User blog:Binkatong/Some Helpful Dialogue Hints

I was bored and I'm procrastinating on writing my novel, and I wanted to do something for BTFF, so I wrote a dialogue guide. In it, I'll be walking through how to make your dialogue interesting and engaging. But first off...

Why is Interesting Dialogue Important?
It's interesting. Duh. But why is it interesting? So, how do you make interesting dialogue, then? Let me walk you through an example.
 * 1) It adds realism. Not everyone talks like a robot. Having the characters talk like real people makes it more believable.
 * 2) It adds clarity. It may seem like simple speech would be easier to understand than messy human speech, but characters that don't sound like textbooks make the reader more willing to process what's being said, making the plot more clear.
 * 3) It adds emotional torque. The secret to good storytelling is to make people feel something, and what better way to do that than have a character who seems like they're really feeling something themselves. Good dialogue hammers home what the character is feeling, and makes funny scenes funnier, sad scenes sadder, and exciting scenes more exciting.
 * 4) It adds personality. One of the biggest reasons people read stories is because they care about the characters, and you can only make people care if the characters seem like real people. Having them show their personality through their words is much more effective than simply stating their traits in descriptions. When people can relate to the characters, they keep reading. If you want your series to get readers, characterization is a must, and what better way than through dialogue?

The Original Example
(Kristen): Do you guy want to go see a movie?

(Lyn): Sure. I want to see Attack of the Giant Cockroach. I heard it's scary.

(Liam): I don't want to watch that.

(Lyn): Are you scared?

(Liam): No, I don't like monster movies.

(Lyn): With all of the monsters we fight, you should have no problem with them.

(Liam): I'd rather see Starship Adventures.

(Lyn): Kristen, what do you think?

(Kristen): Both movies sound good.

(Lyn): Attack of the Giant Cockroach it is then.

(Liam): Hey!

Bland, huh? Well, at least it's clear and the grammar is fine, but there's still a long way to go. Let's be a little bit more specific on what can be improved on:

Who's Talking?
All of these characters are speaking the exact same way. Really the only reason this conversation is easy to follow is because it's mostly back and forth between Lyn and Liam. But, if you took away all the character names, the first line could have been said by anyone. And imagine how bad it would be if you added in two or three more characters. No one will know who's doing what!

You want your characters to be distinctive simply by their manner of speaking. This is what gives characters personality and makes them engaging to the audience. Maybe your character says a certain word a lot, like “really” or “actually” or “dude”. They could phrase things simply, formally, extravagantly, or crudely with unnecessary swearing, or anything else you can think of.

People Don't Talk Like That
Usually, people don't say things like “I want to” (unless they're especially proper and that's how they talk), they say “I wanna”. Don't be afraid to use shorthand that mimics how the character would actually be speaking.

A lot of the phrases used sound awkward and stilted in real life, not how a person would normally talk. If you want a character to sound awkward and stilted, which can work in some cases, great, write them like this, but it's not going to work for everyone. Here's a trick: after your write a sentence, say it out loud. Keep changing it until it flows naturally.

Where's the Feeling?
You may know exactly how your characters are saying those lines in your head, but the audience sure doesn't. If you can the emotion behind the line obvious by the phrasing, that's great! That's the best situation, actually, but sometimes just good word choice isn't enough.

In these cases, you should turn to the inflection of the sentence to get your meaning across. This means adding punctuation and formatting in order to show how the lines are pronounced. For example, adding pauses and breaks using commas and ellipses (the dot-dot-dot). You can also define emphasis with italics, rises in volume with CAPS, excitement or anger with exclamation points, you know the drill. This technique is useful, not just because it's more interesting to read, but because often it will help with communicating the meaning. There's a difference between "I love you" (I'm the one who loves you), "I love you" (I love you, I don't hate you) and "I love you" (You're the one I love). And of course, the famous "Let's eat, Grandma!" vs. "Let's eat Grandma!". Punctuation saves lives.

Sometimes your dialogue needs a little more push, which is when you add parentheticals. Parentheticals are extra adjectives, adverbs, or minor actions added to dialogue, usually in parentheses right after the character name. You can do these a million ways, like:

Ben: (depressed)

(Gwen, guiltily):

[Kevin, entering]:

Or however else you feel like doing it. Do this when a sentence is rather ambiguous and not obvious in context, or the emotion your character is expressing contrasts the dialogue in some way. Look at the difference here:

(Ben): Go away, doofus!

