On Writing: Dialogue

[cahab]

Dialogue. I love it! I really enjoy trying to make my characters live a little through their words. Whether I'm successful or not is for the readers to decide, but I've had enough positive feedback to suggest I'm not getting too much wrong. Most of the readers seem to like it, or at least they don't single it out for condemnation.

In my extract above a lot of the speech isn't tagged, as the conversation is between two people only and as His Grace TheEarl has indicated, in such a situation attributives aren't always necessary. Where I have used them, I've used them to indicate something other than regular speech – 'he said darkly', for instance.

The problem with leaving too many attributes out is that even with just two people talking it can become confusing, and you can lose track of who's talking. Simply naming people in speech doesn't help. The only exception to that is where you have two people with vastly different styles of speech, or viewpoints.

An extra few attributes or lines of action can make your work far less uncomfortable, IMO. For instance;

It was quiet when he came in and I caught his eye and waved him over. He shook his head briefly, no. "Hang on, Matt. I'll get meself a pint."

"Chas!" I called. "Pete's pint's on me!" Chas nodded and Pete came over with his pint and sat down at my table.

"What can I do for you, Matt?", He said.

"You still got your contacts, Pete?"

"Where?" His attention had sharpened.

"Around." I gestured vaguely.

"All right, then. Who?"

"My unloved ex-partner", I said.

"Tony?" He was surprised.

"Tony."

"What about him?"

"I want to know if he's got his fingers in anything sticky."

"There's been rumours," he said darkly. "What's it worth?"

"Fifty for you, fifty for your leg man. Up front."

Pete put down his pint and stroked his chin pensively. "Just for the leg man, Matt. I won't charge you if there's nothing."

"Fair enough, Pete. I'd be grateful for anything and as soon as possible."

"Consider it done, Matt. You at the studio?"

"All week and most of next", I said. "Trish will know where to find me if I'm out."

"Ok, Matt. If I'm working, I'm off now! See you." He sank the rest of his pint, waved to Chas and went out. I settled up with Chas and went back to the studio.

As a general guide, I always feel more than three or four lines without action or dialogue is too much. Although in writing more than anything else, rules are made to be broken.

 

[CWatson]

> What is dialogue?
People talking.

> How can dialogue be used to develop character?
By having a character talk in a certain way. People from different backgrounds, with different educations, from different cultures and subcultures, speak differently. They have different speech mannerisms, different slang, and so on. People can tell when someone splices them. You should've heard the laughter when the youth pastor at my church started talking in teenage slang in the middle of his sermon. Church pastors, youth or otherwise, don't generally pop up in church saying "fo schizzle."

> How can dialogue be used to develop plot?
If the conflict is between two characters, as it almost always is, having them talk is a great way to do it. For that matter, have one or the other character TALK about the conflict with their friends.

> How do you use attributives to their best advantage (attributives are the words that tag the speech, "said" words)?
Personally, I find myself using them as breath marks or pause marks. I mostly learned this from Timothy Zahn, who inserted atttributives in the most bizarre places. "Didn't we [he said] just leave this party" is NOT how Harrison Ford said the line.

> How do you use dialogue combined with action?
I tend to keep them separate, unless it's an action scene of some sort, like if two people are having a fistfight or something. Most of the time, people aren't doing something important AND saying something important; you can afford to ignore one and concentrate on the other.

> How do you use dialogue combined with description?
Again, keep 'em separate. Mixing and matching breaks the reader's concentration AND your own rhythm.

> What do you consider "good" use of dialogue? "Bad" use?
I don't think there's such thing as bad USE of dialogue; what people say is always interesting. Or SHOULD be. If it's not an interesting conversation, why is it in the story? There IS such thing as badly-WRITTEN dialogue. Witness, for instance, the rather stilted stuff in Star Wars Episode II. (Though, for the record, good acting can save bad dialogue; my friends and I watched the DVD of SW2 with French dubbing, and it sounded a lot better.) I honestly don't understand why people can't write good dialogue; you just have to listen to yourself speak. But then, I write formal school papers the same way, and some people can't do THAT either.

> Attributives: How do you get around using them?
Either by ignoring them entirely and letting the dialogue do the attributing by itself. It's hard, but it can be done; some of the conversations between Starling and Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs are COMPLETELY VOID of attributions. But then, Thomas Harris had a rather extreme situation to work with; most conversations aren't that charged. Alternately, I toss in short descriptions of actions:
"God, that hurts." She sighed and rolled her shoulders. "I am never again taking my bowling ball to school in my backpack."

 

[Guest]

Great dialogue

Dialogue is a way of advancing the story or for character development. It's undoubtably the best way of showing stuff about your characters rather than just telling. Dialogue is invaluable in 1st person stories. How else do we know what the other characters are thinking?

I don't really have much to say on the subject as dialogue is not one of my strengths, but those who have heard this rant before will know what to expect.

