a Southern cowboy, and a high-school dropout with absolutely no grammatical skill. Can someone say...overkill? Unless you’re going for the completely unrealistic. In which case I say go for it.

Technically speaking

So we just started school and now we’re into the technical junk of dialogue. *dodges flying tomatoes* I thought I might exercise your brains for a little while. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt too much. Writing dialogue correctly is key in having readers understand and enjoy your story.

I’ve got a few common mistakes that make me cringe every time I come across them.

Matching dialogue

Match your dialogue with the speaker. If your character says something, but another character is attached to the sentence, people get confused. Trust me, you need to make sure it is clear who is speaking. It will result in potentially hilarious sentences, if you don’t. This is usually a result of writers not understanding when to make a new paragraph for dialogue, which will be addressed later.

Paragraphs

Ah, my favorite. I used to have terrible trouble with new paragraphs for dialogue. A new speaker needs to start a new paragraph. If you’ve started a new paragraph and there is no dialogue in it yet and the speaker is clear, you may stay in the paragraph and put the dialogue there.

Ex.

Jahara nodded, tracing the pommel stone on her sword with gloved fingers. “Rhonin’s late.”

“He’s worse than you are.” [See? New speaker, new paragraph]

“I’ll tell him that.” [New speaker]

“You should. He needs to know.” [New speaker]

[new paragraph, but no one speaks right away.] Rhonin appeared in front of the two in an instant, seating himself across from Jahara. “Of course I do. I’ll be sure to tell myself, Jack. I just hope I won’t be too disappointed; you know how I get when I break the news to someone as fragile as myself.” [We didn’t need a new paragraph because we already had one.]

Remember Your Quotation Marks

I really hope this is no new news to any of you, but in case you’ve been writing without quotation marks all these years—you need them. Dialogue must always be inside quotation marks. If there are no quotation marks, no one is speaking. That clear? Good. Strange as it may sound, I hope no one just learned something.

Much of the time beginning writers forget that they’ve ended the speaking and go right on back into their narration. Bad idea. Make sure you stick the end quote on. Otherwise you’ll end up with some interesting and somewhat humorous sentences/ runons.

Quotes within quotes. These get interesting. If someone is speaking and quotes someone else (Or says something that, grammatically speaking, needs to be written in quotes), you’re still going to put that other quote in quotation marks, but you’re only going to use one on each end.

Use your commas

I believe Willow touched on this slightly in last month’s issue in her article Punctuation Makes a Difference, but it’s worth saying again. Use commas correctly. Please. I beg. I plead. Especially in direct address. If a comma is not used in direct address, you have just completely confused the reader.

Ex.

“Watch that nose of yours miss.”

“Watch that nose of yours, miss.”

[two completely different meanings]

“Get inside boys. And don’t mind the bodies. We’ve got a fort to defend.”

“Get inside, boys. And don’t mind the bodies. We’ve got a fort to defend.”

[That mistake would send readers into hysterics, but I’m not so sure that’s what you want…]

Pauses in speech do not necessarily mean commas go there. Don’t just start throwing commas into your sentences. This throws off the entire sentence structure and is very confusing. Which leads me to my next point: refrain from over-using commas. Commas are only meant to separate compound sentences, participial phrases, direct address, adverbial phrases, lists, and independent clauses. Maybe I should have taken that “only” out. Yeah. But a lot of those aren’t used in dialogue unless your character is that famous but friendly and oh-so-cool-talking Oxford professor.

Direct Address

This is huge, people. Pay attention now, ‘cause I know you’ve fallen asleep during the last five paragraphs. Direct address should be used just like exclamation marks: sparingly. Nothing irks me more than to read my old stories and see every second sentence of dialogue with a name in it. After five chapters of hearing everyone’s name ten thousand times, we get the idea that they’re talking to each other. And you can use other ways to indicate that a character is talking to a specific person other than direct address. Showing rather than telling is advised in these situations. Some things direct address can be used for, though, are:

Emphasis/gravity

Having a character say another character’s name deliberately can add emphasis or weight to the sentence. It can be a character developer or indicate emotion. It can communicate feeling as well.

Surprise, anger, or other strong emotions

Character development

Use direct address where it would make sense. You don’t hop around all day talking to everyone by starting all sentences with their names, so why would your characters? Of course, someone who uses direct address a lot could be a very annoying and interesting character…hmmm…*shifty eyes* You didn’t read that. *snatches character idea*

You should hardly use direct address when writing a piece of dialogue containing only two characters. It is rather obvious that they are talking to each other, and there is no one else to talk to, so hopefully direct address should not be needed to identify the speakers.

I really should have some sort of conclusion to wrap all of this junk up. Yes... I should. But I don’t. So that was my dialogue rant. I do hope it’s been helpful. There’s a world of stuff I didn’t cover here, so don’t be afraid to play with ideas and get creative, and yeah. I could say something profound, but things like that never come from my mouth, so you should go about your business. Now. Yeah.