We now fall down the rabbit hole of dialogue and how it can make or break your story, screenplay, or script. Don't forget to use quotation marks.
I used to be a very reticent person. Chalk it up to paralyzing social anxiety or just the belief I didn't have anything significant to say: either way, I didn't talk much. As I grew older, I started to climb out of my shell (as we learned during introductions) and socialize more with my peers. Nowadays, my friends can't get me to shut up. While it is terrific that I've found my voice, those years of staying button-lipped taught me something I don't know I would've learned had I been born chatty: listening.
Up until I started contributing heavily to conversations, I merely listened to what people had to say. I learned the speech patterns of certain people and, when invited to speak by them, imitated the pattern in order to engage them. This is an imperative skill for the working world, where most of authority just like to hear themselves repeated in a different voice. However, this tool is useful elsewhere, particularly in social situations and writing. And now that I've gotten the hang of being social, it's time to really apply it to writing.
"But, Sydny!" you cry in desperation. "I've been listening to boring assholes my entire life! And I still struggle with dialogue."
That means you have the key, but you don't know which door it opens. Don't worry, my anonymous crier, we will unlock your door and unleash your full dialogue potential. For now though, tuck the key in your pocket so we can discuss what dialogue is and why it is so very important in almost every form of writing we use today.
Dialogue is any form of communication between two characters (or, in special cases, between a character and an object/idea/entity). It is typically portrayed in the typical format: "Wow, dialogue sure does suck," Mary said. In some cases, quotation marks are abandoned in order to give the prose a more fluid structure (for example, the excellent "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake", which you should give a read after you finish this equally excellent blog post). Dialogue is often essential in fiction, film, television, and stage to move the story forward and develop characters without having to explicitly state their traits.
There are a few key things to remember when writing and polishing dialogue. There is no one-size-fits-all: a five-year-old does not have the same speech pattern as a forty-year-old. People from the North and South have different speech patterns, inflections, and monikers for things (don't ask a Southerner if they want pop, because they won't have a clue what you're talking about. Believe me. I'm sick of New Yorkers ordering pop. It's called soda, folks.) Even characters who share age or gender or ethnicity won't speak exactly the same, because just as every person has unique fingerprints, they have unique speech patterns.
That's why developing your character is so important before launching into a writing endeavor. You have to know exactly who this person is to know exactly how they'd talk. Do they have a nervous stammer because of their anxiety? Are they always calling people "sugar" or "honey"? Is their speech peppered with "um"'s and "yeah"'s due to lack of confidence? If you're in the middle of a project and want to know if your characters' speech patterns are diverse enough, take away every identifier and present it to a friend or family member. Ask them if they are able to tell which character is speaking and what kind of person they most likely are. This is a broad experiment that may not always work, considering there are some phrases and sentences that can't be perfectly tailored to be different ("okay", "hey", and one-word questions like "why?" or "how?" don't have to be changed). However, if it's a dialogue-heavy scene, there should be a perceptible difference between the interchanging lines of dialogue.
In terms of dialogue itself, some authors struggle with creating it organically. I'm sure we've all read books where the characters speak so stiffly you'd think their tongues were coated in starch or watched movies where every line is some trite platitude (think "wow, you look... beautiful" and "it's standing right behind me, isn't it?") As a creator, it is your job to create a voice. Every character has a voice, whether verbal or not, and it is important that you respect that voice.
Do you feel like your writing is too stiff and unnatural? My first tip is to read it aloud. I do this with every story I write. Because I sometimes struggle with modifier placement (both in writing and real life, due to scattered thought processes and a staggering lack of eloquence), I have to read my dialogue aloud to make sure it flows and doesn't sound clunky. Another tip is to always "dumb it down". Even if you're a stickler for perfect grammar and syntax, most people aren't and won't speak that way. Add a few ellipses for when the character is fumbling for a word or too embarrassed to speak. Don't be afraid to have them say "um" or "like"; these phrases do not, as our society believes, signify vapidity but are mere placeholder words. Every language has them: we just happen to equate ours with a lack of intelligence.
Still struggling to make it sound organic? Watch some television. The best show to study for natural dialogue is "Home Movies", a teen and adult-oriented animated sitcom (most episodes are available on YouTube). The show's entire first season was almost completely improvised by the actors and while the following three were more scripted, the dialogue is still as natural as a conversation you'd overhear in a coffee shop. Another show is "Bob's Burgers", which is excellently written and a good influence for any writer who wants to study up on their character interactions. Watching these shows might remind you of how people rarely, if ever, know exactly what to say and when they do, it may not always be the right thing.
My last tip is to do what I did: listen. When you're in public, listen to how the cashier talks to customers and how they respond. Listen to tones. Listen to inflections. Listen to your mother's diction on the phone with her mother compared to her best friend. Watch videos of your favorite celebrities in interviews (try to find interviews that aren't staged) or talk shows. We are a society constantly embroiled in discussion and this is a wonderful thing. We are constantly swapping words, sentences, paragraphs. We are constantly communicating.
And this is not a bad thing at all. Why else would we focus so intently on dialogue and its place in the literary world? Don't forget that before we had writing, we had speech. We had dialogue. If thousand-year-old cultures can figure out dialogue, so can we. It's time you found your voice.
ANNOUNCEMENT: With the arrival of summer and some new spare time, I have decided to start a new page of book reviews on this blog. It will not be updated as rigorously as this blog, but I will try to include announcements of new reviews with each post. Happy writing!
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