Question for fiction writer's: How does one make realistic sounding dialogue?

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

Question for fiction writer's: How does one make realistic sounding dialogue? I have a story I want to write, but can't do dialogue worth (blank).

[Tog_]

What is the specific issue you have with the dialog?

If it's the need to add ", he said" to every line, there are ways around it.

If it's getting the characters to sound different, then it may be an issue with the way they exist in your head. I will sometimes fill out a small charater record sheet, like for a role playing game, so I can keep track of what each one is like. I also try to have a personality set before I start. It will change as I write, but most of the time, it stays within the boundaries I had at the start.

[gwiz]

You could try playing the conversations inside your head, visualising people you know who resemble your characters.

[Nicholas_Bostaph]

Question for fiction writer's: How does one make realistic sounding dialogue? I have a story I want to write, but can't do dialogue worth (blank).
I had this exact same problem while writing my first five or six stories (that made it all of ten pages). I realized that my biggest problem was that I didn't establish a personality for the characters beforehand; I just kinda expected it to develop. It helps to create a history for each character (even a sketchy one) and have an approximate personality in mind before you even introduce them.




You could try playing the conversations inside your head, visualising people you know who resemble your characters.
This is similar to what I do. All of my characters have similar personalities to people I know; preferably those that I know well. This makes it easy to write a dialogue as you can usually predict responses for friends and family with reasonable accuracy almost subconsciously. This keeps you from struggling to get into a foreign mindset, and keeps all your characters from sounding like variations of you. After a while your characters tend to grow beyond their 'hosts' and become distinct personalities themselves in your head.

Of course, this doesn't work quite as well if you don't know a lot of people or only tend to interact with others who are very similar to you. (Sometimes a roadblock I run into)




If it's the need to add ", he said" to every line, there are ways around it.
I'd be interested in hearing your techniques on this. With two people talking the reader can easily assume that every new indent is the other person talking, but when you have a group conversation you have to be more specific. When I'm reading I tend to gloss over the "he said" / "she intoned" / "John agreed" / "Jill mentioned" and absorb the information without realizing, but when I'm writing it I feel like it must really be getting old to the reader. Any tricks you could share to decrease the need for this would be very helpful.

[Tog_]

I'd be interested in hearing your techniques on this. With two people talking the reader can easily assume that every new indent is the other person talking, but when you have a group conversation you have to be more specific. When I'm reading I tend to gloss over the "he said" / "she intoned" / "John agreed" / "Jill mentioned" and absorb the information without realizing, but when I'm writing it I feel like it must really be getting old to the reader. Any tricks you could share to decrease the need for this would be very helpful.

Well a basic exercise for it would be to write out a scene from a movie involving multiple characters, but include their actions as well.

Bob came through the door, shoulders drooping, briefcase in hand and said, "Wow, am I glad to be home".
"You're not as late as you said you'd be", Jill called from the kitchen.
"Hey, Dad". Steve never actually turned his head from the TV.
"I swear traffic is getting worse. There needs to be an IQ test to be allowed on the freeway"
"We've heard it before. Yesterday in fact. Ohh... I love this ad."
"Dinner's almost ready, go wash up then come set the table."
"Hey, Hon, remind me to proofread that report before bed. I just don't have it in me at the moment."
"Oh, Dad, that reminds me, Gary called this afternoon, he said the... umm... wait I wrote it down. Oh yeah here it is. He said it's too long, you need to cut it down to eight pages."
His shoulders slumped even more, "It's twenty three pages now. There is no way to get it down to eight and still have it make sense."
"You could use a tiny font."
"For that crack, you cook dinner tomorrow night too."

Well, that's the idea anyway. You could have them fidgit with their watch, or hunt for arrowheads with their feet, or whatever, but having them doing something while they talk as opposed to just standing there like a robot can help to give a more natural feel to it all.

[captain swoop]

skill a sa writer?
these things can be learned from writing course, our local college has an evening class for fiction writing.

And there are books available but in the end it comes down to the person writing i suppose

[ToSeek]

I'm not sure what advice to give, since that's not one of my problems when writing fiction. I agree with fleshing out the characters beforehand. Also, reading the dialogue aloud isn't a bad idea - if you find yourself stumbling through it, then it's probably not good dialogue.

