Writing Blog Number 2

20240318 Keeping Dialogue Real

Keeping It Real [on dialogue]

Ahh, the joys of reading…

Over the past 50-odd years, I have – quite surprisingly – done a lot of reading. Not all of it has been the trad published books; there is also a bit of self-publishing, some in my former life as a teacher, beta reading, reading to help people out, and, of course, here at WdC. Lots of reading, which in my current guise as a person of no fixed address does help pass the time.

Now, I notice a lot of things when reading – can’t help it, not really – but there is something that I have been seeing more and more of. That is the dialogue people use when writing their tales.

This has made me realise that there are 4 different sorts of dialogue writing: stilted, non-differentiated, phonetic and what I will call “correct”. Yes, I’m inventing terms here, but it’s my writing blog.

Stilted dialogue is when people speak in a manner that is too formal for the setting. The people talk like they are reciting a serious capital-L Literature script, and it does not sound real. Formal exchanges and comments are the most common here: “I do not believe I would do that;” “Please could you procure for me some lemonade?” and, “Your shooting of my person pains me a great deal.” This occurs especially when a writer is relatively new and they have done one of those writing courses that tells them that all professional writing has to be professional and formal and the like, and also when a writer is trying too hard to be politically correct. The biggest issue, though, is that, of course, no-one speaks like this. Ever. Not even in Victorian England.

Non-differentiated dialogue comes in two forms. The first is when the dialogue sounds like the writing around it. The way people speak is mirrored in the way the writer writes. While this can work in a first person story, so the narrator is going to talk in direct speech like they narrate the story, but it does not necessarily follow that everything should sound like that. This leads directly to the second, when all the people talking sound the same. Even if the way they speak is different from the writing around the direct speech, having them all use the same phrases, same words, some interjections makes them sound like they are the same character. It can seem like some well programmed robots are involved in the story, not people.

This leads us on to the phonetic dialogue, which is the complete opposite to stilted dialogue. This is when what is written is exactly what is said by the people in said situation. When this happens, it is obvious that said writer has taken copious notes or has recorded with some sort of magic voice recording device thing and just transcribed everything on it to the page. That’s wonderful and incredibly authentic, but, really, listen to the way people really talk. It’s not in perfect sentences. It’s punctuated by a lot of pauses, ‘umm’s, ‘err’s, and grunts, and often – especially when two old friends are talking – unfinished sentences and ideas because they know already what’s going on. Authentic, yes, but it doesn’t help the reader. For example: “Yeah, well, so I was, umm, yeah, you know, with Dan and we, like, umm, went to the , uhh, shop.” Very true to life… and very hard to read.

However, this does not mean your characters should tell one another things that they already should know. Not even an, “As you know…” conversation starter. That is lazy writing and movies do it all the time.

Continuing with this, what’s worse is when people try to transcribe phonetically an accent, which takes a story going along in its own pace and brings it to a grinding and sudden halt as the reader tries to work out what the hell is going on. The following is an example I’ve ripped from a real, published story: “I a-canna d’ et; et’s a-tu ‘evveee.” I think that’s, “I can’t do it; it’s too heavy,” but you can see the point.

An even worse example is when they combine these two with the verbalisations of teenagers from their own current time period, and that they are not a part of. It comes across as trying too hard and using a completely foreign language. “Like, I was, you know, rollin’, and we were, uhh, err, yeah, you know, lolin’ and…” [I can’t do any more… this is again from an actual book] just does not make sense on any level.

So that leaves us with what I will call the “correct” way… which just means the way that makes the most sense to me as a reader and writer and teacher. This is a strange mixture of all three. What works in books is when people talk informally (except in situations where they would be required not to, talking to superiors and its variations being the most common), they add some slang terms from their own idiom / country / identity group, or some accent identifiers, and they have occasional pauses. In good written work, lots of the “err”-like interjections and blank passages of incomprehensible vernacular just do not exist. What this means is that dialogue in books, though based on reality, cannot be completely real if you want a reader to actually keep on reading your stuff.

Anyway, that is one person’s opinion.

And remember punctuation for direct speech!  . (Notice the cheap plug for another blog entry?!).