(Ben, furious): Go away, doofus!

(Ben, laughing): Go away, doofus!

The in the first one, it's harder to tell what's going on, it would depend on the situation. In the second one, Ben clearly is angry at the doofus and wants them to go away, whereas in the third he's being much more playful and probably doesn't feel any anger towards the doofus.

Here's the process you should go through:?


 * 1) Word the sentence in a way that expresses the desired emotion. If that doesn't work--?


 * 1) Add italics, caps, or additional punctuation to convey the correct speech pattern as to clarify the emotion If it's still not enough--


 * 1) Tell the audience what the emotion is in the parenthetical.

Actions Speak Louder than Words
Sometimes words just don't cut it. The raising of an eyebrow, a nervous glance at one's own feet, or the clench of a fist can often be just as effective as a line of dialogue, if not more. Besides, it's more interesting, and brings a level of realism to the story. After all, people don't just stand around with blank faces and talk all the time.

You shouldn't do this constantly. It's most effective when a character is reluctant or to any degree hiding something, like if they're lying, or trying to keep their cool but it's not working, or if they don't want to tell their friends that they lost the doomsday device and the bad guy got away. Is also good when the emotion the character is feeling is especially intense.

Note that describing body language or specific facial actions has more punch than just saying what the emotion on their face is. Contrast “he was pacing back and forth, biting his lip” to “he was nervous”.

Putting it all Together: My Method
Here's a step by step process I've made up to make this all easier. This isn't by any means the be-all-end-all of how to do dialogue, but I thought some of you might like a more structured approach to how this all works. I myself don't even do this; okay, well, I do, but it's unorganized and entirely in my head. I'm about 50% of the way to this being second nature. Still, I can't really walk you through that method, so we're doing this instead.

Step 1: Preparation
Don't just dive into the conversation right away. There's a few things we need to define first:

Characters
Who are the characters participating in the conversation? Write down each of their personalities, including things about how they speak, like so: Kristen is nervous, excitable, dutiful and naïve. She can be anxious about new experiences and unfamiliar situations, but after she actually experiences something and enjoys it she wants to do it again and again. She's socially and emotionally dependent on Lyn and Liam, mostly Lyn. When it comes to fighting evil she is almost a completely different person, Because she doesn't have a very good grip of speaking English, she is a girl of little words, and communicates mostly through body language, vocal tone, and simple, fragmented phrases. Lyn is emotional, social, bold and dishonest. A drama queen in every sense of the word, her emotions are always off the wall and she's not afraid to show it. She's an extremely talented liar, a skill she uses both onstage when playing the lead role of the school play, as well as in real life. Her social life is the most important thing to her, and she knows just about everyone, or if she doesn't she'll be their friend in a matter of minutes. She's not one for suitabilities, and will be brash and direct with her closer friends. When speaking, she uses a lot of expressive vocabulary, expletives, and emphasis on words. Her dialogue in general is very colorful and in-your-face. Liam is proper, intelligent, serious and overly cautious. The best word to describe him would be academic— knowledge is important to him, and he isn't one to fool around for any reason. Besides Lyn, logic is his best friend. He is socially awkward and bad at handling people. He's more easily frightened than his uptight exterior lets on, and there are few things he hates more than going into an unfamiliar situation unprepared. He speaks formally, avoids too much slang, though his sentences get filled with pauses, hesitations and space-fillers when he's feeling nervous or awkward.

Purpose
What are each of the characters trying to accomplish in this conversation? Kristen feels like going to see a movie, and she's trying to convince the other two to take her. She has no preference to which movie she'd like to see, because she doesn't know either of them. Lyn wants to go see Attack of the Giant Cockroaches, because it sounds exciting and freaky and fun, and because her friends recommended it. Liam doesn't want to see Cockroaches because he's scared of horror movies. He wants to see Starship Adventures instead.

Progression
It helps to think of each conversation as a story of its own, with a beginning, middle and end. Before you start writing, it helps to at least decide where it begins and where it ends. If you have any ideas for how the middle goes, put that down here as well. Always decide the end before the middle, because that's the most important part. If a conversation doesn't either move the plot along, show character development, or create humor/tension, it shouldn't be there. Beginning: Kristen suggests they go see a movie, the group agrees. Ending: They decide to see Attack of the Giant Cockroaches. Middle: After making their points, Lyn and Liam leave it up for Kristen to decide. She has no opinion, so Lyn hijacks it and decides on Cockroaches against Liam's wishes.