[Gillianren]

Listen to people talk. That's the first, best advice I can give. Listen to their patterns. Listen to how their dialogue changes when they're in different emotional states. Then, do your level best to recreate it through both vocabulary and a judicious use of punctuation. I find, for one, that I use a lot more dashes and so on in dialogue, which is part of why I use so many here. Here, unlike in the narration of my stories, I write the way I talk. Also be aware that you don't really need that many exclamation points; those, at least, should be used sparingly.

Believe it or not, an excellent way to improve your dialogue is to learn how the grammar is supposed to work, because people tend to violate the rules in very specific ways, and if you don't know the rules, you may not notice the violations. This is my problem with Faulkner, actually.

[mike alexander]

My method is simple in concept: as mentioned by others, I just listen to the conversation in my head and take it down. I fully realize that this is a fantasy, but it gets me in the mood, and seems to allow the dialog to grow both naturally and in unexpected ways. Sometimes I even glance back and forth at the different speakers.

Then, you go back and polish it; reading aloud is something I find helpful.

[Ronald Brak]

Write unrealistic dialogue. It worked for Hemingway.

[Tog_]

Actually, if you ever flip through one of those true crime novels where the dialog is taken from the official transcripts, you can see that all you need to make it realistic, is add lots lof "umm...", "uhh", and repeat words.:razz:

[HenrikOlsen]

It's advice number one when starting to write, "read a lot."

Take a couple of authors who write strong dialogue and try to figure out how they did it. Pratchett comes to mind.

Be careful if doing exposition by dialogue not to have people tell each other what they already know just to let the reader know as well, ie. avoid the "As you know, your father, the king, who died three days ago, . . ." trap.

[Tog_]

One of my writing guides also discusses the "he said" issue. Their take on it was that using he said after ever sentence spoken was wrong, but only slightly more wrong than using every word in the thesaurus for "said" at the end of every sentence.

"Gopher ate the cable", Bob said.
"What?", Jill asked.
"Gopher ate the cable", he repeated.
"So when it will be fixed", she inquired.
"Well tha cable company...(four minutes later) Not 'til Saturday", Bob expoused.

Gets old fast. It does seem to ork for JK Rowling though...

[captain swoop]

Only if you think she writes good dialogue!

[Tog_]

Good or not, she's selling a ton. Well several tons, those are thick books.;)

That's the thing about her writing that grates on me the most. With Dean Koontz, it's the fact that nothing just happens the way it does, it always happens like something else. Every now an then is fine, but every other sentence really bothers me. The one and only book of his I've read was Odd Thomas, which had a story I really liked, but the ramapant similie/metaphor use was just too much to take. I've noticed a lot of them in HHGG too, but they aren't as annoying there.

[Ronald Brak]

For the benefit of budding writers everywhere I shall present all the dialogue from my lastest masterpiece:

You &%$#@*! What the &^%$l do you think you’re doing?
*&%* &*^%!
Sorry, but the bridge is washed out. You’ll have to go back.
Why thank you, son. You’re a good man.
Thanks man.
Yeah, whatever. Just get out of here.

That's it. Hard to believe that I get paid for this sort of stuff.

[Romanus]

This is very difficult for me; good dialogue needs to strike a balance between being realistic (not so much that it's unreadable), and being well-made (but not so much that it sounds artificial). One should also use just enough dialogue to flesh out a character or advance the plot.

Anyways, my answer: listen to people, and try to polish what people really say into a form suitable for fiction. That said, I can't consider myself especially good at it; like Stephen King, I think some writers are just better at it than others.

[greenfeather]

This is very difficult for me; good dialogue needs to strike a balance between being realistic (not so much that it's unreadable), and being well-made (but not so much that it sounds artificial).

It's not so bad when writing about contemporary Americans... just listen to what they say and condense it a little.

I find in any sort of writing, it helps to try to express things in a unique way. New metaphors, vivid imagery etc. Because it is so easy to lapse into cliche. At the same time, writers should go for clear, simple prose that sounds like something a person would say. It has to read well inside your head, or you will skip over it.

What's really difficult is trying to write ALIEN dialogue. You can't use slang or cultural references, and you might even have trouble with basic things like flirting or food! (You can't really talk about 'going on a date' for instance.) Your aliens can easily end up sounding like some kind of biology textbook. ("She only wanted me 'cause she was in her estrus cycle.")

Also, if your characters are on a starship, they just naturally seem to drift into "Trek-speak' (captain, I'm picking up an unusual signal"). It seems really cliche'd but I don't know how to avoid it. Would people (or aliens) on a starship talk like that?