Dialogue tags (attributives) are the work of the devil! He said/she said - if it's in quote marks, then it should be obvious that someone's speaking. Observe:



Imagine if I'd attached attributives to every one of those bits of dialogue. 18 lines and not a single direct attributive. I think it flows better because of that. Omit needless words.

[/rant]

The Earl

This is excellent dialogue (above). Sometimes, especially if the same character speaks twice in a row, attributtives are necessary to prevent from confusing the reader but I agree they should be avoided when ever necessary, like adverbs and adjectives.

I think pure dialogue is great writing. Elmore Leonard, the great novelist, writes amazing dialogue with hardly any description and his writing is tight and fast reading.

James Lee Burke is a great describer and metaphor user and I love his stuff but Leonard's stuff is so great because it allows the reader to paint the picture in their mind that they want to see.

 

[jtmalone70]

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[Matadore]

...ok, I couldn't resist doing this. I'm an editor...

I like to approach prose in some ways as if I were writing poetry. One of those is that every word is necessary and correctly placed and spelled for optimum effect. I rarely manage.

I find that dialogue is much like a poem within a poem.

 

[jtmalone70]

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[M-Y-Erotica]

This is excellent dialogue (above). Sometimes, especially if the same character speaks twice in a row, attributtives are necessary to prevent from confusing the reader but I agree they should be avoided when ever necessary, like adverbs and adjectives .

I try to treat attributives as I do every other word in a bit of either poetry or prose. (OK, I don't write poetry.) In other words, it should only be there if it is necessary. The Earl did a great job on having a natural flow in his dialogue so that we know who was speaking without having to be told. We don't need to be told who said what because we can tell from what they say. The more distinct a character's voice is the less we need to be told about who is speaking. Similarly, we don't need to be told that they said something happily if the words they say are in fact happy ones, or menacingly if the words are menacing. You will always need attributives at times, but the more we know the less you need them.

You could make an argument then that attributives will go up when the character's words are intended to mean the opposite of what they literally say. The ultimate in this is sarcasm. Ever been in a chat room and you speak sarcastically and someone you've never met takes you literally? Of course. But notice how it is only the people you haven't met who make this mistake. Even in chat the regulars who know you can tell when you are being sarcastic or not because they know you. The point? Even in a story where a person is deliberately saying the opposite to what they mean, it will be clear if the reader knows the character. So, the better you, as an author, can introduce us to your character, make him or her unique, and let us get to know your character, the fewer words you can use later, such as in dialogue, to get your meaning across.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Good points, well put, MY. Just adding a couple thoughts.

While I agree with your thoughts about character voice, IMHO it's better (less bad) to have an extra attribute or two (he said/said she being the preference) instead of some confused readers.

Elmore Leonard has some of the best dialogue I've come across in modern fiction. He and Stephen King are proponents of using he said/said she instead of discriptive attributes. They contend readers don't really read them.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Alex756]

While I agree with your thoughts about character voice, IMHO it's better (less bad) to have an extra attribute or two (he said/said she being the preference) instead of some confused readers.

My thoughts on Dialog have changed alot in the past few years. I started to take a serious look at HOW things I love to read are written. Was it Card that says no one ever says, "Oh that sucked, he used the word 'the' way too much" and that it was the same thing with said.

In short stories its not as pronounced, but readers aren't alwaysreading things under the best circumstances. I know I am not the only one sneaking out a page or two while brushing my teeth. I know people who hide in the bathroom and read a few pages at a time. A few extra attributes are going to help if you are picking up mid page or mid scene, and really are not going to be noticed. I don't tend to have that much dialog, I think my NaNo entry will be much more dialog intense.

When in doubt, it's probably better to use them, since they really are not seen by most people and the lack of them is far more difficult than the excess.

~Alex

 

[drlust]

I want to second Rumple's point about Elmore Leonard. I'm a believer that he writes some of the best dialogue going. Pick up any of his novels and you'll find that as much as two-thirds of the book is dialogue. So, this brings up the point several people made that dialogue is people talking to each other. I'd disagree with that. I think dialogue is another way of telling the story, moving the plot along.

Hitchcock used to be fond of asking people how many times they saw the knife plunge into the woman's body in Psycho. The answer, of course, was zero. He would then point out that there was nothing he could show on screen that equalled the horrors conjured in the human mind. Good dialogue can do the same thing for the reader--draw him/her into the story and move it forward without recourse to lots of descriptive writing. I try to achieve this (and typically fail).

Allan

Good points, well put, MY. Just adding a couple thoughts.

While I agree with your thoughts about character voice, IMHO it's better (less bad) to have an extra attribute or two (he said/said she being the preference) instead of some confused readers.

