Top of the evenin' to you, Writers On! I haven't been hanging out as much as usual lately at our Thursday soirees, but I have an excuse. Or a reason; I can't remember which is the good one. Mr. Emmet has decided to join the crowd and is experiencing Clostridium difficile, a/k/a c. diff., a nasty gut infection which everyone who's anyone is picking up at the hospital these days. So I've been spending an inordinate amount of time making chicken soup, reading clinical studies, and generally being a ministering angel except when I differ with the doctor's directions, based on my scholarly research, and then I get mad and my halo falls off into the chicken soup.
Also I've been writing dialogue amongst the bad guys in the book I'm working on. I've grown very fond of them, and want to give them bigger roles. But it wouldn't be credible if they were to talk with my point of view characters about their evil machinations. So I'm writing their internal discussions purely as dialogue. And that brings us to tonight's topic.
Dialogue has to be one of the hardest things in the world to get right. If you Google it you'll find lots of online help and exercises, and you'll see this isn't a comprehensive discussion.
Dialogue has to have the rhythm of speech, not writing. They always advise you to read it aloud. But it can't be exactly like speech, which has so many ums and uhs and meanders so much it would be intolerable.
The characters have to sound the way people with their background and education would sound, rather than sounding exactly like the writer. I never get that part right. I always try to ask myself whether the character writes or speaks in any way for a living, and in what capacity, because that makes a big difference to their use of language, to how comfortable they are with being directive, for example. Does the character like to hear himself talk? Does she think she's funny? Does he read? If so, what exactly? Doe she watch TV? Tweet? How assertive is she? How comfortable in his own skin? Who does she admire?
Oh, and dialogue has to be interesting and ideally, compelling, in addition to being necessary to the story. Here are some other qualities:
* Verbal tics. In The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett features a character, Inigo Skimmer, a Dark Clerk from the Assassins' School (scholarship boy, though), with a signature quirk:
"Not Your Grace," [Vimes] said. "Just Vimes. Sir Samuel, if you must. Are you Vetinari's man?"
"Inigo Skimmer, sir. Mhm, mhm. I am to travel with you to Uberwald."
It works because (a) it's exactly the kind of sound this character would make; (b) it's not overdone (no more than one character with verbal tic per book); and (c) this is Pratchett we're talking about.
* Dialect. Regionalisms. Pygmalion. Charles Dickens. Mark Twain at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn:
EXPLANATORY
IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap- hazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
I think this is becoming a lost art, because so many people today sound like Brian Williams -- or Lester Holt, as of last week. If you've got a great ear, you can still do it, though many readers with less-great ears won't pick it up, consciously anyway. If you write fantasy, of course, it's a little easier because Brian and Lester don't have hegemony in fantasy worlds. Here's a great example from cfk, a few weeks ago:
The sky filled with eagles, owls, and hawks bearing down on Malford whose tail switched back and forth trying to bowl them out of the sky like tenpins.
It kept his attention on the tiny attackers as Jasper and Hitch raced to the tunnel.
"Be serendipity the birds want revenge," Hitch said.
"Serendi...pity...what?" Jasper asked.
"Means be good thing they come now while we need to get to safe place."
"Yes, but...serendipity?"
"I like the word," Hitch said as they dashed into the tunnel and out of Malford's sight.
* Character. (This isn't to say that the writers mentioned above don't write dialogue that is steeped in character. They do.)
Pulp Fiction is number 16 on the Writers' Guild of America's
101 Greatest Screenplays of All Time. I think it should be higher. Here are Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta), two hit men, discussing pork:
JULES: They're filthy animals. I don't eat filthy animals.
VINCENT: Sausages taste good. Pork chops taste good.
JULES: A sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie. I'll never know 'cause even if it did, I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That's a filthy animal. I don't wanna eat nothin' that ain't got enough sense to disregard its own feces.
VINCENT: How about dogs? Dogs eat their own feces.
JULES: I don't eat dog either.
VINCENT: Yes, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
JULES: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy, but they're definitely dirty. But a dog's got personality. And personality goes a long way.
VINCENT: So by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he'd cease to be a filthy animal?
JULES: We'd have to be talkin' 'bout one motherfuckin' charmin' pig. It'd have to be the Cary Grant of pigs.
* The unexpected/shocking/funny/horrifying. See above. In the
Pulp Fiction example, one can assume that Vincent and Jules have many discussions where they're in character but also boring. This topic both demonstrates character and is very funny.
TONIGHT'S CHALLENGE:
We're in Togwogmagog, where a Callow Youth and his/her Stout Companion must find the Sacred Jewel of TogWogmagog and save the kingdom. If you have established Togwogmagog characters, use them. If not, it's a great time to establish them!
Write a conversation between the Callow Youth and the Stout Companion and/or another character. Use only dialogue and dialogue tags (e.g. "she said") and only if necessary. We're outside the local pub, The Startled Duck. Start from here:
"Remember what happened to the building inspector," the bartender said. "It could happen to you too." He slammed the door on them and the mosquitoes and the foggy, swampy night.
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