In addition to starship aliens, my story also has animals who talk. This is probably why it got rejected. But I think animals should be able to talk, as long as it is understood that they are "speaking" in their own "language". After all, animals have feelings and are sentient. What do people think about talking animals in fiction? (I don't mean stuff like 'Redwall' where the mice are just like humans.)

[Gillianren]

I'm not big on talking animals except when the entire book is anthropomorphized animals. Even then, it often gets tedious.

The thing is, there's no reason to assume that animals/aliens won't have their own slang and cultural references and every reason to assume they would, if we're going to assume they're like us enough to fit into our notion of stories in the first place. It'd be different, but there's a lot of different slang, especially if you write anything but contemporary stories set in your own location.

[nomuse]

Day late and five hundred words short, but I also record the dialog that's already in my head. At least I do that for all the key bits. It's part of how I work on characters; I set them to talking to each other in my head; while I'm working, while I'm driving, in the shower, etc. As they talk they begin to discover what kinds of people they are and what their voices are. After that it is more like recording than it is like inventing.

And speak everything aloud. If you can't say it yourself, then it won't sound natural. (This obviously doesn't count for alien dialects -- but then again these will work better if you and the reader can at least pretend to speak the words.)

[AGN Fuel]

Don't forget that you can drive the narration while opening an opportunity for dialogue, without the need for a 'he said/she said':

Bob read the letter with increasing confusion and, without thinking, he sat at the table and loosened his tie.

"I just don't understand. This was supposed to have been sorted out last month".

Margaret joined him at the table and watched her husband with concern.

"Can't you call them and find out what went wrong?"

Bob stared at her with bemusement. He reached across and gently covered her hand with his as his voice choked slightly.

"No. I was told not to contact them under any circumstances."

You can't use it all the time, but it can be effective if used occasionally.

[Gillianren]

Though I will point out that the exposition (stuff that isn't dialogue) and dialogue should go in the same paragraph--and can go in the middle of more dialogue. I do it that way all the time.

[nomuse]

I like the theater term for it; "business." Give the characters something to do and not only do you break up the blocks of dialog, and not only do you get to show a little about their character in the way they move, the way they sit, what they do with their hands, but you also get a chance to tell a little more about the setting they are in and the background of the story in general.

Consider;

"That's true, sir," Clark said.
"And what happened that night?" the Captain asked.

"That's true, sir." Clark wrung his garrison cap between his hands.
The Captain frowned. "And what happened that night?"

Clark walked into the CO's office with his cap in his hands. "That's true, sir," he blurted out.

The Captain frowned, and steepled his hands in front of him on the dark polished wood of his desk. "And what," he asked the young man, "happened that night?"


Okay, the last example won't win any prizes for terse efficiency! But you get the idea.

Think of it this way. You may have your people clear in your head, and where they are while they are talking. The reader does not. Take the chance to remind the reader, gently, where everyone is standing, if it's sunny or night-time, indoors or outdoors. Not all writers do this (Azimov comes to mind!)

[Ronald Brak]

Not all writers do this (Azimov comes to mind!)

Why mazel tov, I'm an Asimov!
At least according to what I've read,
For many a year I'd live in fear my dialogue was dead,
Or if alive liked by just one guy,
Who happens to be my ed.

[SMEaton]

Wow. I had a hard time reading the previous posts, so what does that say? Banquo, go with the "make a character outline" advice. Don't wing it. The content and flavor of the characters' dialogue is what must come through.

[Mellow]

Hiya, well, if you read my posts in this forum you will be excused for not believeing that I write occasionally.

Anyway, when writing dialogue, I agree with the posts that state you should create your characters back stories and 'character cards' are a good idea too.

In order to capture dialogue, I have even improved a scene with a colleague, captured on audio tape and then used that to pick up on spoken idiosyncrasies.

Might be worth a try...

[ToSeek]

I'm not big on talking animals except when the entire book is anthropomorphized animals. Even then, it often gets tedious.

I'm going to send you one of my "Freddy the Pig" books and see if I can't make you change your mind. ;)

[Gillianren]

Hey, there are exceptions--I'm a fan of Gaspode the Talking Dog, for one. But you know, Pratchett outlines the problems with talking animals (relative intelligence--"Good boy, Laddie!"--for one).

[Tog_]

There was an episode of Dexter's Laborotory where he found a dog and invented some formula or device to understand what the dog was saying. The dog had gems like:

"Hey! Other dogs! Can you hear me yelling? I hear you yelling! I can smell something! I like smelling things!: and so on. It's actually a really great episode.