Step 2: Skeleton
Write the conversation line by line, only focusing on the logical cause and effect. The goal is for it to make sense, not be interesting to read. Ignore the actual character traits (unless their reactions directly affect the course of events) and focus on their purposes. You should end up with something similar to the original example.

Step 3: Edit for Emotion
Now, go through the conversation line by line, and ask yourself the following questions:

Why?
What is your character trying to achieve by saying this? Are they trying to inform, convince, flatter, provoke, crack wise? Note that the goal may not be the result; in fact, it often isn't, and that's a big cause of conflict.

What?
What are they feeling when they're speaking? Are they calm, depressed, terrified, enraged, jealous, prideful? How do they feel towards the person or people they're talking to? Do they hate them, love them, don't know them, want them to stay, want them to leave?

How?
How are they going to speak to convey their intention? If they're trying to flatter someone, they'll use positive vocabulary; if they're trying to impress, they might act more formal, or use big impressive words. Also, how will their emotion affect how they speak? Even if they're trying to impress someone, if they're scared, they might stutter or trip over their words.

With all this in mind, edit the line into something more interesting and in-character. This is where you pay attention to each character's personality, it will give insight on how character will feel during different situations.

Example
Original Line— (Kristen): Do you guy want to go see a movie? Why is she saying it? Kristen wants the others to take her to see a movie.

What is she feeling? She's very excited about the idea of seeing a movie, but she doesn't know if the others want to. How is she speaking? Because she doesn't know many words, she will likely only use one or two words. She will try and convince them to do it by sounding hopeful, expressing how excited she is and counting on them wanting to make her happy by doing this for her. Because hopefulness isn't something that can be expressed in a one-to-two word phrase about going to the movies, nor can it be shown with written inflection, so we'll use a parenthetical.? Revised Line— (Kristen, hopeful): Movie?

Original Line— (Lyn): Sure. I want to see Attack of the Giant Cockroach. I heard it's scary.

Why? Lyn agrees with seeing a movie, and wants to see Attack of the Giant Cockroaches. She tries to sell that movie to the other two.

What? She, like Kristen, is excited.

How? Because she holds the opinions of her friend group in such high esteem, she will use the fact that all her other friends liked it as her main argument. She's excited, so she'll use plenty of vivid language and descriptions. There's enough context in the words so that we don't have to resort to inflection or parentheticals.

''' Revised Line— (Lyn): Heck yes. I've been wanting to see Attack of the Giant Cockroach for weeks! Everyone I know who's seen it nearly wet their pants.'''

And so on an so forth. Continue this through the whole conversation. You don't need to write all your answers to the questions down, just keep them in mind when you're writing. Some lines will take you a few seconds, others might take a whole minute to get right. This is just how it works, unfortunately. The process will speed up as you get more practice.

I'm not going to go through the rest of them, but here's the final product:

Once More with Feeling!
(Kristen, hopeful): Movie?

(Lyn): Heck yes. I've been wanting to see Attack of the Giant Cockroach for weeks! Everyone I know who's seen it nearly wet their pants.

(Liam): Uh, actually... can we see something else?

(Lyn): Why? (mocking) Is widdle Wiam scared?

(Liam): I am not! I just... I don't like monster movies.

(Lyn, sarcastic): Yeah, 'cause it's not like we fight monsters every other freaking day.

(Liam): How about Starship Adventures? It got good reviews.

(Lyn): Looks like you're the deciding vote, Kristen. Take your pick.

(Kristen thinks for a second, then shrugs.)

(Lyn): Cockroaches it is then!

(Liam): Wait, no fair!

Much better. :D

Final Thoughts
Dialogue is tough, and a lot of work, but it has a huge payoff. Here's a few more tips to send you off with: Good luck, everyone! Also, if you have any questions, or want me to look at a conversation or two and give you some specific pointers, I'll be happy to help. :3
 * Read it out loud to help figure out word flow and emotion. Don't be afraid to get into it.
 * Get a second opinion. Have someone else read it and tell you if something doesn't make sense, or if a certain part is boring. Don't take criticism personally, because after all, the first draft of everything is terrible. No exceptions.
 * Know your characters. You can't show your character's personality through dialogue if they don't have a personality. Figure them out. At least get down a list of basic traits.?