Elmore Leonard has some of the best dialogue I've come across in modern fiction. He and Stephen King are proponents of using he said/said she instead of discriptive attributes. They contend readers don't really read them.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[M-Y-Erotica]

Good points, well put, MY. Just adding a couple thoughts.

While I agree with your thoughts about character voice, IMHO it's better (less bad) to have an extra attribute or two (he said/said she being the preference) instead of some confused readers.

I agree completely.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I Apologise for the sheer length of this post. And there's so much more to say! I'll add to the discussion later, perhaps, if people don't tell me to get the hell out of the way
I wanted to say that I never realised how much Elmore Leonard has influenced my dialogue style until recently.
I use fewer and fewer signifiers, and find the work flows much better. I tend to stick with "Said" and, (based on recent editing experience, thank you, you know who you are) I use far fewer modifiers- "Angrily, softly, laughingly", instead trying to find a different way to show the anger for instance.

I've gotten two complaints on my story "The Baroness' Boy" which has NO quoted dialogue at all. This was an experiment, to see if I could convey inflexion and speech without actually using it. Personally, I am very satisfied with it, but maybe I shouldn't have pointed out the lack of dialogue in the little forward...

A young lady tsk-ed about the choke hazard of a collar and leash used that way. Griffin sneered out loud. Novices, she said, were entirely welcome to interfere in her scenes, provided they were willing to learn a thing or two. Then, thrusting her hips at the girl, she invited her to climb aboard for a ride to ecstasy. The novice's friends came to the rescue, and Allyson, as Griff had hoped, strode back to deal with her. She stood to attention, hurriedly put her hands behind her back.

The Baroness said she did not approve of that kind of impertinence; but the sparkle in Allyson's eye told a different story. The Baroness's boy had better remember who she belonged to. The Baroness gripped her by her black silicone cock, and reminded her jaw with a series of sweet, stinging slaps, that made Griffin blink, seeing her Mistress through a soft, hazy filter. If she couldn't control her mouth, a gag would control it for her. Whose cock was it? M'am, yours, M'am. My property is not allowed to scare novices, let it be understood. Damn. Of course, M'am.

(BDSM, by the way...) But, the dialogue is actually there, IMO. People say things to each other constantly, in this story, and, I hope, you get an impression of the ways they speak, from the "reportage"
Here's another bit;

Commanded to begin, Griffin cracked her whip overhead. Then she lowered her aim and landed a stinging blow on Gloria's ass. Her range was just right. She waited for a yelp. She didn't get one. Daddy G seemed thoughtful. Griffin, after a second's pause, threw a second shot, and then, since no one told her to stop, she threw in earnest. Purple welts began to raise, in spots and streaks and Gloria grunted and twisted, her hands clenched until her knuckles showed white. Griffin stalked around her, aiming for her upper thighs. The sound she elicited from Gloria didn't seem to be a safeword. Griffin looked over to Jess, watching with glee. Jess raised one arm and ran her other hand along its underside, meaningfully and with a grace that fogged Griff's brain momentarily. Griff signaled frantically with her eyebrows. When Jess nodded, she shrugged and raised her aim. That hit caused Gloria to sag at the knees, so Griffin got the second in quick. While Gloria got her voice back, the marks slowly went livid, one on each tricep.

Gloria roared.

Griffin asked Jess if it was stopping time.

Gloria, still roaring, informed her that she hadn't said any safeword, boy. Jess indicated that she wanted Griffin to hit Daddy's tits, causing Gloria to turn her wrath in her partner's direction. Griffin was doubtful, both of her aim in such a delicate area, and of Daddy G's continued co-operation, but Jess insisted.

Allyson came up while the negotiations went on, and slid an arm around Griff from the back. Dire threats were whispered, of what would happen if Griffin failed to give satisfaction to this very well respected top from California. Allyson also wondered if her boy was starting to feel a little too daddyish. Griff didn't think so. Not while the boy was having this much fun.

The partners agreed that Gloria should experience the whip on her tits. Two hits on each, which Griffin delivered with a great deal of anxious care. Her instinct was to flee the scene immediately thereafter, while Daddy G unclenched her fingers from the chain, and reclenched them into fists. Jess flung herself into Gloria's arms, and the big-knuckled, scarred hands relaxed and grabbed handfuls of delectable girl, instead. Griff knelt and watched. Gloria stepped over, and glared down at her to declare that she did a fine job, boy.

Griffin said thank you, Ma'am.

Gloria stood there for a moment longer, looking her over, thoughtfully, until Jess came to unlace the corset, and put her back into butch gear.

Contrast that with this snippet from "Jessamine" which is nearly ALL dialogue;

"Ay, conó – I didn't know you were busy," Sheba said at the door. " Oops – you really are busy..."

Jess made herself as small and still as possible. It didn't work; they still could see her.

"Oh, we weren't doing nothing," Gloria said. "Just waiting for you."

"But– you got a girl handcuffed to your bed, and she ain't got a stitch on." Sheba advanced into the room "How you doin', mamacita? Ooh, she ain't got no hair on her pussy, either. Ooh, look at that pinocha pelon'– Maybe you always watch T.V. like this?"

"Now that's a funny thing," Gloria drawled. "I said you was on your way, and she freaked out, you know? Wanted to leave. She just wouldn't listen to reason..."

"So?"

"Well, it seems you two have met before. She's scared to death of you, good buddy, in fact."

"Afraid? of me? We've met, you say?"

I use dialogue all the time, to move the plot forward, to take the place of exposition, whenever possible, and, most of all, to delineate character, because character is the sexiest thing in a sex story.
In another story that is told from a first person POV, i wanted my character to be big, strong and sexy, and know it- but too much of a gentleman to ever say so out loud. Since she's the one describing herself, she doesn't tell you what she looks like, the reader has to infer it from other people's dialogue;

"Anyone tell you lately that you have a perfect body?" I could not quite span her waist with my hands.

"Anyone say the same to you? Big strong you." She turned round in their circle to kiss me, while we drifted down to the mattress, that was covered with a Madras spread.

 

[Stella_Omega]

> How do you use dialogue combined with description?
Again, keep 'em separate. Mixing and matching breaks the reader's concentration AND your own rhythm.

For an excellent example of edscription and dialogue flowing effortlessly, read Norman Mailor. "Harlot's Ghost", while not perhaps his best, was a fantastic example of what can be done along those lines!

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Dialogue - The Heart Of A Story

Said, commented, replied, answered, responded, questioned, inqured... these are all words I try to avoid en masse. I try to envision my characters and envelop their emotions. As was stated earlier, great writers can overuse these withiout the reader noticing. Unfortunately, although I'd love to be great, I'm only mediocre and rely on a good mixture.

"No!" her timid voice cried out in surprise.

"No" she cried out defensively.

"Yes!" His tone of voice left no room for argument.

"You bitch!" The undercurrent of his voice tugged at her legs like a vicious whirlpool.

These are just a few examples. There are SO MANY possibilities!

 

[M-Y-Erotica]

Good thought, Asylum. I think how strong the attributive is depends upon what is going on around it. If what they say is extremely strong, then you don't usually need a strong attributive. It's inherent in the words. And so strong attributives on strong words are like repitition. Similarly, if it is abundantly clear from the words and the situation who said something, then we don't need to be told they said it. That two would be repetitive.

However, when you have something that by itself is very generic, then you might need a serious attributive:

"Fine," he spat out at me as he always did when he thought I was being stupid.
"Fine with me," she tossed over her shoulder as she went through the door of the sex shop.
"Fine," he almost whistled. "Damn, she's fine."
"Fine," Judy whined at me like a teenager. "I'll go if I have to."

Versus:

"F- you, Tim! F- you! I hate you, I hate you, and I always will."

Doesn't seem on the latter that you need to say much afterwards, or who said it. It's unlikely to be Tim. Of course, if it is Tim, then you better tell us.

Of course, everyone has their own style, which is why we read more than one author.

 

[M-Y-Erotica]

What's in the head?

I just wanted to add that while I love dialogue and write it almost effortlessly (sorry, but it is by far the easiest part of writing for me whether or not I do it well), I have a really, really hard time figuring out what is going on inside the head. I could give you 10 pages of two people talking exploring what they are feeling, but I can't give you more than a couple lines on what they are thinking to themselves. I can give a woman words with which to confess her love to someone, but I can't come up with much to say what it is like being in love inside. This doesn't mean that I don't get love. Been there. But it is much, much harder to express with the written word to me. I'd much rather have the character perform some action to show how she feels than give you a thought in her head to say how she feels. I don't know. Just curious to me.

 

[MasterPhoenix]

I'm new here, and haven't yet submitted anything to this site. I have a few projects that are in the editing stage that I am thinking of submitting soon. Writing however, is My great passion.

I have a tendency to bog myself down in dialogue by overusing it, then falling in love with the clever wit of My characters.

I do think that dialogue is a spice that works well in some stories and not in others.

 

[kissingthepink]

Hi, I’m fairly new here. Mostly a lurker and a reader, but I do write elsewhere. Hope you don’t mind me jumping in.

Of course, if you do, it doesn’t really matter, I’m going to do it anyway.

I like using dialog for character development. The way a person speaks tells so much about them. What area of the country they might be from, how educated they are, what social class they belong in, their age, if they’re introverted or extroverted. All of that can be shown through good dialog.

There’s nothing that will kick me out of a story faster than stilted or trite dialog.

I haven’t made up my mind on the attributives question yet. I really don’t mind a simple he/she said. Sometimes authors go a little overboard trying to avoid it, when a simple he said would do. I like to keep things simple and straight forward.